My interest in the life and work of English astronomer William Huggins (1824–1910) began over twenty years ago in a graduate seminar on conceptual transfer within and among specialised scientific communities. The exchange of cultural baggage is a subtle dynamic that practitioners, particularly those working in long-established disciplines, usually take care to shield from public view. Our little group spent the semester analysing the far more transparent machinery of newer, still-developing hybrid disciplines like geophysics, biochemistry and astrobiology.

The topic meshed well with my own research interests at the time. I wanted to learn more about how the boundaries of scientific disciplines are established, policed and altered: What are the rules members must follow in investigating the natural world? What questions are deemed appropriate to ask? What do good answers to such questions look like and how can they be recognised? What constitutes an acceptable way of finding those answers? Who is allowed to participate in the search? Who says?

How better to find answers to these questions than to watch a scientific discipline during a period of change?