Ether Wave Propaganda – Page 32 – History and Historiography of Science

Schaffer on Cometography, Pt. 1

Cometary transits have always displayed the troubled relationship between astronomers, theologians, natural philosophers, and their public.

Simon Schaffer, 1987

Drawing by Honoré Daumier, 1857. From the Art Institute of Chicago

Between 1987 and 1993, Simon Schaffer published five papers on the history of cometography, meditating on some of his favorite themes concerning the links between cosmology, scientific methodology, scientific identity, epistemology, theology, politics, authority, social order, and the hermeneutics of history:

(1) “Newton’s Comets and the Transformation of Astrology” in Astrology, Science and Society: Historical Essays (1987), edited by Patrick Curry.

(2) “Authorized Prophets: Comets and Astronomers after 1759,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 17 (1987): 45-74.

(3) “Halley, Delisle, and the Making of the Comet” in Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley (1990), edited by N. Thrower.

(4) “Comets and the World’s End” in Predicting the Future (1993), edited by L. Howe and A. Wain.

(5) “Comets & Idols: Newton’s Cosmology and Political Theology” in Action and Reaction (1993), edited by Paul Theerman and Adele Seeff.

From his earliest publications, comets had played a role in Schaffer’s thinking about seventeenth and eighteenth-century cosmology and philosophical inquiry: they were frequently called upon to fill various cosmological roles as agents of destruction, transportation, and restoration. In these five pieces, Schaffer provided further evidence for the centrality of comets in natural philosophical problematics, and clarified the staggering variety of implications cometography could have within and beyond them. In this post, I outline a few of the features of his decidedly complex set of arguments. In its sequel, I will look at Schaffer’s historiographical thinking in (4) and (5).

Although Schaffer’s examination of cometography stretches from Tycho

Read More…Read More…

Primer: Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was born in Shanghai, China and raised nearby in Jiangsu Province. Her father had been trained as an engineer and was the director of the Ming De School for Girls at the time of her birth. Wu finished her education at her father’s school in 1922 and went on to the Soochow School for Girls in Nanjing, where she studied physics and mathematics on her own while undertaking a more classical formal education. In 1930 she registered at the National Central University in Nanjing, and received a degree in physics in 1934. She was also active in the student protests there that followed the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

Wu did x-ray crystallography research for two years at the Chinese National Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. In 1936 she sailed to America with financial support from an uncle in order to undertake graduate education at the University of Michigan. On her way, she stopped and visited the University of California at Berkeley, where she met Ernest Lawrence (and her future husband Luke Yuan). On learning that Michigan did not allow women in its student union, she opted to pursue her PhD at Berkeley instead, receiving it in 1940 for work on nuclear decay

Read More…Read More…

The Great Escape

This post is meant to be the first in a series concerning the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science, paying special attention to the influential notion within the history of science that the philosophy of science has a deleterious influence on historiography.

Philosophy, in this view, injures inquiry by removing from consideration some of science’s most important non-scientific contexts; by causing historians to attempt to investigate incoherent questions rooted in philosophically defined problems (such as those relating to moments of discovery, confirmation, falsification, and proof); and by concentrating narratives on histories of disembodied ideas (vacuum versus plenum, atoms versus continuum, myth/confusion versus reason, determinism versus vitalism/free will, mind-body questions) and on the Whiggish pedigrees of disembodied theories (the theory of natural selection, the periodicity of elements, etc…), instead of on the actions and debates of scientists themselves, which the archives reveal did not turn on these preoccupations.

Sociology played a big role in “the great escape” (as I am calling it) from philosophy. If philosophy has to do with the interaction between ideas and experience, it then has only a very narrowly defined role in the history of scientific practice. The sensibility, I think, is captured nicely by sociologist Harry Collins in his recent overview of his career-long research program on the practice of gravitational wave physics, Gravity’s Shadow (2004). Here he defends a “relativist” versus a “realist” (one might say sociological versus philosophical) perspective:

Read More…Read More…

Primer: The Rise of the Austrian School of Economics

The “Austrian School” in economics traces its tradition to the work of Carl Menger (1840-1921). Menger’s theoretical development of the origins of price has grouped him with the contemporary “Lausanne School” (identified with the axiomatic mathematical economics of Leon Walras) and the work of British economist William Stanley Jevons, all as part of the “marginalist revolution” in economics, which grounded the mechanism of price-setting in the value attributed to various quantities of goods by their buyers and sellers—a keystone of neoclassical economic theory and a critical element in the argument against the control of the economy by the state.

Menger developed his theories in opposition to the “German Historical School” headed by Gustav Schmoller (1838-1917), which gave Menger and his followers the label “Austrian”, intending the label as derogatory. Schmoller insisted that theoretical economics disregarded essential differences in national traditions, and that only detailed historical investigations could arrive at a firm understanding of political and economic activity. The opening of the conflict between Menger and Schmoller occurred following the publication of Menger’s Principles of Economics (1871), a mere four years after Menger had received his law degree. An anonymous review signed “G. Sch.” in a literary journal criticized the text’s scientific pretensions. When Schmoller dismissed Menger’s Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics (1883) in

Read More…Read More…

Hump-Day History: Karl Alfred von Zittel and his History of Geology and Paleontology

Karl Alfred von Zittel ( September 25, 1839 – January 5, 1904) was a German paleontologist. Henry Fairfield Osborn, the geologist, zoologist, and eugenicist, who authored, in 1936 the two volume, The Proboscidea: A Monograph of the Discovery, Evolution, Migration and Extinction of the Mastodonts and Elephants of the World, as well as Man Rises to Parnassus, eulogized von Zittel as one of the most “distinguished advocates of paleontology.” It was no exaggeration, according to Osborn, to say that “he did more for the promotion and diffusion of paleontology than any other single man who lived during the nineteenth century.”

Von Zittel, “while not a genius”, nonetheless possessed “untiring industry” as well as “critical capacity” ( Science, N. S., Vol. XIX. ) What then were von Zittel’s achievements? First among them was the multi-volume Handbuch der Palaeontologie, issued between 1876 and 1890. While the progress of paleontology in the nineteenth century was “prodigious,” according to Osborn, it was nonetheless, “scattered through thousands of monographs and special papers,” a “hopeless labyrinth to the student.” Such was the state of knowledge, detail without system, that it was impossible for even the expert “to gain a perspective view of the whole subject.” Von Zittel’s Handbuch der Palaeontologie was a feat of organization and collection. Added to this textual achievement was von Zittel’s apparently fantastic collection of natural historical specimens which he assembled at Alte Akademie of Munich. This collection, assembled from all over the world, illustrated the course of the ” evolution of plants and of invertebrate and vertebrate animals.”

It was small wonder that Munich accordingly became “the Mecca of paleontologists, young and old.” Such community was fostered by von Zittel due in large part to his “exceptionally charming and magnetic personality.” He was also exceptionally generous with both his time and his natural historical specimens. Von Zittel’s legacy and fame were secure as he could count among his students “all the younger American, most of the German, and many of the younger French and Austrian paleontologists.”

Read More…Read More…

Odds and Ends

I’m off to Minnesota to visit family for a week, and will probably not be posting. I think Chris has something planned for Hump Day History, which will probably go up later.

For any readers with an interest in science policy, the blog Prometheus is being discontinued. I originally had Prometheus on the blog roll because I enjoyed David Bruggeman’s attention to a well-parsed variety of issues concerning science in the federal (and occasionally British) governments. Bruggeman’s new blog is Pasco Phronesis, which takes Prometheus’ place on the blog roll. Prometheus’s main contributor, Roger Pielke, Jr., is primarily intested in climate change issues, and he also has a new blog. His analyses of policy issues and public pronouncements are detailed, frequent, and pointed, but are a little far afield of what we do here. So no new link, but I encourage readers with any interest in the issue to check him out if they haven’t already.

Finally, I thought it might be interesting to do occasional “what am I reading?” posts. I read different books in different ways. Some books I read in detail from cover to cover. For Hump Day History I read books in enough detail to do a competent summary of the subject matter, but don’t really absorb the whole thing. A whole stack of others sit on my shelf or coffee table seemingly eternally half-read, and sometimes I actually finish them. A couple selections I plan on taking to Minnesota with me, plus short commentary, after the jump.

Read More…Read More…

Methodological Unity, Revisited

Buchwald and Franklin, eds., Wrong for the Right Reasons.

In my recent look at historiographical language, I discussed Kent Staley’s 1999 critique of Peter Galison’s division of particle detector history pre-1970 into epistemologically discontinuous “image” and “logic” traditions. I noted that Staley might have made his point less palatable through an appeal to the methodological “unity” of science (rather than contiguousness), which Galison jumped on as contrary to the construction of coherent history. For Galison, it is the methodological divisions in science that keep it nimble, intellectually diverse, and heuristically powerful, and it is an appreciation of this disunity that allows us to make any sense of its history consistent with a detailed reading of the historical record. What, then, is the appeal of philosophical “unity”, and do historians have anything to gain by letting philosophers espousing it in the door?

If, indeed, philosophers believed philosophy could be used to reconstruct an algorithmic history of science, then surely they should be kept out at all costs, but this does not appear to be the case. Staley, for one, appears to seek conceptual clarity rather than to follow Imre Lakatos’ notion of the “rational reconstruction” of history—science may be epistemologically diverse, but underlying epistemological connections may be revealing of the sources of the strength of certain kinds of knowledge-making acts: “We might entertain the following version of the ‘unity of methods’ thesis: there are a small number of forms of argument that are shared among otherwise diverse areas of investigation, or that are employed in common during

Read More…Read More…

Primer: Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday (1791-1867) came from a London artisan family and as a youth became an apprentice at a bookbinding shop. There he took the opportunity to read the books passing through, including such scientific titles as Conversations on Chemistry (1805) by Jane Marcet and Antoine Lavoisier’s landmark Elements of Chemistry (translated into English in 1790). Supported in his explorations by his master and others, he attended popular scientific lectures, including some given by the celebrated chemist Humphry Davy (1778-1829) at the new Royal Institution (est. 1799). In 1813 Faraday finagled a job as Davy’s assistant, and would remain at the Royal Institution for the rest of his life.

Faraday undertook his work throughout a period when the sciences were changing rapidly, as they were yoked into distinct specialties, and as his own area, the experimental physical sciences, became dramatically more sophisticated. Under Davy’s and other Royal Institution figures’ supervision, he learned the techniques of chemistry, and undertook all his early work in that field (and is credited with the discovery of benzene). When Faraday initiated his interest in electricity and magnetism early in the 19th century, the harnessing of galvanic currents by means of voltaic piles was a recent innovation that had sparked extensive investigation into electrochemical effects (an alternative explanation is here). Davy was a leader in this new field of study, and Faraday would likewise become an expert. Faraday would eventually fall out with Davy—who would oppose his election to the Royal Society—and he came into his own at the Royal

Read More…Read More…

Self-Promotion!

Aside from blogging, I, in fact, also do research and produce academic works. Typically I try not to blog excessively about my own work, but it seems a pity not to try and bring the two together from time to time. So, I wanted to draw attention to a two-part series appearing in the latest Science in Context that I wrote with my friend and former grad school colleague Lambert Williams. Both papers have both our names on them, and were formulated largely in tandem, but (as the writing styles will evidence) we do have our respective halves of the series.

My half is a new consideration of Jay Forrester’s system dynamics simulation methodology, which he originated at MIT circa 1960. It’s best known through its role in the 1970s “Limits to Growth” affair, but rather than recapitulate the tit-for-tat of the various proponents and critics of his simulation project, I wanted to try and elucidate what made this project so appealing to him that he has remained with it through the present. To a large extent, system dynamics has meshed into the larger background of computer simulation

Read More…Read More…

Watch your language, Pt. 2: Galison vs. Staley

In Pt. 1, I discussed the historiographical problem of under what circumstances it is useful to criticize someone else’s characterization of history, highlighting Peter Galison’s rebuke in Image and Logic to Andy Pickering’s account of the discovery of the J/ψ particle from Constructing Quarks. I noted that Galison took exception to Pickering’s idea of “tuning” experiment to theory on the count of its adherence to an antipositivist understanding of the history of experiment as proceeding in some sort of theoretical relationship to theory rather than on its own terms. This independence of experimental tradition from theoretical concerns is part of a useful view of history Galison calls “intercalation”. I noted that the issue of theory-dependence can have political overtones, but that the issue is also important to understanding how knowledge-production works, and to constructing coherent and accurately-worded historical accounts.

But just how important is accuracy in wording? When is one making a point and when is one just nitpicking? To address this question I want to skip ahead a couple of years to a special issue of Perspectives on Science dedicated to Image and Logic in which philosopher of science Kent Staley disputed Galison’s division of modern particle detection into epistemologically distinct “image” and “logic” traditions. Galison responded in the same issue entirely confident that he was being visited by some easily vanquished ghost out of the historiographical past. Yet, to my mind, this is a dispute that Staley won. I’ll explain why, and then get on to the ultimate question of whether it matters.

First off, I should say that I’m predisposed to Staley’s argument. When I first thoroughly read Image and Logic in

Read More…Read More…