Environmental Prediction and Governance in Industrial Societies: The Infrastructural Sciences

Everybody has seen TV weathermen, but hardly anyone understands why they are important. Environmental prediction has become an essential aspect of the day-to day operations that sustain industrial societies. Weathercasters are prominent local celebrities, a misleadingly visible tip of the mass of technical experts floating submerged beneath the cultural waves. These scientists and technicians, mostly employed by governments, monitor tightly defined aspects of the socio-natural world, producing reports and predictions that enable critical infrastructures to operate safely. While rarely drawing public attention, their routine forecasts are crucial to maintaining the stable flows of food, water, goods, and information—the infrastructures—that most residents of industrial societies have come to take for granted.

This paper argues that historians have missed a fundamental role of science in the modern world. Much scholarship connects science to moments of change: disruptive technological innovations, and culturally challenging theories about human evolution or the nature of space, for instance. Yet a vast amount of scientific work has actually gone into maintaining the continuity of long-established technical systems and social arrangements. Because reliable infrastructure is essential to public health, economic productivity and military power, since the mid 19^th century, states around the world have supported weather services, geological surveys, flood warning systems, and standards institutes. These scientific institutions stabilize the infrastructures that William Cronon calls “second nature” (Nature’s Metropolis) by coordinating pervasive, routine surveillance and prediction. My paper surfaces this scientific work and connects it to environmental history and the history of technology. The paper concludes by arguing that studies of prediction can help us join our histories of science, which usually involve dozens or hundreds of people, with histories of human activities that involve millions to billions of people, like agriculture, industrial production, and mass consumption.