Science: Histories, imaginations, spaces

Abstract

Scientific understanding of oceans has long required an interplay between the use of remote sensing technology and imaginative inference about underwater spaces. This chapter explores how the relationship between marine science, marine space, and the imagination, has played out in different environments such as the shoreline, the vertical water column, and the seafloor, from the late eighteenth century to the present. Tracing these developments reveals a back-and-forth relationship between how scientists imagine marine environments and the technological inventions that facilitate interpretation of ocean space.