Human Computers as Instruments

To understand how science works we need to understand how scientific knowledge is produced. This requires investigating both the roles of human beings who reduce, analyse, and interpret the data as well as how data is produced by instruments and experiments. The project undertakes a novel and interdisciplinary inquiry into the epistemic roles of the people historically reduced and analysed data in large-scale scientific enterprises before the advent of digital computers. In particular, the project investigates the epistemic roles of C1-the scanners within the Bristol Nuclear Research Group 1935-1955 and C2-the human computers at the Harvard Observatory 1880-1920. Both scanners and human computers were women, from relatively poor backgrounds, who were employed as 'unskilled' workers to 'mindlessly' analyse the data, being regarded as 'ideal' candidates for making discovery and scientific knowledge 'more objective'. But were these 'hidden figures' merely 'mindless machines'?

The particular philosophical value of the comparison between C1 and C2 consists in: a) identification of novel objectivity norms; and b) analysis of the dynamics between scientific discovery and credit and authorship. Additionally, the comparison is valuably contrastive in that the data analysed is significantly different: the scanners specialised in the detection of cosmic particles within photographic emulsions plates, whereas the human computers specialised in the identification of the spectral characteristics of stars and their classification.


The Human Computers as Instruments project will furnish analytical and ethical tools for a) the philosophical and normative assessment of epistemic work and epistemic injustice within large scale collaborations; b) the re-appraisal of norms of scientific objectivity and scientific discovery; c) the regulation and communication of credit, authorship, and reward systems in science and d) the engagement of the public in more complex narratives of instrumentation and experimentation, scientific discovery, and reward systems in science.


This project will provide an essential platform for a better understanding of how scientific knowledge is produced and legitimised in large scale collaborations, as well as of how scientific credit is apportioned in such scientific enterprises. This will be invaluable for future philosophical and historical work which investigates how scientific knowledge is produced and legitimised in i) other nuclear emulsions and bubble chamber projects which hired scanners (e.g. the UCL Emulsion Group and Bubble Chamber Group 1955-1975, the Brookhaven National Laboratory); other Observatories or enterprises which hired human computers (e.g. the Edinburgh Observatory mid 19th to mid 20th centuries, NACA/NASA 1940-1965); as well as iii) contemporary large-scale scientific projects such as big science2 enterprises (e.g. CERN) or citizen science3 projects (e.g. the Hubble Asteroid Hunter project).