Revealing river models: On the drifting epistemic status of scale models in American hydraulics (1922-1962)

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Julia Sánchez-Dorado: Revealing river models: On the drifting epistemic status of scale models in American hydraulics (1922-1962)

This paper discusses the main epistemic and institutional factors involved in the shifting value attributed to scale models in 20th-century hydrological research. It focuses on the decades of 1920s–1930s in American engineering, a period when disagreements about whether hydraulic scale models were indispensable tools for prediction or mere illustrative devices (unable to substitute experimentation in the actual river, “nature’s own laboratory”) emerged in the public debate. These methodological disagreements allow us to uncover another two long-standing, interrelated disputes within the community of American engineers at that time: one, the dispute between the model of military science endorsed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and that proposed by civilian engineers graduated at elite American universities, such as John Freeman, main advocate of the founding of a National Hydraulic Laboratory in the U.S.; two, the dispute between engineers who praised the merits of European hydraulic models, and those who believed that the uniqueness of American river problems required genuinely American models, very different from those previously built in Europe. The article concludes connecting the history of modern hydraulics with the broader debate about the singular character of engineering work, at the intersection of theoretical knowledge, craftmanship, and the search for immediate engineering solutions in response to devastating events such as the Great Flood of 1927. (This paper is written in co-authorship with Prof. Susan Sterrett, Wichita State University).

Julia Sánchez-Dorado is an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow in the area of Theoretical Philosophy at the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Literature, at the TU Berlin. In 2019 she obtained a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from University College London. Her current research project concerns the epistemology of modelling in the geosciences. She is also interested in the problem of representation in science and art, the status of creativity as an epistemic value, and the formation of standards in scientific communities.