Geophysics, realism, and industry: how commercial interests shaped geophysical conceptions, 1900–1960

Have industry and commerce affected the concepts, values, and epistemic foundations of different sciences? If so, how and to what extent? This book suggests that the most significant influence of industry on science, in the two case studies treated here, had to do with the issue of realism. These two cases deal with the elucidation of the layers of the upper atmosphere and the Earth’s crust. Using wave propagation as the common thread, this book simultaneously analyses the emergence of realist attitudes towards the entities of the ionosphere and the Earth’s crust. However, what was it that led physicists and engineers to adopt realist attitudes? This book suggests that a new kind of realism—one with social and cultural origins—is the answer: a preliminary, entity realism responding to specific commercial and engineering interests; i.e. a realism that was neither strictly instrumental nor exclusively operational. The book has two parts: while Part I focuses on the study of the ionosphere and how the British radio industry affected ionospheric physics, Part II focuses on the study of the Earth’s crust and how the American oil industry affected crustal seismology.