The case of the twentieth-century perfume industry illustrates the varieties of knowledge developed in the production of materials requiring a high level of both technical and aesthetic expertise. Previous studies, such as those of Geoffrey Jones and Eugenie Briot, have shown the significance of synthetic perfume materials for expanding the market for finished perfumes and fragranced products. However, these have not examined the kinds of contested knowledge and peculiar expertise developed to making novel products appealing to the senses. Integral in my analysis is Steven Shapin's work on the sciences of subjectivity. He advocated greater appreciation of the role of the senses in ways of knowing, underscoring the commercial heft of the 'aesthetic industrial complex', his designation of industrial, academic and government entities reliant on trained aesthetic judgment to understand markets and design products.
In my paper, I will examine the knowledge-making practices of firms producing or managing perfumer materials over the middle of the twentieth century, in Britain, Germany and the US. From the cases of W. J. Bush, Schimmel and Arthur D. Little, I argue that a particular form of blended expertise mixing embodied and instrumental knowledge was developed in industrial perfumery. Balancing on one hand the demands of aesthetic sensibility and a luxury product, and on the other, chemical knowledge, industrial production and corporate limitations, twentieth-century perfumery is a prime case for studying science and the boundaries of scientific practice in modern industry.

In 1906, English neurophysiologist Sir Charles Sherrington published 'The Integrative Action of the Nervous System' describing how animal movement was built up from the interaction of reflex arcs, which were unit mechanisms of the nervous system. This is widely regarded as a seminal work heralding modern neuroscience and its current reductionist approach. Geroulanos and Meyers (2016) interpret Sherrington as a reductionist whose views were in direct conflict with those of holistic psychologists such as Kurt Goldstein. Goldstein was a German neurologist and contemporary of Sherrington's who, in his book 'The Organism' (1934) developed a holistic approach that challenged the view that investigating isolated parts could inform you about the whole organism. 
In this paper, I examine Goldstein's criticism of Sherrington's reflex-theory in 'The Organism' to suggest that the contrast between their views is more nuanced. First, through close analysis of 'The Integrative Action', I question the interpretation of Sherrington as a reductionist. Then, in light of this, I show that there are in fact similarities between Sherrington and Goldstein's views. The main disagreement between them was ultimately a methodological one. I argue that this can be better understood with reference to their different social contexts and their views on the relation between mind and body. To this end, I outline the differences between the German and British neurophysiological traditions in the nineteenth century. I conclude that the differences between Sherrington and Goldstein reflect the diverging attitudes towards the mind-body relation in Germany and Britain in this period. 

With the “spatial turn” (Livingstone/Withers), scholars are examining local contexts and the networks linking scientists’ communities. We study the circulation of texts, scientists, scientific knowledge, and specimens or the raw materials used to produce (for example) drugs or armaments. We know less about objects underpinning scientific practice. There are exceptions: Lawrence Dritsas’ “technologies of expedition,” Jennifer Tucker, Marta Braun on photography.
 What of the sourcing and circulation of objects used in everyday bench work? Some (notebooks) could be found widely. Others (microscopes) were crafted in metropolitan centers and traveled across the globe.
 Canada balsam was a staple of every microscopist’s cabinet, as shown in Wood’s popular  Common Objects of the Microscope – yet could be harvested in just one region. A resin from the bark of the balsam fir, Canada balsam acted as pinhole “penny” lens, fixative, or clarifying agent, enabling and enhancing microscopic vision from street to laboratory. It’s discussed by broadsides and by Buckland (writing for Dickens). But it could only be extracted from a remote region in summer, in labor-intensive work usually conducted by indigenous peoples. A unique element of North-woods culture, a product of the extraction economy, Canada balsam was a “common object,” not easy to use, with rare and valuable qualities.
 Canada balsam reminds us: microscope stories don't always proceed from metropole outward to province or colony. What story did it offer? The same as the rest of Victorian microscopy: Painstaking labor, the likelihood of error, perhaps a transcendent reward.