History and Historiography of Science

controversy and conversation

Here’s a thought for the day: how do you tell a scientific conversation from a scientific controversy? I was thinking about this while thinking about the problem of limited perspective. Yesterday I discussed C. P. Snow’s two cultures problem–he was concerned that administrators had too narrow a perspective, that they weren’t open to scientific revelations, that scientific knowledge no longer counted as part of intellectual life. The flip side to this argument is the critique of scientism: science’s limited perspective can constrain thinking within the bounds of what has been accepted as adhering to the constraints of certain kinds of scientific models. Of course, these constraints are frequently designed around certain political or technical projects.

I’ve expressed my doubts that these critiques address a realistic portrayal of the place of science in society in any era. Both seem to hinge on a scientific authority that is either ignored or fetishized, in either case supposing a final conclusion that “science” advocates. Studies of scientific controversies also seem to be mostly concerned with the circumstances of their resolution. But little emphasis seems to be placed on the productivity of debate. By emphasizing controversy rather than conversation, by emphasizing the closure of argumentation rather than its opening up, do we assume that issues of science tend to assume a bitter tone? Is this seen as a choice between optimism and pessimism, or hagiography and critique?

I don’t have a good answer, and I’m not sure how long I want to keep asking hand-waving questions. As we move into summer, I want to try and do something different and more constructive with this blog, so, following the conclusion of the responses to Galison’s questions, be on the lookout for more speculation on canon-building. I also want to try and capture some lessons from my class and do some exercises in historical summary along the lines of “if we had to tell the story of, I don’t know, physiology in the latter half of the 19th century in 10 minutes, what would we say about it?” I like reductivist exercises, because they force you to separate what you know from what you don’t.

Science and Humanities

C. P. Snow rises from the dead to haunt us once again! I’m going to take a break from Galison’s questions for a post or two to try and concentrate on some other things. In this case, it’s a New York Times article on a curriculum to unite the sciences and the humanities, which Advances in the History of Psychology picked up on as well.

We are confronted with the question of whether the science and the humanities (a.k.a. non-science) cultures can ever resolve their perspectives. I’ve been hacking away at the intro to my book, which essentially says that we among the academic commentariat have missed the boat. The two cultures never existed. (See also Edgerton’s Warfare State and Guy Ortolano’s recent intellectual history dissertation on the Snow two cultures controversy).

This is a hard subject to address in blog format, but I’d just point to two issues. First, the problem of specialist knowledge is not limited to science. Modern society is effectively founded on the notion that many differing kinds of specialist knowledge and skill must be brought together even though no one individual (or committee) can master it. Questions of trust and fairness abound. This issue is much bigger than science, and Snow was wrong to suggest that the inclusion or exclusion of science, in particular, was central to this problem (science studies could do with some reality checks here as well).

The second issue is the definition and relevance of the humanities to public and scientific culture.
By any reasonable standards, science is incredibly mainstream. And humanistic thinking is equally mainstream, if, by humanistic thinking, you mean non-scientific thinking. The two get along quite nicely, again, by any reasonable standards. Snow was (needlessly) worried that Britain’s administrative ranks were chock full of people who could quote obscure literary passages, but knew nothing of the second law of thermodynamics. But this was not representative of the state of British science-society relations in Snow’s day. Today the concern is even less relevant.

Science has been incorporated into the technological life of society to the point where the university-commercial divide has ceased to exist in a meaningful way. There are many who hand-wring about the integrity of academic science, perhaps in some cases rightfully, but the situation we enjoy was precisely what Snow was advocating. The question thus becomes, do the academic humanities have anything to contribute along the lines suggested in the NYT article?

The NYT article suggests the contents of the humanities could be useful (not just some vague analysis and writing skill acquired through work in humanities courses regardless of their content). Personally, I doubt it. I think our work could be useful, if we wanted it to be (and it’d be legitimate if we said we don’t want it to be). Public discourse consists of a series of short-hand references–historical references (witness the recent hubbub over Bush’s reference to appeasement), turns of phrase, etc. Humanists could be good at researching, dissecting, and judging the pertinence of the way public discourse unfolds.

We in the history of science could demonstrate how people are bad at talking about science and technology; but that would mean taking what non-historians have to say seriously. Traditionally, some non-historians have done very well in arguing about issues. A humanities training could be good at preserving the quality of prior arguments and rearticulating them, and repackaging them in useful ways so as to promote originality and cumulation of ideas. But our work will never be pertinent unless we are committed to being cumulative ourselves–working amid abstruse details, and refusing to set up straw men. Scientists have no problems with either, and it’s gotten them a long way. Until we can match them in terms of quality and the core importance of their contributions, I don’t think programs that attempt to link science with the humanities can flourish.

–apologies for sloppy use of the term “humanism” in the prior version of this; it’s still not up to snuff (humanists=practitioner of the humanities; ugh), but will have to do.

Galison’s Q’s #5: What Should We Make?

Jumping off of “fabricated fundamentals”, Galison asks a related question: if we can make new natural things, what natural things should we make? It’s basically the same thing Donna Haraway was getting at back in the ’80s with her Cyborg Manifesto (I think–Haraway can be baffling). We’re all artificial now, so now what?

I don’t really see this as a history and philosophy of science question at all–it’s basically a political and economic question. We have some technology, so what should we do with it? Economists will tell us that we will be hard-pressed to come to conclusive answers because individuals hold different values, and that market-type negotiations will instead determine what takes place. Is it possible to ban a technology? Probably not; if it’s valuable enough, a black market will develop. Then, if some people have access to it while others don’t, that changes the dynamics of what constitutes ethical and legal behavior (see the plethora of current IP issues, or the ambiguous social attitudes toward narcotics). Do we in the science studies professions have anything original to say on this score? I’m not too sure we do.

Thinking about this actually reminded me of one of the most interesting sci-fi novels I’ve read (I’m not really a student of the genre), Frank Herbert’s Dune, where a society 30,000+ years from now is highly technological, highly feudal, and highly religious. In this techno-ethical system, the highest technologies revolve around the mind. Interstellar travel is based on folding space, which is accomplished using a state of hyper-consciousness achieved through ingesting the spice “melange” (which only exists on the desert planet Arrakis, a.k.a, Dune). Melange is a pretty transparent stand-in for oil, and its trade is tightly controlled. But maybe a more pertinent point to this post is the fact that “thinking machines” (i.e. advanced computers) are religiously banned; in their place are “human computers” called Mentats. There’s more to the book than that; but it’s an illustration of the book’s overall treatment of the limitations on the use of technology in a time when technological applications are basically unlimited, essentially suggesting that fanaticism and totalitarianism (the book’s main plot revolves around the possibility of a coming galactic “jihad”) are the only replacements for economic behavior in a society where technology must be controlled. Interesting stuff.

Galison’s Q’s #4: Fabricated Fundamentals

In his 4th question, Peter Galison asks about the manufactured fundamental; essentially, what do we mean by fundamental? How does something get to be fundamental, and if we manufacture a new fundamental (like, say, a transuranic element) is it natural or artificial?

This seems like sort of a gimme. In one sense, it’s a very old question. Many seventeenth-century objections to experimental knowledge hinged on the fact that an artificial manipulation of nature did not represent a form of knowledge that could be considered natural, and eternal, and, thus, philosophically interesting. Bacon and Galileo argued otherwise, and, over the course of the century, opinion slanted their way. So, really, engineered states of nature have always been a part of modern scientific inquiry. If lasers, or engineered proteins, or quark interactions, or nano-scale technologies seem artificial, I don’t see anyone really seriously objecting that they are worthy of study as objects of interest, and whether one chooses to view them as natural, artificial, fundamental, or whatever, strikes me as a matter of linguistic convention, perhaps worthy of Scholastic debate. They are constrained states of nature, like everything else.

A somewhat more difficult question is how do things come to be fundamental? This plays right into the old SSK questions. How are quarks constructed? Or, following the rival approach, how do experiments end? The old approach seems to emphasize the social resolution of conflicting opinions in controversy. They are replete with the politically defeated scientists, often sulking into retirement stubbornly clinging to their positions. But is that really typical? Don’t scientists willingly change their minds all the time? I don’t deny that the processes of convincing and being convinced are based on social-linguistic traditions, but, at the same time, the role of evidence is clearly important. Here’s my opinion: the future of historical study in this area will focus on robustness. At some point the evidence fits so tightly together that you feel compelled to acknowledge its persuasiveness.

At some point after 1900, even though atoms have been persuasively argued for for a century, you really should start admitting that they exist. The distinction between whether you feel they exist ontologically or phenomenologically ceases to matter, because your practices with respect to them will be the same in either case. To put a little sauce on it, take the quantized field: do virtual particles exist? The name “virtual” even acknowledges that they have a quasi-ontological status (rooted in the superposition of discrete quantum states), but, for all intents and purposes, the robustness of their use in HEP theory effectively secures their reality. Whether they are what we (and, by we, I mean physicists) think they are (if, indeed, physicists think about it at all) is another matter.

Exactly what “robustness” entails has social and physical elements that are definitely worthy of study. Actually, there’s a specialty in operations research dedicated to the idea of robustness–might be worth checking out the technical literature on it.

Galison’s Q’s #3: Technology of Argumentation

PhunDay: once again a great time. Good papers; good, deep arguments. Apparently we’ve got some blog readers from Princeton, so here’s a shout out to y’all up in NJ.

To continue on with another PhunDay participant, Peter Galison’s questions, I’ll address Peter’s third question about historical argumentation. He starts out by talking about the boxes of inquiry: physical sciences, biological sciences, earth sciences, etc… which leads to a heavy concentration on certain areas clearly within these boxes (Darwin, quantum measurement, number theory, etc…), but less in cross-cutting areas, though we have a good start in areas like probability, objectivity (cf. his new book with Raine Daston), observation, and model building. So, the question seems to be, where should we go with this?

I guess I have a few reactions. First, it may be too easy to invent or commandeer categories and then to tell their history in our eagerness to find sexy new ways of looking at history. Before commenting conclusively or in depth I have to sit down with the book rather than flip through it, but I have my suspicions about the objectivity argument (Ted Porter wrote a good review on this, too, I think in Isis–I’d have to look it up). Galison and Daston chart attitudes toward objectivity through time. But is objectivity the sort of thing that bears coherent attitudes that change in clear ways? You can tell a history of anything if you cherry pick your evidence, but I always liked Keith Thomas’ Man and the Natural World, which to me serves as a permanent refutation of the notion that the human “attitude to the natural world” is something that actually has much of a history, because there are just too many concurrent–and contradictory–perspectives couched in concerns other than a general outlook on the natural world. (It’s true Thomas focuses on the “man” bit from his title, but arguments that “women” have a coherent attitude to the natural world have always struck me as fiercely reductivist as well). I’d think objectivity is a similar sort of concept–different attitudes toward portraying the “typical” or the “prototypical” or the “unusual” or the “specific specimen” would probably vary depending on concern rather than on grander epistemic shifts, but maybe that’s wrong….

That said, the approach has produced its successes. I think Daston and Park’s charting of attitudes toward wonder was very well done and was a nice way of looking at changing ideas about knowledge without adhering to science/non-science boundaries. Also, I believe the history of 20th century science cannot be told without discussing a constant state of interdisciplinary shifting. These shifts might not be a broad cross-science trend, but they definitely defy a one-field analysis. Also, Peter’s focus on the tools of science is apt. There’s a lot more history left to write on the history of such-and-such a method of arguing, or such-and-such an epistemological sensibility. In fact, these histories probably serve as a sort of guide to interdisciplinary shifts. I’m not sure if I can articulate that any better at this point.

One last observation: historians of science have never seemed to mind stepping outside of boxes. If anything, we’ve become obsessed with accounts that emphasize what is external to the history of our science. Yet, we do seem to harp on the same bits of science, the same stories over and over again, don’t we? I attribute this to a growing lack of concern with the actual history of science, and more toward seeing ourselves as historians of “ways of seeing the world” or something. But this strange disconnect between our desire to go outside the box and our adherence to a very narrow set of episodes or scientific practices is worthy of further thought.

Contrite Post #1: Final Exams

I’m off to the always enjoyable Princeton-Harvard Physics History PhunDay tomorrow–a real model for what a workshop should be. Today’s post, however, comes amid correcting final exams for History 174, and my realization that, while my course’s design seems to have produced some good, improved writing (big thanks to my TA for working with students, reading drafts, revisions, etc.), it seems to have primarily been an exercise in self-education. Indeed, I learned a lot! I wish I’d have had a chance to have taken my course at some point, taught by someone with a better established knowledge of the subject matter than myself.

However, it’s painfully clear that I torpedoed my undergrad students. Everything coming back to me on the exam IDs is all about what so-and-so discovered, or what they’re famous for, or how something changed the world, or something, without picking up on trends and narratives and the like. In other words, what I wanted them to learn registered, but got echoed back cloaked in the language of pop-history. It’s pretty clear there’s not much in the way of “superlunary” ideas about how science works; in fact, I’d say they don’t think about it much at all. It’s more just trying to figure out who the “notables” are.

Even more disappointing are the essays, which, except for some good answers on my Bacon vs. Descartes question, are almost all BS. It’s clear the readings weren’t touched too much. All-in-all no one paid much attention. I attribute this to students having other priorities–if they’d paid attention more than intermittently, they’d have surely done better. But, at the same time, I could have focused more tightly on certain ideas, and repeated them, and hammered them home to get students interested.

So, lessons definitely learned. I structured the course in such a way that students were exposed to all kinds of historical threads from which they could choose what they were most interested in. Several who kept up really, really liked this approach. I’m glad that they were so drawn in. But most just seem to have gotten lost. Who’s to say they would have gotten more out of the course had I used another approach, since many are just science majors fulfilling a requirement? Still, you just can’t teach a course of 77 kids for the benefit of 5.

Galison’s Questions #2: The Basic and the Pure

In his second question Peter Galison asks us to figure out what we mean when we speak of “basic” versus “applied” science. I don’t like this question as much as I did the context question. First, because I think he’s pretty blithe about conflating two separate issues: the question of foundations in science, and the perennial R&D issue, which has little, if anything, to do with fundamental knowledge in any strict sense. Second, ultimately, I think this issue is less worth debating than the externalist vs. internalist debate (which I think is worth having, not to settle the question of which one really matters, but to put a little respect back into internalist histories).

Peter’s very clear about why he thinks the “basic” issue is important–it’s the Cold War.

“So much seemed at stake in these Cold War battles. Superlunary science seemed the only hope for a model of democracy. Enlightenment reason, argued many, carried just that mixture of rigor and courage that could block the ferocious and demeaning demands of Hitlerism and Stalinism as they pounded on the gates of the academy…. But as the Cold War aged, as “the war” increasingly called to mind Khe Sanh rather than El Alamein, the symbolic register of science began to slip. For a generation of scholars [“scientists, philosophers, and historians”] who came of age after the 1960s, rather than in the 1940s and 1950s, science appeared not so much the last bulwark of reason against brute force as, instead, the sharp edge of endless war.”

This is a classic case of the Twentieth Century Turning Point Presumption, which I reject. Whose arguments are these? Why are they important? Did anyone actually, seriously think that pure, unadulterated science was a bulwark of democracy? Did anyone seriously feel pure science was under immediate threat? Why? Because it had large amounts of government funding? Because its funding later retreated somewhat from outrageously high record levels? Didn’t the exact same disillusion occur after World War I? What happened, did everyone just kind of forget about that Post-WWI malaise? (I just saw a talk by Michael Adas on a project claiming that Vietnam was to America as World War I was to Britain–the historiographical “Britain/America discordance” is a topic I’d like to address some time). Or, maybe, the disillusion has been played up by commentators against the grain of historical reality? Let’s challenge the “symbolic register of science” as a category of historical analysis, and see what’s really behind it.

Edit: Peter uses so many vague statements here, I can’t truthfully tell if he’s referring to some general attitude about science, or an extremely narrow range of philosophers and commentators on science. His reference (hidden in my ellipsis) to the “Unity of Science” movement seems to suggest he’s talking about a sideshow that has a bearing on how we, the readers of Isis, talk about these issues. In this case, maybe he’s making a related point to the one I’m making??

One more thing: I’ve previously noticed Peter’s frequent use of the phrase “at stake”, and I’ve tended to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m wondering, if we were really to boil the issue down every time this phrase is used, if we can really make the case that what is claimed to be at stake is really at stake, or (as Peter’s qualification “seemed to be at stake” implies) if anyone who might have used this rhetoric at some point or another seriously thought that these things were at stake. Did a new “generation”–a whole generation–really feel differently? If we’re going to move forward productively, we’re going to have to be careful about discordances between rhetoric and practice–“at stake” tends to blur the boundaries. It’s going on my yellow flag list, along with “Randomly Chosen Science as Having Some Association with a Caricature of a Broad Historical Trend”. (I’m a bit sensitive to this at the moment, because I just read a paper last night that made particularly egregious use of the phrase “at stake”).

History and Museum Studies

Just looking over Jenny’s overview of our online debate/conversation, I noticed a remark of mine that historical studies of material culture could “devolve” into museum studies. That sounds a little dismissive, but I stand by it, provided we don’t take “devolve” to mean “degrade”. I think my point is more that the analysis of objects is not the same thing as history, so to take a historical artifact and analyze it according to whatever criteria we please (say, using a literary-type analysis), does not constitute the practice of “history”.

But this is not to say that museum studies is below history. If I’ve taken away any big points from reading the Copenhagen Medical Museion’s blog, it’s that museum studies can similarly devolve into history. Thomas Söderqvist has often expressed on that blog his boredom at simply placing objects in their context. I am completely convinced that museum studies is a pedagogical-aesthetic-historical hybrid activity, and should not simply be “history”.

Ultimately, this just goes back to one of the points I started this blog with, which is that we need to be clear up front about what our motivations are, and who we expect our audience to be. I’d like to see a sort of renaissance of historical analysis that is not automatically labeled “bland” or “conservative” because it’s not museum studies. I see the two areas as related but distinct enterprises, and, by keeping them, and other areas, conceptually distinct, I hope that historical analysis (versus literary analysis, philosophical analysis, sociological analysis, or, for the lack of a better term, “issue” analysis) can be seen as a lively and progressive field of inquiry.

French history debate results

Sorry for another prolonged absence. Obviously Will is beating me in the number of posts here but I will do my best to plod alongside his commentary. This post summarizes our online debate that occurred several weeks ago. We are thinking of trying something similar, maybe with more of a direct science slant, in the near future.

Online debate on French history, theory, and the question of modernism

Our first experimental virtual chat went very well, and we are happy to report that we had the generous participation of some French historians in training who took some time to talk with us about the usage of theory, the meanings behind history, and what it means to be modern.

Our guests included Micah Alpaugh, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Irvine, who studies non-violent political protest during the French Revolution; Meghan Cunningham, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Northwestern, who examines modern conceptions of the family as evidenced in the writings of Enlightenment savants; and Natasha Naujoks, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UNC Chapel Hill, who investigates the mythology of Napoleon during the 19th century in light of both classical and contemporary traditions.

Here are summaries and fragmented excerpts selected from our group chat:

1. Derrida and Foucault in the Classroom

The long shadowy presence of Foucault seemed to dominate this part of the conversation since most of our participants’ educational backgrounds had touched upon his theories in some way. Most of our guests were in agreement that theory was often taught but there was little in the way of guidance about how to employ theory in relation to history. Natasha recommended Elizabeth Clark’s History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn as a good source that commented about the origins of the “new intellectual history” and its debt to French theory. Apparently, it also turned out that I was the sole supporter of theory with Will and the others quite happy to leave it alone. No closet Deleuzians here…

2. Textual Interpretation, Inside Out

Literary interpretation was another area of interest that seemed to be debilitating, or at least, lacking in proper means of usage. Meghan raised the problem of interpreting the emotional language found in the letters between romantic partners, parents/children, and friends for the purposes of her dissertation. Micah agreed that linguistic categories were equally limiting for the concept of mass-action. Everyone seemed to enjoy the work of Clifford Geertz as a budding graduate student, but Micah’s dislike of Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms merit as a micro-history divided the group. Bruno Latour’s Laboratory Life and Science in Action provided some amusing thoughts about the agency of salmon.

Meghan: (summarizing the book)…with the more theory-inclined arguing that bacteria have agency…
Meghan: and this one history grad student pipes up, “So what’s next? Salmon have agency?”
Will: See, it’s not that he’s wrong, if you read him right, it’s that he’s not that helpful.
Meghan: I would say that was my take on him as well.

3. Historians are Humanists too!

Should history graduate students really pretend to be part of the humanities in order to garner more grants and fellowships (when art historians really do need the money)? As Natasha aptly articulated, the “exercise in fantasy,” when a dissertation has yet to become a concrete project, is a mix of rhetorical posturing and not knowing where one will find the appropriate forms of evidence (if they even exist). Some shuddered at the thought that some historians do not even use archives at all.

4. Traversing the *“Leaderless Minefield”

Meghan noted that some historians, in the spirit of finding new frontiers, were making the move to the area of material culture. Which possibly could devolve into museum studies, according to Will. Which could be generalized as visual culture, as I implied. Which could end up in media studies. Not quite sure if that is so good. In retreating to the analysis of culture, the group agreed that there was a strong lack of argumentative programs that did not offer any original viewpoints about the state of the field (there were many scholars who were certainly trying to avoid obvious faux pas or attempting to revise the revisionist literature).

*We actually owe this term “leaderless minefield” to Micah.

5. Modern, Modernism, Modernity, WTF?

We managed somehow to return to address Fish’s assertion that deconstruction does not and could not have a politics, which did not sit well with most of the guests. The conversation finalized around the types of questions that our guests are posing in their projects and if looming presence of modernity played a role in their assessment of historical periods, fields of study, and the kinds of conclusions drawn from scholarship.

Micah: Very broadly, I think it’s time to have Revolution come back in — the Soviet hangover’s worn off a bunch over the last twenty years, and the world over the next few is likely to get a lot more interesting…
Meghan: I would say my chief interpretative issue is how to write a sort of collective biography, and in particular how to access emotional/private life issues through texts, which involves a lot of correspondence theory.
Natasha: on a provincial level, I’m challenging early modern and modern French historians about periodization
Natasha: I really resent the 1789 dividing line
Me: What would be the new date of the French Revolution?
Micah: I’m pretty invested in the 1789 line myself.
Natasha: I’m in favor of 1750-1850, not across the board of course
Micah: Sounds Furettian 😉
Natasha: well, I do love my ferrets, you know…no seriously, think about teaching the French Revolution, how could you possibly start in 1789 and make sense of it? Inevitably you’d have to create a sort of prologue unit, you know, “origins of…”
Micah: Such is the great challenge, but a worthwhile one. Did the French Revolution really have origins?
Natasha: no, was an accident…you’re right 🙂 Seriously, though, I’m not sure I’m convinced by the conflation of the FR and “modernity,” fraught with teleological problems
Micah: Yeah, modernity, WTF?

What is Context, Part 2

Mulling the issue over some more, I’d like to take a mulligan on my previous answer to the context question. I feel I punted on the question by offering a critique of some prevalent uses of context, without ever answering the question in a compelling way. One way is to try and add some dimensions to the concept. I guess I think of it along two axes: generic-necessary and tradition-response. I refer to them as axes, because they are probably more descriptive qualities than firm categories.

So, a necessary context is some context necessary to arrive at a proper understanding of something; it provides a motivation. Situating something within a new necessary context can totally change why we see something as having taken place.

A generic context, on the other hand, enriches our understanding of a topic, but will rarely demand a wholesale change in the way we think about something. It describes a gross sort of contingency (i.e., 19th century natural history wouldn’t have existed in anything like the form it did without the imperialist project), or it provides an understanding of why something looks the way it does. Say there’s an operative metaphor or imagery in use that resonates with some other metaphoric tradition that has nothing to do with the history of the subject at hand. Oftentimes, a generic context is something we can safely take for granted, but it doesn’t have to be menial. For example, say we’ve never paid attention to a certain tradition of theory-making, a study of that tradition will tell us both about the theory in question, as well as about the context. However, in subsequent history (provided the original study has achieved canonical status), we can refer to this tradition off-hand, or even ignore it entirely.

A context of tradition speaks to us of a learned behavior. A scientist uses this sort of diagram, which goes back a century, or the tradition of spectroscopic analysis, or the tradition of anthropological characterization in terms of evolutionary principles.

A context of response speaks to us of a more reasoned response to some stimulus. Placing a theory in the context of a certain experiment tells us that to understand the motivation behind the theory, we have to be aware of such and such an experiment. To understand why science funding increased after 1957, we have to be aware of the launch of Sputnik.

So, when is contextual analysis worthwhile? A context of tradition, it seems to me, can move from being a necessary context, if it hasn’t been previously considered, to being a generic context, once the tradition becomes well-understood. Whereas, a context of response is always necessary (or is it?). So, it’s always worthwhile if we can learn about a new context. We can do this through a case study, or, better still, by making the context the subject of investigation itself. One of my favorite history of science books is Andy Warwick’s Masters of Theory. It could place, say, the work of the Maxwellians in the context of the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, but it’s a much better book than that, because it turns the scenario around and make the Tripos (the ostensible context) the subject instead. Galison’s Einstein’s Clocks is a great book, but it’s maybe a bit awkward, because it’s framed around placing the special theory of relativity in the context of the technical challenges of the late-19th century, but the book ends up being about this context. The effect is to make much of the book seem extraneous to the central point of contextualizing relativity, until you realize that Galison has simply shifted the focus to the context.

Conversely, it’s rarely interesting to contextualize something for the sake of contextualization. To contextualize something significant (like the theory of relativity) is interesting only if the context is necessary. If it’s generic it’s less interesting. So, you could say, Einstein talked a lot about clocks in his 1905 relativity paper, and then say that clocks were everywhere in this period. But Galison goes beyond this, and shows that the problem of simultaneity was a deeply conceptual problem in this period–what could have been generic becomes necessary. However, if the subject is insignificant and is placed within a well-understood context, it’s not interesting. So, say someone placed some other uninfluential paper on time coordination within the context Galison illustrated, it would just come off as a cheap knockoff. That said, there might still be room for a definitive history of time coordination in the late 19th century not as context, but as subject, if there are actors and traditions that need to be made explicit, but not if it’s just a recapitulation of what Galison said.