{"id":86,"date":"2008-07-10T15:01:42","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T15:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/about\/"},"modified":"2008-07-10T15:01:42","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T15:01:42","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manifesto<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Ether Wave Propaganda is a history of science blog that specializes in historiographical issues. It’s a niche blog aimed at people working in the academic disciplines of the History of Science and Science and Technology Studies. Those looking for general science blogs are welcome to follow along and comment, but may find some of the posts a little esoteric.\u00a0 We do have a “primer” (formerly “hump-day history”) series designed to offer a sophisticated but accessible introduction to various historical topics.\u00a0 The archive of primers can be found on the “Finding Aid”<\/span><\/a><\/span> page.<\/span><\/p>\n

The title of the blog is a reference to the 19th-century understanding of the transmission of electromagnetic energy (such as light) as taking place by means of waves traveling through a universally pervasive fluid called the “ether”. Ether also commonly refers to the sea of communication inhabiting overlapping radiowaves, or, more recently, the cyberspace of the internet. Propaganda is a variation\u00a0on the word propagation, which is what waves do, they propagate. But it also refers to the fact that the blog welcomes opinionated commentary about what future scholarship in the history of science should look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

A major aspect of this blog is its interest in opening up the “inside baseball” of historical scholarship. \u00a0Many fine blogs present episodes from history to the public, while others are critical of popular representations of science and its history. This blog prefers an approach that opens up to scrutiny how little even professional historians know about and understand history, despite the fact that we have already made great strides. \u00a0It aims to maintain candid conversations about the strengths and weaknesses of our portraits. \u00a0This position is taken in the belief that, academically, it is much more exciting — both to ourselves and to outsiders — to confront problems and uncertainties, than it is to repeat what we think we already know.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contributors<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Will Thomas<\/span><\/a><\/span>
\nChristopher Donohue<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>Will Thomas\u00a0<\/strong>is currently a science policy analyst at the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, Maryland, where he writes for the FYI Science Policy Bulletin<\/a>. However, he originally trained in the history of science, receiving a PhD in the subject from Harvard University in 2007. He worked as a postdoctoral associate historian at AIP from 2007 to 2010 and as a junior research fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, at Imperial College London from 2010 to 2013. From 2013 to 2016 he worked as a contract historian at History Associates, Inc., in Rockville, Maryland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thomas’s academic interests relate mainly to the physical, mathematical, engineering, and economic sciences, as well as to intersections between science and policy. \u00a0His work focuses mainly on twentieth-century Britain and the United States. Views expressed on this blog are purely his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"abc\"<\/p>\n

Twitter: @GWilliamThomas<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Publications<\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas,\u00a0Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940\u20131960<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>(Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2015). [MIT Press<\/a><\/span>] [Amazon<\/a><\/span>]<\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, “Bureaucratic Reformism and the Cults of Sir Henry Tizard and Operational Research,” in\u00a0Scientific Governance in Britain, 1914\u201379<\/em>, edited by Don Leggett and Charlotte Sleigh (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 45\u201362.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cUseful History of Operations Research,\u201d\u00a0OR\/MS Today\u00a0<\/em>42\/3 (2015): 18-22.<\/span>\u00a0https:\/\/www.informs.org\/ORMS-Today\/Private-Articles\/June-Volume-42-Number-3\/History-of-OR-Useful-history-of-operations-research<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, “Decisions and Dynamics: Postwar Theoretical Problems and the MIT Style of Economics,” MIT and the Transformation of American Economics,\u00a0<\/em>History of Political Economy\u00a0<\/em>46 (2014) (annual suppl.): 295-314. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1215\/00182702-2716208<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, “Research Agendas in Climate Studies: The Case of West Antarctic Ice Sheet Research,”\u00a0Climatic Change <\/em>122<\/strong> (2014): 299-311.\u00a0<\/em><\/span>http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1007\/s10584-013-0981-3<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cThe Mathematical Management of Uncertainty in Britain and America in the Second World War and After,\u201d in Des Math\u00e9maticiens et des Guerres: Histoires de Confrontations (XIXe<\/sup>-XXe<\/sup> Si\u00e8cle)<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>, edited by Antonin Durand, Laurent Mazliak, and Rossana Tazzioli (Paris: CNRS \u00c9ditions, 2013), pp. 71-79.<\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cStrategies of Detection: Interpretive Methods in Experimental Particle Physics, 1930-1950,\u201d Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences <\/i>42<\/b> (2012): 389-431. http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1525\/hsns.2012.42.5.389<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cOperations Research vis-\u00e0-vis Management at Arthur D. Little and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s,\u201d Business History Review<\/i> 86 <\/b>(2012): 99-122.\u00a0 http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0007680512000050<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas and Lambert Williams, \u201cThe Epistemologies of Non-Forecasting Simulations, Part I: Industrial Dynamics and Management Pedagogy at MIT,\u201d Science in Context <\/b><\/i>22<\/b> (2009): 245-270. \u00a0(Will wrote most of this one.)\u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0269889709002233<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lambert Williams and William Thomas, \u201cThe Epistemologies of Non-Forecasting Simulations, Part II: Climate, Chaos, Computing Style, and the Contextual Plasticity of Error,\u201d Science in Context <\/i>22<\/b> (2009): 271-310. (Lambert wrote most of this one.) \u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0269889709002221<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cThe Heuristics of War: Scientific Method and the Founders of Operations Research,\u201d British Journal for the History of Science<\/i> 40<\/b> (2007): 251-274.\u00a0http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1017\/S0007087407009508<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

William Thomas, \u201cSelling OR: An Historical Perspective\u201d OR\/MS Today<\/i>, October 2004.\u00a0http:\/\/www.orms-today.org\/orms-10-04\/frselling.html<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>Christopher Donohue\u00a0<\/strong>completed his PhD in History at the University of Maryland in 2013. \u00a0He is currently splitting time between the\u00a0Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>in Moscow and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. \u00a0He has broad interests in intellectual history, but focuses primarily on intersections between the social and biological sciences and political and legal thought. \u00a0His work attempts to find new ways of uncovering the richness of ideas running throughout the historical record, and presenting them in analytically useful ways.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manifesto Ether Wave Propaganda is a history of science blog that specializes in historiographical issues. It’s a niche blog aimed at people working in the academic disciplines of the History of Science and Science and Technology Studies. Those looking for general science blogs are welcome to follow along and comment, but may find some of<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… About<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-86","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}