inaccuracies and superficial determinations and all those explanations creep in, under the
burden of which science is weighed down.”51
It is even conceivable that this was a subtle but programmatic statement aimed at any
members of the Society who happened to be in the audience. Because - even though there is
no reason to assume van der Willigen did not give his lectures at the Society with the best of
intentions - they did mark a break with the past in the sense that during the previous decades
of the Society’s existence, any member had - in principle - been allowed to give
presentations on any topic or recent finding deemed interesting.52 By effectively
monopolising the right to hold these lectures (although he shared this duty together with his
colleague who held the chair for chemistry), van der Willigen was relegating the members to
the status of mere recipients of knowledge that he - the expert - would break down and
“diffuse” for them. This reflected the growing status of science, and by extension the status
claimed by and accorded to researchers - “scientists” - such as van der Willigen.
At this point it is worth noting too, however, that van der Willigen’s penchant for precise
measurement and his clear distinction between trained, specialised researchers on the one
hand and amateurs on the other hand did not go uncontested. His contemporary Christophorus
Henricus Didericus Buys Ballot, a professor of mathematics at the University of Utrecht, was
a particularly outspoken opponent. The origins to the two men’s dispute again lay in van der
Willigen’s inaugural lecture: in order to illustrate how important precise measurement was to
serious research van der Willigen had referred to studies of the earth’s atmosphere as an
example of the gathering of data that would not be of much use because it was imprecise and
would yield little more than qualitative results. Buys Ballot however took this as a personal
attack on his research efforts - most likely this was not unjustified - and published a rebuke in
the popular weekly magazine Algemene Konst- en Letterbode.53 Interestingly, in the same
way that van der Willigen was basically helping define a methodology that in turn defined
physics, Buys Ballot was at the time in the process of establishing meteorology as a fully
fledged science. To this end he was in the process of constructing an immense,
“Humboldtian”, network of observers - which explicitly included amateurs. In fact, his
rebuke to van der Willigen was delivered in an article in which he called upon those amateurs
to provide him with as many measurements as possible. He was convinced that absolute
measurements were not needed to establish a margin of errors in his measurements, but that
51 “Sterrekundige waamemingen waren te alien tijde meer boven het bereik van velen verheven en vorderen
bijzonderen toeleg; treffende natuurkundige proeven daarentegen vallen binnen den kring van een ieder. Terwijl
nu nog een ruim veld van onderzoek en bespiegeling overblijft, houden velen zieh met proefnemingen bezig en
gaan op ontdekkingen uit; zij leveren onnauwkeurige waarnemingen, waar reeds de volkomenste worden
gevorderd, en valsche onderstellingen, die tot hare vernietiging nieuw onderzoek eischen; zoo wanen zij der
wetenschap uitstekende diensten te bewijzen. En hierdoor sluipen dan die onjuistheden en oppervlakkige
bepalingen en al die verklaringen binnen, onder wier last de wetenschap gebukt gaat.” Ibid., 37.
Goeij, “Het Deventer Natuur- en Scheikundig Genootschap en de opleving van de natuurwetenschap in
Nederland in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw,” 31-32.
53 Christopherus Henricus Didericus Buys Ballot, “Sterre- en Weerkundige Waarnemingen: lets over de
Meteorologische Waarnemingen aan het Observatorium te Utrecht,” Algemeene Konst- en Letterbode, August
12, 1848.
54 On this see: Frans van Lunteren, “Geinstitutionaliseerde deskundigheid: Buys Ballot en het KNMI,” in De
opmars van deskundigen: Souffleurs van de samenleving, ed. Frans van Lunteren, Bert Theunissen, and Rienk
Vermij (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2002), 59-74.
relative values were sufficient for what he sought to achieve. As he said some years after his
public exchange with van der Willigen, he considered it “infinitely better to make simple
observations in a hundred places, not too far from each other, than very complete ones in ten
pl, aces.«55 I
Yet despite this small but nasty public feud, both men continued unperturbed. Van der
Willigen could not resist a jibe at his detractor before the members of the Deventer Society m
1851, stating that meteorology was “more of a descriptive than an explanatory science, closer
to geography than to physics”.5
Van der Willigen remained in Deventer for the better part of 16 years - after which he was
appointed curator at Teylers. Notable and formative events during these years include his
marriage in 1856 (when he died suddenly in 1878 he left his widow with six children) and, as
was already mentioned, his being elected a member of the Dutch Royal Academy. Whatever
time he had van der Willigen devoted to research - although he complained at least once that
the equipment and facilities at his disposal were actually insufficient.57 But he evidently
overcame such restrictions and busied himself with a variety of research projects. In 1852 for
instance he established Deventer’s exact latitude by taking a series of measurements at the
observatory that had been installed in a tower of the town’s former fortifications. This resulted
in the publication of a small booklet with his findings.58 Between 1857 and 1859 he published
a series of articles in the Dutch Royal Academy’s Journal on spectrographic research he had
performed on light that was created through the discharge that occurs between two electrodes
in a variety of gases. This research in turn allowed him to develop methods of testing the
quality of materials on the basis of spectrography. He was able to establish whether solutions
of soluble bases contained any contamination from other materials. His research on electric
discharge also led him to cooperate with Friedrich Wilhelm Florenz Geisslergthe brother of
Heinrich - and van der Willigen suggested to him that he introduce platinum wires into the
Torricellian vacuum tube of a barometer, sealing off the junctions and thereby producing the
best possible vacuum known at the time”.59 According to van de Sande Bakhuyzen, van der
Willigen became disheartened with this line of research after Fraunhofer and Bunsen had
published far more precise results on the same topic, and spent his last years in Deventer
performing small-scale experiments related to electricity and the interference and diffraction
of light.
By this time, major change was looming on the horizon. More specifically, the year 1863 saw
a substantial reform of the Dutch education system. Following suggestions by the first
minister Rudolf Thorbecke - the former professor of law in Leiden who had already been first
55 “oneindig beter op honderd plaatsen, niet te ver van elkander, eenvoudige waarnemingen te doen, dan op tien
plaatsen hoogst volledige.” As quoted in: Ibid., 63. . BSsfÉI
56 “meer beschrijvende wetenschap dan verklärende, dichter bij geografie dan by physica ; ‘Notulen Natuur- en
Scheikundig Genootschap 1853-1908”, 06.11.1861, Archief Deventer, ID972, nr. 1.
57 See the introductory remarks to: Volkert Simon Maarten van der Willigen, Bepahng der poolshoogte voor
Deventer (Deventer: J. de Lange, 1852). I am grateful to Marijn van Hoorn for having drawn my attention to this
publication.
58 Ibid
59 Karl Eichhorn, “Heinrich Geissler (1814-1879): His Life, Times and Work,” Bulletin o f the Scientific
Instrument Society 27 (1990): 19.