History and Historiography of Science

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Talks in London on the 28th

If you happen to be in London these days, and you are free on the 28th, you could make your way over to Greenwich, and pay six-to-eight quid to hear Simon Schaffer’s talk, “Acting at a Distance: The Venus Transit Expeditions and the Establishment of Empire” at the National Maritime Museum.  It is part of the Royal Society’s lecture series, Science and the Maritime Nation, which is running this month.

Or, you could skip the obligatory inspirational lesson on “how fraught and fragile” the transit expeditions’ “attempts to make science and empire work together” were, download his Tarner lectures on astronomy, hear/read his take on the transit expeditions here, read Thony C’s very nice summations of the frustrations of an 18th-century transit expedition here, and then feel free to come and see me, free-of-charge, at Imperial College in South Kensington, as part of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine’s seminar series.

My talk will be entitled “Some Facets of the 20th-Century-Problem in Historiography: Scientists, Policymakers, Experts, and Analysts”, and will be at 4:15pm, Sherfield Building, 5th Floor Seminar Rooms. Hopefully drinks afterward.  My talk will begin with an overview of my work on operational research, policy analysis, and decision theory, and some of the new conclusions I was able to draw from that research.  However, it will then move into the difficulties of studying very big topics (i.e., the “20th-century problem” which is a term that has gained a modicum of traction in discussions around here), the dangers of adhering to classical historiographical expectations of what tensions will inhabit those topics (science! politics! where-oh-where will the boundaries be drawn this time?) and some possible strategies for dealing with this historiographical problem, i.e., the internet.  I will discuss blogs as a way of keeping the historiographical pot stirred, and ACAP as an example of addressing a big topic in a preliminary way.  This will lead into an introduction of my brand new research project: a broad survey of forms of expertise used in the British state, 1945-1975, on which much more anon.  It’s a whirlwind, but I figure it will be more interesting than a boring old lecture on a single topic.

By the way, Whewell’s Ghost contributor Rebekah Higgitt will be doing a lecture, “The Admiralty’s Observatories: Greenwich, Cape, Rossbank” on November 4th at the NMM.  I will not be lecturing on that day, so by all means do go and check it out.

Is There a Conflict of Interest between STS and History of Science?

A brief satire:

Q: If you’re an STS scholar, how do you participate in a policy debate?

A: (1) Identify some place where somebody can plausibly be accused of over-certainty and reductionism in their assertion of a solution to a policy problem.  (2) Deploy your meta-knowledge of how controversies work to accuse participants in policy debates of over-certainty and reductionism.  (3) Feel increasingly satisfied with your meta-knowledge that over-certainty and reductionism are the root causes of policy failure.

If aversion to reductionism is indeed the central critical feature of Science and Technology Studies (STS, occasionally “Science, Technology, and Society”), the danger of reductionism is taken to be augmented by the prospect that science and technology carry a certain public authority that can potentially disguise this reductionism.  This authority is thought to be based on the prospect that science and technology enjoy a certain separateness or distinction from the rest of culture and politics.  The central authority-based failure to detect reductionism is taken to lead to follow-on varieties of failure, particularly: the structural failure of formal methodologies to cope with suitably complex and uncertain phenomena, the moral failure of methodologies to take into account divergent social and intellectual perspectives and values, and the failure of methodologies designed to resolve social problems and controversies to transcend controversy themselves.

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Boundaries, Interests, and Traditions in the Management Thereof

When I posted on boundary studies in the history of science earlier this summer, I had in mind narratives focusing on epochal conflicts between groups, and the likelihood that we will learn little from the conflict that will help us understand the groups themselves.  In reaction to that, Amy Fisher (a PhD student from the University of Minnesota who has been doing some work for us at the AIP History Center) told me that for her the most interesting boundary problems were “on a smaller scale, as it connects to issues of identity.”  This was a good point, and I have had to go through a number of other posts before I felt I had my thoughts in order enough to address it adequately.

What boundary? This bridge has been here for years!

These smaller-scale boundary problems usually deal with individuals attempting to build lives, careers, or ideas, and having to situate their actions and beliefs within the strains of competing interests.  Natural philosophers might have had to reconcile their arguments about nature with their beliefs about religion.  Museum exhibitors might have to reconcile their desire to educate the public about certain kinds of scientific knowledge with the interests and expectations of that same public. In the twentieth century, physicists might have had to reconcile their desire to pursue their research interests with their ability to acquire funding by appealing to military, government, or industrial patrons.  Etc.

My response here is that in these cases the most relevant boundaries are not necessarily well-portrayed by the historiography.  Historians will typically portray actors as having to “negotiate” a compromise position on their own through a sort of an ad hoc process.  I would argue that it is here where historians’ aversion to reconstructing various long-term traditions is damaging, because it does not take into account established patterns of identity development and institution-building, which become models for a successful and legitimate resolution to the many many situations in which conflicts of interest arise.

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The Toronto Blog Collective

History of Science departments have a record of abject failure when it comes to maintaining a thriving presence in online discussion.  University of Pennsylvania’s Logan Lounge was a pioneering departmental effort, but soon sank into posting semesterly updates of upcoming colloquia, and, after 2008, stopped doing even that.  The University of Minnesota program has also given it a go, but never got things going very well (I expect more from my hometown Golden Gophers!).  University College London apparently could not secure state funding and the support of local workers for the construction and maintenance of its STS Observatory.  The University of Oklahoma’s Hydra journal died quietly soon after creating a site with professional-looking graphics.  Ostensibly having an entire department dedicated to the task of maintaining a blog should make it easier for everyone — I know I wish I had more backup! — but this is apparently not so.  Tragedy of the commons, or something, I guess.

Libraries, archives, and museums have a much more impressive record.  Oregon State’s Pauling Blog continues to amaze me in its ability to churn out quality material on a single person week after week.  The Copenhagen Medical Museion keeps a steady hand on the wheel of its discussions of material culture and public presentation in the biomedical domain.  The Wellcome Library blog is excellent, and the Royal Society is off to a good start as well.  My employers, for lack of planning, did not fare so well.

Now there is blogging fever at the University of Toronto.  Three students have started blogs: Jai Virdi, Aaron Sidney Wright, and Jonathan Turner.  In addition, there is a new group blog, The Bubble Chamber, which aims to address a broader audience about matters of public interest.  EWP wishes this new cauldron of effort well, but will observe that keeping a consistent blog requires either a deep well of subject matter to make public, or a willingness to grow in one’s ideas with time.  History of Science scholarship encourages us to think that, by our capacity as people dedicated to the study of science and technology, we have the additional capacity to see-and-commentate at will, and that this ensures both good historiography and our value to the public sphere.  A line of dead blogs (and declining blogs that will remain nameless) suggests we think we have more ideas than we really have.  (Also: no whining about work loads — blogging should always augment your work, not distract you from it.  Blogs should maintain an individualized pace and format appropriate to that task.)  Toronto: the spotlight is on you.

Great Whewell’s Ghost!

Just a quick note to say that I will now be doing some new entries, as well as some cross-posting and re-posting from EWP at the new Whewell’s Ghost blog, which has been set up by John Lynch, evolvingthoughts.net’s John Wilkins, and Rebekah Higgit of the National Maritime Museum in London.  It is meant as a clearing-house for high-quality posts on history and philosophy of science, and already seems to be dwarfing readership here after about one day on the internet.

Summer Vacation

There are a few different things in the blog pipeline, but I haven’t finished any of them before hitting a period of travel and other assorted tasks.  Posting will be sparse-to-non-existent the next few weeks, but will be back later this month.

Life at the Boundary

For decades now, historians of science and their allies in science studies have had an enduring fondness for boundary studies.  The “boundaries” in question are taken to be places where agreements that define what constitutes a legitimate claim no longer clearly apply.  In Thomas Kuhn’s idea of the “paradigm” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962), arguments across paradigms cannot be decided based upon evidence, because the standards of interpretation that would allow a decision to be made differ.

Kuhn’s point spoke to a potential philosophical irreconcilability, but sociologists would adopt the basic idea to discuss the importance of social coalition-building in knowledge-building, which could be hidden beneath an apparent epistemological smoothness where arguments were well-accepted, but which became visible in instances of controversy along coalition boundaries.

Harry Collins wrote in 1981, “In most cases the salience of alternative interpretations of evidence, which typifies controversies, has acted as a level to elicit the essentially cultural nature of the local boundaries of scientific legitimacy—normally elusive and concealed” (“Introduction” to a special issue of Social Studies of Science 11 (1981): 3-10).  Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer wrote in Leviathan and the Air Pump (1985):  “Another advantage afforded by studying controversy is that historical actors […] attempt to deconstruct the taken-for-granted quality of their antagonists’ preferred beliefs and practices, and they do this by trying to display the artifactual and conventional status of those beliefs and practices” (p. 7).

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A Few Quick Bits

First off, as an extension of my two–part post on chymistry and natural philosophy, readers interested in the topic may enjoy this interview with Bill Newman for NOVA’s “Newton’s Dark Secrets” program, which first aired five years ago.

Next, my once-and-future collaborator Lambert Williams sends along a link to this profile of Martin Gardner, who just recently died.  Gardner was a writer, ponderer of things scientific and philosophical, and is probably best-known for his long-running Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

Finally, for those who like a face to go with their posts, via the latest AIP History Center newsletter, a typical day for me at the office:

The book, by the way, is Galileo’s Two New Sciences.  I picked up a cheap used copy on Amazon, but, not being a scholar of 17th-century mechanics, I still haven’t actually read the thing all the way through.

Paul Lucier on “Professionals” and “Scientists” in 19th-Century America

John Shaw Billings (1838-1913): critic of the term "scientist" and the dudes who used it.

Indepenent historian Paul Lucier’s “The Professional and the Scientist in Nineteenth-Century America,” Isis 100 (2009): 699-732, presents an excellent overview of the place of different scientific activities in that milieu, the conceptual vocabulary and nomenclature with which those activities were routinely described, and how those descriptions changed with time.  The article engages actively with other portrayals in the historiographical literature from the past century, and presents new materials and arguments.  Stylistically, it is an exemplary work of scholarship.

As an intellectual contribution, Lucier’s piece comes up very strong as well.  His most immediately valuable contribution here is a clarification of the 19th-century lexicon.  Throughout the century, Americans followed their British counterparts in routinely referring to “men of science” as a generic term for geologists, chemists, and so forth.  While the Americans also followed closely on the British in founding new institutions of science, notably the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, est. 1848) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS, est. 1863), these and other organizations’ role in organizing American science ought not, under any circumstances, be referred to as “professionalization”.

As Lucier explains, the “professional” in 19th-century America was someone who earned a living through their educated services, especially physicians, lawyers, and clergymen.  Men of science could be professionals, because they were frequently employed on a fee-for-service basis: as geological surveyors, as chemical analysts, as tutors, etc.  But being a man of science was not in itself a “profession”.

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Polemics, Ideals, Ideas, and History

Some time ago, I posted on a subject I referred to as “insultography“, which is the study of insults operating in history.  When I later posted on Simon Schaffer’s (fantastic) “Comets & Idols” and its discussion of historical uses of Newton’s work as a kind of “sacred text”, I thought that might be a more general treatment of the problem.  Since then, I’ve been batting this vague idea around in my head, and thought it might be a good idea to do a post, albeit a very hand-waving one.

Every good historian knows it’s not wise to take historical insults at face value.  For example, if someone in history observes that someone else’s complaints against them were rooted in that person’s jealousy of their accomplishments, it might not be a good idea to repeat as fact the idea that that other person was complaining just because they were jealous.  There are two sides to every story, and so on and so forth.

What I have in mind here, though, goes more toward the relationship between historical polemics (or praise) and historical ideas.  The character of an insult can tell you a lot about the culture that the polemicist inhabits: they might accuse someone of being impious, or imprecise, or rough-mannered, or weak.  It seems reasonably safe to say that polemics and praise reflect on the ideals of a culture: piety, precision, refinement, strength.  In the history of science, insults can tell you a lot about surrounding cultural resources that a scientific culture draws upon to structure thinking within its community.

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