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Controlling The Environment: The Australian Phytotron And Postcolonial Science, David Munns

Publications and Research

The phytotron story is concered with the presence in Australia of large scientific instruments. The scientific and political commitment to those instruments was overlapping and indistinguishable. The instruments signalled Australia’s place as a first world scientific nation, preemminant in its region. Moreover the instrument was a sign of Australia’s standing as a member of the international first-world community, the community which contributed towards the stock of ‘pure’ knowledge for the defence of the free-world. But there were ideological battles as well. The defence of the free world was, for the principal proponents in Australia and the United States, connected to …