History and Historiography of Science

Enlightenment in 50 Mins. or Less!

Going back to History 174, in my chemistry lecture, I basically just claimed that, despite efforts to incorporate chemistry within physical philosophy, the basic methodologies were never radically altered from the alchemical period up to (and really beyond) Dalton; new kinds of experiments were done, and new conceptual schemes emerged, but, in practice, the sort of “natural history” methodology of chemistry remained fairly constant. Special thanks to Jan Golinksi’s “Chemistry” entry in the Cambridge History of Science Vol. 4.

But today was the Enlightenment. Since entire courses are dedicated to the Enlightenment, how does one cope? Well, first, you keep your eye on what all this has to do with the scientific enterprise rather than drift off into a summary of the Enlightenment. Thus, science is a template for the overthrow of authority and the building up of new knowledge. Pit stops at salon culture, the Encyclopedia, deism/atheism. Then, you address the new political economy as a quasi-Newtonian theorization based on the actions of individual actors: Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Smith (yes, it was that fast, basically project sumamries rather than discussions of individual philosophy). Then, you sum up with different governmental interpretations of Enlightenment thought: enlightened despotism, Jefferson’s rationale for independence, Jefferson’s and Hamilton’s differing ideas about government, and the rationalized populism of the French Revolution/metric system (thanks Ken Alder)/Napoleonic code. Then you end up with some hand-waving about the role of rationality in governance, with a comparison of the sensibilities underlying Tinker v. Des Moines and the French ban on religious dress in schools as the cherry on top.

Presto! Thematic Enlightenment Pie. It’s an old family recipe!

Mirowski’s blog, plus new OK blog

A quick Google search reveals Phil Mirowski is now posting excerpts from his forthcoming book, ScienceMart (with a Haraway-esque “TM” attached to it), online in blog format. Which is lame: in my utopia all blog posts are original off-the-cuff remarks. Still, we’ll link to the Viridiana Jones Chronicles at left. Also, some folks at the University of Oklahoma are putting together a new online grad student journal in the history of science–this is also at left. Looks like 2008 is the year of the blog in history of science.
UPDATE (May 6, 2011): Mirowski’s blog has been closed for some time.

Why we should all read Phil Mirowski

I don’t want things to get too cynical here at the History of Science Blog, so today I want to talk about an author on my top 5 most exciting historians list, Philip Mirowski of Notre Dame (an arch cynic himself). Mirowski does history of economics, and also has a training in economics. Operations research, my speciality, is an area that Mirowski’s done quite a bit of work in, so I’ve had some decent exposure to his work.

Nobody writes like Mirowski. He’s not at all disciplined as a writer (to his detriment) and is extraordinarily sarcastic, especially toward historical actors. He has a strong agenda; namely to demonstrate how economics lost its epistemological soul, which means his work gives off strong whiffs of Whiggism (Steve Fuller points to him as an exemplar of “Tory” history). The place to start with him is unquestionably his compilation, The Effortless Economy of Science? which leads off with his autobiographical reflections, “Confessions of an Aging Enfant Terrible”.

I pretty adamantly disagree with most of Mirowski’s conclusions; I don’t think he takes the epistemology of economic theory seriously on its own terms (we could get into this, but that would take a full-on essay; in short, he feels these terms were borrowed from other fields along with their analytical techniques). But this also reflects why I think Mirowski is so exciting–his arguments are ones that can be disagreed with. No “I write only to highlight a discourse”; no “science is not context-independent” here. His argument runs along the lines of: let me show you, step by arduous step, how the context of economics robbed it of a soul independent from physics and information theory. Stringing piece after piece of evidence together he puts together such a strong narrative that it bleeds into the genre of conspiracy theory.

Mirowski is also an author with an oeuvre–his work is much richer if you read it as part of an ongoing project. As one of only several authors in the history of economics to move beyond the march-of-theories paradigm of writing, he probably waves the sociology of science magic wand a little too strenuously, but he seems to see his primary battle as being with the philosophers of science (again, see Effortless Economy, especially his broadside on Kitcher), and I think the sociologists see themselves as an antidote to the idea that science has a coherent philosophy (he likes his Feyerabend).

As I’ve said, I tend to see the sociologists and philosophers as all of a kind, but unlike a lot of the sociology school, Mirowski functions incredibly well as an historian, too. To get books like More Heat Than Light, and Machine Dreams, close reading is rewarded. History is not merely window dressing on a basic Latourian sociological point. In the case of the latter book, you need to do a lot of brushing up on material behind his narrative to even have a chance of getting what’s going on, because he makes no effort to explain his historical references. But history should hinge on the details, and if an author at least shows how you have to really understand the ins and outs of the history to see what’s going on, that author has done their job. Nobody writing seriously on the history of OR or economic theory can afford to ignore Mirowski’s narratives. I’ll probably say more about the goals of his oeuvre at a later date.

Hobbit History: A Case Study

Fair warning: long post.

Reading over C. S. Lewis’ The Discarded Image, the following passage popped out at me about his opinion of the relationship between medieval literature and medieval conceptions about the historical-philosophical Model of the universe that they had. Seeking to explain “why the authors so gladly present knowledge which most of their audience must have possessed,” he observes: “One gets the impression that medieval people, like Professor Tolkien’s Hobbits, enjoyed books which told them what they already knew.” He tries on a number of theories as to why this might be, but concludes: “The simplest explanation is, I believe, the true one. Poets and other artists depicted these things because their minds loved to dwell on them. Other ages have not had a Model so universally accepted as theirs, so imaginable, and so satisfying to the imagination.”

I think we have a Historical Model about science and context that maybe we just kind of like to remind ourselves about again and again through case study. I will present the case for the prosecution against the 2006 HSS Distinguished Lecture, “The Leopard in the Garden: Life in Close Quarters at the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle” by Richard Burkhardt of Urbana–Champaign, as appearing in the December Isis. The lecture is sort of a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the governance of the museum in the late-18th, early 19th century, especially under George Cuvier. I have nothing against the piece, as such. It’s charming and well written. But I would also claim there’s absolutely no reason to read it because we already know roughly what it says.

We get to the main claim to importance here: “From a somewhat more nuanced perspective [beware the word “nuance” because it will usually alert you to the presence of a nearby “naive position”], we might also think about the power the museum exercised over its scientists. Perhaps by the nature of its resources and practices, it disposed its scientists to think and act in certain ways but not others. Pursuing the phrase in a Foucauldian direction [novel claims are sure to come], we could consider how the museum’s structures and practices served to discipline the French populace, ordering their behavior and fixing their place in the social order.”

This last bit might be sort of interesting, if the significance of the museum could be demonstrated, but the “French populace” never actually appears, nor does the museum directors’ assessment of their impact on the populace. We are largely left to infer the relationship between the museum and the French populace, by the actions of the museum directors and our innate (edit: “enlightened”?) understanding of museums as loci of knowledge/power. He seems to make the connection primarily in the museum’s ability to control the specimens, but, as I say, the effects of this control in the minds of the populace is not dealt with.

Anyway, hijinks ensue for 18 pages until we get to the moral of our story: “In our daily lives, as well as in our historical researches, we are continually reminded of the ways in which the cultivation of scientific knowledge and its dissemination are tied to specific times, places, and interests.” Say it with me, everyone: science is not context-independent.

Yes, it was a wild ride. Agendas were not only politically negotiated, they were also constrained by their material circumstance in ways pretty well consistent with our extant knowledge of the social relations of 19th century natural history. The acceptance of “progressive” scientific theories was resisted by those in positions of political power. Heck, the Hottentot Venus even dropped by for a visit, as much of an opportunity for bourgeois Europeans to project their notions of the exoticness of other races onto her body as ever.

I did learn that the Paris museum did not push Lamarckism, and that in the period of Darwin, it fell back on Lamarckism as a conservative position, so that adds a data point to my understanding of natural history presentation in that era–but that could have been demonstrated in a few sentences. Further, the historical significance of this data point is not clear.

Now, this is a distinguished lecture, which means that it is an opportunity to please an audience tired after a long day of hearing talks, and what better way than by presenting a pleasant story demonstrating unchallenging themes with which we ought to be familiar. So, the piece may say something about history of science audiences, but I would claim that it is actually quite representative of history of science writing regardless of audience, in that demonstration of the influence of social context on scientific knowledge is the key to receiving a polite response; nothing further is required; nothing further will receive particular reward.

Had I been in Vancouver, I’d have probably skipped out to get a beer with my colleagues. Tell me something surprising, and you’ve got my attention. Your honor, the prosecution rests.

Coming soon: Why Philip Mirowski is a mad genius; and Jenny and Will invite some folks over for a debate on French versus Anglophone analytical traditions (if I understand her proposal right). Also, I’d at some point like to take a look at Ronald Binzley’s intriguing case for mid-20th century Catholic science in the same issue of Isis as Burkhardt’s piece.

On the couch: etiquette

In recent analysis, we often make a point of mentioning the emotional or moral qualities of the scientist–what about the emotional or moral qualities of the historian? As more red dots appear on my map, and as I pile on the posts, I start to feel a little nervous about these little grains of thought I’m sending out into the void at a ratio now of about 7 posts to one of Jenny’s. I’ve received some nice encouraging feedback from people I know. But, still, as the only history of science blog that makes a point of talking regularly about what constitutes good and bad (or boring) work, I start to worry that I sound like an ass, and that I’ll never get another job, etc. What is it that makes me so awesome that I can talk about what history should or should not look like?

The long and short of it is that I’m writing as though I were participating in a culture that I wished existed, as though everyone in science studies had their own blog, and traded ideas about what they liked and didn’t like. What I have in mind when I blog is something like the culture of criticism that exists in film or music–not high-minded critical theory, but the hooks and jabs and freestyle speculation that take place at sites like The A. V. Club over topics about what it is we like and don’t like in our pop culture. I’ve encountered this raucous atmosphere when I’ve visited certain places, like Imperial College in London, but I haven’t found it much elsewhere. I have from time to time asked people to justify their work, but if you do that in the wrong crowd, it’s like you’ve kicked their dog. I was once accused of being “uncollegial”–but what makes our little community different from any other community where people get up on a stage and present their creativity to the world? Isn’t it healthy to ask what makes our work worth the price of admission? I want a culture of vigorous criticism because I love what I do, and because when I write, I try to emulate what I like out there (which is a lot), and to avoid what I don’t.

Next: looking at a high profile target–the 2006 HSS Distinguished Lecture. Are we out to reform the world or to fulfill the needs of our audience?

Cambridge Histories

I’d just like to say, as I prepare my lecture on alchemy/chemistry, that the Cambridge History of Science is invaluable, and I wish there were a way that the set could be made available cheaply so that historians could buy them. I see in Volume 4 that Craig Fraser’s article on 18th century mathematics would have been helpful to me as well, had I had my head screwed on straight enough to pick the volume up before that lecture.

Justification for Case Histories

I like to think that every time we sit down to write we have some implicit or explicit justification for what we are about to write. That there is some sort of economic reasoning as to why we choose to write about one topic rather than another. Now, in almost every single history of science seminar I’ve ever been to, more than 3/4 of HSS presentations, and almost every single article in our flagship journals deals with a narrowly focused case study on a topic of no obvious general interest. Aside from the fact that this style of history is an established tradition, what is the justification? Why is case history supposed to be so compelling? What are we supposed to get out of these presentations that connects up with our larger knowledge?

One argument is that it’s Baconian empirical study. Eventually, we’ll be able to make some bigger claim once we’ve been through enough microscopic study. I think empirical study of areas we know little about is tremendously important to the production of good, new scholarship. But, in terms of presentation style, this defies any efficient economy of writing–if you’re going to present to a broad audience (in a department seminar or in a journal), why bother everyone with the petty details?

My more cynical theory is that these studies are self-justified because they address naive positions that for some reason we think need to be addressed, that is, there’s a notion that because “people” think “science” proceeds independent of context or that it proceeds in a progressive fashion, it is therefore worthwhile to present a study showing how, to pick one of my favorite targets, some obscure 19th century natural history served the agenda of British imperialism. But, by “people” I think we mean Robert Merton or somebody nobody ever reads anymore, who supposedly represents some sort of default way that people think about science.

Is “everyone” supposed to have read Merton? Or did Merton (or maybe those pesky textbook history boxes) penetrate the “public” imagination in a way that newer science studies people have yet to do, but if we only present enough department seminars we are sure to?

I don’t buy it. Nobody in the intended audience ever has any such notion of a context-independent or purely progressive science. So why undertake the study? To further reinforce what we already know about “how science works”? To make ourselves feel good by intellectually combating the evils produced by the alliance between science and 19th century imperialism (or the Cold War, or the evils of technocratic thinking, or whatever)? I can see how such things were refreshing given the state of the historiography 20-30 years ago, but why today?

I’m totally open to a good answer to this question. It’s pretty rude to ask it in seminars, so hopefully this is a good forum. I’m not against the obscure case study in principle, but I think we ought to be explicit about why our case studies matter, and what they tell us that we don’t already know. I’ll leave a comment justifying one of my forthcoming case studies.

What I did with mathematics

I want to come back to yesterday’s post soon, because I have a few crackpot theories I’d like to share about the relationship between naive positions and the continued preponderance of arcane and disconnected case studies in the history of science, but, before the moment is past, I’d like first to come back to my problem with mathematics in the history of science.

Eventually, I did come across a pretty helpful book, Roger Hahn’s recent biography of Pierre Simon Laplace, which did a very nice job of lucidly placing Laplace within his cultural, institutional, and intellectual context. What more could a historian ask? It leads me to suspect that there is actually a pretty decent French-language literature out there on this (Hahn’s book was originally in French; maybe a post on what areas of the non-English literature need to be read is forthcoming?). I also have my curiosity piqued about a translated book by Johan Christiaan Boudri called What Was Mechanical About Mechanics? The Concept of Force Between Metaphysics and Mechanics from Newton to Lagrange, although I have no idea if it’s any good.

Lamentably, my own approach largely centered on the old W. W. Rouse Ball model of presenting a series of biographies. But I spiced it up with quite a bit of exposition on the growth of methods of approximation, the development of theoretical aids to calculation (Euler’s formula, the Euler-Lagrange equations, etc…), methods of data analysis, all with an eye toward representing physical phenomena in an acceptable mathematical model, which clearly departs from Cartesian/Leibnizian ideas about the justification of mathematics in direct mechanical explanation. Instead, the ability to predict and verify becomes the gold standard of what constitutes knowledge in physics.

More concretely, the development of analyses consistent with each other and with fundamental principles like Newton’s laws becomes the heart of what it means to be a theoretical physicist in the 1700s and after. This shift was made possible through the analytical versatility of the growing mathematical toolkit to support the burden (say, of demonstrating the stability of the solar system), and an agreement to abandon the requirement of clear philosophical interpretation in mathematical formulation (how can you, when you’re doing things like cutting off higher order terms of Taylor series?).

I really tried to drive home the centrality of an analytical toolkit to physics practice and self-identity; and also tried to give some sense of changing institutional venues; from isolated chairs at universities like Cambridge and Basel (the Bernoullis), to dedicated positions in scientific academies (Euler, d’Alembert, etc…), to the proliferation of posts in state-sponsored institutions (Ecole Militaire, Ecole Polytechnique), especially in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

I’m pretty sure it was boring and flew mostly over their heads, but I learned a lot trying to come up with a coherent story to tell about what happened to mathematics and physics in the 1700s.

Bowler and Morus/Naive Positions

In History 174 we’ve now come to the end of Peter Dear’s Revolutionizing the Sciences, a textbook which I like a great deal (and the students seemed to like it, too). For the rest of the course, the textbook is Peter Bowler and Iwan Rhys-Morus’ Making Modern Science, which I generally like, but I have one major criticism that applies both to it, and to history of science writing in general, and that is its insistence on arguing against naive positions.

We’re starting out with their chapter on “The Chemical Revolution”, which they frame around the question of whether the chemical revolution was delayed by a century from the rest of the scientific revolution (and, of course, whether it was a revolution at all). They mount a sustained attack on the notion. This general strategy is employed throughout the book. Various historians, like Kuhn, are constantly making an appearance. I can’t help but think that this is distracting to students. I would be willing to bet they have no a priori notions abut the “chemical revolution”, so why burden the text by structuring it around a refutation of such notions? I believe the point of a textbook is to tell the best, most informative history we can, not to lay bare the neuroses of our profession induced in us by our battles with our forebears [edit; rereading Bowler and Morus this morning, this last clause is too extreme a description for what they clearly have intentionally deployed as an interesting framing device–but I think the statement is valid for why it might seem like a good idea to insert the “history of science profession” so prominently into a “history of science textbook”].

Really, the strategy isn’t surprising, because it is, in general, a habit ingrained in our desire to elevate our own analyses by arguing against the naive positions of certain prior thinkers about science, or against the “science textbook presentation”, or against “pop science”, or against the notion that the progress of science is independent of its context, as if these represented a living and threatening school of historical thought. My historiography guru David Edgerton has publicly and privately criticized technology historians’ habit of taking on straw men like the “linear model” (my students will read his piece against this straw man) and technological determinism. I tend to glorify mainline historians, but they, too, tend to rail against viewing developments as inevitable, and insist on looking at how events are “contingent”. If we’re going to improve our art, we need to avoid intellectual crutches like arguing against long-comatose naive positions.

Things That Do Stuff/New Blog Links

Check out the commentary over at the Copenhagen Medical Museion blog that is critical of the recent “Things That Talk/Think/Act/etc…” trend in history of sci/tech/med writing. There are two posts, linked-to directly here and here. We are also now linking to their blog at the left, as well as the new University of Minnesota History of Science, Technology, and Medicine blog. Anything associated with my home state excites me, so this is great–hopefully they’ll come up with some good stuff for the broader community, but pictures of broomball outings are always cool, too. Lamentably we never did anything like that at Harvard.