Positioning the History of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 248)

Positioning the History of Science

BOSTON STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Editors ROBERT S. COHEN, Boston University JÜRGEN RENN, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science KOSTAS GAVROGLU, University of Athens

Editorial Advisory Board THOMAS F. GLICK, Boston University ADOLF GRÜNBAUM, University of Pittsburgh SYLVAN S. SCHWEBER, Brandeis University JOHN J. STACHEL, Boston University MARX W. WARTOFSKY†, (Editor 1960–1997)

VOLUME 248

POSITIONING THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE Edited by

Kostas Gavroglu, University of Athens, Greece

and

Jürgen Renn Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Germany

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-10 ISBN-10 ISBN-13 ISBN-13

1-4020-5419-X (HB) 1-4020-5420-3 (e-book) 978-1-4020-5419-8 (HB) 978-1-4020-5420-4 (e-book)

Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Positioning the History of Science Kostas Gavroglu and Jürgen Renn

1

Big History? Babak Ashrafi

7

Suggestions for the Study of Science Stephen G. Brush

13

Will Einstein Still be the Super-Hero of Physics History in 2050? Tian Yu Cao

27

For a History of Knowledge Olivier Darrigol

33

Working in Parallel, Working Together Lorraine Daston

35

Challenges in Writing About Twentieth Century East Asian Physicists Dong-Won Kim (Jhu)

39

Why Should Scientists Become Historians? Raphael Falk and Ruma Falk

43

From the Social to the Moral to the Spiritual: The Postmodern Exaltation of the History of Science Paul Forman

49

Between Science and History Evelyn Fox Keller

57

The Search for Autonomy in History of Science Yves Gingras

61

Without Parallels?: Averting a Schweberian Dystopia Michael D. Gordin

65

The Intellectual Strengths of Pluralism and Diversity Loren Graham

69

On Connoisseurship John L. Heilbron

73 v

vi

Table of Contents

Concerning Energy Steve Joshua Heims

77

Reflections on a Discipline Erwin N. Hiebert

87

The Woman in Einstein’s Shadow Gerald Holton

95

The Mutual Embrace: Institutions and Epistemology David Kaiser

99

History, Science, and History of Science Helge Kragh

105

Parallel Lives and The History of Science Mary Jo Nye

109

Discarding Dichotomies, Creating Community: Sam Schweber and Darwin Studies Diane B. Paul and John Beatty

113

Public Participation and Industrial Technoscience Today: The difficult question of accountability Dominique Pestre

119

The Character of Truth Joan Richards

135

Schweber, Physicist, Historian and Moral Example José M. Sánchez-Ron

139

What’s New in Science? Terry Shinn

143

On the Road Skúli Sigurdsson

149

Plutarchian Versus Socratic Scientific Biography Thomas Söderqvist

159

Problems Not Disciplines John Stachel

163

Physicist-Historians Roger H. Stuewer

169

Letting the Scientists Back In Stephen J. Weininger

173

Table of Contents

vii

Science As History M. Norton Wise

177

Postscript Sam Schweber

185

KOSTAS GAVROGLU AND JÜRGEN RENN

POSITIONING THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The present volume, compiled in honor of an outstanding historian of science, physicist and exceptional human being, Sam Schweber, is unique in assembling a broad spectrum of positions on the history of science by some of its leading representatives. Readers will find it illuminating to learn how prominent authors judge the current status and the future perspectives of their field. Students will find this volume helpful as a guide in a fragmented field that continues to be dominated by idiosyncratic expertise and still lacks a methodical canon. The essays were written in response to our invitation to explicate the views of the authors concerning the state of the history of science today and the issues we felt are related to its future. Although not all of the scholars whom we asked to write have contributed an essay, this volume can nevertheless be considered as a rather comprehensive survey of the present state of the history of science. All of the papers collected here reflect in one way or another the strong influence Sam Schweber has exerted during the past decades in his gentle way on the history of science as well as on the lives of many of its protagonists worldwide. All who have had the opportunity of encountering him have benefited from his advice, benevolence and friendship. Sam Schweber’s intellectual taste, his passion for knowledge and his erudition are all encompassing. It therefore seemed fitting to honor him with a collection of essays of comparable breadth; nothing less would suffice. The history of science, like any other established academic discipline, is subject to tensions that are well reflected in the papers presented here. Whether these function as a driving force for its future development or risk tearing it asunder may be judged differently by different readers, and will in any case remain a topic to be debated among historians of science. Principal among these tensions is that between history and science. Both scientist and historian, Sam Schweber has experienced this tension, even embodied it and has shown us through his life’s work how to resolve it in a productive way. This tension, so essential for anyone entering the history of science, which encompasses different interests, cultural values, historiographical perspectives and methods, is touched upon in many of the essays. Another tension is that between the focus on content and on context, responsible for much of the acrimony presently prevailing in our field. Should a historian of science concentrate on what makes science a human enterprise, that is pomp, power, passion and circumstance, or rather on what makes science unique among all human enterprises, that is, its historically situated quest for knowledge? Once again, in his work, Sam has shown ways to successfully transform this tension into a medium of deep K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 1–5. © 2007 Springer.

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historical insights. Yet, that tension is still with us and continues to shape current intellectual debates and institutional struggles. No wonder then that the issues surrounding this particular tension are a prevailing topic of many of the papers included in this volume. Other tensions are perhaps less prominent but no less vital, for instance that between collaborative ventures in the history of science and individual intellectual pursuits or between a more methodologically-oriented history of science and an approach governed by personal taste and connoisseurship, or that between a history of science focused on the European and American traditions and a global history of knowledge covering also non-European traditions. These tensions as well as several others are also reflected in the views of the authors. The essays in this volume address some of the major questions presently concerning the community of historians of science, such as the question as to how science has gone through dramatic transformations in recent decades and what this change means for doing history, or the question of how history of science as an interdisciplinary discipline has changed. For instance, have some of the themes that were so prominent in the research agendas of historians of science in the relatively recent past actually become themes without a future? What has been the outcome for historians of science of more than two decades of historiographical controversies with, at times, strong philosophical and ideological contentions? What possible syntheses are we envisaging for the not so distant future? And, most importantly, to what extent have the range and content of questions to be examined within, say, the coming decade, been re-defined by these controversies? Historians of science were always very sensitive and aware of the changes happening in science and the essays in this volume reflect this awareness. Some of them explicitly address the question of whether we are facing the emergence of a new paradigm of science. Several ways of characterizing such a new paradigm are being explored: the end of reductionism, the expanding role of techno-science and industrialized science comprising a tendency towards the privatization and commercialization of knowledge, the changing role of the sciences in the structure of universities, but also the emergence of a new epistemology of processes of learning and evaluation and the increasing role of historical explanations in the natural sciences. Naturally, the changes in science mentioned above constitute major challenges for the history of science demanding new ways of dealing with its historical objects. Even the sheer smallness of the number of historians of science when set into relation to the vastness of scientific activities represents such a challenge. Also, in an age of industrialized science, moral reflections as they have been part of some of the best scholarly work in the history of science including that of Sam Schweber, can no longer be causes championed by individual scientists, whatever their prestige. Whole communities of scientists are obliged to become aware of the wider consequences of their work and of the very character of what it is they are producing. At the same time, this need for awareness represents an important challenge for the community of historians of science, and can be addressed only

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by enlarging the interface between science and the history of science. But can this interface be really enlarged without, at the same time, ensuring that historians of science are capable of speaking the same language as the scientists themselves? As a matter of fact, precisely because of the pluralism at every level in the history of science, characteristic of almost every established academic discipline, there is the real danger that typical core activities of the history of science such as detailed reconstructions of technical arguments, biographical accounts, and other genres in which scientist-historians such as Sam Schweber have excelled, may have no future. Several essays express concern about what seems to be a growing consensus among the younger generation that dealing with the technical and cognitive dimensions of science has largely become obsolete. After more than a century, the history of science is still in search of a wider audience, of its canons, its shared questions and in many cases of its institutional autonomy. In any case, the history of science today has turned out to be dramatically different from what its founding fathers imagined. Its development has been marked by disappointments as well as contributions through which we came to understand the extreme complexity of scientific developments. While it has become ever more clear how cognitive, social, ideological and political factors interact in the development of science, the grand dream of intellectual synthesis has remained unfulfilled. Institutional diversity still prevails, scientists have after all not become the sought for allies of the historians of science; the dominance of idiosyncratic expertise has often prevented focusing on larger questions relevant to wider audiences, yet the subject itself has been solidly established and both scientists and historians appear (alas, very slowly) to be less indifferent to our pursuits. Though, on the whole, scientists still think of historians of science as having a “soft” take on science and historians think of our work as hopelessly technical for their skills, there are progressively more scientists and historians who have actually come into direct contact with the relevant scholarship in the history of science. The methodological debates of the last 20 years have deeply split the field and partisan views have done a disservice to all those who were entering the field. On the other hand, such controversies underlined the maturity of the field itself, and looking at these controversies, now that passions seem to have somewhat subsided, gives reason for hope. Extreme believers and fundamentalist convictions, of any creed, appear to have been marginalized. The sensitivity for the complementary relationship between content and context has been increased. The emergence of major institutions has stabilized the field without inhibiting the positive effects of its institutional and disciplinary biodiversity. The fact that the history of science has become not only faute de mieux, but by inner necessity a multidisciplinary field is being recognized more and more. There are at least two aspects within history of science that have expressed the new dynamics of the discipline. The first is the emerging communities of historians of science in countries where most of the related works for many years could not overcome an antiquarian problematique. Members of the emerging

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communities – from Latin America to countries at the European periphery to Korea – are recasting what have often, and for many years, been local topics in ways that are being linked to contemporary historiography of science. New areas of research are being successfully investigated; there are dynamic institutional initiatives and promising challenges in the charting of new research agendas. The second aspect is the amazing impact of the information revolution and the introduction of electronic media for the way the history of science is being pursued. In particular, new possibilities have emerged for crossing boundaries of specialization imposed by a fragmented landscape of sources, which are distributed over archives, libraries, and museums, but can now be united in virtual working spaces for the history of science. Also the traditional separation between theoretically-oriented surveys and source-oriented case studies can now be overcome by integrating interpretations and sources within the electronic medium, where footnotes referring to sources located a continent away can now be turned into links to digital libraries just a mere click away. But the realization of this vision presupposes the availability of and free access to the sources themselves, the vast number of archival collections, of instruments and of old issues of scientific journals that give rise to unimaginable research opportunities as well as to totally new possibilities in the teaching of history of science. The number and quality of the digitization processes presently undertaken by museums, research institutes and universities are impressive but will ultimately come to fruition only if the temptation to commercialize cultural heritage is withstood and historians join forces with the scientists that have made the open access movement such a success. From the multi-faceted character of research and education in the history of science, some qualities have emerged which will last as criteria for work, as exemplified by the contributions of Sam Schweber. To these criteria every discipline that has been over time interrelated with the history of science has contributed a number of values of its own. From the essays in this volume, what clearly emerges is the ‘moral integration’ of the history of science, which has been often overlooked due to its controversies. There clearly is a common engagement in the goal among historians of science of quite different types, to contribute to a greater reflectiveness about science, to highlight the moral and edifying aspects of science, to remind us that social choices are at the core of science and to stress the communal aspects of the history of science, including the need for the public accessibility of knowledge. A related moral issue emerging as a common denominator is the striving for the accountability of science with regard to society and the realization that such accountability also needs structures, including an institutional role for the history of science. This may also be an argument for bringing the scientist back into the history of science: as science has to face history, scientists have to face historians of science. The values mentioned above together with issues of style, such as modesty, tolerance, tact and taste – which have always been the hallmark of excellent contributions to the history of science – can only be upheld if the community is prepared

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to stand up for its principles under the new challenges described above. Growing specialization and industrialization of science will make ever-higher demands on spaces for multi-disciplinary autonomous work, not hiding in intellectual niches and shying away from the burning issues that are also relevant to society. The privatization of knowledge makes it necessary that historians of science add their voices in order to defend and secure knowledge in the public domain, struggling for public access to scientific knowledge. The globalization of knowledge makes it necessary to take into account the interests and perspectives of the emerging communities of historians of science addressing the challenges of cultural diversity. There can be no doubt that the way toward the future exemplified by the works of Sam Schweber will give encouragement and enlightenment to the brave who address these challenges.

BABAK ASHRAFI

BIG HISTORY?

Historians have described extensively the dramatic changes in the organization of physics research during the twentieth century. To what extent do these changes foreshadow changes in the organization of history of physics? In the afterword of the collection of essays in Big Science: The Growth of Large Scale Research,1 Bruce Hevly summarized some of the new features of large-scale research that arose in physics. Big Science, he wrote, was more than just an increase in relative or absolute size of science projects or scientific institutions. Other factors include the increased concentration of resources in fewer research centers, increased workforce specialization, increased attachment of social and political significance to scientific projects. Furthermore, new forms of relationships have arisen between science and technology, as well as new kinds of interactions between scientists and engineers and the military. For the historian, Hevly observed, studying big science requires renewed attention to institutional contexts and the importance of collaborative research.2 Opinions vary as to whether these changes occurred during and after World War II, or throughout the twentieth century, or have always been occurring. In any of these three periodizations, several questions arise about possible relations between changes in the practice or organization of physics and history of physics. As Hevly notes, “History, like physics at the turn of the century, has been seen as essentially the province of individual researchers, perhaps working at times with mentors and apprentices.” But he claims, “for many historians the traditional setting is beginning to change.”3 Hevly called on historians to reflect further on these changes. Drawing out the analogy in the increase in sponsored research, the beginnings of change from a mentor-apprentice organization to larger collaborative structures and the increasing complexity in the objects of study, Hevly concludes that, “Scholars engaged in such projects [history of recent science] should remain sensitive to the impact of these arrangements on our own work – arrangements that could influence the choice of topics, modes of presentation and training of students. We historians should not imagine that we are any more free of our own complex institutional and cultural contexts than are the scientists and engineers.”4

1 2 3 4

Galison, Peter and Bruce Hevly, eds., Big Science, The Growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Ibid., 355. Ibid., 362. Ibid., 363.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 7–11. © 2007 Springer.

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Sam Schweber has been one of the historians examining changes in the cultural and institutional contexts of physics and how physics went from being a craft of individuals to a profession involving large-scale organizations. These transformations are interesting in their own right, and they may also foreshadow the future of history of science. For example, in his “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical physics in the United States 1920–1950,”5 Schweber examined transformations in the institutional relationships between experimentalists and theorists. He also contrasted such relationships in America with those in Europe. Schweber observed that the European physicists who immigrated to the United States in the 1930s and 1940s did not so much remake American physics as become participants in changes that were already well underway or in place, changes resulting in a mutual transformation of American physics and immigrant physicists. The ingredients comprising this transformation were the following: the increasing complexity of the topics of research, including the advent of quantum mechanics and the rise of atomic and nuclear physics; the rapidly changing institutional setting, including the large size and rapid growth of American physics departments; and American physicists’ prevailing habits of pragmatism and empiricism that encouraged theorists to better integrate their work with that of experimentalists. Schweber’s “The Mutual Embrace of Science and the Military: ONR and the Growth of Physics in the United States after World War II”6 describes the efforts to move the large-scale structures developed for doing war-time research into a postwar environment. In this article, as in the “Empiricist Temper Regnant,” Schweber examined the interplay between changes in the personal, institutional and political spheres. He described also physicists’ loss of (their perception of) control over their own research as their dependence on sponsored research grew. In a third article, “Big Science in Context: Cornell and MIT,” which was Schweber’s contribution to the volume Big Science, he contrasted the attempts of two research universities to reconcile their different ideologies of basic or applied science with the broader interests and trends that drove sponsored research in the United States during and after World War II. We can believe that the complexity of Big Science, the increase of sponsored research, and impending challenges to historians’ dearly held ideologies about themselves present new obstacles. But historians have faced new obstacles before. The nature and volume of sources, for example, have been changing all along, and historians have developed new skills to cope. Perfectly familiar responses, such as producing more historians in larger departments with more funding, may suffice this time as well. If historians could multiply as quickly as scientists, then we could create more case studies and more biographies. Perhaps keeping up with the

5 6

Schweber, Silvan S. “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the United States, 1920–1950.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 17 (1986): 55–98. Mendelsohn, Everett, Merritt Roe Smith, and Peter Weingart, eds., Science, Technology and the Military, pp. 3–45. Sociology of Sciences Yearbook, 1988. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1988.

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growth in the scientific community is not as easily done as said. Nor is it clear that more individual studies will lead to more or better historical insight. If, on the other hand, the changes occurring in science and history of science really are deeper than just an increase in scale, then historians should consider how to enhance their effectiveness in the new environment, regardless of the size of the communities involved. Greater effectiveness could involve refining and refocusing historical questions, using technology like every other sector of society to increase productivity, and working together more often, more closely, and more effectively. There are several examples of attempts to address the obstacles that Big Science presents to historians. In 1992, a large international collaboration published Out of the Crystal Maze,7 a study of the history of solid state physics. The project is interesting both for its pioneering work on the history of solid state physics and for its scale of collaboration, which is so rare in the history of science, or the humanities more generally for that matter. The project was undertaken because the investigators, both historians and scientists, felt that the topic of their interest is “huge and varied and lacks the unifying features beloved of historians.”8 They embarked upon a collaboration because “given the breadth and complexity of solid-state physics, progress in the traditional mode of research would be painfully slow.” The participants held meetings to discuss how to work together, which is common in other disciplines. The fact that such organization does not happen automatically or by accident seems to be a lesson often relearned. The fact that effective collaborations need to be planned and actively organized is worth noting here because humanists, who spend so much time studying how other communities organize, seem to be such determined individualists. In contrast with historians, those in allied professions, such as archivists and curators, are more familiar with collaborative endeavors. One way for historians to learn how to organize more effectively would be to see how these allies have organized themselves to explore some of the features of Big Science that are of mutual interest. For example, in 2001, the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics reported the results of a ten year study of documentation practices in multi-institutional collaborations.9 This study was motivated by the observation that as multi-institutional collaborations are becoming more common, their archives might be scattered or destroyed. Although this study was about documentation rather than history and resulted in publications in sociology journals, it is interesting for historians because it was an attempt to address one of the aspects of the rise of Big Science. It is also interesting as a collaboration involving, in part, historians of physics. The study was aimed at identifying the patterns of collaboration, defining the scope of the documentation

7 8 9

Hoddeson, Lillian, Ernest Braun, Jürgen Teichmann, and Spencer Weart, eds., Out of the Crystal Maze, Chapters from the History of Solid-State Physics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Ibid, viii. Warnow-Blewett, Joan, Joel Genuth and Spencer Weart, AIP Study of Multi-Institutional Collaborations: Final Report. College Park: American Institute of Physics, 2001.

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problems, working with institutional archivists to locate and preserve records, fieldtesting proposed solutions, and making recommendations about documentation. The investigators prepared a census of collaborations; interviewed hundreds of participants in those collaborations including those with “special perspectives,” such as women and minorities, as well as pivotal individuals such as directors and program officers; conducted a qualitative analysis of these interviews; and conducted focused case studies of a few collaborations. The study itself had some of the features that mark Big Science projects. There were five sponsors, and several more institutions that were the sites of multiinstitutional collaborations, such as Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Brookhaven, provided support of various kinds. The researchers consisted of eight Center staff and six main outside consultants. There was a working group for each of the three stages of the study, numbering 27, 33 and 19 members, respectively. The members of the working groups were scientists, historians, archivists and sociologists drawn from academia, business and government. Each working group met once or twice a year, but each of the members was expected to respond individually to queries and requests for advice. The working groups designed the project’s methodology and reviewed its findings and recommendations. Those findings continue to influence the Center in its efforts to preserve the archives of physics and physicists. The final example of a project addressing obstacles that historians face when studying large and sometimes widely dispersed projects with many participants generating vast archives in various media is one that involved the preservation of archival materials as well as the production of historical narratives. In 2000, Schweber joined a collaborative Web-based project called the History of Recent Science and Technology Project (HRST), for which I served as one of the historians and the project manager. This project was commissioned by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (with matching support provided by the Dibner Fund) as one of a range of experiments in the history of recent science and technology. We attempted to foster collaborative teams of historians, encourage collaborations between historians and the scientists and engineers involved in the projects we wished to study, and used Web-based tools to support these collaborations. We developed a suite of database-backed Web applications to extend the reach of historians across large and dispersed formations and to help them design and establish flexible, interdisciplinary collaborations for collecting and annotating digital archives. We faced technical, historiographic and organizational problems in HRST. The technical problems were straightforward to address. The historiographic issues about the use and reliability of evidence, narratives of recent science and collaborations with the subjects of our studies are more interesting. But here too, we face questions

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that are familiar. Indeed, we are preceded here by many, including other historians,10 sociologists and anthropologists. Historians can be much less confident in facing the organizational problems of the kind that arose during HRST. None of the examples described above has led to more than a temporary change – if that – in how historians work. The features of Big Science have not translated well to history of science. Specialization of the workforce in history has been on topics such as the study of particular periods or disciplines, rather than on skill sets that could be applied to various topics. This is reflected, for example, in the structure of Out of the Crystal Maze. Collaboration has been much less common among historians than among museum curators or archivists and librarians. Individual historians of science and technology are still not inclined to move to organizational models beyond scholar-and-assistant, and the institutions that house historians are not set up to facilitate, support and reward collaborations. One of the lessons of the HRST project was how highly historians value their intellectual and professional individuality and how difficult it currently is for historians’ institutions to sustain collaborative projects. There is a deeper issue underlying these problems. Almost no consensus exists on a shared set of questions or research approaches among historians of science. Scholars and their readers would be justified in celebrating the resulting diversity of perspectives, but they should also acknowledge the resulting obstacles to collaborative organization. We might conclude from this robust individualism that the history of science and perhaps the humanities in general, will remain almost exclusively solitary endeavors. Or historians may yet be pushed by their sponsors or pulled by their sources into doing more collaborative larger-scale work. Alas, it seems, much kicking and screaming will ensue. Center for History of Physics American Institute of Physics College Park, Maryland

10

Söderqvist, Thomas, ed., The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, Studies in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, v. 4. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1997.

STEPHEN G. BRUSH

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDY OF SCIENCE

Recently, an education columnist in the Washington Post wrote that students should be given some idea of “how the various disciplines fit together (the history of science, the mathematics of sport…)”.1 This reminded me once again of the great potential audience for our field. In an age when education seems to be dominated by relentless specialization and the testing of factual knowledge, many teachers, parents and other citizens are fascinated by the Big Questions: What is the origin and structure of the universe? Are science and religion compatible? Did humans evolve from simpler organisms? Is human behavior determined by genes or culture? Why did European civilization come to dominate the world after the fifeteenth century? Do science and society influence each other? If historians of science do not give intelligible answers to these questions, someone else will. In fact, others already have done so. In the general science section of any comprehensive bookstore you will find many books that seem to use the history of science to tell fascinating stories about how we arrived at our present understanding of the world and the lively controversies along the way. Plays about physicists and mathematicians (Copenhagen, QED, Proof) have been popular. The authors of these works are often very good writers and some of them even read our publications. However, few of them are historians of science in the modern sense. They repeat old myths and stereotypes about the history of science without making the effort to study original sources and do serious research in archives. Historians of science often write more accurate and interesting accounts than the traditional stories but their language should appeal more effectively to students and the public. For many years, historians of science were reluctant to write textbooks and popularizations, perhaps because they realized how much research needed to be done to get past the myths or because they feared that addressing issues of current interest would legitimize the much-maligned “whig” interpretation of history. Recently however, there has been a revival of good expository writing for a wide audience: several comprehensive textbooks and short monographs, readable and reliable, are now available. 1

Karin Chenoweth, “Homeroom: Taking the Measure of Magnet’s Attractions,” Washington Post, Prince George’s Extra (15 November 2001), p. 6. The first four paragraphs of this article are taken from “A Wider Audience for History of Science” in the American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics Newsletter, 34, no. 1 (Spring 2002), p. 4, reprinted by permission of the American Institute of Physics. I have also incorporated material from my Keynote Lecture, “Different Directions in the History of Physics in the 1990s” presented at the Joint Atlantic Seminar in the History of the Physical Sciences, College Park, Maryland, 17 September 1999.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 13–25. © 2007 Springer.

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In science education, the historical approach can no longer be considered just a distraction that takes time away from learning “real science”. On the contrary, research done on the Project Physics course for high schools showed that this historically-oriented text, in combination with simulations of the experiments done by Galileo and other great scientists, enhanced students’ understanding of the nature of science while preparing them to do as well on standardized tests of subject-matter as students taking a traditional course.2 Nor is there necessarily any conflict for a historian of science, between research and educational or popularizing activities. At least in my own case, the effort to present an intelligible and accurate view of science to undergraduate students inspired me to undertake new research projects, and the results of those projects were directly incorporated into my teaching. The purpose of this essay is not to persuade historians to put more effort into teaching undergraduates or to write more books and articles for the public. Instead, it is to argue that more attention to the historical questions that interest non-historians would stimulate research and analysis that is beneficial to us as professional historians of science. The problems we have been addressing during the last two or three decades are important and worth studying, but it is time to look at other kinds of problems that have been neglected. I am not alone in my dissatisfaction with the present state of the discipline but others have rather different reasons for being dissatisfed. Let us begin with a recent assessment of the state of our field, as seen by one eminent practitioner, in a review of Jan Golinski’s book Making Natural Knowledge:3 “The place of the history of science in the academy (in the United States as well as elsewhere, save perhaps for Holland) is appalling. Only a few universities have freestanding departments; where these are lacking, history departments may employ one or two professors in this area. Historians, by trade, know “nothing about science.” Thus, although we have learned quite a lot about women and workers, wars, political movements and other important aspects of ordinary life, science – the muscle of twentieth-century North America – has been understudied and poorly understood. And for a number of reasons. Chief among them is a prevailing epistemology that has lent privileged status to science as pure and objective, largely unsullied by the mess of human subjectivities. Jan Golinski explains how constructivism, which he defines as a methodology that “directs attention to the role of human beings, as social actors, in the making of scientific knowledge” (p. 6), has exploded this foundational belief. Constructivism has historicized science and in so doing has called for analysis of all its associated categories: discovery, evidence, argument, experiment, expert, laboratory,

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3

See my article “History of Science and Science Education,” in Scientific Literacy Papers: A Journal of Research in Science, Education and the Public (Oxford), Summer 1987, pp. 75–87; reprinted in Teaching the History of Science, edited by M. Shortland & A. Warwick (Oxford: The British Society for the History of Science/Blackwell, 1989), 54–66 and in Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education (Toronto), 20, no. 2 (1989): 60–70. The success of the journal Science & Education: Contributions from History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Education (Kluwer, volume 12 published in 2003) documents the widespread international interest and activity in this enterprise. Review by Londa Schiebinger in American Historical Review 103 (1998): 1554–1555.

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instrument, image, replication and law. The heat of the current “science wars” – those unproductive tussles between scientists and their critics – reflects perhaps the success of the last thirty years of science studies.

This quotation raises some interesting questions. Is the pitiful state of history of science worse than it was 30 years ago, and is this despite or because of the “success” of constructivist science studies? Is constructivism the only acceptable way to “historicize science,” and is it in fact the dominant trend in history of science at present? If the two sides in the science wars are identified as “scientists and their critics” does that mean that constructivists are really anti-science, as some scientists claim and many constructivists indignantly deny? Whatever may be the state of history of science as a whole, research in the history of physical science is flourishing and highly regarded by scientists. One reason for this relative success is that physicists, chemists, astronomers and geologists have strongly supported historical research through their societies (for example, the Center for History of Physics, financed partly from the revenues of physics journals) and journals (one can publish historical articles not only in the relatively new Physics in Perspective but also in the well-established Physics Today and Reviews of Modern Physics). Historical sessions at meetings of these societies attract large audiences. Authors whose primary training is in science publish in professional history of science journals, hold professorships in university departments of history or history of science and win prizes offered by history of science societies. Thus, the premise that there is some inherent hostility between scientists and historians is certainly not universally valid. I begin by describing some trends in research on the history of science; only one of them, and not the most popular in the 1990s, is constructivism. Two other approaches, which I call “modernism” and “contextualism,” dominate the publications I am familiar with. Next, I propose a couple of unsolved problems that should, in my opinion, provide fruitful research opportunities in the twenty-first century (although historians of science now seem reluctant to tackle them): explaining the Scientific Revolution and elucidating the “nature of science”. Finally, I mention a topic we already know a lot about but have not made into a coherent theme: the role of mathematics in the introduction of new ideas about the physical world. MODERNISM, CONTEXTUALISM AND CONSTRUCTIVISM Thirty or forty years ago one could clearly distinguish between publications by scientists, which were generally internalist and whiggish, and works by historians, which were more likely to be externalist and contextual. In fact, historians proclaimed their rejection of the “whig interpretation of the history of science” to demonstrate their independence from the scientific community they were studying, while scientists simply ignored what historians were writing about them. Since then the two groups have moved much closer together and their approaches can be

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regarded as complementary rather than antagonistic. At the same time, scholars from other disciplines – sociology, women’s studies and literary criticism to mention only three – have become interested in the history of science from their own perspectives and their work has greatly enriched the history of science by introducing new questions, methods and sources. Lacking a generally-accepted term, I have used the term “Modernist” for the successor to the old whig internalist history; it may be considered “presentist” in its choice of subjects, but is no longer whiggish in its treatment of those subjects. The Modernist is still interested in long-term trends, revolutions and the role of ideas like continuity, atoms, force, progress, etc., in early as well as modern science. However, the focus is on the development of the science itself, with the technical details explained in a way that engages the attention of experts as well as general readers. Sam Schweber’s magnificent history of quantum electrodynamics (QED, 1994) is a good example of a Modernist history, although he has also written in the Contextualist mode. “Contextual” is a familiar term for the analysis of science in relation to other factors (social, institutional, economic, political, psychological, etc.) pertaining to a particular time and place; it is the successor to the old “externalist” approach, having been enriched by much greater attention to the technical aspects of the science. However, it is more limited to particular times and places (thus giving rise to the complaint that the “Big Picture” is ignored). Contextualism is not the same as “Social Construction,” though there is obviously some overlap between the two: both may use the same kind of evidence but interpret it with different assumptions. The Contextualist, like the Modernist, assumes that scientists are discovering facts and laws that correspond at least approximately to some reality in the physical world; the Social Constructionist does not. Among other approaches are the “Artistic” (studies that emphasize the role of visual presentation, musical harmony or aesthetic factors in the development of science) and the “Feminist/postcolonial” (studies that discuss the development of science from the perspective of disadvantaged groups such as women, ethnic or racial minorities and third world populations). I am especially interested in “Philosophical” approaches that analyse phenomena such as the acceptance or rejection of theories in terms of philosophical criteria (e.g., testing of novel predictions). Most professional research in the history of science in the past couple of decades has been done in the Modernist or Contextualist mode. Social Construction, despite the large amount of publicity it has received and its apparently widespread influence within the larger community of Science and Technology Studies (STS), is found in only a small number of publications. This may reflect its faddish character: by now most of the founders of Social Constructionism have either rejected or substantially modified their original radical positions.4 The other three approaches 4

Thomas S. Kuhn, whose famous Structure of Scientific Revolutions inspired many of the Social Constructionists, explicitly rejected their work in “Reflections on Receiving the John Desmond Bernal Award,” 4S Review 1, no. 4 (1983): 26–30 and in The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, MA: Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, 1992). Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, whose book Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific

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(artistic, feminist/postcolonial and philosophical) are also sparsely represented in the general history of science journals, though they flourish in specialized journals. Another dimension is the subject-matter studied by historians of science. A glance at the contents of a journal like Isis shows that “science” does not usually include mathematics, technology or medicine. (By contrast, the scope of Isis in its early years or of Social Studies of Science currently, seems much broader.) I think this contraction of our field has been umfortunate; a historian of science should not have to seek out specialized journals on history of mathematics, technology or medicine to learn about the relevance of those subjects to physics, chemistry and biology. EXPLAINING THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION To me the most important question in the history of science is “why did the Scientific Revolution happen in Europe in the 17th century”? It is also one that undergraduates find fascinating, judging by class discussions and their choice of topics for an assigned essay. Many factors have been proposed: social/economic/religious conditions in Europe in the 15th and sixteenth centuries, recovery of ancient Greek science and mathematics, Humanism, the “natural law” concept, geographical discoveries, etc. But how can we determine which of these factors is important, necessary or sufficient Facts (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979) is still a canonical text of the movement, pointedly omitted the word “social” in the subtitle of their second edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986) and Latour himself elaborated his view that STS based on Social Constructionism is obsolete, in “One More Turn after the Social Turn,” in The Social Dimensions of Science, edited by E. McMullin, pp. 272–94 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). Harry M. Collins first reduced his “relativism” from an ontological to a methodological position [compare “Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism,” Social Studies of Science 11 (1981): 3–10 on p. 3 with “Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon,” ibid. 11 (1981): 33–62, on p. 54]; he now seems to have abandoned it completely, in his article with Robert Evans, “The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience,” ibid. 32 (2002): 235–96, on pp. 239, 240. David Bloor, founder of the social constructionist “Strong Program,” later admitted that this program seems to have been forgotten [“Remember the Strong Program?” Science, Technology & Human Values 22 (1997): 373–85] and, with his colleagues, explicitly rejected the radical anti-realism of other sociologists [Barry Barnes, David Bloor & John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, pp. 76–77, 87]. Andrew Pickering, in response to severe criticism by philosophers of his book Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), did not defend it but changed his position in a way that seems to me to water down Social Constructionism [“Knowledge, Practice, and Mere Construction,” Social Studies of Science 20 (1990): 682–729; The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)]. Challenged by Stephen Cole to give just one example in which established knowledge had been socially constructed, Bloor cited Andrew Warwick’s study of the reception of relativity theory at Cambridge University; however, this is not very convincing since Warwick covered only the period up to 1911, when the theory had not yet become established knowledge and (as often happens in research at the frontiers) there are different views about what the theory actually means. See S. G. Brush, “Why Was Relativity Accepted”? Physics in Perspective 1 (1999): 184–214.

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on the basis of only one historical event? To do that we must analyze other situations where some but not all of those factors were present, just as Conrad Russell tried to eliminate proposed causes of the English Revolution by studying an earlier period in English history when that Revolution didn’t happen.5 In particular, you cannot plausibly explain why the Scientific Revolution did happen in Europe in the seventeenth century – what has been called “The Grand Question” – unless you try to explain why it didn’t happen in other places where a very high level of science (and technology) had been reached earlier. The leading candidates are Islam and China. As Raymond Martin argued, we can learn something about historical causation by studying counterexamples.6 But only a handful of historians of science – notably Joseph Needham and H. Floris Cohen – have seriously considered the question in this way. One must deal with a set of questions that many historians do not want to discuss, for two reasons. First, they tend to rule out hypothetical questions (why something did not happen) as a matter of principle – “that’s not history”. Cohen complains that “quite a few scholars have indeed denied flatly” that the question “makes sense.”7 Second, historians deem it offensive to ask why another civilization “failed” to achieve what the West did. Doesn’t that presume that the West succeeded and the others somehow took a wrong turn? The biologist Jared Diamond dared to tackle the larger question: why did European civilization dominate the rest of the world after the fifeteenth century? In so doing, of course, he was careful not to insult the people who lost power, wealth and their lives to the Europeans. The commercial success of his book Guns, Germs and Steel8 suggests that there is a popular demand for explanations of major events in history. However, in this case the excuse “that’s not history” is unconvincing, since general historians (unlike historians of science) do regard this as a legitimate question, suitable for discussion in a professional journal as well as in a magazine edited for a broader audience.9 There is a small amount of historical analysis directed toward The Grand Question; some of it is summarized in Floris Cohen’s historiographic book on The Scientific Revolution. But when I decided to include the topic in my undergraduate course, I could not find any general books by historians of science suitable for students. In fact, it is shunned by the handful of good textbooks on science and 5

6 7 8 9

Conrad Russell, The Causes of the English Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1990). See my article “Why Did (or Didn’t) it Happen? “Historically Speaking 4, no. 5 (June 2003): 20–21, and the letter to the editor about this article by Roger L. Williams, with my reply, ibid 5, no. 1 (September 2003), 49–50. Raymond Martin, “Historical Counterexamples and Sufficient Causes,” Mind 88 (1979): 59–73. H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 1994), 381. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: Norton, 1998). Gale Stokes, “The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories,” American Historical Review 106 (2001): 508–25; “Why the West? The Unsettled Question of Europe’s Ascendancy,” Lingua Franca 11, no. 8 (November 2001): 30–38.

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technology in world history, as well as by books on the Scientific Revolution. One of the best such books in the first category calls the question “illicit” – “foreign to the historical enterprise and not one subject to historical analysis.” So I have had to use a book by a sociologist, Toby Huff’s The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge University Press, 1993), which is useful but apparently not based on research using original sources.10 The challenge to historians of science is: if you do not provide a satisfactory explanation of why the Scientific Revolution happened in seventeenth century Europe but not at another time and place, someone else will do it.11 My thesis is that if you do undertake to explain why an event happened by invoking certain causes, you should be willing to back up your argument by discussing counterexamples – other situations in which some of those causes were present but the event did not happen. Otherwise you cannot claim that your explanation is satisfactory. Although the task may involve more theoretical reasoning than historians find congenial, it does not mean that the historian has to be scientific, either in the sense of Popper (making predictions of future events) or in the sense of modern physics (developing general laws and mathematical theories to explain or predict empirical facts). In fact, given the eagerness of many historians of science to emulate what they consider to be the methods of “general” historians, it is ironic that my colleagues seem to avoid the kind of causal questions that specialists in, say, the seventeenth century English Revolution, find worthy of serious research and debate. THE NATURE OF SCIENCE In the 1970s there was a brief flirtation between historians and philosophers of science; each group thought it might learn something useful from the other. Philosophers of science were tired of arguing with each other about how science should work and decided they should take some account of how science actually does work, now and in the past. Historians of science welcomed this movement at first because it promised to fill a perceived need for some theory to explain or at least rationalize the large amount of descriptive data they had collected on the behavior of scientists. If it were possible to establish a philosophically-respectable theory of the nature of science by historical work, one might even be able to predict how science would develop in the future.

10

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James McClellan and Harold Dorn, Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 137; see also pp. 115, 139. Toby E. Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999; 2nd ed., 2003) One way to avoid the question is to deny that there was a Scientific Revolution in seventeenth century Europe. Judging by the ever-increasing demand for and supply of books about the supposedly nonexistent event, I would say that strategy has not yet been successful.

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Although the flirtation gave birth to some academic programs, books and journals (one of which, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, has been quite successful), it did not lead to a stable marriage. Historians decided “science” is not a well-defined entity that persists unchanged through time, hence it cannot have a unique “nature” and there is no need for a theory of its historical development. Philosophers still believe that science does have a nature but decided the best way to determine that nature is by logical analysis, rather than tedious archival research on past science. Science educators also want to know the nature of science because they think that’s what they should be teaching in the classroom, not just the results of scientific research.12 Nevertheless, a few problems on the borderline of history and philosophy are still generating research and discussion within both disciplines. In particular, philosophical analysis of theory-confirmation has interacted with historical studies of the reception of theories. For example, I claim that the following is an important historical question, even though it is usually discussed only by philosophers, not by historians: in deciding whether to accept a proposed theory, do scientists (now and in the past) give more weight to the successful prediction of new facts than to the successful explanation of known facts? Historians who study the reception of scientific theories are best able to answer this question because they have the evidence right in front of them; but unless they recognize the importance of the question they may simply report who accepted or rejected the theory without investigating why. We have here another causality issue, this time on the level of individual scientists rather than entire socities or nations. Historians should not simply point the philosophers in the direction of the archives of scientific writings (published and unpublished) because philosophers are not looking for the kind of answer that would be useful to historians. The philosopher is likely to be an absolutist who wants the answer, valid at all times and places. The historian would suspect, rightly I believe, that the answer varies from one field of science to another, and within each field may change from one time to another. It is precisely the way in which it changes – whether, for example, nineteenth-century physicists are more or less likely to judge theories by their successful predictions than seventeenth-century physicists or twentieth-century biologists – that tell us something worth knowing about the history of science. This particular historico-philosophical question also turns out to be of considerable contemporary interest when it is used, as the philosopher Karl Popper proposed, as a criterion to demarcate science from pseudoscience. If a theory does not make testable predictions – if it cannot be verified by an actual experiment or observation – then it does not deserve to be called scientific. The criterion has been used by both sides in the creation-evolution debate; it has been used to undermine

12

See Randy Bell et al., “The Nature of Science and Science Education: A Bibliography,” Science & Education 10 (2001): 187–204.

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the credibility of disciplines like psychoanalysis; and it has been enshrined in an Opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court (the Daubert case). In my opinion Popper’s “falsifiability criterion” is itself false: sciences widely acknowledged as legitimate (evolutionary biology, historical geology and much of astronomy) do not generally satisfy it: they deal with phenomena in large domains of space and time, which cannot easily be brought into the laboratory for controlled experiments. As a historian I have to conclude (from my own research and that of others) that even in fields where predictions can be tested, the results of those tests do not usually determine whether the theory is accepted; other factors such as the explanatory power and esthetic beauty of the theory may be equally or more important. Social and psychological factors may play a significant role.13 Nevertheless, the frequent public statements glorifying the hypothetico-deductive method as the key to the success of modern science have led some younger or inexperienced scientists to believe that confirmation of a novel prediction based on a bold hypothesis is the quickest way to establish their reputation. This belief can lead them astray. As Joachim Dagg has suggested, “misunderstanding the predictive power of science as a sort of guarantee to be right may be the primary motive for forgery”. Even without any dishonorable intent, a scientist may unconsciously focus on empirical data that support the hypothesis and ignore or minimize data that refute it – behavior that psychologists call “confirmation bias”. This phenomenon may explain some of the frauds involving apparently respectable scientists.14 Thus we have two propositions about the Nature of Science: (1) scientists do not in general accept a theory primarily because it has led to successful novel predictions; (2) the belief that they do so because of publicity about the “scientific method,” is one reason why scientists may (unintentionally?) falsely report that a theory has been confirmed by experiment. Neither proposition has been conclusively established, but they are attractive targets for future historical research, even though they derive from a philosophical claim about science. If the propositions turn out to be valid and if their validity is made known to science educators and to the 13

14

See S. G. Brush, “Why was Relativity Accepted?” (cited in note 4); “Dynamics of Theory Change: The Role of Predictions,” PSA 1994 2 (1995): 133–145; “How Theories Became Knowledge: Morgan’s Chromosome Theory of Heredity in America and Britain,” Journal of the History of Biology 35 (2002): 471–535, and other papers cited therein. Joachim L. Dagg, “Forgery: Prediction’s Vile Twin,” Science 302 (2003); 783–784. On “confirmation bias” see Ryan D. Tweney, Michael E. Doherty & Clifford R. Mynatt, On Scientific Thinking (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); M. J. Mahoney, Scientist as Subject: The Psychological Imperative (New York:: Ballinger, 1976); P. C. Wason, “On the Failure to Eliminate Hypotheses in a Conceptual Task,” Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12 (1960): 1290–1340. The problem seems to have been recognized as early as 1933; see the remarks by Ernest Rutherford about the discovery of the positron following its prediction by Dirac, at the Solvay Congress held in that year, quoted by D. V. Skobeltzyn in Early History of Cosmic Ray Studies, edited by Y. Sekido & H. Elliot, p. 50 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985). Cf. A. P. French, “The Strange Case of Emil Rupp,” Physics in Perspective 1 (1999): 3–21.

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public, the future of science itself might be affected.15 In this case, the historian of science would be not just a passive observer of science but would play a more active role. However, that happens only if the historian is willing to go beyond mere description of what happened (in this case, a theory was accepted) and try to analyze why it happened.16 IS MATHEMATICS THE KEY TO THE UNIVERSE? And what about the mathematics of sport, the other interdisciplinary subject mentioned by the Washington Post columnist? As it happens, that subject is relevant to a curious connection between recent and modern cosmology, a connection that also shows why historians of science should pay more attention to mathematics. In his Timaeus, Plato identified the regular solids (cube, icosahedron, octahedron, tetrahedron) with the four elements (earth, water, air, fire); the fifth solid, the dodecahedron, was identified with the cosmos. Commentators on Timaeus have suggested that Plato had in mind a popular game involving a ball made by sewing together 12 pentagonal pieces of leather (like a modern soccer ball). That would be a dodecahedron if the pieces were rigid and flat but because of the elasticity of the leather, the pieces bulge out to form a sphere when air is pumped into the ball. This would be a simple, practical way to make a model of the celestial sphere but

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“One big problem with science fairs is that everybody tries to force-fit students into the mold of what they call’the scientific method’ [hypothesis-testing]” – Randy Bell, University of Virginia, quoted by Valerie Strauss, “Science-Fair Hypothesis Fraying”, Washington Post, 20 February 2001, p. A9. The notion that the validity of a philosophical concept like the confirmatory value of novel predictions could enter public discourse is not quite as far-fetched as it sounds. Consider the following exchange published in Parade magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement that reaches millions of readers: “I recently read that the ancient Babylonians could accurately predict solar and lunar eclipses. But how was that possible if it was not yet known that the Earth actually traveled around the Sun, rather than the other way around. – Scott Morris, Highland, Ind. [Reply:] “They didn’t need to know why the eclipse was occurring… [They] assembled meticulous observational tables for so long that, even though they thought the Sun revolved around the Earth, they still had great success in predicting eclipses. This is an excellent example of how prediction–widely accepted by scientists as the truest test of the accuracy of a theory–is utterly inadequate…”. Marilyn Vos Savant, “Ask Marilyn,” Parade, 10 August 1997, pp. 4–5 (italics in original). A well-known example is the influence of Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, published in 1962, on the rhetoric of geophysicists involved in the “Revolution in the Earth Sciences” that revived continental drift theory under the name of Plate Tectonics. By appealing to [Kuhn’s view of] the history of science, they helped to establish [their view of] the history of the Earth. It is consistent with one interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which any observation of a phenomenon has an effect on the phenomenon itself. Two recent examples of attempts to go beyond descriptive narrative and analyze how science works are: David L. Hull, “Studying the Study of Science Scientifically,” Perspectives on Science 6 (1998) 209–231; Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (New York: Pantheon, 1996).

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the choice of the dodecahedron rather than some other solid involves theoretical considerations in 3-dimensional geometry.17 All historians of science are familiar with Kepler’s use of the five regular solids in his first model of the solar system and with the role of Platonic/Pythagorean thinking in the works of Galileo and other physical scientists. But now, we have a more specific question, which only an historian who takes mathematics seriously can discuss: why did Jean-Pierre Luminet and his colleagues select the dodecahedron (more precisely, the sphericalized “Poincar´e dodecahedral space”, which looks like a soccer ball) to represent the universe, in a paper that one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals not only accepted for publication but featured as its cover story? Nature 425 (2003): 593–595. How is their reasoning related to that of Plato? Having rejected the “whig interpretation of the history of science,” we cannot ignore this question just because other cosmologists are skeptical about the validity of the Luminet model, and it may be forgotten in a few months. The case of the dodecahedral universe is only an extreme example of a more common phenomenon that deserves more attention from historians of science: what Eugene Wigner called, in the title of a famous paper “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences”.18 Some of the most revolutionary ideas in modern physical science were introduced first as purely mathematical hypotheses that contradicted well-established views about the nature of the world, yet could not be ignored because they led to superior explanations and predictions of empirical facts. Astronomers had to use the Copernican system in their calculations because the planets seemed to move as if they were going around the Sun, not the Earth, even though in the late sixteenth century most of them could not accept the absurd idea that the Earth itself moves around the Sun as well as around its own axis. They could “exploit Copernicus’ mathematical system… while denying or remaining silent about the motion of the Earth” with the result that “the final victory of the De Revolutionibus was achieved by infiltration”.19 Eventually, since the mathematical hypothesis 17

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“The dodecahedron was familiar to anyone familiar with the construction of balls out of twelve pentagonal pieces of leather… Of the five solids inscribed in one and the same sphere the dodecahedron has the maximum volume and comes nearest to coinciding with the sphere, as well as looking most like it in shape. So the Phaedo (110 b6) compares the spherical Earth with… balls made by sewing twelve [pentagonal] pieces of leather together.” Another possibility is an “allusion to the mapping out of the apparently spherical heavens into twelve pentagonal regions for the purpose of charting the constellations.” A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), pp. 359, 377. See also F. M. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato translated with a running commentary (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1937), p. 219. E. P. Wigner, Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 13 (1960): 601–614. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 185–187. Kuhn argues that the “as if” attitude of these sixteenth-century astronomers was similar to that of their predecessors: “Ptolemy himself had never pretended that all of the circles used in the Almagest to compute planetary positions were physically real; they were useful mathematical devices and they did not have to be any more than that” (p. 187). Kuhn’s interpretation has been

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of the Earth’s motion was incompatible with the physics of Aristotle, Galileo invented a new physics that would be consistent with the mathematical hypothesis. Galileo, however, refrained from proposing a comprehensive philosophy to replace Aristotle’s; that task was left to Descartes. Descartes developed a mechanistic picture of the universe in which space was completely filled with matter; pieces of matter could push each other around by contact action but could not exert any forces over a finite distance. Indeed, the idea of “action at a distance” was condemned by the Cartesians as an unscientific remnant of the “occult qualities” and magical mysticism popular in earlier centuries. Isaac Newton agreed in principle with this view but found that he could explain planetary motion and other phenomena quite effectively by postulating a universal force of gravity. Falling apples, the Moon, planets, comets and the oceans behaved as if they were subject to a force acting through empty space, even though everyone, including Newton, knew that there could not in reality be such a force. Of course, Newton did not consistently reject all non-contact forces, but he did express his distaste for the idea that the Sun could simply reach out over millions of miles to pull the Earth, without the help of an intervening substance. According to Alexandre Koyrè, “Newton… never admitted attraction as a “physical” force. Time and again he said that it was only a “mathematical force”.20 However, like the Earth’s motion, Newton’s theory of gravity was so successful that it had to be accepted, even though the major continental physicists like Huygens and Leibniz did so with the stipulation that gravity itself does not exist as an inherent property of matter. It was only when the next generation had translated Newton’s theory into the language of Leibnizian calculus, and found that it was also far superior to Descartes’ vortex theory in dealing with problems such as the return of Halley’s comet, the orbit of the Moon, and the shape of the Earth, that the Continentals shrugged off their antipathy to long-range forces; mathematics had again infiltrated physics and forced it to change its fundamental principles.21 A similar story could be told about atomic randomness, the photon, quantum entanglement, antiparticles and general relativity – based, like the above examples, on facts well known to historians of science. But in each case where historians find that a concept was first introduced as a mathematical hypothesis that could not represent physical reality, then was later accepted as real because of its empirical success, there is a tendency to treat it as an anomaly, rather than an instance of what might be a general rule. What is lacking is an adequate recognition and analysis of the creative role of

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somewhat modified by subsequent historical research but his basic premise, as applied to the reception of Copernicus by German astronomers, is supported by the detailed studies of Robert S. Westman; see for example “The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory,” Isis 66 (1975): 165–193. Newtonian Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Poress, 1965; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), p. 7. E. J. Aiton, “The Vortex Theory in Competition with Newtonian Celestial Mechanics,” in The General History of Astronomy, Volume 2, Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, Part B, The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, edited by R. Taton & C. Wilson, 3–21 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Koffi Maggio, “The Reception of Newton’s Gravitational Theory by Huygens, Varignon, and Maupertuis: How Normal Science may be Revolutionary,” Perspectives on Science 11 (2003): 135–169.

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mathematics in the development of physical science. Instead, the current fashion is to emphasize the role of laboratory experiments. Granted, this role has been neglected in the past, when historians wrote mainly about theories and concepts and a lot more research needs to be done to correct that imbalance. My point is not that experiments need less attention from historians but that when we do discuss theories we should consider mathematical concepts as more than just convenient fictions.22 In particular, we should recognize the possibility that at least in some cases, the mathematics is not merely a tool to express a new physical idea and deduce its empirical consequences; rather, mathematics may run ahead of physics, forcing physicists to use and eventually to accept a new concept they initially rejected. In short, historians of science have not really “taken on board” (to use a current clich´e) the remarkable statement of Albert Einstein: Nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas. I am convinced that we can discover, by means of purely mathematical constructions, those concepts and those lawful connections between them, which furnish the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. Experience may suggest the appropriate mathematical concepts, but they most certainly cannot be deduced from it. Experience remains, of course, the sole criterion of physical utility of a mathematical construction. But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense, therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the ancients dreamed.23

Institute for Physical Science & Technology and Department of History University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742, US 22

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There is also a Contextualist aspect here, which is often forgotten (by me as well as by other historians): how did the scientist learn the mathematics that was to prove so useful? We now have some good accounts of the way physicists prepared for the Tripos examinations at Cambridge University, including what kinds of mathematics they would have encountered there. James Clerk Maxwell certainly profited from this kind of education, yet he apparently got the idea for his remarkable derivation of the velocity-distribution law before he went up to Cambridge by reading John Herschel’s lengthy review of Quetelet’s books on social statistics. It was the success of this law, which postulated that molecules in a gas behave as if they moved randomly, that infiltrated the idea of atomic randomness into physics at a time when physicists generally assumed that atomic motion was governed by deterministic Newtonian mechanics. Albert Einstein, On the Method of Theoretical Physics: The Herbert Spencer Lectures delivered at Oxford, June 10, 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933). Part of the context for this statement is Einstein’s own experience during the previous two decades: he followed a mathematical path to deduce the equations of general relativity, then found that when applied to the universe they entailed an unacceptable consequence: a static collection of massive bodies would be unstable because there was nothing to prevent gravitational forces from making them collapse into a small space. So for physical reasons he added the arbitrary “cosmological constant,” in effect a long-range repulsive force to prevent this collapse. The subsequent discovery that the universe is expanding made this correction unnecessary, so Einstein retracted the correction. Introducing the cosmological constant was what he later called his “biggest blunder” [according to George Gamow, My World Line (New York: Viking, 1970), p. 44] – i.e., to let the physics override the mathematics. Einstein’s views on the role of mathematics in science are discussed by Christa Jungnickel and Russell McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature: Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 334–347.

TIAN YU CAO

WILL EINSTEIN STILL BE THE SUPER-HERO OF PHYSICS HISTORY IN 2050?

Since the middle of the Twentieth century there have been three histories of physics: that of the historians, that of the physicists – they call it physics history – and that of the journalists and general public. On the whole, that of the journalists and the public follows closely that of the physicists (although of course watered down a good bit), while the historian’s history, departing from both, is read by neither. To this generalization there is one great exception: Sam Schweber writing history of science that is also physics history and is read by historians, physicists and the general public too.1 What all three of these histories of physics, however different their audiences and their intents, have in common is – Einstein. A ne plus ultra for the historians, the most wonderfully human super-human for the public, Einstein inspires especially the efforts of those theoretical physicists committed to the goal of elimination of the world’s apparent diversity through reduction to the properties and interactions of more elementary entities. In their grand narrative of physics history as an epic of ever-grander unification of physical theory, Einstein is the super-hero. Of Einstein’s unparalleled prominence in all three histories of physics we had striking evidence at the recent International Congress of the History of Science in Beijing. Falling in fully with the celebration of the World Year of Physics as an exercise in Einstein idolatry, not only were there many, many papers about Einstein contributed to the proceedings and several plenary lectures, but also the opening plenary lecture, again about Einstein, was given by C.N. Yang, perhaps the greatest living theoretical physicist. Moreover, this exaltation of Einstein was consistent with at least one side of the general theme of that history of science congress, namely “globalization and diversity”. In an important sense, globalization entails homogenization. By means of translation and diffusion, Einstein is now a hero not only in Germany and Switzerland, Europe and the United States, but in all the West. Einstein is now also regarded as a hero in China, India and Brazil. He is indeed a global hero. Since nobody imagines that this process of globalizing various areas of human actions can or will be arrested, we must suppose that in 2050 the world will be much more homogeneous than it is now. Thus, were globalization the only story 1

S.S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It (Princeton University Press, 1994), 784 pages; In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton University Press, 2000), 256 pages.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 27–32. © 2007 Springer.

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and the whole story, we would have to expect that in all three histories of physics, Einstein will be an even more global hero in 2050. But what about diversity, the other side of the theme of the Beijing congress? Some, of course, would answer: cultural diversity, maybe; economic and political diversity, no! This is the end of history thesis. I do not believe the end of history thesis. I think it very unlikely that the presently existing, diversified economic and political structures will converge into a homogeneous pattern of structures that emulate the Anglo-Saxon model. However, here there is not enough space, even were it the place, to discuss this much contested issue of the prospects for a politically diverse future. And it is all the less necessary to do so as the economic and political will are found, after all, to be largely cultural consequences. So we have the question: Is science part of culture? Of course, it is. But again, some would insist that even if science is part of culture, it is precisely that part with the greatest universality, that part of culture with global characteristics and in this regard, completely different from other parts of culture. Religion, moral teachings or artistic ways of presenting human sentiments or reflecting on existential dilemmas – all these might keep their diversified forms of existence even in a globalized future (if they are strong enough to resist the conquering power of American popular culture). But not science, they say. Just as I do not believe in the end of history, so also do I not believe that science is, or can be, exempted from historical changes in cultural outlook. Why can it not? Because all cultural thinking – scientific creativity included – has metaphor as its ultimate source. And not only as the source but also as the grounding for its cogency. To take just one example, one that Sam Schweber has helped us understand, recall that Darwin’s metaphorical appropriation of Malthus’s economic principle was crucial not only to his conception of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, but also to the persuasiveness of his argument for evolution. Consider then, with this fact of the grounding of science in metaphor in mind, the following parallel: the conceptualization of our social and cultural world in terms of globalization and diversity on the one hand, and the concepts of symmetry and symmetry breaking as the guiding perspective in contemporary theoretical physics on the other. The two doublets in the parallel are metaphorical to each other and thus mutually supportive. May we not then regard symmetry and its breaking as even more than a prototypical conceptual framework? May we not regard it as a style of reasoning of our current era, the style that characterizes the way people perceive and conceptualize the world today? Certainly this is entirely consistent with the way we observe, and what we observe in, the social and cultural world around us today. Everywhere we see that the more globalization, the more diversity, not only in the cultural realm but also in the realms of politics and economics. Just think about the present political and economic development patterns in China, Russia and India. Similarly, in the development of theoretical physics in recent decades, the grander the symmetry or the greater unification achieved, the more symmetry breakings are

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sought – and are discovered. Just think about the electroweak theory, the Higgs mechanism and the search for Higgs particles. Should we not be persuaded by these evident parallels of the deep connections between science and other parts of culture? And what if this inseparability of diversity on the one hand, and symmetry breaking on the other, from the progress of globalization, on the one hand, and unification, on the other, continues to be characteristic of our culture as globalization goes forward in the coming decades? Then, I argue, Einstein cannot and will not retain his uniquely exalted place in physics history. Einstein will inevitably be taken down from his super-hero pedestal and placed in the company of other merely first-rank heroes such as Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Maxwell. Einstein made numerous historically significant contributions to physics, among them several that were revolutionary, such as the light quantum and the settlement of the existence of atoms. About this there is no controversy. But what is Einstein’s most important and longest lasting contribution to physics – so enduring that physicists today appeal to it to guide their own research? If Einstein had made all his other contributions but had not pursued the idea of symmetry and unification – and having succeeded, to some extent, in this pursuit, advocated it strongly as a lofty goal worthy of pursuing – then Einstein would not have been able to catch the imagination of so many great physicists in the twentieth century and would not today be regarded as a scientific icon worthy of worshipping. Einstein’s unification of mechanics and electrodynamics was based, ultimately, on Poincare symmetry. His success in unifying inertial systems and non-inertial systems was based directly and heuristically upon general covariance or diffeomorphism, an even wider symmetry. However Einstein failed to unify gravity and electromagnetism. This is a sad story for him, and, for some while, a tragedy for the dream of unification. During the last thirty years of his life, this genius devoted all of his time and energy to this cause – all except the small but very important part that he devoted to political causes – without any real achievements and without support or participation by any but a very few of his fellow theorists. The idea remained however, and the ideal was later accepted by others who have carried the torch further. In particular C.N. Yang regards himself and is regarded by many other physicists, as Einstein’s successor in the sense of aiming at completing Einstein’s unfinished project, a project of establishing a unified understanding of the physical world. And with Yang and his collaborator Mills, the pursuit of unification entered a new phase, the phase of the standard model. The standard model is wonderful but nobody knows how to make the standard model a really unified theory. Yes, weak interactions and electromagnetic interactions can be treated in a unified way. But how to unify QCD and electroweak theory? Nobody knows. Then the string theorists, and Edward Witten in particular, appeared to carry the torch. Their heroic pursuit continues but the claims of progress made are rather dubious in my judgment.

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Granted that the achievements of Einstein’s program of unification by symmetryenlarging, though incomplete, has been significant. But if we ask about Einstein’s place in physics history in 2050, then of more significance for Einstein’s reputation among theoretical physicists of the next generation are the prospects for reaching the more ambitious goals of his program of general unification. Let us therefore consider what, in principle, is indeed possible to achieve in this way? Any pursuit of unification through exploring larger and larger symmetries without corresponding attention to symmetry breaking, although it might provide some beautiful mathematical constructions, has only very limited meaning in deepening our understanding of the physical world. Thus, one of the most convincing aspects of the electroweak theory is its Higgs mechanism, without which we would have only some speculations but no physical theory – no physical theory in the sense that we would have no theoretical means to guide experiment or to confront experimental data. Secondly, unification presupposes and entails reductionism. The pursuit of a reductive explanation is deserving of great respect. Such explanations provide what is perhaps the most illuminating mode of understanding. But they succeed, generally, only when complemented by knowledge of the particular context in which the intrinsic properties of the ‘lower level’ entities – those to which what happens at the ‘upper’ or ‘phenomenal’ level are to be reduced – conspire to produce the reductively explained phenomenon. (’Context’ here refers to those special structures arising from holistic characteristics or collective behaviors of the lower level ingredients.) That is, without being complemented by holistic knowledge, the reductive pursuit alone is not enough to causally understand what happens at any level. A more serious problem with reductionism is that knowledge of the properties and interactions of the lower level entities may not be relevant to what happens at the upper level because of decoupling. Thus, what happens in atomic nuclei at the quark-gluon level has little or no impact on what happens between atoms at the chemical level. Recognition of the force of the decoupling argument has set very severe limits to the relevance of reductive knowledge in understanding the behaviors of ‘upper level’ entities, for those behaviors are dictated mainly by the ‘upper level’ context. (Nonetheless, reductive knowledge remains relevant to the constitution of upper level entities – although not, generally, to their behaviors – if, as mentioned above, it is complemented by holistic knowledge of the context in which the upper level entities emerge.) Furthermore, decoupling is closely related with symmetry breaking: the decoupling boundary is usually set by the mass scale of the particles that are indicative of symmetry breaking. Thirdly, unification through reduction involves an implicit assumption about where fundamentality is to be found, namely, down ‘lower’, i.e., at higher energy scales. But this is only an assumption. And while one of the attractive features of unification through reduction is that it establishes (through the renormalization group) the precise connection between the physics operative at the lower and at the higher energy scale, that very connection raises a fundamental question. The physics

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at one range of energy scales is generally different from the physics at another range of scales. Thus, the connection itself does not obviate the difficult task of understanding why the physical world has this specific hierarchical structure. Furthermore, when we are able to move in both directions via the connections established by the renormalization group, there is no way of settling the question of which energy scale, with its characteristic entities, is the more fundamental. This is not good for reductionism. All these disturbances of the dream of reductive unification have arisen through developments in high energy physics in the late twentieth century.2 Their relevance to the regard in which Einstein will be held is this: they show that Einstein’s conceptual resources are very limited. His major guiding principle was unification and symmetry. Apart from some scattered phrases in his writings and some unexplored ideas, Einstein had no serious understanding of symmetry breaking, neither of its importance nor of mechanisms to implement it. That was not his fault, of course. Physics had not yet then matured enough for the importance of symmetry breaking to be understood and its implications explored. The point, however, remains: Einstein’s conceptual resources are not enough even for late twentieth century high-energy physics. The same verdict of insufficiency results from consideration of the limitations of reductionism that are implied by the indispensability of contextual knowledge and by the fact of decoupling and the reversible connections established through the renormalization group. Briefly, we can say Einstein is wonderful because he left us the legacy of pursuing unification by means of symmetry; but Einstein is not wonderful enough. His legacy is not sufficiently rich and powerful to sustain in coming decades an attitude of Einstein-Bewunderung among theoretical physicists – not, anyway, among those theorists grappling with diversity. Einstein provided them no guide to understanding differentiation, for which only the post-Einsteinian ideas of symmetry breaking, decoupling and the renormalization group give means of access and understanding. Stated in terms of style of reasoning in the globalization era, we may say that Einstein is a cultural symbol for globalization but not for diversity. And Einstein’s status in 2050 will be determined in large part by the relative strength of globalizing forces in comparison with diversifying forces. It is this balance of forces that will dictate the relative degree of interest in pursuing unification versus differentiation. And it is my confident surmise that diversity will dominate – in theoretical physics, as in culture and politics generally. Given the current concerns among active research physicists and assuming that these concerns will not be swept aside by another run of success of reductionism – such as, say, successfully reducing quantum mechanics to classical mechanics, or 2

T.Y. Cao and S.S. Schweber, “The conceptual foundations and the philosophical aspects of renormalization theory,” Synthese, 97: 33–108 (1993), gives a comprehensive review of these developments.

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fully understanding complexity in terms of the behavior of individual entities – then it is quite safe to anticipate that in 2050 Einstein will no longer be the super-hero of theoretical physicists and physics history. Einstein will certainly remain among the first-rank, heroes such as Kepler or Galileo or Newton. But Einstein will no longer be looked to as Yang and Witten look to him, as a guiding spirit in our fundamental research in physics. Boston University

OLIVIER DARRIGOL

FOR A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Paul Dirac once defined a philosopher as someone who, in order to figure out the game of chess, would ask: “what are the pieces made of?” In recent years, some scientists have been worrying that the definition would apply to the new wave of historians of science. Indeed, some of our most prolific colleagues elaborate on their scientists’ diet, favorite sport, political intrigues, financial speculations, and so forth. After all, they may be right to do so: in some cases such elements turn out to have an impact on scientific activity. For the health of our discipline, however, the important issue is not whether we should ask about the stuff the pieces are made of; it is whether we have given up questions about the rules of the game. Any observer of the evolution of history of science during the last thirty or forty years has to be amazed by the diversification of its topics and approaches. We have moved from a narrow history of scientific ideas to fully-fledged histories of scientific practices and their multiple dimensions and contexts, and of the uses and representations of the sciences in society at large. We have become critical toward cumulative, linear, heroic accounts of scientific discovery and instead pay attention to the competing forms of life within complex arrays of scientific subcultures. We refuse to read works of the past in present terms, even though the most subtle of us acknowledge the inevitability and even the necessity, of presentist remnants of interpretation. As so many new perspectives opened in our field, its borders became blurred. While reading some of its trendiest output, we sometimes wonder: is this literary criticism, sociology, anthropology or perhaps history of science? In so far as such disciplinary indeterminacy signals innovative spirit and vitality, we can only welcome it. Yet the dizzying multiplication of perspectives about science may have an unfortunate consequence: the loss of any consideration of the specificity of science. Even when it comes to hard-core science such as electric metrology or particle physics, the interpretive categories of the up-to-date historian of science are often found to apply equally well to non-scientific disciplines such as music or religion. The cognitive power of science, its ability to predict and control natural phenomena, has somehow slipped through the coarse net of our cleverest scholars. This failure at capturing the cognitive specificity of science has sometimes been attributed to the influence of social constructivism, according to which the methods and even the object of scientific investigations are matters of negotiation and persuasion. However, emphasis on the social nature of scientific activity does not necessarily exclude inquiries into its cognitive power. Even the staunchest constructivists have come to admit some sort of knowledge-producing resistance of nature in empirical investigations. The problem is that when science so much resembles other human activities, it becomes a challenge to identify its cognitively specific features. K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 33–34. © 2007 Springer.

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How can we hope to capture the elusive singularity of science in our historical investigations? Certainly not by returning to normative epistemologies of the past, for those have been seriously discredited by post-Kuhnian historians of science. A more hopeful strategy is to focus on the technicalities of scientific practice, to examine the rules of the game, to do a genuine history of knowledge. The abovementioned diversification of history of science has pushed this demanding approach to the margins. This is especially true for the history of physics, in which surprisingly much has been said without engaging the more abstruse, codified parts of scientific work. Few historians of science now have a sufficient scientific background to make sense of these aspects. Most of them ignore the few histories that try to do so and underestimate them as fossils of an outdated historiographical tradition. In reality, the last twenty years have brought a few methodologically innovative histories of knowledge. Unlike their old “internalist” forerunners, these histories have material and social texture; they strive to represent the actors’ moves in their own terms, without rational or teleological projections; they avoid preconceived ideas of scientific behavior. The resulting insights into the nature of scientific knowledge contradict the older normative epistemologies by historicizing the basic notions of rationality, objectivity, and proof. They also contradict the newer ideology of social constructivism by admitting long-term constraints affecting scientific practice as well as important structural relations between successive or competing theories. Perhaps a proper way to historically approach the specificity of science would be to seek a second-order rationality in the ways the criteria of scientificity have evolved. At any rate, much would be learned from a cognitively-oriented history of science. Why should we worry about the specificity of scientific knowledge? Why should we take pains to revive old, intricate and abstruse ways of thinking? This sort of inquiry could indeed degenerate into esoteric practice within a closed circle of initiates, as has happened with much analytical philosophy. This will not happen however, if the historians who dwell on the technicalities of scientific work take the time to process their conclusions such that they become accessible to other audiences. On the contrary, the development of this type of history could well improve the sometimes problematic relations between history of science, the sciences, and philosophy. Moreover, by providing a more balanced view of what it is to be scientific, it would help us to assess the legitimate role of science in society. What should we do in order to protect and develop this threatened species of history of science? First, we should avoid an institutional situation that would exclusively tie history of science to general history and we should encourage strong ties with the sciences and with philosophy. Second, we should make sure that at least some of our students acquire advanced training in one science. Third, a friendly, cooperative attitude should prevail between the promoters of the various sorts of history of science. Then and only then, will the history of knowledge retain the central role it should have in the history and philosophy of science. CNRS: Rehseis (Paris)

LORRAINE DASTON

WORKING IN PARALLEL, WORKING TOGETHER

Sam Schweber’s work in the history of science, both lived and written, has repeatedly returned to the theme of how intellectual communities are created and sustained. He has written vividly and perceptively about the tight-knit and enormously productive communities of physicists in Göttingen in the 1920s, Los Alamos in the 1940s, Cornell in the 1950s and 1960s.1 These small, local, faceto-face communities have little in common with either the Enlightenment Republic of Letters or the much-conjured Scientific Community, both of which stretch over continents and centuries, and whose members may well never meet, except in letters and each other’s publications – Kant reading Hume in remote Königsberg or (to take an example from Schweber’s own work) Charles Darwin reading Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart.2 In contrast, the communities Schweber re-animates in his descriptions of twentieth-century physicists at work are populated by flesh-andblood scientists, solving shared problems elbow-to-elbow, spurred on by emulation and rivalry as well as esprit de corps, and inspired as well as organized by a charismatic leader – a J. Robert Oppenheimer or a Hans Bethe. Although Schweber is keenly aware of the failings of such communities and of their leaders – especially how collective ardor can silence better judgment, both intellectual and moral – he nonetheless appreciates their more utopian aspects: these fleeting (for such communities rarely endure for more than a few years) associations of talented, energetic, comradely intellectuals, all enlisted in a common cause, become in some sense ideal (though not idealized) communities. Much has been written since Thomas Kuhn (who was himself drawing on the late writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein) about the central role of the exemplum, as opposed to abstract rules, in teaching the next generation how science ought to be done: “That process of learning by finger exercises or by doing continues throughout the process of professional initiation. As the student proceeds from his 1

2

Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feyman, Scwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); idem, “Physics, Community, and Crisis in Physical Theory,” in Kostas Gavroglu et al., eds, Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), pp. 125–152; idem, “Writing the Biography of a Living Scientist: Hans Bethe,” in Ramesh S. Krishnamurthy, ed., Pauling Symposium: A Discourse on the Art of Biography (Corvalis: Oregon State University Libraries, 1996), pp. 159–196; idem, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), idem, “Robert Oppenheimer: Proteus Unbound,” Science in Context 16 (2003): 219–242. Silvan S. Schweber, “The Wider British Context in Darwin’s Theorizing,” in David Kohn, ed., The Darwinian Heritage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 35–69.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 35–38. © 2007 Springer.

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freshman course to and through his doctoral dissertation, the problems assigned to him become more complex and less completely precedented. But they continue to be closely modeled on previous achievements as the problems that normally occupy him during his subsequent independent career.”3 Also drawing upon the later Wittgenstein, a more recent literature in the history of science has explored the notion of a “form of life” in science, e.g., the “experimental life” that emerged in the late seventeenth century, in which the “experimental philosopher could be made to provide a model of the moral citizen, and the experimental community could be constituted as a model of the ideal polity.”4 But Schweber’s accounts of local, face-to-face scientific communities demand a notion of the exemplum that is more human and more concrete than either of these Wittgensteinian prototypes: a specific individual who models the life of the mind – intellectually, emotionally, socially, and – at least in a limited, professional sense – morally. These individuals are the seed crystals around which remarkable if short-lived communities of researchers accrete. It is the presence of such individual exempla, rather than the size of the research group or the resources and ingenuity of its members, which distinguishes a community from a working collective. The latter may be stimulating to work in, scientifically productive, and often more stable and long-lived as an institution, but it will lack the self-conscious sense of shared purpose and values of the community in Schweber’s sense. These individual exempla (my term, not Schweber’s) recall an ancient tradition in moral and natural philosophy, in which the philosopher’s person, the life as well as the works, featured crucially in the training of young aspirants. Hence the very long tradition, stretching back to Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers (3rd c. CE) through at least the eighteenth century, of reporting what was known of celebrated philosophers’ biographies as well as their doctrines:5 without the one, one could not understand or master the other; philosophy was a way of living, not just knowing.6 Philosophical discourse, and a fortiori scientific research, can no longer be described as a spiritual exercise, and historians of science since the early nineteenth century have taken considerable pains to distinguish the lives of scientists from their works. Yet science remains a vocation, not just an occupation, and “the scientist” is a recognizable persona, even if individual scientists are just persons.7 In order to instill the monomaniacal dedication Max Weber thought essential to

3 4 5 6 7

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1962], second enlarged edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 47. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 341. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks, 2 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1925). Pierre Hadot, La Philosophie comme manière de vivre. Entretiens avec Jeannie Carlier et Arnold Davidson (Paris: Albin Michel, 2001). Lorraine Daston and H. Otto Sibum, “Introduction: Scientific Personae and Their Histories,” Science in Context 16(2003): 1–8.

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fulfilling a scientific vocation, and in order to assume the characteristic habitus associated with the scientific persona, something more than abstract rules of conduct or even biographies of eminent scientists will be required. Just as scientists learn how to do science, they learn how to be scientists – in both cases, from concrete models. But there is an important difference between the initiation by exempla in ancient philosophy and modern science: although the former may well take place in a communal setting (Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum), the acolyte must ultimately master ways of posing and solving problems, of thinking and feeling, as a solitary exercise, to be pursued in meditative isolation. This solitary vision of intellectual work, emblematized by the hermit-scholar Saint Jerome alone (except for his lion) in the wilderness, has a centuries-long history in the Latin West and still persists in many areas of the humanities.8 In contrast, the scientific communities portrayed by Schweber are genuinely communal: it may be possible to imagine each brilliant individual member working fruitfully, even genially, alone but when their efforts are bundled, the whole is greater than the sum of their parts. There is, then, something about the exemplary figures who teach this way of life that must embody this collective aspect. Individual gifts, no matter how great, however necessary, will not suffice: no such community coalesced around Newton or Einstein. Aside from Schweber’s own work, there has been very little attention paid in the history of science to the role of exempla in forging communities. There is a large literature on scientific institutions and a still larger literature on the biographies of individual scientists, but neither directly address the questions Schweber has posed: although both institutional resources and individual qualities are necessary conditions for extraordinary scientific communities, they are demonstrably insufficient ones. How a collective moral economy and a shared Fragestellung are generated among scientists remain open questions about the ways in which distinctive scientific cultures coalesce. At the outset I alluded to Sam Schweber’s work in the history of science, both written and lived. Sam’s lived work in the discipline has been to forge small, informal communities of scholars, especially young scholars, that foster intense exchanges that surprisingly often – considering that this form of working together goes against the grain of most humanists’ training – create shared problematics, if not shared problems. Because of its intrinsically multidisciplinary character, combining subject matter and approaches taken from fields ranging from anthropology to zoology, the history of science cries out for collective work. So far the individualistic stamp of training and academic evaluation in the humanities has constrained such initiatives; at best, they take the form of work in parallel, as 8

Dora Thornton, The Scholar in his Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Brian Vickers, ed., Arbeit, Musse, Meditation: Betrachtungen zur Vita activa und Vita contemplativa (Zürich: Verlag der Fachvereine, 1985).

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in the case of anthologies of articles by several authors on a single theme. The challenge of Sam Schweber’s work on communities is twofold: first, extending his written work, the historical investigation of the role of exempla in the creation of remarkable scientific communities; and second, building on his lived work, finding ways within the field of the history of science to advance beyond work in parallel to work together. Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

DONG-WON KIM (JHU)

CHALLENGES IN WRITING ABOUT TWENTIETH CENTURY EAST ASIAN PHYSICISTS

I was deeply moved by the conditions under which Tomonaga’s contributions were made, and I came to appreciate their importance to the training of a generation of outstanding Japanese theorists that includes Nambu, Kinoshita, Fukuda, Hayakawa, and Nishijima, among others. I hope that an account that does justice to Tomonaga and to the Japanese context will be forthcoming. (QED and The Men Who Made It, preface, p. xii)

Since 1993 I have had the privilege of discussing with Silvan S. Schweber the life and work of East Asian physicists. He first encouraged me to work on the history of the Japanese physics community during the early twentieth century, then to write a biography of Yoshio Nishina (still in progress) and even to research the history of the Korean physics community. The following are some of the results of these valuable discussions. The first challenge of writing about East Asian physicists is how to include them in the larger picture of the world physics community. Many East Asian physicists have contributed greatly to the development of physics in the twentieth century. Hantaro Nagaoka, Yoshio Nishina, Yukawa Hideki, Sinitiro Tomonaga, C. N. Yang, T. D. Lee, Yoichiro Nambu, and Leo Esaki are just a few of the well-known names. Several short articles and translations from native tongues were published in English to provide basic information about the lives and works of these East Asian physicists. To date, however, there have not been any model works that analyze these East Asian physicists as deeply and as systematically as have been done with their Western counterparts. Some articles emphasize the East Asian characteristics of these figures too much, while other publications virtually ignore them. The fundamental difficulty is that historians of science working in this field must not only understand East Asian society and culture but also be well trained in the general history of physics, a very difficult dual requirement. The effort to treat East Asian physicists as part of the world physics community without losing their East Asian identities has therefore just started. Laurie Brown’s works on Yukawa and Tomonaga, Olivier Darrigol’s articles on Tomonaga and Schweber’s QED and the Men Who Made It (1994), are good examples for future research. Nonetheless, these authors have not yet solved the fundamental dilemma mentioned above. The second challenge is how to appraise Western influence on the East Asian physics community. It was Western physics that was first imported to and then shaped East Asian physics communities. Some Westerners came to the region to teach physics (most notably in Japan in the late nineteenth century) and many distinguished Western physicists — Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac and others — visited there to give lectures and seminars. More commonly, East Asian physicists K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 39–41. © 2007 Springer.

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traveled to the West for advanced training. Since the late nineteenth century, Japanese physicists have worked in many well-known physics laboratories in the West. That is also true for Chinese physicists since the early twentieth century and for Korean physicists since the mid-twentieth century. These overseas students brought not only advanced knowledge but also Western-style research methodology and ethos, all of which has greatly influenced the formation and development of physics communities in the region. However, historians of science do not yet know how much and in what way Western physics has actually influenced the East Asian physics community. Many historians often exaggerate the Western influence and minimize East Asians’ own efforts to incorporate the foreign influence into their own frameworks. For example, Yukawa, Tomonaga and their generation never went to Europe to learn new quantum mechanics. Instead, they were trained and started their new research program inside Japan during the 1930s. How could they have achieved that kind of dazzling success without overseas study? How much did the Western and Japanese physics communities each influence their work? This point will pose more serious problems for historians of science as East Asian physics communities grow faster and become more independent. The third challenge is directly related to the history of East Asia in the twentieth century. The twentieth century was a very difficult period for all East Asian countries. China and Korea had been victims of Western and Japanese imperialism in the first half of the century and then two different ideologies divided the countries to make the two halves bitter enemies. Japan was victorious during the early decades of the century but the Second World War not only made it the first victim of nuclear bombing, but also allowed a foreign power (the U.S.) to rule the country for the first time in its history. This unique history in the twentieth century poses a special question to the intellectuals of the region: which aspect should they emphasize in the history of the twentieth century, continuity or discontinuity? The question becomes more complicated when specific ideologies such as Communism, Nationalism, Confucianism and also democracy in Japan, South Korean and Taiwan are involved. The intellectuals of the region have been sharply divided on this issue and historians of science have not felt they could rely on any one interpretation. How could historians of physics connect physics and society? There are still more challenges or obstacles for historians of science to overcome, but I would like to add only two points. The fist is that in East Asia great scholars had been often described as perfect men without any faults. Historians of science are frequently not permitted to criticize hero physicists like Nishina, Yukawa, Tomonaga, Lee or Yang or to construct reasonably probing appraisals of their contributions. Many East Asian scientists in general do not recognize the independent role of historians of science but expect them to write as they remember or dictate. This situation may provide one major reason that historians of science have been reluctant to write biographies or critical essays of these physicists. To demystify the heroism of East Asian physicists is a great challenge to historians of science. The

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final challenge is the problem of identity. Many East Asian physicists (most notably Chinese physicists) earned their fame while they worked in the West rather than in their home countries. Most still live and work in the West. Are they then really East Asian physicists? Are Lee and Yang Chinese physicists or American physicists? Is this kind of question no longer important? What is the role of these non-resident East Asian physicists and what is their contribution to their home countries, as well as to the West? When I discussed the above problems with Sam Schweber, we agreed on at least one point — the history of physics in the twentieth century will remain incomplete without more thorough research on the lives and works of these twentieth century East Asian physicists. A gold mine lies just in front of historians of science. Johns Hopkins University

RAPHAEL FALK AND RUMA FALK

WHY SHOULD SCIENTISTS BECOME HISTORIANS?

A story circulated among historians of science, according to which an elderly obstetrician relates to his historian-of-science colleague: “Next year, when I retire, I’ll be doing history of science.” “What a great idea!” answers the historian, “Because in another two years, when I retire, I have been thinking of taking up obstetrics”.

Such a story that reflects the image of the history of science as a realm for amateur retired professors has changed over the last half century. History of science is a discipline in its own right, demanding specific professional training and experience in its research methodologies. Yet, there is a constant trickle of scientists who choose, after many years of a career in experimental or theoretical science, to go through the burden of starting a new career as historians of science. What motivates an experienced scientist to give up science and become a historian of science? What are the unique qualifications that she or he may bring to the discipline? In short, why should a scientist bother about the history or become a historian?

RIGOR VERSUS HISTORICAL CONTEXT We think that one of the major factors causing an experienced scientist to make this move is the hope to be able to obtain a wider perspective of his/her research work. Experimental work demands a great deal of attention to many small details and concern with a narrow problem: more and more about less and less. It is easy to lose the whole picture, let alone of the wider context of one’s work. It is true that the structure of the scientific papers offers, actually demands, keeping in mind and presenting the research in a wider perspective in the Introduction and again in the Discussion. But the more specific experience is gathered, the more it becomes necessary and challenging to examine the details in the wider context. This may happen when scientists – usually senior and experienced – are invited to write reviews of the work in their field of expertise. Still, some would wish to see matters in an even wider perspective and will turn to the philosophical and hence also the historical aspects of their discipline. Thirty years ago, historian of science Stephen Brush (1974) published in Science a defiant paper entitled “Should the history of science be rated X?” Brush sarcastically ridiculed “arguments that young and impressionable students at the start of a scientific career should be shielded from the writings of contemporary science historians” because K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 43–48. © 2007 Springer.

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these writings do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists as rational, open-minded investigators, proceeding methodologically, grounded incontrovertibly in the outcome of controlled experiments, and seeking objectively for the truth, let the chips fall where they may. (p. 1164)

On the other hand, he concluded his paper maintaining that those teachers who want to counteract the dogmatism of the textbooks and convey some understanding of science as an activity that cannot be divorced from metaphysical or esthetic considerations may find some stimulation in the new history of science. (pp. 1170–1171)

It is true that today’s scientists who grew up with best sellers like Jim Watson’s (1968) The Double Helix have another view of scientists and the factors that affect their research than those who grew up with Paul de Kruif’s (1926) romantic and heroic stories of the scientists of the Microbe Hunters. We may have come a long way from assertions like Karl Pearson’s: We have no axes to grind, we have no governing body to propitiate by well advertised discoveries; we are paid by nobody to reach results of a given bias. … We firmly believe that we have no political, no religious and no social prejudices … We rejoice in numbers and figures for their own sake and, subject to human fallibility, collect our data – all scientists must do so – to find out the truth that is in them. (Pearson & Moul, 1925, p. 8)

Still, the “metaphysical or esthetic considerations” discussed by Brush are also very relevant in the education of the scientists today. For most of us, the still common training as scientists has such an impact that we do not sense its inbuilt paradox: on the one hand, we adopt the scientific-research tenet of keeping an open, critical mind and shunning indoctrination, yet, on the other hand, we adopt unawares those doctrines (and implicit assumptions) that had been established by the dominant scientific zeitgeist. No wonder then, that when established scientists eventually realize the yoke that the indoctrination may have had on them, they will struggle to overcome it. Once realizing how the social and cultural background of scientific lore constrained a researcher’s notions, it is only natural to want to follow possible impacts of such factors. Once science is perceived as inquiry in context, rather than simply finding the truth, all the truth and nothing but the truth about nature “out there,” the history of science, namely the study of this context, becomes a major issue for a scientist to bother about. To see science as a corpus of knowledge in context, rather than the act of uncovering reality as it is, is conceptually a most problematic issue for the philosopher of science and, as mentioned, is paradoxical for the practicing scientist. Assimilating the historical context of science may attenuate the conflict and help cope with – not resolve – the paradox. It may also shed new light on established findings and expand the picture. Take the evidence that mutations in bacteria are pre-adaptive, that is, they appear in a culture independently of their effects. Critical experiments carried out by

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Luria and Delbrück in 1943 and later confirmed by other experimental procedures (Lederberg & Lederberg, 1952; Newcombe, 1949), established beyond any reasonable doubt the “truth” of the Darwinian, rather than the Lamarckian, doctrine of the origin of mutations independently of the selective agent applied to detect them in bacteria. What a shock it was when 45 years later, Cairns, Overbaugh, and Miller (1988) found out that under proper experimental procedures “populations of bacteria … have some way of producing … only the most appropriate mutations”. (p. 144) Discovering that mutations may be “directed,” that is, induced as adaptive responses to environmental needs, was a challenge to the very foundations of Darwinian Faith. Frank Stahl (1988) gave air to the feeling of disbelief when he entitled his review of the discovery “A unicorn in the garden”. It took some years to settle this inconsistency. Actually, it promoted an expansion of the incidence of the notion of evolution, to comprise Darwinian evolution of the very mechanisms of evolution. Reflecting on their activity – becoming “historians” – showed the scientists how they were captives of their own dogma and that by expanding it, the “unicorn” was resolved. Not less significant is the role that scientists who turn to history may play in bridging the gap between the “Two cultures”. They are able to mediate and critically examine the transfer of ideas and conceptions from one “culture” to the other. This would be of special significance in the teaching of science and mathematics. HISTORY VERSUS THE DEVELOPING INDIVIDUAL Leslie Glickman (1989) put the issue squarely by asking “Why teach the history of probability?” Introductory probability is notoriously difficult to teach. Beginning students often feel they are entering a counter-intuitive and paradoxical world. It may be of some comfort to them to know that the problems, paradoxes and misconceptions they encounter also confronted the pioneers of probability. (p. 6)

He then concluded that “the history of our discipline has so much to offer to teacher, researcher and student alike in terms of insight”. (p. 7) An especially illuminative case of employment of historical-biological notions to personal, psychological conceptions is the application of Haeckel’s “biogenetic law”. In a simple questionnaire concerning conceptions of motion and gravity, Benny Shanon (1976) showed that up to a third or more of questioned students gave Aristotelian rather than Newtonian answers. He noted that “Perception is founded on old phylogenetic mechanisms, whereas scientific investigation is a most recent phenomenon. This temporal ordering … of the two sources of knowledge recapitulates itself in ontogenesis”. (p. 243) Moreno and Waldegg (1991) claimed that the idea of ontogenesis as a condensed repeat of phylogenesis is demonstrated by the correspondence between concepts of today’s students to concepts along history. They purported to show the existence of

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well-differentiated stages in the historical development of infinity and they correlate them with the cognitive development of the individual. We had a chance to observe our students becoming deeply disturbed (and we shared this experience with them) by a particularly blatant paradox – attributed to Aristotle and discussed throughout history by eminent mathematicians such as Galileo, Descartes, Fermat and many others. Consider Martin Gardner’s (1983) formulation of the problem:

Assume that the bottom wheel rolls without slipping from A to B. At every instant that a unique point on the rim of the large wheel touches line AB, a unique point on the small wheel is in contact with line CD. In other words, all points on the small circle can be put into one-to-one correspondence with all points on the large circle. … This seems to prove that the two circumferences have equal length. (pp. 2–3)

How can this be? When trying to cope with this unnerving paradox, we may draw some solace from the evidence that the great pre-Cantorian minds of the past encountered the same difficulty. Moreover, the untutored among us usually try the same method as Galileo, by considering what happens when the two wheels are replaced by regular polygons and then increasing the number of sides of these polygons, thus considering, in turn, equilateral triangles, squares, regular pentagons and so on, much like Archimedes’s approach in his approximation of . Multiple insights can be gained by the experience: we appreciate the inherent difficulties in the transition from the discrete to the continuous case; we get close to inventing calculus-like tools such as limits, and are now also partly prepared for Cantor’s concepts of the power of infinite sets. Moreover, the history of the evolution of mathematical concepts that we study now makes living sense to us. Borasi (1985) went even further with inferences from history to educational orientation. The presence of alternative positions among mathematicians themselves concerning the comparison of the numerosity of two infinite sets challenges the common interpretation of what can really be considered “right” or “wrong” in this area. Looking at the history of mathematical infinity … not one, but several alternative conceptions of “infinite numbers” have been suggested and developed by different mathematicians. Although only few are currently used in mathematics, they could all be considered

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theoretically acceptable and suitable for specific applications. … Not only are several alternative notions of “infinite number” theoretically possible, but each of them could be more or less appropriate depending on the context and the purpose for which we are comparing infinite sets. In such a situation it is very difficult to determine what an “error” is. (pp. 82 & 87)

Borasi concluded her paper, after having described the history of contradicting conceptions of infinite numerosities, commenting: It is amazing, then, to still observe the arrogance with which cardinal notions are sometimes taught and students’ errors pointed out whenever they decide to use their own judgment in the comparison of infinite sets. On the contrary, we should try to make the students aware of the complexity of this situation and of the problems related to it, and capitalize on this for a better understanding of the nature of mathematics as an evolving and man-made discipline within which the concept of controversy resides. (p. 88)

A more compelling argument for scientists and teachers to deal with the history of their field can hardly be imagined. SCIENCE VERSUS HISTORY Finally, it must be asked if the phenomenon of scientists becoming historians may have negative implications. One may argue that persons, who have devoted many years to become competent and authoritative scientists in their field and then abandon it at the peak of their career, constitute a waste. However, both the self-fulfillment that these persons experience and their contribution to a more comprehensive perception of science should annul such claims. Some ex-scientists may be frustrated by the realization that what they previously considered to be an absolute discovery is context contingent. Its truth depends on assumptions that have been hidden, so that it becomes open to modification and even rejection. This may seriously reduce one’s pride in past achievements and even shatter one’s world view. No one knows the subtle ins-and-outs of scientific work as well as the experienced scientists. Scientific work, as every skilled scientist would point out, cannot all be learned from textbooks, or even from taking classes that include practical laboratory work. As has been emphasized by Polanyi’s (1964/1974) and by Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) attack upon the ideal of objectivity of the time, much of the subtleties of scientific research is the implicit knowledge that is obtained by apprenticeship and long involvement in research work. The role that this plays in science, it may be argued, can only be appreciated by experienced scientists, and only they can write meaningful historical chapters. However, historians would justifiably argue that scientists or ex-scientists cannot really write proper history of science because they have never mastered the implicit rules of historical work. Let us conclude with a case where we believe a great contribution to both science and the history of science has been extended by scientists who have been contributing to the history of science without losing the balance between personal

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reminiscences and anecdotes, solid science and historical analysis: geneticists Jim Crow and Bill Dove (2000) have been editing for almost two decades a section in the journal Genetics, entitled Perspectives on Genetics, which has presented stories and comments from the history of genetics, usually by scientists who were personally involved. The editors explicitly subtitled this section: Anecdotal, Historical, and Critical Commentaries. Scientists should bother about the history of science, although they may also contribute without becoming historians. Yet, some have contributed significantly to both science and history by becoming historians of science, and hopefully, will do so in the future. Department of Genetics and the Program for History and Philosophy of Science, The Hebrew University, 91904 Jerusalem, Israel. Department of Psychology, The Hebrew University, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel. REFERENCES Borasi, R. (1985). Errors in the enumeration of infinite sets. Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics, 7 (3&4), 77–89. Brush, S. G. (1974). Should the history of science be rated X? Science, 183, 1164–1172. Cairns, J., Overbaugh, J., & Miller, S. (1988). The origin of mutants. Nature, 335, 142–145. Crow, J. F., & Dove, W. F. (Eds.). (2000). Perspectives on Genetics: Anecdotal, Historical, and Critical Commentaries, 1987–1998. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. de Kruif, P. (1926). Microbe Hunters. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Gardner, M. (1983). Wheels, Life and Other Mathematical Amusements. New York: Freeman. Glickman, L. (1989). Why teach the history of probability? Teaching Statistics, 11, 6–7. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Lederberg, J., & Lederberg, R. M. (1952). Replica plating and indirect selection of bacterial mutants. Journal of Bacteriology, 63, 399–406. Luria, S. E., & Delbrück, M. (1943). Mutations of bacteria from virus sensitivity to virus resistance. Genetics, 28, 491–511. Moreno, L. E., & Waldegg, G. (1991). The conceptual evolution of actual mathematical infinity. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 22, 211–231. Newcombe, H. B. (1949). Origin of bacterial variants. Nature, 164, 150. Pearson, K., & Moul, M. (1925). The problem of alien immigration into Great Britain, illustrated by an examination of Russian and Polish Jewish children. Annals of Eugenics, 1, 5–55. Polanyi, M. (1964/1974). Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post Critical Philosophy. N.Y./Chicago: Harper & Row/ University of Chicago Press. Shanon, B. (1976). Aristotelianism, Newtonianism and the physics of the layman. Perception, 5, 241–243. Stahl, F. W. (1988). A Unicorn in the garden. Nature, 335, 112–113. Watson, J. D. (1968). The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. New York: Atheneum.

PAUL FORMAN

FROM THE SOCIAL TO THE MORAL TO THE SPIRITUAL: THE POSTMODERN EXALTATION OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The history of science, insofar as it remains a scholarly discipline, must inevitably share the fate common to all scientific and scholarly disciplines in our postmodern era, viz., disintegration and dissolution. Disciplinarity and the disciplines are inventions of modernity. Disciplinarity as constructed social-cultural ideal, and the disciplines as institutional realizations of it, are collective implementations of the enlightenment project utilizing a specifically modern personality structure – take it as governed by Weber’s Protestant ethic or by Freud’s superego. It was the disciplines that, ostensibly, conducted and directed the huge enterprise of knowledge-for-its-own-sake research and publication that grew up in the first two thirds of the 20th century. But what modernity gave to the production of knowledge, postmodernity is taking away. Disciplinarity enters the 21st century deprived of much of its material and all of its ideological supports. Such support, however qualified, as disciplinarity received from governmental and commercial research establishments peaked in the third quarter of the 20th century, and has now almost disappeared. Meanwhile, in institutions of higher learning, the unqualified support that disciplinarity formerly received has deteriorated to bare toleration by administrators who confidently anticipate the disciplines’ future extinction. With hardly anyone anywhere willing to say a good word about disciplinarity or defend it against the ubiquitous deprecations of the disciplines as institutions for knowledge production, there is no plausible prospect for arresting, let alone reversing, our, or any other, discipline’s slide toward extinction.1 The demise of the discipline ‘history of science’ does not, of course, equate to disappearance of the subject ‘history of science’. The subject is far older, and will continue far longer. For some while the discipline of the history of science will itself continue in its present postmodern mode as a continually renovated – but hardly cumulative – body of representations of science past, even as we aged bearers of the discipline will continue to find those representations on the whole ever more arbitrary and insufficient. Meanwhile, we have already begun to see a revival of that genre against which our discipline in its formation so largely defined itself, the history of science written by scientists – written now by scientists in a commendable though inevitably futile endeavor to buttress their disciplinary 1

P. Forman, “In the Era of the Earmark: The Recent Pejoration of Meritocracy – and of Peer Review,” Recent Science Newsletter, 2, no. 3 (Spring 2001), pp. 1, 10–12.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 49–55. © 2007 Springer.

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cathedrals against the winds of postmodernity. But primarily and preeminently the history of science will flourish as a popular literary genre practiced by writers and journalists and emulated by members of academic departments with and without the ‘history of science’ label. And necessarily so, for it is the very essence of the ongoing disciplinary disintegration, the very essence of our postmodern boundariless, all-onone-plane flatland culture – flatter, even, than Marcuse’s “one-dimensional man” – that no line of demarcation can any longer be drawn between intra-disciplinary and extra-disciplinary intellectual productions. Consequently, disciplinarity, with all its strictures, conventions, and standards – above all, standards – must inevitably be overwhelmed by the power of popularity and the Maechtigkeit of the market. Although in the long term the discipline of the history of science has no future, in the short term it will continue to have a trajectory – or, better, a sequence of thematic foci, or, perhaps better still, shibboleths. As in the past, these foci will continue to be adopted from the general cultural milieu, but now and in the future with less and less concern for their pertinence to a comprehensive apprehension of the scientific enterprise. For even if we, collectively, believed such a comprehensive apprehension were possible – and we no longer do – achieving it would not seem a purposeful goal to individual historians of science who increasingly must, willy-nilly, seek the meaning of their efforts outside of the disintegrating disciplinary incentive structure. With this increasingly extra-disciplinary, increasingly ‘elsewhere,’ orientation, the historian of science will necessarily be concerned less and less with what science really is and really was, concerned more and more with the imposition of the leading cultural shibboleths – now increasingly personal in character – upon the matter of science. And this makes it rather easy to predict what will be the next thematic focus, and the associated shibboleth, of the history of science. That predictability of the trajectory of the history of science arises from the further circumstance that compared with history at large, the subdiscipline of the history of science is backward, retardataire, a follower rather than a leader in the ongoing process of shifting of disciplinary foci to align with normative cultural categories. Thus, although hardly consonant with our wonted arrogance vis-à-vis mere historians, it becomes ever safer to say that where history generally is today, the history of science will be a decade or two from now. Take, in particular, the shibboleth ‘moral’, whose currency in the history of science in the past two decades we all well know. But do we also recognize that the thematic focus and shibboleth ‘moral’ had been adopted by historians generally more than a decade before it became the mode in the history of science? And in history generally ‘the moral’ has been a much more intensive focus than ever it has become in the history of science.2 This we-too, follower-discipline pattern is displayed graphically in Figure 1, based on word usage counts in Isis and in the 2

Although it is conventional to cite E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present, 50 (1971), pp. 76–136, as aboriginal, in fact, as Figure 1 shows, Thompson was riding the wave at least as much as he was making it.

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Figure 1: Frequency of occurrence of articles or reviews containing ‘moral’ (upper histograms) or ‘spirituality’ (lower histograms) in Isis and in The American Historical Review. Data based on full-text searches in JSTOR. In order to normalize the data and remove the effect of the upward drift in the number of reviews published in an annual volume of each of these two journals, the counts of items containing the keywords, ‘moral’ and ‘spirituality’ have been divided by the number of pages published by the respective journal in the given 5-year interval

American Historical Review, the two most nearly comparable, discipline-defining and discipline-sustaining journals in, respectively, history of science and history. The upper two histograms give the numbers of articles and book reviews in the AHR and in Isis in 5-year intervals from 1950 to 2000 that contain the word ‘moral’. Evidently, in the late sixties this term began to surge in frequency of use by contributors to the AHR. In Isis, however, the journal most representative of our discipline, the relatively much weaker surge began only in the early eighties. (The lower pair of histograms in Figure 1, to which we will come shortly, give like data for the word ‘spirituality’.) We also all well remember what had been the thematic focus that preceded ‘the moral’: it was ‘the social.’ This focus, and that shibboleth, rose to dominance in the broader historical discipline already in the 1950s, but in the history of science only in the 1970s, roughly twenty years en retard. Yet just at the time that ‘the social’ was beginning to be embraced, belatedly, by historians of science, it was beginning to fall rapidly in the public consciousness in Europe and North America. In this

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epochal political and cultural shift, the transition from modernity to postmodernity, ‘the social’ lost the primacy that it had held in the public consciousness from the era of the Great Depression, and ‘the moral’ gained primacy as normative category – primacy over ‘truth’ and even ‘reality’ – in a social-economic-political field characterized by radical individualization and individualism. For the American polity this reorientation is epitomized by the wide acceptance of the view that “Cutting taxes is really a moral issue because that means that people have more money in their pocket.”3 And if we suppose that ‘mere’ historians, with their good noses, sensed relatively early the ease with which cynicism and hypocrisy have appropriated ‘the moral,’ that might explain the rapid fall in references to ‘moral’ in the AHR in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, we historians of science, as slow to let go as to take up, persist with the shibboleth of ‘the moral,’ oblivious to its emptiness. But in turning their backs on ‘the moral’, historians are most definitely not turning back to ‘the social’. Much rather that transient fixation on ‘the moral’ was only a first, not yet unabashedly individualizing ‘move’ in what is an ongoing, epochal, rejection of ‘the social’, an ongoing exaltation of the individual. Insofar as we can speak any longer of society, it must be conceived as an increasingly individualized agglomerate of persons. Take, for instance, the creative writer in Germany. In the early 1970s it seemed to Wolfgang Hildesheimer, born 1916 and bred on pre-War modernism, that he was witnessing “The End of Fiction”: “a majority of younger writers – at least in Germany – would sneer at you at the very mention of the word masterpiece. The task of the writer, they would say, is to contribute towards the changing of society.” Today, to the contrary, under the headline “For Young German Writers, All Is Ich”, the New York Times quotes writer Judith Hermann, “There has been a very remarkable German revival. The older generation has been more interested in the past, the war, politics. My generation looks at itself”; then the Times quotes magazine editor Andreas Petzold, “Today there is nothing to belong to. Young Germans are therefore asking themselves, ‘What can I do to be happy?’ ”; and the Times reports that every one of the younger writers interviewed saw as objectionable any “overtly moralizing” fiction, in particular that of the socially highly conscious Gunther Grass.4 What, then, will be the new thematic focus rising to prominence in the history of science in the next decade or two? And what will be its shibboleth? My surmise,

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John Kasich (R-OH), Chair, House Budget Committee, in news conference, February 1, 1999. Transcript by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc., thru Nexis. Kasich, who two weeks later would formally announce his candidacy for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, made the moral crusade for tax cuts his defining issue. Already three years earlier Newt Gingrich, then still Speaker of the House, was proclaiming the “moral case for cutting taxes” for “the more money you have in your pocket, the better parent you can be.” Quoted by Adam Clymer, “An Enthusiast Again, Gingrich Proposes a Tax Cut a Year,” New York Times, July 12, 1997, Sect. 1, p. 8. Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Das Ende der Fiktionen (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch, 1988), p. 107. The title essay was written in English for delivery at Irish universities in 1975. Nora Fitzgerald, “For Young German Writers, All Is Ich”, New York Times, July 19, 2003, Sect. E, pp. 1, 5.

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evident in Figure 1, is that ‘spirituality’ is that shibboleth, for ‘spirituality’ is emerging as the keyword of a nascent era of generalized but wholly individualized religiousity, at the center of which is belief in personal transcendence, especially personal immortality. “Spirituality has become a vastly complex quest in which each person seeks his or her own way,” says Robert Wuthnow, widely regarded as the leading sociologist of American religion.5 In so saying, Wuthnow takes the meaning of this nearly neological term to be self-evident. (Nor could he do otherwise, for in truth its application is so broad as to render it almost meaningless apart from very vague connotations of immateriality and non-rationality.) Striking evidence of the rising cultural role of the shibboleth ‘spirituality’ is provided in Figure 2, showing the relative frequency of its occurrence in the titles of ‘serious’ books in English. After the expected falling-off in the proportion of titles that included the words ‘religion,’ ‘religious,’ or ‘spiritual’ in the third quarter of the 20th century – the era of high modernity – there was a steep rise in ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality’ in the fourth quarter, a rise that has been especially steep in the last decade. And though there is a hint that now ‘religion’ too is again on the rise in relative frequency of occurrence, what is much more impressive is the degree to which ‘religion’ has been superceded by ‘spirituality,’ a word wholly lacking in social as well as doctrinal implications, or even connotations. From the perspective of intellectual history, or, better, its historiography, what is most striking in this ‘spiritual turn’ is that it is a volte-face from that denial of all transcendences that was a defining characteristic of postmodernism. Thus, for example, Ihab Hassan, often cited as conceptor of ‘the postmodern’, and coiner of ‘postmodernism’, now, in his old age, says of postmodernism: “I ignore it because my own interests have drifted away from it toward the possibilities of a spirituality that addresses all the issues of the postmodern turn.”6 Though Hassan obfuscates it in acknowledging it, postmodernity is turning out in this as in other important respects to be the very opposite to the realization of postmodernism. Another important respect in which postmodernity has turned postmodernism on its head is in ‘the return of the author’, that originator of the masterpiece whom postmodernism had annihilated. This resuscitation of the creative individual, the natural result of our new nominalism in which only persons have real existence and real value, has had the beneficent effect of revalidating biography as a scholarly genre. More than that, it has led to the reassertion of claims for the exceptional individual scientist as author of science – what Sam Schweber had rightly continued to emphasize through the decades in which ‘the social’ and ‘the postmodern’ were at one in their minimization of the role of the individual. But along with the return of the individual scientist as author of science, ‘the return of the author’ brings also the reconstitution of the scholar as writer – writer, 5 6

Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1998), p. 2. Frank L. Cioffi, “Postmodernism, etc.: An Interview with Ihab Hassan,” Style, 33, no. 3 (Fall 1999), pp. 357–371.

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From the Social to the Moral to the Spiritual

Frequency of Occurrence of "Spirituality," "Spiritual," "Religious," and "Religion" in the Titles of Books in English Listed in WorldCat Union Catalog 120

# per 10^4 Titles

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"Spirituality"

80

"Spiritual" "Religious" "Religion"

60

40

20

0 1955

1960

1965

1970

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Time Period Published

Figure 2: Frequency of occurrence of books in English in the OCLC union catalog of university libraries in whose titles appear the words (from bottom to top)‘spirituality’, ‘spiritual’, ‘religion’, or ‘religious’. The raw numbers were divided by the total number of English-language books with imprints in the given 5-year interval in the OCLC catalog in order to produce a frequency (number per 10,000 titles). I am grateful to Deborah L. Bendig, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), for the year-by-year counts of the contents of their catalog, and to Emily McHugh for assistance in collection, analysis, and presentation of the data.

rather than discipline-oriented researcher – with all that that implies for motivation and reward in our all-on-one-plane flatland culture. Inter alia, it means, as I said at the outset, increasing disregard for the demands of disciplinarity in the interest of the scholar-writer’s creative self-expression – and wider sales. In the future this further exaltation of the scholar to the status of writer may bring even a Nobel Prize for the historian of science herself: “Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which awards the literature prize, envisages more emphasis on philosophy, history and autobiography …. ‘The borderline between the literature of fact and the literature of fiction will gradually weaken,’ he predicts.”7 Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. 7

Christopher Brown-Humes, “The Nobel Century,” The Financial Times, September 29/30, 2001, Weekend Sect., p. 1.

EVELYN FOX KELLER

BETWEEN SCIENCE AND HISTORY

In any discussion of the future of the history of science, questions about the relations between historians of science and practicing scientists inevitably loom large. Indeed, tensions between the two groups over what counts as good history of science have achieved some degree of notoriety in recent years. They may be most familiar from the highly publicized eruption of the ‘science wars,’ but in truth, such tensions are of far longer standing, probably dating back to the moment at which historians first assumed responsibility for writing the history of science. Furthermore, they persist – notwithstanding the apparent suspension of those wars – unresolved and perhaps even irresolvable. The problem is fundamental and it reflects widely divergent perspectives on the meaning and the purpose, both of ‘history’ and of ‘science’. The most conspicuous divergence is that which emerges around the question of appropriate vantage point. For scientists, the perspective from which history is most usefully told is generally taken to be that of the present, i.e., in the light of what we/they now believe to be true. Their question is: how did we get to where we now are? Historians, by contrast, are taught to avoid such a presentist perspective at all costs: their aim is to occupy the place of the historical actors and to bracket judgments about what is now believed to be true. Their question is: what did the world look like to these historical actors and, to the extent that such a question can be answered, why? Inevitably, the two perspectives lead to two different kinds of history, with correspondingly different goals. The former is a history of winners; the latter seeks to be clear of retrospective judgment – it seeks a local and contextual understanding of why some became winners and others losers. As the distance between historical time and present time decreases (as it does for the history of recent science), the differences between these two different kinds of history become acute and it is here that conflict is most likely to arise. My question is this: Are there ways in which dialogue across these differences might in fact be productive? I want to argue here not only for the productivity of such dialogue but also for its necessity. But first, there is an issue requiring immediate attention: A recurring claim in the recent attacks by working scientists is that most (if not all) professional historians lack the scientific competence required to properly write its history. Thus stated, the weight falls heavily on the meaning of “properly” and the motivation behind such a charge seems transparent. Clearly, it is in the immediate interests of working scientists to control the writing of their history. Indeed, it often seems – especially in the more heated fora of the science wars – as if the measure of competence is taken to be the degree to which current dogma is embraced, and to K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 57–60. © 2007 Springer.

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the extent that that is the case, the charge may not be worth even trying to answer. Nevertheless, an important, if difficult, question has been raised: Just how much science do historians of science need to know? There was a time when familiarity with the technical issues in the science one was writing about was assumed to be a sine qua non for historians of science, but with the social turn of so much recent history of science, this is no longer the case. Indeed, it is my view that there is now some urgency to this question and I believe Sam shares this view. The difficulties are especially acute for the history of those recent sciences that have become so technical as to require extensive specialized training and one way of dealing with it is to distinguish the history of recent science from that of older sciences and develop historiographic approaches that would be appropriate (as in, e.g., the Sloan/ Dibner Project on the History of Recent Science and Technology (HRST)). But however urgent, it is also important to juxtapose this question with another: How much and what kind, of history of their discipline would it be useful for scientists to know? Or, to put it differently, what positive value, to both historians and scientists, might the dialogue between historians and scientists that I seek actually bring? The gain to historians of science, particularly to historians of recent science, is I think obvious. The recollections and expertise of the participant actors are clearly of historical interest, and in ways that scarcely need elaborating. But what if anything (apart, i.e., from general culture), can historians of science offer to practicing scientists? Is there anything in the work of historians that might conceivably be of present scientific value? By way of answer I will go way out on a limb and make the highly unorthodox suggestion that, at certain critical moments in scientific history, an activist role for historians and philosophers of science is both possible and of potentially substantive value to working scientists. To indicate what I have in mind, I need to first say a word about one of the most basic lessons to be learned from the history of science. The astrophysicist David Layzer, in a recent foray into the history of science,1 has put the point well. Layzer’s efforts were motivated by the need to explain two oddities in the history of physics – one being the 50-year long gap between the first clear articulation of the energy principle and the serious pursuit of that principle by physicists, and the other, the fact that credit for its “rediscovery” goes to several men, all of whom lacked formal scientific training. As a result of his efforts, he came upon what I might call the “fundamental theorem” of the history of science: Scientists tend to ignore new ideas and new formulations precisely to the extent of their investment in existing theory. Like the fundamental theorem of the calculus, the idea seems banal (perhaps especially to historians of science) but also like that other, more famous, theorem, its implications may be profound. In particular, if the normally productive (and in any case, probably necessary) investment of working scientists in existing theory/frameworks/discourses can, and indeed often does, work 1

Layzer, History of Science Seminar, Harvard University, 10/11/96.

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to impede productive scientific change, then the possibility of a facilitating role for informed observers not bound by that investment, follows immediately. Such a role could be especially valuable for those areas in which evidence for the inadequacy of existing conceptual frameworks has already begun to accumulate. I would point to contemporary Developmental Molecular Biology as one such area; to current debates in evolutionary biology as another. In principle, historians and philosophers of recent (and even contemporary) science ought to be ideally suited to such a role. To be sure, it would represent a significant departure from the more familiar ideal of historical disengagement and perhaps it would sound less sacrilegious if we thought of it, taking a suggestion from Harriet Zuckerman, as “applied history and philosophy of science”.2 More problematic yet is that the possibility of such a role presupposes two conditions. The first – requiring that historians and philosophers of science have the necessary technical competence – turns out to be not very difficult to meet, for, despite the social turn of recent years, many of us already do have such competence. The second condition is more difficult: it requires the possibility of an engagement founded on mutual respect. What would it take to meet this requirement? Scientists may complain vociferously about historians of their subject who pay little attention to, or show little understanding of, the technical substance of that subject but they are often even more critical of the presumption of outsiders, however well informed, to enter into serious discussion of scientific content. Ten years ago, the geneticist David Nanney had this to say about a young historian who had written to him for advice about turf issues, wondering about “the consequences of expressing a conclusion regarding something that was clearly over, but just over, the edge of the science/history interface.” Nanney responded, “Although I encouraged him, I was aware that I was tempting him into the lion’s den.”3 A lion’s den, indeed. Yet, even though one might sometimes get the impression that it is not, after all, an understanding of the technical issues that working scientists really want from historians but rather justification of current beliefs, I adhere to the faith that productive dialogue of this sort is possible. It needs to be emphasized however that the role of ‘applied historian of science’ is an exceedingly risky one. By attempting to occupy the interface between the two disciplines, history and science, it threatens the loss of any disciplinary identity. I personally believe that the potential intellectual rewards are such as to make it well worth the risk but even so, it needs saying that this is by no means the only available route to the kind of dialogue – based on mutual respect – that I am advocating. By his very example, Sam Schweber has offered us a rather different (and notably less provocative) route – one that (at least under his leadership) promises to be considerably more effective. Indeed, it is hard to think of anyone better 2 3

Personal conversation, 1998. Nanney, D. L., 1986. “Eugenics and Human Heredity,” Journal of Heredity 77(6):481–482.

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placed for forging a rapprochement between scientists and historians – just because he so fully personifies the central dilemma of their relations – than is Sam. Although for many years now a fully committed historian and no longer a practicing scientist, he continues to embody crucial aspects of both ethos and may accordingly teach us important lessons about how to circumvent or otherwise manage the differences and perhaps even to move toward some kind of resolution. Most importantly, his example provides inspiration to all of us who follow in his footsteps. Professor Emeritus of the History and Philosophy of Science MIT, Cambridge MA 02139 Chaire Blaise Pascal, REHSEIS, Paris

YVES GINGRAS

THE SEARCH FOR AUTONOMY IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE

In fall 1984, I had the good fortune to meet Sam Schweber when I arrived at Harvard University’s Department of History of Science as a visiting scholar with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Having been trained first in physics, I remembered his name as the author of the formidably difficult (for me!) Introduction to Relativistic Quantum Field Theory, which I had closed as soon as I had opened it, as I immediately realized that the approach was too formal for my taste. Not yet familiar with his infinite generosity and attention to young scholars, I was really amazed that he asked me to work with him on an essay review of Andy Pickering’s book, Constructing Quarks.1 I remember that I told him right away that he would have made a good priest with his very humanist attitude toward people. This profoundly humanist aspect of Sam’s personality makes him very concerned about the future of the discipline of history of science as a community of scholars, and in this contribution in his honor I would like to briefly address one of the reasons which, I think, contributes to explain the actual predicament that historians of science face. I will not raise the obvious question of access to the job market and the possible overproduction of PhDs in the field. Instead, I want to discuss a tension inherent in the discipline of history of science, which, I think, lies at the heart of the recent debates about the state of the discipline. Probably more than any other kind of historians, historians of science are torn between several masters: scientists, philosophers, sociologists and general historians. Fifteen years ago, Paul Forman made a major contribution to the question of the intimate relation between historians of science and scientists, condemning the lack of intellectual autonomy of the former from the latter.2 But his call for “independence not transcendence for the historian of science” is still to be fulfilled when one sees the various pressures scientists put on historians of science who want to do more than simply contribute to the creation and celebration of the internal mythology of scientific disciplines. While Forman had a moral view of the need for independence, insisting that each individual had to stand up and fight for his or her autonomous judgment, I think that an institutional analysis provides a better way to identify mechanisms in which this autonomy could be grounded. 1 2

Yves Gingras and Silvan S. Schweber, “Constraints on Construction”, Social Studies of Science, vol. 16, May 1986, pp. 372–383. Paul Forman, “Independence not Transcendence for the Historian of Science”, Isis, vol. 82, March 1991, pp. 71–86.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 61–64. © 2007 Springer.

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As Forman rightly observed, professional independence is not the same as intellectual independence.3 But I think the specific form taken by this professional autonomy, particularly in the United States, is not unrelated to the identity crisis felt by many historians of science. The creation of special Departments of History of Science (or any combination of history and philosophy and sociology of science and technology) outside established departments of history has not, I think, helped historians of science to take their distance from scientists. In fact, the gaining of independence was made even more difficult when these special departments were located in faculties of science instead of faculties of humanities and social sciences. This particular form of institutionalization of history of science was largely contingent and had no logical necessity. After all, over the last century the discipline of history has always been able to adapt to a changing context by incorporating new objects of historical inquiry into its curriculum and research agenda. The emergence of the special fields of history of workers, industrialization, immigration, women, etc., inside history departments – often through difficult academic debates – clearly shows that a specialization of history of science, as opposed to creating an autonomous discipline, was possible. Being an integral part of the historical discipline would help historians of science to benefit from the sense of intellectual autonomy that historians have acquired over the years. A diverse and strong historical discipline certainly helps curb any control that some actors would like to have over the kind of questions raised – and answers proposed – about objects chosen. Sam often said publicly that for him, Frank Manuel was a model historian. It is not insignificant, I think, that as a historian Manuel was not feeling the pressure of the scientist’s “super ego” peering over his shoulder when he wrote Isaac Newton Historian and A Portrait of Isaac Newton. In short: institutional distance can contribute to intellectual independence. Comparing the historian of science with the political historian sheds new light on the limited autonomy of the former compared to the latter. Which professional historian would take seriously a book on political history controlled by a panel of former politicians? By contrast, few eyebrows were raised at the publication of the book on the history of solid state physics, Out of the Crystal Maze although the whole enterprise was in fact controlled by a “blue-ribbon” committee of physicists (some of them Nobel Prize winners) who were also central actors in the story and decided which topics to include and to exclude. Surprisingly, even this benign comparison may be considered offensive and may be rejected by scientists or their self-appointed spokespersons. In fact, I personally experienced this reaction when I asked the above question using this comparison with political control in a review of that book for the journal Science. Simply suggesting such lack of independence (if not a direct conflict of interests) was too much and – as I had in fact expected4 – they 3 4

Ibid., p. 77. Dominique Pestre was witness to that prediction. I wrote the review while in Paris, showed it to him and said they would call me on receiving it to cut the analogy with politics. Which they did … Who said sociology cannot be experimental?

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asked me to get rid of that analogy and to rephrase my analysis. They finally accepted that I conclude by saying that “let us hope that historians of science will use [the book] to frame their questions in the terms of their own discipline rather than according to the preoccupations of the scientists, which are perfectly legitimate but nonetheless distinct from those of historians”.5 That the journal Science was a gatekeeper not only of the content of science but also of its public image was obvious to me but this fact became even more obvious when four years later the book review editor of the journal took “early retirement” over the turmoil raised by the publication of Paul Forman’s review of the book The Flight from Science and Reason.6 The “science war” is thus simply the most recent attempt by scientists to regain control of the research agenda of historians of science.7 The decision not to appoint Norton Wise at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1997 should be more than sufficient to show that institutional autonomy from scientists is crucial for intellectual autonomy. Confronted with such events, it is amazing to see how much energy is consumed by some historians and sociologists of science in order to convince scientists that they should care about their work, when it is in fact obvious that the aims of historians’ and sociologists’ analysis cannot be the same or even congruent with those of scientists without losing their specificity.8 Here again the analogy with political history is interesting: when politicians disagree with a historical analysis provided by a professional historian, nobody expects the historians to bend over backwards in order to convince the politicians. Instead of trying to win scientists for their analyses, historians of science should strive for a better integration of history of science into mainstream intellectual, social and cultural history. For if it is true that science is part of history and not outside it, then the teaching of (and research in) history of science should also be part of history departments and not outside them. Of course, this does not mean that history of science departments as such cannot gain independence of thought. It only means that they are more vulnerable than generic disciplines like history, sociology and philosophy in periods of crisis. It is also clear that a better integration within the historical discipline will transform the analytical approaches, as the rise of social history of science and the relative decline of technical or internal history are in large part effects of a more thorough historicizing of science. The main losers will of course be the scientists who will have greater difficulties in trying to control the historians’ research agendas and who will lose their “scribes” 5 6 7

8

Yves Gingras, “Redefinitions in Physics”, Science, vol. 260, 21 May 1993, pp. 1165–1166. For a brief summary of these events see The Economist, 13 December 1997, pp. 77–79. If one includes larger social debates one should also remember the cancellation in 1995 of the original Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian; see Edward T. Linenthal, Tom Engelhardt (Eds), History Wars. The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past, New York, Metropolitan Book, 1996. I am thinking here of the book edited by Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins, The One Culture? A Conversation About Science, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

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who wrote their grandiose odyssey as previous historians wrote the life of famous politicians, insisting on their devotion to their nation and their grandeur d’âme. Now scientists will have to write these kinds of books for themselves; for this genre is no longer part of an autonomous specialty that defines for itself the hierarchy of legitimate questions and answers about “science” as an historical entity. Département d’histoire Université du Québec à Montréal

MICHAEL D. GORDIN

WITHOUT PARALLELS?: AVERTING A SCHWEBERIAN DYSTOPIA

A comparison between Plutarch and Sam Schweber cannot be pushed very far. While the Classical author wrote immensely engaging parallel lives, largely of statesmen and political figures in Greece and Rome — juxtaposed in parallel to illuminate historical patterns and repetition — his analysis was light and his sizable rhetorical skills were employed for the purpose of painting interesting stories that have continued to serve as a vault of anecdote in the millennia since. Schweber’s revival of the practice of telling parallel lives as a narrative and explanatory strategy in the history of science has deeper intellectual aims. Schweber’s goal has not been to divert or amuse but to instruct and provoke thought, reasoned debate, and — ultimately — political and ethical judgment. This is not the place (and I am not the person) to attempt to sketch the sequential careers of Sam Schweber as physicist and as historian of science, although such an exploration (and what it might reveal about the origins of the idea of employing parallel biography as a historiographic tool) would be very informative. Instead, I will focus on the potential of the parallel gambit to address the transformation in the history of science towards biography (largely from external pressures from publishers) and how it can simultaneously enrich both our pedagogical techniques and — of central importance to Sam Schweber as an individual — how we as a community interact with each other both within and across generations. Biography has been a central mechanism by which Schweber has engaged with his historical material and presented to us a world (primarily in the history of the physical sciences) that is both rich in technical detail and in historical nuance. I could list his works in this regard at great length but I want to focus instead more narrowly on two of his monographs, which emphasize the role of parallel lives (thus excluding excellent studies such as those of John C. Slater or the parallel institutional study of MIT and Cornell): QED and the Men Who Made It and In the Shadow of the Bomb.1 Both of these address the intellectual and social place of physics after World War II, which is not a coincidence; how we as historians can 1

Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It:Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); and idem, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). For the studies of Slater and Cornell/MIT, respectively, see: idem, “The Young John Slater and the Development of Quantum Chemistry,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 20 (1990): 339–406; and idem, “Big Science in Context: Cornell and MIT,” in Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, eds., Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992):149–183. I also sadly exclude the striking exploration of Victorian culture and science

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 65–68. © 2007 Springer.

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illuminate the political and ethical quandaries posed by modern physics has been a central problem for much of his historical oeuvre. In the first book, Schweber ably traces the conditions that enabled a solution to the fretful infinities that plagued quantum electrodynamics (QED) before World War II to emerge in the immediate postwar years. He describes in detail the alternative solutions of Julian Schwinger, Sin-itiro Tomonaga, and Richard Feynman and then the masterful equivalence proof between the various fomalisms developed by Freeman Dyson. Not only are all these lives placed in parallel to show how the same problem can be subjected to different solutions depending on the intellectual trajectory, institutional and political context, and available resources at hand to the physicist but they are also juxtaposed with the failed attempts of Wolfgang Pauli to solve the same equations in Zurich. There is (placing Tomonaga in brackets here) something very American about the solution to QED, Schweber argues and this is something that is revealed only when one sees all these biographies in parallel.2 The specificities of each case are controlled for — almost in the manner of a science experiment — and one can see what is unique to each actor without reifying his or her peculiarities into a “universal” characteristic. Parallelism removes the classic temptation of the biographer: to see in the single (and singular) biographical subject some kind of “skeleton key” that will open up a culture. In the Shadow of the Bomb performs a similar paralleling of Hans Bethe and J. Robert Oppenheimer to elucidate their differing positions on the nuclear arms race and McCarthyist persecution of physicists. The central dynamic here is the moral and ethical concept of “integrity,” and here the parallels leave Oppenheimer — so often portrayed as the tragic hero of modern physics — wanting. I have, in that all-too-brief précis, already hinted at some of the problems of writing history of science as biography. Biography is not well regarded in today’s historical profession. First, it is perceived as lacking in analytical rigor: the birth and death dates of a given scientist (to take our narrow case) do not typically represent historically momentous events and the long dalliances with the childhood of a scientist, de rigeur in most biographies, most often do not help illuminate the adult scientist (with his or her years of training and collaboration) unless one subscribes to the crudest of psychobiographical formulas. Second, biographies tend to be weak in terms of argument: the biographer gets caught up in the romance (often literally) of the subject, and thus loses the thread of analysis in the narrative. This may make good reading but it often results in poor history. The control effect

2

offered in idem, “John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A Study in Parallel Lives,” Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989): 1–71. This develops, obviously, the justly-famous Schweberian claim that American physics is deeply rooted in a culture of pragmatism, his response to Paul Forman’s provocative thesis about acausal physics in Weimar culture: S. S. Schweber, “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the United States,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 17 (1986): 55–98; and Paul Forman, “Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum Theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971): 1–115.

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that parallel lives offer enables one to avoid these arguments; far from doubling or tripling the research burden, one often finds the narrative scale focused and clarified, as one realizes what is specific to the individuals in question and what is general to the scientific problem, the scientific community or the relevant cultural framework. Coming up with a mechanism for writing a biography that is both rich in narrative and analytically coherent — what Schweber has done with his neoPlutarchian parallel lives — is all well and good in ordinary circumstances, but perhaps something that should not concern the entire discipline of the history of science. Unless, that is, the field is experiencing an enormous push toward writing biographical works — which is in fact the case. That is, students in the academy are trained to disdain biography and are usually discouraged from writing dissertations in this format, and when they obtain their doctorate and try to publish their work, they find that biographies may be the only genre that remains publishable in this grim manuscript market. As academic publishing across the board becomes more competitive and university presses increasingly model themselves on trade-press criteria, biographies are in high demand. The future of our field, if younger scholars want to get tenure (and thus must publish their work), often seems like it lies in increasing numbers of biographical studies. This is not necessarily something that we should lament. A wider attempt to employ Schweber’s model might be a tertium quid where we can balance the justifiable anti-biography qualms of the academic and the pro-biography enthusiasm of the publication marketplace. One feature of Sam Schweber’s paralleling, therefore, would be to help graduate students focus their dissertations in a way that takes into account the nature of status quo academic publishing. But keener attention to this historiographical intervention would do more than that. It would hardly be Schweberian if it did not simultaneously address two things that he cares about deeply: the training of students (both graduate and undergraduate) and the communal sociability of our discipline. The market-driven shift to biography is not a fluke; biographical narratives are appealing, especially in pedagogical contexts, as anyone who has tried to make history of science palatable to a large lecture course knows. Dressing wider political, social, scientific, and philosophical questions in human garb is a tried and true way of conveying the central questions of our discipline to undergraduate and popular audiences. In avoiding the distorting effects of focusing on a few central individuals (Darwin, Einstein, Pasteur, Newton), the paralleling strategy works admirably, exploiting student interest in the personal to convey the intricacies of a culture. The issue of communal sociability is more ethereal, but since this essay is speculative already, I ask only a little more indulgence. I personally have benefited immeasurably from the gentle guidance of Sam Schweber throughout my graduate career — and legions of graduate students from the Boston area (and farther afield) can say the same. His intellectual generosity, inquiring spirit and true commitment to scholarship as a growing organism that feeds on personal interactions have been

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an inspiration to me (and I am sure to many others). I believe it is not too much of an intellectual leap to see Sam’s kindness in this regard as a mirror of his parallel tactics: he places his own life and thoughts in parallel with ours and wants us to do the same with each other. The point is that scholarship requires a community, not a bunch of atomized individuals who pursue their research oblivious to each other. By placing ourselves in parallel, we can overcome much of the “Balkanization” that has already begun to infect the history of science as specialized studies overshadow the traditional “big questions” of the discipline. This is not a call for resuming impassioned arguments about what drives scientific change (or other questions of the ilk) but for seeing our work as part of a larger historical project, reviving discussions that in many cases have lapsed. This is Sam’s problematic, his method, his dream, and his legacy. And we owe it to him and to each other to try for it. Department of History Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 USA

LOREN GRAHAM

THE INTELLECTUAL STRENGTHS OF PLURALISM AND DIVERSITY

Sam Schweber is both a physicist and an historian of science, with his major appointment in a physics department (Brandeis), but with a close relationship with a history of science department (Harvard). He has done important research both in physics and in history of science, and in the latter field he has worked not only on the history of physics, but also on the history of biology, ethical problems in science and other topics. This heterogeneity in his life causes me to ask questions about diversity in the field of the history of science in general, especially in the United States. The field of the history of science in the United States has become rather large. The membership directory of the History of Science Society that lies on my desk contains about 2700 listings, to be sure many of whom are not full-time historians of science and quite a few of whom are not located in the United States. Nonetheless, in the span of less than two generations the number of historians of science in the United States has grown from a tiny band to a very large crowd. Almost all large universities in the country and many colleges, now have an historian of science – often two or more – somewhere on its campus. One of the striking characteristics of the field is the diversity of the organizational affiliations of its members. Some, like Sam Schweber, have their primary tie to a science department. Others can be found in history departments, philosophy departments, sociology departments, national laboratories and institutes, medical schools, research organizations, congressional offices, libraries, museums, governmental agencies, professional societies and industries and industrial organizations. Even if one looks only at those academic institutions which grant doctoral degrees in the field, a remarkable diversity can be found. Some people connect this “disorder” to the relative youth of the field and assume that as the history of science becomes increasingly professionalized the institutional affiliations of its members will become increasingly focused, perhaps primarily on history departments and more specialized departments of the history of science. I would like to defend the view that the heterogeneity of the organizational bases of the members of the field is actually one of its great strengths, enriching its products. Perhaps one reason that I hold this opinion is that I am very familiar with the organization of the field in Russia, where one institute of the Academy of Sciences, with its several affiliates, dominates the field. But I also know that in continental Europe the heterogeneity of the field is less strongly expressed than it is in the United States. K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 69–71. © 2007 Springer.

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This heterogeneity prevents the domination of one interpretive approach to the field. Some historians of science see the field as one of the humanities, and resent the intrusion of natural scientists into their work. Fine, hopefully they will find an intellectual home in university history departments, many of which now contain historians of science. Others believe that the history of science is best conducted by natural scientists or engineers, people with strong technical backgrounds. Good, let them find a home in either a department in the natural sciences, or a university like the University of Minnesota, where specialists in the field are scattered in several departments, including engineering and the natural sciences. Still other scholars believe that the history of science should be strongly linked to its social context and to sociological insight. Excellent, there are places where this is usually done, including the University of Pennsylvania, where there is a “Department of the History and Sociology of Science.” Yet others believe that the history of science should often be seen in conjunction with its philosophical underpinnings. Indiana University contains a “Department of the History and Philosophy of Science” where historians and philosophers rub shoulders, and there are other places where this is done. Some scholars believe the history of science should be closely linked to the history of technology and with engineering. The University of Delaware is an example of a place where the history of technology and engineering has traditionally been strong. Still other historians of science believe that the history of science is best studied in a group in which there are specialists in a variety of disciplines, including sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, engineering and science professors, economists, and of course historians of science and technology. The various “STS” programs (Science, Technology and Society), of which my program at MIT is an example, often contain such specialists. Then there are scholars who believe that the history of science and medicine should be strongly linked; a number of universities, including Yale and Johns Hopkins, have traditionally had such emphases. This list could be continued, showing how the history of science in the United States is organized very differently in different places. As a result, not only is diversity of interpretation a characteristic of the field but also people of different intellectual configurations have a chance to find a niche suitable for them. Sam Schweber is a clear example of such adaptation. Yet another characteristic of the history of science in the United States is the close connection between research and teaching. Most historians of science are accustomed to working closely with students, almost always undergraduates but frequently graduate students. Research and teaching have traditionally been linked in the United States; there is no governmentally-backed “institute of the history of science” on the national or federal level. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was a movement in the United States toward research institutes without teaching functions, but that movement never got very far. In these years the Rockefeller Institute, the Carnegie Institution and the Institute for Advanced Studies were all founded largely in imitation of research institutes of Europe (Pasteur Institute, Robert Koch’s laboratory, Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, etc.).

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But American academics eventually decided that the linkage between teaching and research was an advantage, not a disadvantage. A clear turning point came right after World War II when the trustees of the Rockefeller Institute, founded in 1901 on the basis of European precedents, decided to convert itself into a university and admit students for the first time. As a historian of the Rockefeller Institute observed, “a career of teaching and research in a university had become more desirable than life in an intellectually limited research institute that lacked the vital stimulus of eager graduate students.” However, several of the most distinguished researchers in the Rockefeller Institute resisted mightily the intrusion of students into their laboratories. The trustees “bought them off” by telling them that the resisters did not have to teach if they did not want to, but that all new faculty would teach. Within a few years the diehards capitulated because they saw that their younger colleagues with students were being more innovative and more successful in obtaining outside grants than they were. The students introduced fresh ideas and diversity of approach. The model of “pure research without teaching obligations” that had seemed so attractive a generation earlier lost its allure. An example of how government laboratories and institutes are usually less innovative than research-and-teaching universities can be seen in the National Institutes of Health in the United States, a network of government research laboratories. It is generally agreed among scientists in the United States that the “extramural research” funded by NIH (grants given by NIH to researchers elsewhere, often in research-and-teaching universities) is usually more creative and productive than “intramural research” (research conducted within the walls of a government laboratory). All this is not about Sam Schweber directly, but the indirect links are obvious. Sam is both a scientist and a historian of science. He has always taught, and has teaching experience in both Brandeis and Harvard, with both undergraduate and graduate students. He rubs shoulders with scholars and students with different ideas than his own, and all benefit from the interaction, even when they are not fully aware of the value of the experience. Sam Schweber is an illustration of the strength of the field of the history of science when pluralism of approach and tolerance in administration are reigning principles. Faculty Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Harvard University Professor, History of Science Emeritus, MIT

JOHN L. HEILBRON

ON CONNOISSEURSHIP

Sam Schweber’s magisterial QED (1994) begins with words and sentiments at odds with current fashions in historiography. Here is what he wrote: I have attempted to function as an “objective” intellectual historian. Nonetheless, my emotional ties to the theoretical physics community will be apparent to the reader: I have given loving biographies of the principals involved and an admiring account of the community of theoretical physicists… Theoretical physicists share a common reverence for the competence and capabilities of the leading practitioners… and derive a common joy of soul from the understanding gained by the representations and interpretations of the empirical data put forward by the great theorists.1

The magnificence and amiability of great men, and the joy of recapitulating their work, ought not to occupy the entire attention of a grown historian. So Schweber paints in several colors. In 1985, at a meeting of physicists and their historians at Fermilab, he offended some of those amiable persons by representing theoretical physics as a communal activity constrained by the values and programs of the society that supported it. Here is what he said: The defense connection during the 1950s reinforced the pragmatic, utilitarian, instrumentalist style so characteristic of theoretical physics in the United States… The period under consideration also witnessed the disappearance of the Newton-like “geniuses,” the “off-scale” creative individuals who by themselves work out most of the details and consequences of their brilliant insights and ideas… It is as though most of the members of the community consider it more worthwhile to work out the approach suggested by the intellectual leader of the moment… than to work on their own ideas or on longer-range programs of research. As early as 1951, Feynman called it the “pack” effect.2

Here Schweber appears to approach the postmodern historiography that has no place for heroes and treats truth claims as delusions, theory choice as negotiation and scientific reputation as usurpation. A few of the physicists who heard him could not stomach the idea that the body social or politic could curb or curve their flights of fancy. Robert Hofstadter declared (I may exaggerate) that he would not be happy with his Nobel prize if he thought that his training had shaped his creativity. Like

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S.S. Schweber, QED and the men who made it (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xiv–xv. S.S. Schweber, “Some reflections on the history of particle physics in the 1950s,” in Laurie M. Brown et al., eds., Pions to quarks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 668–93, on 673.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 73–76. © 2007 Springer.

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the poet William Blake, the outraged genius knew that “He who can be bound down is no Genius: Genius cannot be bound.”3 These two points of view – the individual-heroic and the group-conformist – are no more reconcilable in historiography than the pairs momentum/position or energy/time are in quantum physics. However, to continue the analogy, both points of view, the heroic and the conformist, are necessary to do justice to the historical record and human experience. The trick is not to impose the opposed categories simultaneously. Historians have known this truth even longer than quantum physicists. J.B. Bury, one-time Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, held that human history went forward in the continuous, causal manner of Darwinian evolution and also that contingency, the unpredictable qualities of historical actors, dominated the course of events. But he did not expect to be able to hold both views at the same time. “On days when I’m a determinist I look on history in one way, and on days when I am an indeterminist in quite another.”4 Bury grasped Niels Bohr’s deep truth that the opposite of a deep truth is a deep truth.5 Historians of science seldom concern themselves with deep truth. Their business lies between the extremes, between the contingencies that favor the prepared mind and the forces and fashions that enable and limit thought. Pure cases of unconstrained genius or complete determinism would be stories of madmen or automatons. Just as the physicist who knows perfectly the momentum of a subatomic entity cannot specify its position, so the historian whose actors are unconstrained heroes cannot relate them to their colleagues or communities, and the historian who views science as a product of socially-driven communities is not (or, to speak historically, has not been) able to explain its content. Thomas Carlyle’s On heroes and hero worship (1841) may stand as the exemplar of the first pure case. “Universal history [he wrote], the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here…[A]ll things that we see accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result and embodiment of Thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent into the world; the soul of the whole world’s history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.” Where do they originate, these Great Men, and how do they come to think their Thoughts? We cannot say. They are the “gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain…of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness.”6 3

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William Blake, Complete writings, in Geoffrey Keynes, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 472, quoted in Patricia Fara, Newton, the making of genius (London: Macmillan, 2002), 170. J.B. Bury, “Cleopatra’s nose [1916],” in Bury, Selected essays, ed. Harold Pinkerton, quoted by G.P. Gooch, Maria Theresa and other studies (London: Longman’s Green, 1951), 326. Niels Bohr, “Discussion with Einstein on epistemological problems in atomic physics,” in P.A. Schilpp, ed., Albert Einstein: Philosopher—Scientist (Evanston: Library of Living Philosophers, 1949), 199–241, on 240. Thomas Carlyle, “The hero as divinity,” in Carlyle, On heroes and hero worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), 1–2.

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Against these once eloquent and now disreputable notions can be set the constructivism currently cultivated by historians of science. Its extreme position is a pure case of social determinism. An example from Schweber’s backyard, Andrew Pickering’s Constructing quarks, does not mince words: “The world of HEP [high energy physics] was socially produced.” The italics are Pickering’s. “The history of HEP can be understood as a communal search for a congenial world: a world which made social sense, and in which practice could be socially organized.”7 It is not far to insist that the congenially socially constructed world of scientists agrees with, or follows from, the political construction of the wider society. “Solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order.”8 It is doubtful that the equation of science with society provides a better purchase for understanding the development of scientific ideas than Carlyle’s referral of heroic thoughts to the light of heaven. What should guide historians in the identification and analysis of the impure or intermediate cases that make up almost all of human history? Modesty and tolerance, for a beginning. Historians ought not to argue like lawyers; we can admit more than one set of facts and more than one way of interpreting them. As wise old Monsignore Bianchini put the point in his pioneering Istoria universale (1697), “the opinions of an historian are not the decrees of a magistrate.”9 Keith Thomas, in his monumental Religion and the decline of science (1971), allowed that without systematic quantification, the historian has to fall back on the “traditional method of presentation by example and counter-example.”10 Too much recent writing in history of science labors to prove rather than illustrate a thesis. The evidence put forward in proof of things not provable often does not meet the test of common sense, let alone the standard of historical argument. Modesty and balance may not carry one far into history or up the academic ladder. The key additional ingredient, in addition to luck and fortitude, is taste. The historian needs an eye for the telling episode, the significant development, the decisive period; and also discernment, an ability to identify the extraordinary, whether good or bad, in our terms and theirs, in the writings, artifacts, and actions of the past. Cultivating this discernment is the work of a lifetime. It requires not only studying the material of immediate interest, say the scientific papers of some heroes, but also reading in general history and the literature of the age, listening to its music, looking at its art and architecture. In a word, an historian should be a connoisseur. Sam Schweber is a connoisseur. His love and admiration for theoretical physicists and their work is not the ignorant bombastic hero worship of a Carlyle, but the reasoned evaluation of a master. He knows what is difficult in 7 8 9 10

Andrew Pickering, Constructing quarks. A sociological history of particle physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 406, 411. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Levianthan and the air pump (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 332. Francesco Bianchini, La istoria universale (Rome: the author, 1697), b.3r. Keith Thomas, Religion and the decline of magic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), x.

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conception and admirable in execution in theoretical physics because he has tried his strength at similar things himself. Paul Forman tells us that postmodernism has killed the disciplines. If true, postmodern historians must, “willy-nilly, seek the meaning of their efforts outside of the disintegrating disciplinary incentive structure.”11 Even if disciplines should survive, history of science might be too diffuse to count as one. That is the view emphatically expressed by Roshdi Rashed in his opening lecture at the meeting of the International Congress of the History of Science in Mexico City in 2001. According to Rashed’s anti/ante postmodernism, history of science is not a discipline but an enlarging domain of miscellaneous activity. It can be made a discipline by recognizing that its purpose is to understand how progressive, improvable, transcendent knowledge arises from and overcomes the all-too-human circumstances of its production, how “necessity emerges from contingency.” Everything else now thrown higgledy-piggledy into the “history of science” would be gathered together into “social research on the sciences.”12 It would be better to follow Sam. That requires cultivating an exact scientific knowledge, an appreciation of the historical actors and a modest, tolerant, energetic connoisseurship. Worcester College, Oxford

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Paul Forman, this volume, 49–55 Roshdi Rashed, “History of science and diversity at the beginning of the 21st century,” in J.J. Saldaña, ed., Science and cultural diversity (Mexico City: Sociedad Mexicana de Historia de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, 2003), 15–29, on 28–9.

STEVE JOSHUA HEIMS

CONCERNING ENERGY

First of all, I take the occasion of this Festschrift to express my deep appreciation for Sam’s warm friendship throughout the decades when I worked as an independent scholar in the history of science. During those years he was my best link to the professional history of science community in the Boston/Cambridge area, an expression of his openness to outsiders. In the publications in which Sam compares two scientists (“John Hershel and Charles Darwin: A Study in Parallel Lives”, and In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist), he explores profound and absorbing themes in a creative and conscientious way. The Hershel/Darwin paper shows, in the instance of Darwin, the development of his scientific and intellectual power needed for the “Origins”, but also the impediments to such a level of creativity that can derive from personal family relations and from conventional religions or mind-sets. In Shadow it is the level of detail and use of original sources, together with Sam’s rich understanding of the significance of the documents and quotations, especially in the chapters on the response to McCarthyism and on moral issues raised by nuclear weapons, that will make the book a unique and reliable resource for all future studies of these topics. The pictures that emerge of Hans Bethe and of the physics community at Cornell are memorable. My current interest relates to energy. Here I compare two individuals engaged with different sources of energy, one committed to “solar” (in the generic sense of “renewables” including energy efficiency and conservation) and the other to drilling for, transporting and refining crude oil. The two individuals’ lives, work, and circumstance – that of a solar buff and an oil tycoon – are quite dissimilar. My interest is less in them per sé, but as exemplars or “types”, respectively belonging to a solar or oil “subculture”, and the qualities of each of the subcultures. The predominant source of power in our society derives from fossil fuels, and the society is structured and conditioned by that fact. We can only imagine a solar society, as Ernst Callenbach did in his novel, Ecotopia. The comparison made in the present essay clarifies how some of the choices as to the forms of energy used in our society come about, although it must be remembered that a large number of other elements enter into the process as well. “Type” and “subculture” are intended primarily to be useful conceptual tools for more general sociological or historical discussions in which solar buffs and oil tycoons are among the groups playing a role. Of course, other “types” and “subcultures” not described here, may additionally enter into such a discussion. Particular interest in the present topic derives from the circumstance that the choices regarding energy can be enormously consequential K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 77–85. © 2007 Springer.

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for the character and wellbeing of society and the global ecology for both the short and the long term. John McPhee’s narratives, one centered on conservationist David Brower and the other on nuclear physicist Theodore Taylor, both extraordinary individuals concerned with energy, deal admirably in a very human and interesting way in separate books with these two relevant people and their respective activities. However, in the present essay the personal stories of a “solar buff” and of an “oil tycoon” are incomplete and severely condensed, since the purpose is to identify, more abstractly, the qualities and methods characteristic of the two associated subcultures. The two individuals serve primarily to give concreteness to the abstract notions. For my topic this more sociological approach seems natural, as it would also be if one examines the impact on society as a whole and even the global ecology with which one is ultimately going to be concerned. The oil tycoon I have chosen to consider was not directly involved with any of the military adventures in which the U.S. has engaged for the sake of fossil fuels and oil company interests, so that the connection to wars – deliberate killing – is beyond the scope of this little essay. As a member of the board of directors of the Chase Manhattan bank, however, he was closely associated with the Rockefeller dynasty and its worldwide interests. We begin with the solar buff: Deborah Leta Habib, recalling her early childhood pleasures and activities, wrote “I had been collecting cocoons, delighting in the changing leaves, planting carrot seeds and baking bread since I was a wee one…” By the time she was twelve, a new sensibility was entering her consciousness. She was “coming to feel some of the pain of the world,” was “becoming very disturbed and disenchanted by the technological, fast-paced world she was experiencing all around her.” It is not so rare for children at that age to awaken to powerful themes in the larger world, and to respond to them with feeling or even action. When she was nineteen or twenty she decided to become an intern at the New Alchemy Institute (NAI) on Cape Cod, a vibrant center for a community of people innovatively experimenting with integrating agriculture, aquaculture and uses of solar energy with an ethos of mindfulness of what serves the planet Earth as a whole. Its founders had professional knowledge and experience in biology, agriculture and aquaculture. Habib met Richard Baruc, whom she eventually married, there. In 1988, a few years after she had left NAI, she wrote of her more than four years there as enormously influential on her “professional, emotional and spiritual growth…New Alchemy represented to me a merging of some very important work to be shared with the world, and a spirit of hope and love for this planet.” And again, “I thought I was just going for a three-month internship…and it turned into four years and forever… a lifelong experience”. She had worked hard as a member of New Alchemy. The “New Alchemists” became a reference group for her and Baruc in defining and guiding their own future. Today, over a decade after NAI closed, she and Baruc continue the friendships and stay in touch with other ex-Alchies, who each in

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his or her way continues to work along lines similar to earlier NAI activities. In 1994–95 she and Baruc took part in an “Interfaith Pilgrimage for Peace and Life” (Habib is from a Sephardic Jewish background), which took them from Auschwitz to Hiroshima, reminding of brutalities and a war of a half-century earlier. They were especially affected by their stay in Iraq, where they saw “firsthand the impact of the (Gulf) war over oil” and the subsequent embargo. They “knew they could not keep supporting the oil producers.” It strengthened their commitment to renewable energy. Robert Orville Anderson, much older than Habib, had from early on gone a different route. Born in 1917, he was the son of a Chicago banker who had made loans to oilmen, liked them and befriended them during the depression years. After college at the University of Chicago, he apprenticed himself to an oil refinery in Texas. By the time he was 25, he was the president of one oil refinery and, partly due to his family’s largesse, the owner of another. He became involved in various mergers of companies, big fish swallowing little fish, with finally his company (Atlantic Refining) merging with the much larger Richfield to become ARCO, and Anderson became the chairman of the board. Charles Jones, the previous chairman, ready to retire, was impressed during the negotiations by Anderson’s having “learned everything there was to know about the company” and his boldness. According to Jones, Anderson was a man who knew where he was going and why. He was young and had made a great success of his life…his decisiveness and confidence had been proved after he took over the management of Atlantic.

As is usual in the oil subculture, getting around violation of anti-trust laws and successfully fighting the taxes associated with such a merger were crucial elements in closing the deal. Anderson was optimistic about Alaskan oil for which Richfield had leases and had been drilling. Habib and Baruc, strong in their commitment and willing to work hard, have been implementing their values and beliefs, which include an active concern for social justice. It is evident when visiting them that they both deeply enjoy their life and delight in play, especially with their young son. Nearly a decade ago they bought thirty acres of land in a low-income community through a Land Conservation Trust, now named “Seeds of Solidarity Farm”. They regard themselves as stewards of the land rather than owners. They have greenhouses heated by passive solar energy as well as composting (which gives off heat) and use ingenious organic methods in their farming. Their electricity is derived solely from photovoltaic cells with no link to the grid, but they have ample for their stereo, computer and other amenities. Their motor vehicles run on biodiesel. Their home is in a superinsulated building which relies largely on passive solar heat. Baruc and Habib stay abreast of technological advances relevant to the farm and learn what other “solar buffs” are doing through personal contacts, e-mail, and magazines such as Home Power or Northeast Sun (published by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association). A sense of collaboration and cooperation, an

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eagerness to pass on to others or, as the case may be, to learn from others, anything useful a “solar buff” has discovered, had been implicit in all of the NAI activities and the larger solar community already in the 1970s. Habib and Baruc function in that non-competitive tradition. Their activities include outreach to communities near and far. Habib is an enthusiastic and thoughtful teacher (she picked up a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts) of children and adults, including especially schoolteachers, in all elements of what they call “ecological liberation”, which requires for many people that their way of life needs to undergo a radical change from the “ecologically destructive patterns” normal in our society. In an article concerning the process of such “radical change” and their way of life, Habib and Baruc incidentally report, “we love our life”, as Habib’s exuberance suggests already. What emerges as the strongest component of the affective springs of Habib’s activities, insofar as I can judge, is a love of all living things on the planet and the fulfillment of giving expression to it in her activities. She and Baruc are carefully planting seeds for a hopeful future. She has taken from New Alchemy the principle that for all choices and decisions, one needs to be mindful of the overall ecology of the planet. In an abstract model to characterize the pure “solar buff subculture” the affective component of a love of living things, giving expression to it, and a rational rule for making choices, however local, to be mindful of their impact on the planet’s ecology (and implicitly long-term viability), are salient elements, the foundation and perhaps the most striking characteristics. It is rooted in the American tradition of Henry David Thoreau. A further element, taken as a matter of course, is the open cooperative style and exchange of helpful information, as if the whole subculture collectively was one team. Anderson’s and ARCO’s business was oil, although he ventured into coal, copper and for a time even into photovoltaics. He became enormously rich, owned over a million acres of land in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. His basis for decisions fits the model of “economic man”. Consider Anderson’s own expression of faith in the oil industry, …and my enthusiasm for it. It is the greatest industry in the world, and the most exciting to be in. It is unique. It is the one true international business. The amount of oil being carried across the oceans of the world at any particular moment defies the imagination. Oil is used everywhere. The largest need for money in the world’s money markets is for the purchase of oil. It is valuable everywhere. It is a kind of currency. A cargo of oil is the nearest thing to a cargo of money. It can be converted into money at a drop of a hat. It is hard currency. This has been the case for fifty years. It is an exciting business because having information a few minutes ahead of anybody else can make somebody millions. There is luck, much luck, involved in the success in the oil business. But the oil business is also a unique test of judgment, experience, stamina and nerve.

He liked and enjoyed the oil business, the wealth accumulated, and the extent of the global playing field, but also outwitting the other person, playing the game and winning. It is rooted in the American tradition of John D. Rockefeller, the

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nineteenth-century founder of Standard Oil Company. For an abstract statement characterizing the subculture of oilmen, we regard the affective motivations and gratifications he himself described (above) as appropriate, entirely different, the other end of a spectrum, from those of a solar buff. The single-minded purposiveness of increasing his company’s wealth, ignoring every other consideration in his decisions, is not just characteristic of Anderson, but of the subculture of oil tycoons. This too is radically different from the solar buffs’ criteria for making choices, but similar to that of corporate capitalists in other industries. Although sometimes alliances between oil companies are formed to achieve particular objectives, it is a highly competitive business, where secrets are often well guarded, kept within one company. Companies often grow by taking over former competitors. The time frames considered by oil capitalists tend to be very short, the profit or loss within one fiscal year, while long-term viability of ecosystems is ignored. An oil tycoon uses his wealth and relatively direct access to the US government to help implement his company’s purposes. Habib’s and Anderson’s work lives are similar in that they both do the kind of work they had wanted to do, both find it gratifying and are devoted to it, and neither is an employee within an organizational structure. (Considering Anderson’s age I should use the past tense for him but for purposes of this essay the present tense is preferable.) One major difference is the nature and the style of their respective impacts on the larger world. Solar buffs influence people from the bottom up, and influence spreads out from local people. In the case of Solidarity Farm, at first the interns and apprentices at the farm pick up the techniques and ideas, as do some neighbors. Students in the classes Habib teaches and participants in the annual autumn festival Habib and Baruc had generated (with about 4,000 attendees), extend the influence outward. The impact is totally benign, people can follow Habib’s and Baruc’s example or not, as they please. They affect people by implicitly encouraging selfreliance, self-respect and hope, showing people new capabilities they might not have known they had. Nobody is hurt. The style of Habib and Baruc is entirely open and candid. Putting their criteria for making choices in a philosophical frame, it seems to fulfill the ethic defined by Kant’s “categorical imperative”. Their time perspective, implicit in their concern with “sustainability”, is long term. The decisions of chairmen of large oil companies may affect people on a very large scale, and the effects are as likely harmful as beneficial, since they are made simply on the basis of what is good for the oil companies. People have to adapt to them. As an example, consider the consequences of ARC0’s discovery of an ‘elephant’ in Alaska, which brought oil from domestic rather than foreign oil fields into the United States (presumed favorable for easing international tensions), and which led to huge profits for a consortium of oil companies, but also included an “unintended” total transformation of the state of Alaska. It was instrumental in pushing for settlement of native claims by the US government, but the seemingly generous settlement was made in terms of a corporate model, which turned out

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to be devastatingly destructive to Indians, Aleuts, Eskimos and their cultures (a substantial portion of the Alaskan population). The large lucrative oil business was also corrupting to the state legislature, in effect bought by the consortium of oil companies and even the workers who came to build the pipeline at high wages fared badly on the whole. As foretold by environmentalists and neutral observers, a huge oil spill would surely result and it did (the Exxon Valdez oil spill) and do immeasurable harm to life on the Southern Alaskan coast, as it did. Anderson’s criterion for choice as an oilman was consistently based on economic “self-interest”, a criterion that had been justified by Kant’s contemporary, Adam Smith, in terms of the “hidden hand” for cases of pure competition. The hidden hand argument does not apply to modern large corporations. Specifically, the Alaskan venture was carried out by an international oligopolistic oil consortium. Moreover, whereas economic theory normally counts money as a benefit for the recipients, the money received by Alaskans from the oil companies had a predominantly destructive impact, and led to many individual tragedies. The trade-off of cash payments for the big oil-spill was no net benefit either. Investors, typically, had not only risked their own money, but without their consent had put Alaskan people and their environments on the gaming table. Unlike the time-scale of Habib and Baruc or of the NAI founders (or of Alaskan Natives), the oil consortium’s was – characteristically – short-term. Anderson’s style was to play it close to his chest and maintain secrecy until he was ready to act. Another difference between the solar subculture and the oil subculture is their respective access and tactics for influencing political decisions. Solar or environmental NGOs may have an impact backed by many citizens, institute lawsuits to protect the public interest and have the laws enforced (as was attempted in connection with the Alaskan project, but led only to its delay). Leaders of the oil industry tend to be political insiders with direct access to the halls of political power. Their wealth allows them to provide funds or withhold funds from political candidates and in turn, obtain specific political favors (today’s situation is more extreme, with a political leadership identified with the oil industry). Anderson, a major figure in the Republican Party and on its National Committee, for example, was on good terms with Richard Nixon, as well as other Presidents, and had been a large contributor to his electoral campaign. He was instrumental to Nixon’s appointing a Secretary of the Interior who would strongly favor the oil consortium’s plan in Alaska. Vice President Agnew was crucial to exempting the environmental impact statement for the Alaskan pipeline from the judicial review otherwise required by law. Environmentalists had advocated a different route for the pipeline, which was environmentally safer, although financially less advantageous for the consortium. The solar buff and the oil tycoon subcultures could not simply ignore each other. When the renewable energy movement was at its peak (the late 1970s), the characteristic attitude was one of mutual contempt: solar buffs had a contempt for the greed and commercial values, lack of social responsibility, manifested in the oil industry. Corporate oil people had contempt for small solar ventures because they

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were small and did not generate an amount of energy even remotely comparable to that of the fossil fuel industry, nor did solar buffs have much political clout, even when supported by the whole environmental movement. Oil companies and solar energy devices intersected when (in the late 1970s) generous State and Federal tax credits deferred a large percentage of an oil company’s investment in development and production of solar cells. ARCO in particular set up a solar subsidiary in considerable haste while the tax credits were still in effect and became for a time a leading producer of solar cells. However, some poor technical decisions were made, the whole operation became problematic for ARCO and was eventually sold to the German electronics company, Siemens. By the twenty-first century many corporations, large and small, have emerged to produce solar technologies, especially wind-turbines and PV cells (sales of both have grown exponentially), and are developing the modification of automobiles to be powered by hydrogen fuel cells or means to greatly increase gas mileage. Presumably, these corporate activities are sufficiently different from both the oil tycoon and the solar buff subcultures that one would need to identify a third subculture to characterize them appropriately. Incidentally, Baruc and Habib deal with a photovoltaic company (Evergreen) that they found congenial and that does not deal in fossil fuels. Anderson and environmentalists had confronted each other over the Alaskan pipeline. The environmentalists had delayed the project by means of lawsuits, frustrating and costly for Anderson, for several years. In turn Anderson used a clever tactic to attempt to undermine the whole environmental movement, although he at times appeared to be on friendly terms with some of the movement’s members: to fight and confuse the environmental movement, Anderson went to considerable lengths to fund and create, with the help of some industrialists and public relations men, so-called “environmental” organizations that strongly favored ever-increasing fossil fuel production and consumption and accelerated industrial growth, i.e., an anti-environmental agenda. He was able to substitute his organization for the bona fide conservation and environmental organization slated to organize the first UN conference on the environment in 1972. The oilmen, and especially Anderson, were not opposed to saving whales, but favored ever-greater consumption of oil, coal and gas, and ever more industrialization throughout the world in the name of “growth” or “progress”. The solar buffs favor reduced use of oil, coal and gas, and increased reliance on solar, conservation, and energy-efficiency in the name of “sustainability”. Each of these subcultures is convinced their attitude leads to a better life for the general public and for some time to come, both subcultures will co-exist. People normally adapt to the forms of energy and the associated technologies that have been installed in their neighborhoods and are made conveniently available. Nowadays, solar people are small islands in the sea of a petroleum world. The petroleum subculture is economically, politically and militarily in charge. But that

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could change, especially if fossil fuels become very expensive. The islands could even become continents. From diverse people in the solar subgroup whom I have interviewed over the years, I am forcefully struck that many of them are similar to Habib in their choices, broad affections and other personal qualities. In fact, that observation had led me to speak of “subcultures.” The solar subculture implicitly and often explicitly provides a critique of some norms in modern society, and – in my view – has a legitimate and powerful claim on our attention. Current global trends are away from sustainability, as had been already acknowledged and formally recognized at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro over a decade ago, trends aggravated by American foreign policy and the narrow aims of multinational energy corporations, especially if the two work in concert. The World Watch Institute’s 2003 State of the World report, written after the 2002 Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development, observes “…that growing inequality is one of the most pronounced and disturbing global trends…. (The summit showed) how deeply people are affected by the intersection of poverty and environmental decline…Because of their scale and because of politics that surround them, governments and international institutions are often influenced by archaic ideologies or beholden to entrenched economic interests. Outside groups with fresh ideas and representing new political pressures are often required to overcome the momentum of the status quo”. At the Summit diverse organizations made unofficial agreements to carry out sustainable development activities.

The growing deprivation of people in many parts of the world is the obvious and most compelling reason for interest in the solar buff subculture, showing that it is badly needed. Its characteristic quality of loving all of life (or variants of that concept) as a pattern of relating to nature, that is perhaps found among naturalists in the United States and Europe, and is congenial to views implied in Asia by Taoism and some forms of Buddhism, is itself of interest. But of equal importance is the ethos and strong sense of community of Habib and Baruc with former coworkers at NAI, and a sense of solidarity with a larger group of people. This brings me full-circle to an entirely different realm of endeavor, with the character of its community, as described by Sam in his discussion of Bethe and Cornell’s Newman Laboratory, in some respects surprisingly similar,“a model of Dewey’s communicative community; one that creates ‘a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute,’ one that exists under the constraint of cooperation, trust and truthfulness and is uncoerced in setting its goals and agenda; one that recognizes that human emancipatory interests are involved.” Sam’s description of Bethe’s role at Cornell makes me think of Sam himself and his part in the community and in community building in the history of science in the Boston area, and in the Brandeis physics department, where I first met him in 1961. However, temperaments and relations to community differ. Notwithstanding my lively interest in communities, I seem to do my best work at those times when I am able to walk the tightrope of marginality without falling off to either side.

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PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES Concerning NAI, Habib and Baruc www.fuzzylu.com/greencenter www.seedsofsolidarity.org For Sam Schweber Festschrift 14 Babson Street, Gloucester, MA 01930 Tel: 978 281 6723 email: [email protected] Partial List of Sources ∗

REFERENCES Richard Baruc and Deborah Habib, “Seeking Liberation from the Cycle of Ecological Oppression,” People’s Voice of Franklin County, summer 1999, pp. 8–10. John Baskin, “Living off the Grid,” Northeast Sun, Fall 2003, pp. 14–15. T. Susan Chang, “Garlic Breath is Welcome here”, Boston Globe 8/13/03, pp. E1 and E4. Deborah Habib, New Alchemy Quarterly #34, winter 1988–1989, p. 5. Richard Perez & Joe Schwartz, “Evergreen Solar” in Home Power #93, February/March 2003, pp. 72–77. Nancy Todd, ed. The Book of the New Alchemists (1977).

Concerning Anderson, ARCO, and Alaskan oil John J. Berger, Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What it Means for America (1997). Thomas R. Berger, Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission (1985). Charles J. Cicchetti, Alaskan Oil: Alternative Routes and Markets (1972). Robert Engler, The Brotherhood of Oil: Energy Policy and the Public Interest (1977). Kenneth Harris, The Wildcatter: A Portrait of Robert O. Anderson (1987). Jack Raymond, Robert O. Anderson: Oil Man/Environmentalist and his Leading Role in the International Environmentalist Movement (1988). John Strohmeyer, Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska (1993). Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (1991).

ERWIN N. HIEBERT

REFLECTIONS ON A DISCIPLINE

This statement about past achievements and future perspectives on the history of science seeks to honor Sam and express profound gratitude for his singular contributions to teaching and research. The comments presented here are intended as personal reflections aimed at a brief appraisal of the past, present and future outlook on the history of science discipline. They are based on a short but intellectually rewarding career in experimental physical chemistry and some forty years as student and teacher of the history of science at the University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Harvard University. The remarks that follow relate mainly to the history and philosophy of the physical sciences since 1800 – the areas of my own teaching and research. The more explicit point of departure and focus of my remarks comes down to a simple question and its inherent implications: what does the historian of science make of reciprocal relationships that link history of science and historian of science to scientist? This is a topic that was truly out front in the minds of those in my generation who were lured into studies and careers in the history of science and technology after World War II. Perhaps it may be worthwhile, these 50 years later, to take a fresh look at how the links between history and science and between historian and scientist have altered and provided new and fertile directions of pursuit. To that end, I have chosen to say more about the past than to offer grand suggestions about the direction in which the discipline should be moving. As Sam well knows, this is an opportune time to search for robust and feasible guidelines contributory to a meaningful integration of the discipline in general and to reappraise teaching and research at the graduate level. In the late 1940s students came into the field predominantly with training and baccalaureate degrees in one of the natural sciences, mathematics, medicine or a closely related branch of knowledge. In this country only Harvard, Cornell and Wisconsin were set up to offer advanced training in the discipline. There were, at the time, meaningful discussions among graduate students and their supportive professors. Where would studies in the history of science take those entering the field? What would constitute the optimum mix of history and science to keep the student in reasonably close touch with the world of science? Without knowing exactly what the liaison with science and scientist might be, we nevertheless believed that meaningful discourse and partnership would ensue. Not surprisingly, the strongest moral and financial support for the creation of history of science as a separate discipline at the universities came from scientists. The historians offered their blessings. From their point of view the history of science was not particularly unique, since everything has a history. It thus became clear to historians of science that in order to pursue their own discipline they needed K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 87–94. © 2007 Springer.

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history more than historians needed history of science. Unfortunately the weak link between history and history of science has been with the discipline from the start. On the other hand, the links between history of science and the sciences, as well as between history of science and philosophy of science, have been strengthened over time. It is generally agreed among historians of science that the working subject matter of the discipline includes published and unpublished scientific texts, documents and archival materials, oral interviews with scientists, information about the institutional, and organizational structure of the sciences, and various categories of contextual information that serve to define and illuminate the scientific enterprise in its entirety. Beyond recognition of the rich and diversified contextual frontier on which the history of science can be approached, it is understandable that persons with strong scientific backgrounds choose to lean heavily on scientific texts and other sources of information that constitute the working materials of scientists. Taken from this vantage point, history of science seeks its logical terminus a quo, its métier and rationale, in a degree of mastery of the scientific documents. The scientific texts and the science component of problems formulated become the focus of the investigation no matter which contextual factors are chosen to contribute to the clarification of the overall historical account. The strong focus on science during the early days of the discipline tended to foster additional advanced scientific training in a specific area of science or specialty that would enhance the investigation of a particular research topic. Fellow history of science students planning careers in other than the modern chronological period typically were immersed in the study of other topics and chronological periods. At any rate, some of us discovered early on that we were standing with one foot in the history of science department and with the other foot in another department, such as physics. The two-way associations cultivated during student days have been kept alive in many of our teaching careers and have turned out to be rewarding for both historian and scientist. An attempt must be made here to tease out the possible variant meanings affiliated with the expressions “context of science” and “content of science.” The latter term is referred to alternatively as the “cognitive content of science” in order to differentiate it from those contextual aspects of science that enter into its practice but do not become part of the content. The two terms normally serve to compare history and science as distinctive intellectual endeavors. This is especially the case where the need to make the distinction grows from within the problem focus. It is evident, however, that for certain topics in which the investigation includes a wide range of time-dependent parameters, the terms “content” and “context” may serve no function and merely lead to artificial questions and analyses. And yet it must be evident to every student of the history of science right from the start that, unlike investigations in science proper, where the goal is the acquisition of scientific knowledge as such, the history of science entails not only the study of scientific knowledge but also the study of those contingent concomitants that

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provide information on how, why, where and when the scientific knowledge was undertaken, attained, reported and received. The pursuit of history of science is the study of “science in context.” If agreement can be reached on this emphasis, then it would seem to follow that the focus and goal of the history of science falls quite outside the normal purview of the scientist. A single simulated example may serve to illustrate the problems associated with the search for and analysis of, contextual factors. Why was it that certain scientists working towards the end of the 19th century in a specific geographical locus and laboratory setup were able to take already well-established discoveries and turn them into a fertile field of investigation that opened up an exciting new sub-discipline of physics? A multiplicity of potentially relevant contexts present themselves. Was it sheer brilliance and penetrating insight, or superior training in a narrow scientific specialty? Was it a matter of persistent reflection or the search for clues on how to approach the problem from the perspective of another scientific discipline? Was it reaching an unanticipated solution by expanding on a thought experiment that was seen by others to lie beyond theoretical proof or experimental verification? How important was it to secure financial support at the right time and right place, or to have access to the requisite instrumentation and craftsmen able to construct what was needed, or graduate students able to provide routine but basic experimental data? Other possibilities come to mind: the possession of superior communicative prowess, the knack of presenting aesthetically attractive or mathematically convincing and clearly formulated views on the subject, linguistic facilities conducive to the comprehension of foreign scientific literature and collaborative research at the international level. Or was it that the circumstances were such that many bits of the puzzle finally just jiggled into place to produce an unexpected solution? This simulated query has been posed to illustrate the open-ended and therefore somewhat discretionary nature of the problems encountered in the exploration of contextual factors associated with the growth of science. This undefined terrain surely lies at the heart of the seemingly endless range of ways in which the history of science is cultivated and documented in the literature. From the point of view of the scientist looking in on the discipline from the outside, it is plausible to see that contextual matters, fascinating though they may be, nevertheless are ancillary to the more readily identified hard-core cognitive components of science (where such exist). The history of science is an essentially humanistic activity. It is not a science nor are its methods readily put into a scientific mode of discourse and representation. Like the history of music and the history of religion, the history of science is, in large part but not only, intellectual history or the history of ideas. Beyond being embedded in all aspects of general history, it seems to flourish notably by locating links with the philosophy of science, social and economic history, the practical arts, the scientific instrumentation crafts, the technological and engineering disciplines, and the worlds of business, institutions and organizations.

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The rationale for having drawn such a sharp distinction between the content of science and the context of science has its roots in the search for a meaningful way to accentuate and explore the consequences of the unique differences that characterize the life, activity, and intellectual output of the historian of science and the scientist. The optimum liaison, as I see it, is one in which historians of science and scientists cultivate open-ended cross-disciplinary attitudes and bridges of communication with regard to each other’s goals and contributions. The essence of a real partnership would include critical commentary on each other’s work and even joint collaborative efforts in teaching and research. The seeming professional and disciplinary exclusivity that exists between historian of science and scientist at the formal level by no means rules out the possibility of recognizing expertise in both science and history of science in one person. Sam is a splendid example of this genre of scholars; his contribution to both science and history of science stand secure on their own merits. This is not always the case. There are numerous examples to show that well-known scientists have written books, articles and book reviews on the history of science that leave much to be desired in understanding the historical issues, accuracy in the use of documents and the perpetuation of clichés that the public could do better without. The same criticisms, of course, apply to historians of science who deal with matters scientific that are beyond their comprehension. We have not yet touched upon an issue that has been endlessly debated by historians of science, philosophers of science and scientists. To pose it as a question: would or would not the growth of scientific knowledge in completely segregated scientific communities, cultures, or “manned” universes (if there were such to be examined by an informed scientific arbiter) arrive at similar or indeed identical theories and concepts about the “nature of things”? Different positions on the question – realist or anti-realist – are rooted more often than not in a philosophical point of view concerning the nature of reality and the ultimate truths about the world. On the other hand, the status of a theory relates to matters such as comprehensiveness, conceptual or mathematical simplicity and elegance, compatibility with other theories and predictive potency. These matters will not be examined here, except to bring up possible differences in the views on the subject by historians of science and scientists. How do these differences color their respective interpretations of the growth of science and the choice of topics to be investigated? Are the best theories the sciences have managed to put together mental constructions that point to reality or can those theories be taken to be “out there” waiting to be discovered? The problem, on occasion, has been framed as a theologically grounded metaphor: are the discovered theories, if not exact images of ultimate reality, at least asymptotic approximations of God’s vision of the nature of things? Does God play dice? No, says Einstein. the Lord God is refined (Er ist raffiniert). He is not malicious (nicht Boshaft). That is to say, God has made man as a being capable of arriving at truth, tricky though the access to it may be. Like Einstein, most scientists are realists, but there are many philosophical variants of realism.

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The strongest argument for the realistic position may be the impressive way in which certain theories that have been formulated to cover wide-ranging domains of observable nature interrelate to form a unitary picture. The fit, it has been said, is too convincing to be fortuitous. The other argument for reality is that it provides the scientist with the right kind of firm motivation and heuristic drive for a life in science. An alternative view, one that strikes this historian of science as conducive to maintaining a receptive frame of mind for exploring the incredibly rich and multifaceted frontiers on which science advances, is that the best theories scientists come up with at any time in history are more like mental constructions than realistic representations of nature. The theories are based on the aptitude of scientists for hammering out abstract structures that point in the direction of reality and show the way to the advantages that the scientific resources provide. Perhaps the scientist sees no other option than to accept, as working model, the view that nature is there independent of any kind of human endeavor or philosophical disposition. The moon is there even when no one is looking at it or picking up a beep from one of its visitors. It would seem rational nevertheless to assume that there are aspects of reality that have not been captured because of the limitations of instruments, techniques and finite human minds. The position of pragmatic realism is attractive. It makes room for the constructed character of scientific knowledge and provides a well-anchored, reliable and open-ended picture of the nature of things. Conceivably, the state of affairs at any time in history is one in which the most experimentally secure and the most prediction-prone theories occupy and take over various local patches of experience, thinking and explanation. Maps and other signposts within the boundaries of the patches help scientists maneuver in the domains of their validity. But can they be extended to cover the whole of reality – if reference to the whole of reality makes any sense here? Whether or not a theory is incomplete or is in a near-final or final state that resists further revision, or is amenable to experimental testing, is a valid scientific question. However, it would seem to be an act of hubris and arrogance to talk about a theory of everything because that tends to foster a closed universe of discourse and does nothing to provide an historical explanation about what scientists are up to in their work. Not surprisingly, one finds no reference to theories of everything among chemists or scientists in the life sciences. At a conference on the history of chemistry some years ago I was deeply impressed by discussions on the many different and yet interconnected and complementary ways to engage in the history of chemistry and chemical technology. I felt at the time, and still do, that in chemistry, or in any other scientific discipline, it is best for the historian of science to be perennially on the alert to those new modes of thinking, teaching and conducting research that promise to illuminate the question: where do we go from here? My conclusion at the time was, “I cannot imagine that our new molds of thinking – if that is what we need – would want to include reductionism, or a uniform language of discourse, or identical educational

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backgrounds, or a monism of method for pursuing history. The discipline, I think, should remain open-ended, and this implies radical methodological pluralism. So let us celebrate it.” (Chemical Sciences in the Modern World, edited by Seymour Mauskopf. Philadelphia, 1993. Hiebert on p. 369.). This escapade into the philosophy of realism and anti-realism has been introduced in order to emphasize the importance of the philosophy of science in the formulation of provocative content-focused and context-rich projects of historical investigation. At least that has been my own experience – namely that the philosophy of science more than any other single discipline has been of value to point up historical questions that are worthy of in-depth historical study. A course entitled “Scientists as philosophers of science” provided the right opportunity for collaborative thinking and the formulation of historical problems that gave meaning to how scientists put together and reflect on what they think they are doing in their various scientific endeavors. A personal note about teaching may be in order. The teaching of a general twosemester course in the history of science – the history of the physical, biological, and earth sciences from Babylon to Einstein – was normal fare for most of us in our careers. Offered as a course that constituted science credit for non-science majors, it was designed as a survey of information to which every student was expected to be exposed. Priority was given to world-celebrated scientists, their discoveries and inventions, the characteristic features of different historical time periods and locations and the impact of sciences on society. However, the teaching of would-be historians of science and science majors interested in the subject was more challenging and more rewarding at many levels. This merits comment. Rightly or wrongly it was concluded that teaching at the advanced level could be built around an emphasis on “learning by teaching” (for both teacher and student), rather than around a specific curriculum designed to “cover the field.” Assigned readings, followed by lectures during which students were encouraged to raise questions and make comments, fostered the essential atmosphere for genuine collaboration. The approach opened up problems, puzzles and informal discussions that spilled out beyond the classroom among students who developed their own little preferred enclaves. The talk was often about how one should approach the history of science, or how one goes about formulating meaningful topics and questions in the discipline. Since a cluster of students would plan to be around the department at minimum for four or five years of study and dissertation research, it was tempting from semester to semester to offer a sequence of area-focused courses in place of one or two courses that would be repeated from year to year. Accordingly, the area of teaching that came under the broad heading of the history of the physical sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries actually broke down into semester courses on history of mechanics and the mechanical world view, history of optics, history of thermodynamics, history of the kinetic-atomic-molecular theory, history of physical chemistry and history of quantum chemistry. It was a demanding learning program

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for students and teacher. The collaborative interchange of ideas in the classroom, in discussions over lunch and in seminars and the home added up to a tolerably comprehensive exposure to the post-1800 physical sciences. In some ways the history of science has gone far afield from the views and approaches shaped by those who got in on the professionalization of the discipline in the 1950s and 1960s. One would have expected changes and it is evident that there are major differences of opinion among current historians of science as to which of the changes have been positive and which have muddied the waters. At present the state of the discipline strikes one as being made up of a myriad of different approaches and conceptions regarding what constitutes “science” and “technology.” The discipline appears to be confronted with a situation similar to one in which musicians, composers, musicologists and music historians in the 1920s and for some years thereafter, argued and debated the question: “What is music?” Historians of science at present seem to be riding in every conceivable direction. One wonders whether social-constructivist views have been overstretched to the point of their having less and less to say about what the producers of science and technology take to be the outcome of their own efforts. It comes down to the question: What is science? I will leave it hanging there except to offer a few suggestions. The primacy of fostering and maintaining informed and open-minded liaison and even a collaboration-oriented disposition towards scientists and philosophers of science, has already been outlined. There have been excellent analyses on science and politics, science and religion and science in the world of Marxist thought. Many other topics merit attention. It is high time, for example, to establish research institutes for the history of non-Western science and technology, and to initiate programs for the comparative analyses of different cultures at different times and places. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, was right on target recently when he remarked, “Today, no nation can afford to shape informed policies and take effective action [on critical global issues] without its own independent capacity in science and technology” (Science 303, 13 Feb. 2004, p. 925). Research ventures into the history of science and technology of ancient civilizations and cultures and the developed and developing countries, would facilitate the creation of positive historical reference points and landmarks; and would function as incentive to foster the “independent science and technology capacity” that Kofi Annan calls for. Only international respect for all nations and their independent heritages can lead to true partnerships, which in turn, promote sharing the world’s collective reservoir of scientific and technological knowledge and its tools and expertise. Almost nothing has been said here about the history of science in pre-modern times. Still, I deem it to be absolutely crucial for the life of the discipline to support teaching and research in the sciences and technology from pre-Greek times to the present. This is readily illustrated from my own pre-PhD student days. There was virtually nothing at the time that left me with so vivid a picture of the expansiveness and depth of civilization’s scientific past as a series of seminars and working paleography sessions held in Marshall Clagett’s back veranda in Madison.

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Topics like the intension and remission of forms in the science of mechanics in the Middle Ages took us into the workings of the fourteenth-century Oxford Mertonian scholastics William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead and John of Dumbleton. The first history of science special topics course I taught was on the history of mechanics in the Middle Ages, as Fulbright lecturer at the Max Planck Institute for Physics at the University of Göttingen after the war. I had planned before going abroad to teach a course on the history of thermodynamics. The scientists who got me there and attended the lectures insisted that thermodynamics was old stuff to them; they preferred to be exposed to a new historical topic. Mechanics in the Middle Ages was something they thought would be of great interest to them. This tells one something about scientists’ perceptions about both science and the history of science and it also reveals the importance and fascination of the development of the sciences in the Middle Ages. In conclusion, here is a word about the importance, for scholars worldwide, of research institutes and other organizations that support senior scholars, post-docs and in-process graduate students pursuing careers in the history, philosophy and sociology of science, mathematics, medicine and technology. There are many such institutions but the two that stand out most prominently at this time are the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Technology in Berlin and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. What would we do and where would we be without them? Sadly, as these reflections go to press, the Dibner MIT no longer exists. Professor Emeritus, History of Science, Harvard University

GERALD HOLTON

THE WOMAN IN EINSTEIN’S SHADOW∗

Among Professor Schweber’s wide-ranging interests in the history of science there is one, excellent in itself even if not sufficiently widely shared: attention to the “outsider,” whose role usually remains in the shadows while the spotlight is on the “insider.” In accord with this wise counsel, I shall attempt in these few pages to draw attention to a woman to whom every historian of modern physics is indebted, but whose role is now known in any detail only to a mere handful of specialists – a woman who for 27 years spent more time face-to-face with Albert Einstein than perhaps any other person: Helen Dukas, the self-effacing but ever loyal and extraordinarily effective secretary and helpmate of Einstein. From her first day of employment in 1928 to Einstein’s death in 1955 and indeed importantly for many years afterwards, she was the person who read, typed and often translated Einstein’s correspondence into English, and saw to it that the vast correspondence and manuscripts were saved (in the face of Einstein’s own typical disinterest and neglect of such matters). Without her scrupulous collector’s passion and devotion to Einstein, we simply would now have only a mere fraction of the collected papers of Einstein that have already sparked so much important scholarship. For many decades she was also a member of the household, and therefore saw at first hand both the bright and dark sides of the life of the Einstein families, though remaining throughout a fierce protector of their privacy. On Einstein’s death, she became a Trustee of his Estate according to his Last Will. I have related elsewhere how I first met her in the first of some 50 or 60 visits during the decades. I had traveled to the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton on 13 August 1959 with a recommendation from Philipp Frank to Helen Dukas, in the hope of my being able to consult some of the documents in the Einstein Nachlass while working on a paper for a conference. After Einstein’s death she had been relegated to the large, room-sized vault in the basement of Fuld Hall. That is where I found her, the whole scene illuminated only by her rather insufficient desk lamp. She was sitting at her desk, bent over some papers; a large stack of file drawers loomed in the darkness beyond. I could not help but think of Juliet in the crypt, after the death of Romeo. She was born on October 17, 1896 in Freiburg in Breisgau, the fourth of seven children. According to a Memorial Essay by Abraham Pais, she had to interrupt her Lyceum education at age 15, after her mother had died, and took charge of running ∗

©Copyright Gerald Holton, 2006. This essay is based in part on Chapter 2 of my book, Victory and Vexations in Science: Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and Others (Harvard University Press, 2005).

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 95–98. © 2007 Springer.

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the household and bringing up the younger children. Later she became governess in the home of Raphael Straus in Munich, one of whose new nephews was Ernst Straus. Let me give you a taste of this remarkable woman’s wit and tough realism. As it happened, in the 1940s, Ernst came to the Institute, to be one of Einstein’s assistants. When Ernst introduced himself to Helen, she said, Of course I already know you well: I was present at your circumcision. Or again: In 1965, in one of her letters to me (and we had a correspondence of well over 100 letters altogether), she said the Russian historian-philosopher Boris Kuznetsov “has sent me the English translation of his new Einstein biography. With my letter of thanks, I enclosed two pages of corrections; and I have found since some more.” To the President of the Israel Academy of Sciences she wrote in 1979, “I looked a little into the catalogue [of an exhibit he had sent]. “The Zionist Congress of 1929 took place in Zurich, not München. I was there!”1 Her self-assigned task was now to attend to the continuing correspondence and inquiries, also to find new documents, retype old, fading ones, or handwritten ones, particularly those in Gothic script. Her sharp memory and her utter devotion and reliability became quickly obvious to me. She had been immediately helpful in my initial visit. But more importantly, I soon came to feel that for the sake of the profession of history of science one must somehow capture her experience, her memory of the events and correspondence in which she had been involved. In the absence of serious help, she had been trying to type out a catalog of the papers, correspondence and manuscripts. John Wheeler soon put the matter clearly in a letter of 12 December 1961 to Robert Morison of the Rockefeller Foundation. He recommended that I be given support for a serious project, namely to put the huge heap of correspondence in good order for use by scholars. Only a few had dared to use it so far. Wheeler wrote, “… the great mass of the material is unorganized. Miss Helen Dukas works at this only in a limited way and without assistance or guidance by anyone trained in the history of science. An enormous task requires doing, and it goes ahead only at a niggling pace.” The financial support I looked for (and which was granted) was also needed for a first microfilming of at least the scientific part of the collection. To quote here from one of Helen’s letters to me of those days: “The work you have in mind for me fascinates me, but also fills me with apprehension.” And in another letter, “I have been hoping for something like this to turn up.” I also had to plant in Helen’s mind the idea of eventually allowing publication, so as to provide scientists, historians of science and philosophers of science with the necessary material for future good work. Moreover, she had to be made to see the historical value of the riches all around her and to bring into the vault what she called the “personal stuff,” which she kept at home and which really was needed to supplement the “scientific correspondence.” 1

Her hand in correcting mistakes in Einstein’s published “Autobiographical Notes” is discussed in Seiya Abiko’s article in HSPS, vol. 33, part 2, pp. 203–206.

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This effort succeeded by September 1968, when she had a number of file cabinets brought from the house at 112 Mercer Street into the vault, to be included and catalogued. She also made available documents that she had kept in a safe within that vault; it contained correspondence with Freud, Roosevelt, Romain Rolland and Elsa’s letters. So eventually there were orderly, catalogued folders on Gandhi, Paul Valèry, Bertrand Russell, Chaim Weizmann, the Queen of the Belgians, Tagore, Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, Bernard Shaw, as well as the light-hearted verses of Einstein—all those joining the files of Schrödinger, Pauli, Curie, Lorentz, Bohr, Born, Ehrenfest, Infeld, Hilbert, Bose, de Broglie, Bohm, Debye, Eddington, and so on, to Meitner, Minkowski, and so forth to Wentzel, Wien and Zeeman. By 1973 there were 130 such file folders completed and catalogued, some very bulky, with Ehrenfest’s having no less than 165 items. And from about 1976 on, the strong editorial staff of the Princeton University Press project greatly expanded what we had started. By the time John Stachel finished in January 1980, he had 42,000 items in his big index, which he wrote me had been initially based on what he called our “little index.” The Foundation money I had raised and which Harvard administered was primarily to provide her with a salary for her work (which, to her amusement, made her my research assistant) and it also gave her the companionship of physics graduate students at Princeton, selected by John Wheeler and myself. These students were hired to come for a few hours or days per week; they did excellent work in cataloguing and also brightened Helen’s life. To help with the work at hand, I made periodic visits to the Institute myself, at least monthly, sometimes weekly, starting in the early 1960s, and staying for longer periods as Member of the Institute in 1964 and as Visitor in 1971. Let me confess that I came to respect and even love Helen—much like one of my favorite aunts—and I think a little of such feelings might have been true for her too. We trusted each other fully. After the first few years, whenever she was occasionally ill, she would permit me to work in the vault on my own or to supervise the students, having given me the code for opening the vault and the keys for the files and the safe within. During that whole decade of visits and collaboration and correspondence, I recall not a single time when we were out of sorts with each other. In 1964, she had the idea of giving me a present. It was precious indeed—the set of reprints of Einstein’s published papers that had been kept near his desk and on a few of which he had made corrections and additions. (These are noted in the published Collected Papers.) The set was bound in three volumes and on the first page, Helen had written a dedication to me: “To my helper….” Among the countless other direct and indirect results of these first years of putting together the Archive, I will just mention one: On October 2, 1962, Tom Kuhn wrote Helen and me for examples of how we were cataloging the Archive, so as to serve as a model for ordering the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen. Einstein and Bohr, wherever they were then, still exchanging ideas, must have been amused by that news.

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It is a pitiful irony that Helen, in part because of the delays caused by the Executor, Dr. Nathan, did not live to see the publication of the first volume of the projected 30-volume series of Einstein’s Collected Papers. She died on February10, 1982, at age 86, having been in full possession of her lucid faculties to the end. From the late 1960s on, I and others had urged her to fulfill her own plan of moving to Jerusalem, where she had relatives and perhaps to continue from time to time to attend to the papers she had so lovingly dealt with through most of her life. In a letter of February 11, 1971, Yehuda Elkana of the Hebrew University offered her a room at the Library where the Einstein Archive was to be transferred upon the decision of the Trustees (as in fact it was, about a decade later) and also offered to produce living accommodations for her. She could have added much to illuminate the newly acquired materials in the Archive. But it was not to be. Yet, she lives on, having been an “outsider” for the history of science, now inside the Collected Papers. Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of History of Science Harvard University

DAVID KAISER

THE MUTUAL EMBRACE: INSTITUTIONS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

In twenty years of scholarship on the history of modern physics (following his previous careers in theoretical physics and the history of biology), Sam Schweber has been at the forefront of one of our field’s greatest and most enduring challenges: linking the high-brow world of ideas with the grubby, earthly world of lucre, power and the “all too human.” Across a terrain pocked by contentious debates, in which caricatures of extreme positions often stand in for difficult analyses, Sam has gently pushed for a vision at once common-sensical and radical: of course the ideas of modern physics depend on the vagaries of time and place, proclaims Sam. The dependence comes not in the form of abstracted Weltbilden or Zeitgeisten, but in the concrete bricks and mortar of institutions. Historically-contingent, culturallyspecific institutions tether the netherworld of theory, Sam has taught us. If physics looked different in Wilhelmine Germany than in Cold-War America, look not (or certainly not only) to the writings of Immanuel Kant or John Dewey. Look for the means by which physicists have conducted their research, interacted with their patrons and trained their students. Look to physicists’ changing institutions – with all their stubborn time- and place-ness – to understand their epistemology. In this “mutual embrace” of institutions with epistemology, Sam has shown, we will find the keys to understanding both – a potent lesson to guide us into a new century of scholarship on science, technology and their histories. The salient feature that Sam has worked so hard to understand is the “pragmatic,” “utilitarian,” or “empiricist” flavor of so much of the theoretical physics produced within the United States during the twentieth century, often in stark contrast with the Erkenntnistheorie-style of the great Continental theorists. Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr spent sleepless nights debating the epistemological and metaphysical consequences of the emerging quantum theory; Wolfgang Pauli and Erwin Schrödinger eagerly linked their latest theoretical work to Eastern mysticism and Jungian depth psychology. In describing his youth, Werner Heisenberg carefully perpetuated the image of the lone boyhood thinker sitting on a rooftop contemplating Plato’s Timaeus, even as the riots and looting following World War I erupted beneath him. Not so the Americans. Many turned, as Richard Feynman did, to stories of handyman craftwork in their younger years (fiddling either with crystal radio kits or chemistry sets). Others, such as Edwin Kemble, John Van Vleck and John Slater, drew their contrast with the Bohrian style even more explicitly, proudly declaring that physical theories need neither be right nor true, merely useful for the job at K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 99–103. © 2007 Springer.

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hand – and that job was almost always “explaining observable experimental facts,” Van Vleck made clear.1 What caused these divergences in attitude and approach, indeed in guiding epistemology? Was it simply that scholars in the German sphere were by nature more philosophical while Americans remained – as de Tocqueville had described them a century earlier – practical to their bones? In a series of articles and books, Sam has enlightened all of us: institutional factors, specific to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, molded a characteristically-American approach to theory. Physicists’ wartime work refracted this interwar approach, amplifying certain strands within the Americans’ toolkit while quietly banishing any remaining vestiges of a Continental approach. The Cold War, with a host of new institutional relations binding physicists in the United States to practical affairs, calcified their narrowly-pragmatic epistemology. Only with the end of the Cold War has this particular mutual embrace of institutions and epistemology begun to unravel. Theoretical physics was a rarity within the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. It only began to grow in this country, Sam has shown, as the result of a deliberate policy on the part of leading experimentalists during the 1920s. Realizing that the new developments in areas such as quantum theory required theoretical and mathematical skills that they simply did not possess, these experimentalists eagerly sought aid from private philanthropies (such as the Rockefeller Foundation) to send the most promising young Americans over to Europe to finish their theoretical training – people like Kemble, Van Vleck, Slater, I. I. Rabi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Condon and many others. Only in Cambridge, Copenhagen, Göttingen or Zurich could these Americans “learn the music,” in Rabi’s famous telling and not just “the libretto” of research in theory. These newly-trained theorists then returned to the United States to build up their own domestic training grounds.2 When the young guard of American theorists began their institution building, they did so within the American university system – and that made all the difference. Unlike the prevailing structures in England or on the Continent, physics departments in American universities housed theorists and experimentalists together, side-by-side, instead of in separate institutes across campus or across town. Further breaking with the European model, most American departments hired more than one professor of theoretical physics, allowing several departments to diversify their course offerings and research programs. Graduate students typically began to specialize in one track or the other during their third year, having “grown up” in a common set of coursework until then. Theorists’ dissertations usually revolved around interpreting their neighboring students’ experimental results, pedagogically reinforcing the close ties between budding theorists and the “empiricist temper.”

1

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John Van Vleck’s eulogy for John Slater, ca. 1976, as quoted in S. S. Schweber, “The empiricist temper regnant: Theoretical physics in the United States, 1920–1950,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 17 (1986): 55–98, on 63. Schweber, “Empiricist temper.”

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Some program-builders, like Slater, worked hard to make the contacts between theorists and experimentalists even stronger, designing new laboratories and even sketching his own architectural drawings. The new buildings’ infrastructure would enhance the crucial links between theorists and experimentalists; floorplans would inscribe epistemology. New summer schools (such as the Ann Arbor sessions, starting in the late 1920s) and conference series (including the Washington conferences, beginning in the mid-1930s) helped to solidify the growing community of American theorists, as did the 1930s boom in nuclear physics: as universities across the country set up their own cyclotron facilities, more and more experimental teams needed the partnership of in-house theorists. The close attention American theorists paid to empirical data and pragmatic calculation during the 1920s and 1930s was no accident, Sam has demonstrated, nor was it merely the working out of some ethereal “national character.” Their epistemology had been forged within specific institutions.3 When American physicists left their campuses for war work in the 1940s, these lessons in the proper roles of theory and theorists received strong reinforcement. “Gadgetry,” in the popular euphemism of the day, required theorists to “get the numbers out.” First-principles deductions and elegant closed-form solutions – characteristics that had been so prized by Victorian Wranglers and Prussian Kulturträger – had little traction in the messy worlds of the radar and atomic bomb projects. Rather, theorists had little choice but to devise pragmatic, ruleof-thumb means of being useful and devise them in a hurry. Working closer than ever with teams of experimental physicists – as well as with electrical and chemical engineers, metallurgists and others – theorists drew upon and solidified their interwar approaches. As the clouds of war began to lift, physicists made plans to restructure their home departments, designing new laboratories to bring theorists and experimentalists still closer together, all in an effort to recapture the “spirit” of Los Alamos.4 Soon after the war, many of the rising stars of American theory, such as Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman, brought these wartime lessons to bear on outstanding problems within their own discipline. Where the great European leaders had glimpsed the seeds of yet another epistemological revolution in the stubborn infinities that had long plagued quantum field theory, Schwinger, Feynman and others applied their war-tested techniques and developed jury-rigged, but effective, means of taming the troubling infinities. Beautiful it was not; ultimate truth, unlikely. But at least they could calculate once again – and calculate numbers of direct use to their experimentalist colleagues.5 3

4 5

Schweber, “Empiricist temper”; idem, “The young John Clarke Slater and the development of quantum chemistry,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 20 (1990): 339–406; and idem, “Big science in context: Cornell and MIT,” in Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research, ed. Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 149–83. Schweber, “Empiricist temper”; idem, “Big science in context.” S. S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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During the early years of the Cold War, theorists found their interwar epistemology further strengthened and reinforced by new institutional arrangements. Their spin-off of “operations research,” largely an outgrowth of radar projects, enshrined their decades-old mantra of “empiricism and computability.” Theorists’ epistemology rapidly became the official blueprint for military strategizing, weapons planning and even corporate management – adding a new series of institutions in mutual embrace with the prevailing epistemology.6 Meanwhile, the unprecedented scale of funding for physics from the federal government (and from the military branches in particular) tied theorists’ pragmatism to billion-dollar budgets. Patronage from the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission significantly buttressed theorists’ phenomenological turn, Sam has suggested: as a new generation of American theorists splintered their time between defense-oriented summer studies, JASON panels, and research on nuclear interactions, the narrowly-utilitarian techniques called for in the former swept easily across the rest of their work as well.7 Only with the collapse of the Cold War has this amalgam been challenged, plunging the physics community into a period of deep crisis – both the epistemology of reductionism and the institutions of government-backed “big science” have begun to crumble, leaving the future of Sam’s beloved first profession in question.8 Whatever the intellectual direction(s) physics will take in this new century, Sam has taught us insightful ways to chart the unfolding developments: by remaining ever watchful of the evolving embrace between new institutions and epistemologies. As Sam has taught us, over these many years, to pay special attention to institutions, he has become an institution in his own right. Scores of graduate students have benefited from his gentle guidance, his kind words of encouragement (always delivered when they are needed most), and his stubborn refusal to give up on students’ growth as scholars. Sam knows that as epistemology is grounded in specific institutions, so too are communities. His constant efforts to foster communities, especially among the rising generation – by organizing special workshops and colloquia, by setting us aright with “Star chamber” proceedings when our dissertations drifted off the completion-course, and by plying us at all times with cookies and good cheer – have made all the difference. He has touched our

6 7

8

M. Fortun and S. S. Schweber, “Scientists and the legacy of World War II: The case of Operations Research (OR),” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 595–642. S. S. Schweber, “The mutual embrace of science and the military: ONR and the growth of physics in the United States after World War II,” in Science, Technology, and the Military, ed. Everett Mendelsohn, Merritt Roe Smith, and Peter Weingart (Boston: Kluwer, 1988), 1–45. S. S. Schweber, “Physics, community, and the crisis in physical theory,” Physics Today 46 (Nov. 1993): 34–40; idem, “Some reflections on big science and high energy physics in the United States,” Rivista di Storia della Scienza 2 (1994): 127–89.

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lives as he has bolstered our scholarship. It is this final mutual embrace – of Sam with his legions of admiring and grateful students – which means most to me of all. Program in Science, Technology, and Society, MIT and Department of Physics, MIT

HELGE KRAGH

HISTORY, SCIENCE, AND HISTORY OF SCIENCE

In 1950, the British historian Herbert Butterfield observed, no doubt correctly, that “it is the scientist rather than the historian who has shown the greatest eagerness for the history of science.” Nearly two decades later, A. Rupert Hall faced the same issue in his presidential address to The British Society for the History of Science, published under the title “Can The History of Science Be History?” It was only in this period, roughly 1950–1970, that history of science emerged as a professional and scholarly activity, different in scope and content from both science and mainstream history, yet closely related to them. Today we can confidently claim not only that our discipline can be history, but that it is in fact history. Over the last several decades there has been a marked shift away from “scientists’ history” towards general history and, in particular, history of culture and ideas. Yet we have a long way to go before our field is recognized as a necessary and integral part of history. In many history departments, at least in Continental Europe, historians of science are looked upon as foreign animals with no right to occupy a niche in the historians’ zoo. Today, when Ph.D. programs, conferences, seminars, and graduate and postgraduate courses are the rule rather than the exception in academia, Butterfield’s observation may seem to be a voice from the past. But I think it is more than that and that it is still worth reflecting on the relationship between scientists and historians. It is only fortunate that scientists, whether active or retired, often have a great interest in the history of their field or, more rarely, in history of science in general. In this respect Sam Schweber is both typical and exceptional. Typical because his background as a research theoretical physicist made it natural for him to investigate in great technical details aspects of modern physics, most impressively in his book QED, a dense analysis of the development of quantum electrodynamics. And exceptional because his first excursions in history were not in history of physics, but penetrating analyses of the Victorian evolutionary worldview, ranging from the Darwinian revolution to the nebular hypothesis. The relationship within our profession between “historians who write about science” and “scientists who write history” has never been easy. Today we would like to believe that there is no tension, as it is generally agreed that our business is to write history of science, in the sense of science in history, and not follow the scientists’ more narrow and streamlined conceptions of the historical development. Yet the problem has not disappeared, it has only taken on a new shape. There are some in our profession who call for a thoroughly historicized and intellectually independent history of science completely “liberated” from the scientists’ mode of thought, while others (probably a minority) feel that a person who is unable to K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 105–107. © 2007 Springer.

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understand in a technical sense the science of the past had better find something else to write about. This is clearly not a question of either-or, and fortunately there are scholars who have no trouble doing both kinds of history, or mixing them in whatever proportion is found appropriate. But the problem is real enough and in need of being openly addressed. To put it crudely, does science matter in history of science? If a crude question deserves only a crude answer, as far as I am concerned it is affirmative. In some modern contextual history of science there is, at least implicitly, a danger of giving priority to the context and ignoring what it is a context of—namely—the content of science. In the so-called science war—has armistice been declared?—historians of science have not been in quite the same front line as sociologists and cultural critics, but we have received our share of the fire. To many scientists involved in the undeclared war it looked as if we historians were part of an unholy alliance seeking to undermine the authority of science. Perhaps this is an inevitable, if unintended result of scholarly history of science, but the metaphor of war is in any case misleading and dangerous. In my view, we have an obligation to think seriously and critically about our relationship to the scientists and their communities. It would be nothing less than a disaster if history of science became divorced from science in any strong sense, if it proceeded purely according to its own standards and towards its own goals. Science is an important part of society and culture, but it cannot be dealt with in just the same way as other socio-cultural components. To understand the unique role that science plays and has played in society, it is indispensable (but of course not sufficient) to understand the scientific texts and experiments. Since its first issue in 1912, Isis has been “devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences” (as its subtitle reads). These cultural influences of science, as well as the cultural influences on science, are of paramount importance, but they should not be identified with history of science. Science has long ago become a profession, scarcely distinguishable from law, business or medicine. It has lost its innocence, if not its magic. Few scientists today feel that their work brings them closer to God or carries with it significant moral implications. Although science is not primarily seen as a calling, the elements of calling, edification and sheer intellectual joy are still important motives for engaging in scientific research. Modern chemists would undoubtedly express themselves differently, but I think they would have no problem appreciating what the chemist and alchemist Johann J. Becher wrote in 1669: “The chymists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapour, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that I may die if I would change places with the Persian King.” The moral and edifying aspects of science has only recently attracted the interest of historians, who have begun to recognize them as an important historiographical theme. They figure prominently in some of Sam Schweber’s works, in particular in his book on the atomic bomb and its ethical dilemmas. In the Shadow of the Bomb is significantly subtitled “Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the moral responsibility

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of the scientist.” As science has ethical implications, so has its history. In fact, the civilizing and moral aspects of history of science were an important factor in earlier conceptions, such as George Sarton’s vision, but of course we no longer want to use history of science in the ideological and missionary way that characterized Sarton’s program. History of science has traditionally forged close links with philosophy of science, as exemplified by Imre Lakatos’ widely shared claim that “philosophy of science without history of science is empty, history of science without philosophy of science in blind.” However, the two branches of scholarship have always been separate and lately the partnership seems to have weakened, if not actually divorced. Today, many philosophers find history of science to be irrelevant, and only few historians, anxious as they are to emancipate their field from former allies, pay serious attention to what is going on in philosophy of science. There are reasons for this situation, but I nonetheless find it deplorable and hope that in the future cooperation between history and philosophy of science will again be strengthened. While there is enough to worry about, the great progress that has occurred since the days of Butterfield should not be forgotten. On the whole, the development of history of science has been a most successful venture, and I have confidence that the success will continue in the new millennium. One thing is certain. As long as history of science can count individuals such as Sam Schweber among its ranks, it will never be dull. Professor of History of Science, The Steno Institute, University of Aarhus, Denmark

MARY JO NYE

PARALLEL LIVES AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

The process of reading, writing and thinking about what has happened in the past and about what will occur in the future, inevitably compels reflection on the complementary roles of interior individual action and exterior force of circumstance in effecting historical change. In the history of science, the conviction among many scientists that their work constitutes discovery of the laws and architecture of the natural world complicates the usual problem of historical determinism by the special claim of scientists to objective knowledge corresponding to a world independent of individual lives. When Sam Schweber turned from doing physics to doing history in the mid1970s, he entered his new field at a time when many scholars in the history of science were shifting away from the philosophy of science and the history of ideas that had dominated the field since the 1940s. Biography had been out of fashion for some time, with the Victorian-era “Life and Letters” genre of scientific biography still surprisingly alive as a model of outmoded biography. By the mid-1970s, Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions had influenced a generation of students to think about textbook traditions and scientific communities, and Robert K. Merton’s essays on communities and networks had been collected into The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Practical Investigations.1 Steven Shapin, Arnold Thackray and Lewis Pyenson argued the need to study “who the guys were” by using quantitative and prosopographical techniques to uncover the 2nd and 3rd raters who had done science, rather than perpetuating stories about the big guys and heroes.2 Feminist studies would soon further call into question the standard story of male heroes.3 Scientific heroes, like scientific objectivity, appeared to be headed down a side road following the ongoing successes in the 1970s of the methodological approach of the social construction of science and the journal Social Studies of Science.

1

2

3

Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Practical Investigations, ed. N. W. Storer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). Steven Shapin and Arnold Thackray, “Prosopography as a Research Tool in History of Science: The British Scientific Community, 1700–1900,” History of Science, 12 (1974), 1–28. Lewis Pyenson, “ ‘Who the Guys Were’: Prosopography in the History of Science,” History of Science, 15 (1977), 155–188. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper, 1980); and Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 109–112. © 2007 Springer.

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Yet, by the 1990s, the status of scientific biography had changed dramatically from the 1970s and biographies were filling bookstore shelves and publishers’ catalogues. As Michael Shortland and Richard Yeo note in their volume Telling Lives in Science, a 1994 poll on reading habits in Britain showed biography to be the most popular category of non-fiction book and considerably ahead of contemporary fiction (19% to 14% of readers).4 Certainly, in the realm of scientific biography, the multi-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970–1990) played a huge role in the transformation of some history-of-science scholars into biographers, a mission applauded in Thomas Hankins’s well-read 1979 essay “In Defence of Scientific Biography.”5 R.S. Westfall’s huge biography of Newton, Never at Rest, appeared in 1980 as one of an increasing number of new biographies of Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Einstein and other giants and near-giants of scientific history. After having worked as a theoretical physicist for roughly twenty-five years, it might have seemed natural for Sam to cultivate the history of physics as his field of interest in the history of science in the mid-1970s. His first publications, however, focused on Charles Darwin, in whom Sam became especially interested after reading Howard Gruber’s Darwin on Man (1974). Sam’s friend Frank Manuel soon urged Sam to make greater use of his technical knowledge as a quantumfield theorist in his historical work, since most historians do not have this kind of expertise.6 In a series of articles during the 1980s, Sam took up the history of theories of elementary particles, focusing on ideas, individuals and research communities. In his 1994 book on the history of QED, Sam focused especially on four figures in the history of quantum electrodynamics: Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and Sin-itiro Tomonaga. In one of his earlier articles on Darwin, Sam similarly focused not on Darwin alone but on Darwin and John Herschel: two parallel lives.7 More recently, in writing a scientific biography of Hans Bethe, Sam has again set up a biographical portrait through chapters pairing Bethe and Peierls, Bethe and Gamow, Bethe and Teller, Bethe and Weisskopf, and Bethe and Oppenheimer – the latter chapter expanding into the book In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist.8 4 5 6

7 8

Michael Shortland and Richard Yeo, eds. Telling Lives in Science: Essays on Scientific Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 1. Thomas L. Hankins, “In Defence of Biography: The Use of Biography in the History of Science,” History of Science, 17 (1979), 1–16. S. S. Schweber, “Writing the Biography of a Living Scientist: Hans Bethe,” pp. 159–196 in Ramesh Krishnamurthy et al., eds. The Pauling Symposium: A Discourse on the Art of Biography (Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Libraries, 1996), on p. 162; and Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), preface, p. xi. S. S. Schweber, “John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A History in Parallel Lives,” Journal of the History of Biology, 22 (1989), 1–72. S. S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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Why parallel lives? Plutarch pioneered the method in his Lives, written in the second century AD, as Plutarch narrated a rich history told in pairs of lives, one Greek and one Roman, with comparisons of the character and fate of men such as Romulus and Theseus or Fabius and Pericles. In Plutarch’s history, as in Sam’s most recent book on Oppenheimer and Bethe, the device of parallel lives is used to depict the exercise of individual responsibility and moral character. In doing so, Sam explicitly eschews the aim of providing a contrast “between good guy and bad guy,”9 aiming instead to illuminate the subject’s strengths and to make clear his limitations.10 It is a method that works as well, for studying the history of scientific theories, by weighing the merits of rival theories and of choices made in a local context at a particular time. As noted above, one of the problems in historical writing is balancing the roles of individual actors, broader communities, and social and economic events or “forces” in historical outcomes. Sam’s historical approach is gauged to measure “the roles culture and institutions play in shaping metaphysical outlooks, building confidence and molding character,” as well as “the role of contingency in transforming lives” and in making history.11 There seems little doubt that Sam’s own education and experiences in physics have informed his practice of history. He knows first-hand the rituals of apprenticeship in laboratories and seminars and in styles of thinking and professional values. Sam experienced professional socialization first in two different cultures of physics: Princeton from 1949 to 1952, when Oppenheimer was director of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Cornell, from 1952 to 1955, where Sam worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Bethe. The Cornell culture was the more congenial, but in both settings Sam experienced the colloquia and seminars, the lunches and parties, the heated talk of a collective research program, and the quest for discovery and understanding. Modern scientific biographies and histories of science must take these group experiences into account, as Sam has done not only in his biographical writing, but in essays such as “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the US, 1920–1950,” which defines a pragmatic style of physics in the US by contrast to Europe.12 Group dynamics are a key to understanding originality and creativity, just as are the scientist’s detailed research pathways and the psychological processes of the experience of discovery. Sam has been quite direct in describing his historical work as studies of remarkable individuals who are “off-scale”: “individuals whose creativity astounds and whose ability to synthesize overwhelms.”13 Darwin was such an individual, just 9 10 11 12 13

Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb, p. xv. Schweber, “Writing the Biography of a Living Scientist,” p. 173. Ibid. S. S. Schweber, “The Empiricist Temper Regnant: Theoretical Physics in the US, 1920–1950,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 17 (1986), 55–98. Schweber, “Writing the Biography of a Living Scientist,” p. 159.

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like Feynman or Bethe. “My concern with off-scale individuals,” he has written, “undoubtedly stemmed from the fact that I was socialized into a culture that attributes the past successes of science to the accomplishments of great individuals, usually men, who had the ability to read nature better than others.”14 He learned, he has said, that theoretical physicists share a “common reverence for the accomplishments and the capabilities of the leading practitioners…and derive a common joy of soul from the understanding” of this work.15 Sam’s work challenges future historians to negotiate, as he has tried to do, the overlapping and sometimes confrontational methodologies of intellectual history, social history, and biographical history. As a theoretical physicist, Sam brings to his historical work the sense of exhilaration that characterizes many physicists in their belief that theirs is a spiritual quest for understanding the fabric of the world. Yet, Sam also demonstrates in his historical work that it is “the community that authenticates the integrity of our scientific understanding” and that this integrity depends on the “moral commitment on the part of scientists to be truthful and trustworthy members of this community.”16 Sam’s achievements as a historian of science lie not only in the historical work that he has accomplished but also in the personal ways in which he has gone about building a sense of community in the history of science and inspiring generations of students and scholars to take up his challenge for writing history. Oregon State University, USA

14 15 16

Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb, p. xii. Schweber, QED and the Men Who Made It, p. xv. Schweber, “Writing the Biography of a Living Scientist,” p. 170.

BY DIANE B. PAUL AND JOHN BEATTY

DISCARDING DICHOTOMIES, CREATING COMMUNITY: SAM SCHWEBER AND DARWIN STUDIES

It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘invention,’ and the Malthusian ‘struggle for existence.’ It is Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes.Karl Marx

In the mid-1970s, Sam Schweber left physics to join a number of younger scholars in the quest to elucidate what David Kohn, in his 1975 doctoral thesis, had termed “Darwin’s path to natural selection.” Both authors of this essay came to know Sam in the early stages of this quest, when he was simultaneously a student of the history of evolution and a contributor to scholarship on the genesis and development of Darwin’s theory. Thus Diane Paul joined Sam (at his urging), in auditing a Harvard course on the history of evolution taught by visiting professor Camille Limoges, whose 1970 book, La sélection naturelle: étude sur la premiére constitution d’un concept (1837–1859), Sam very greatly admired. And on showing up for the first day of his first course at Harvard in Fall 1978, John Beatty found that he had Sam as well as Diane as a student, a prospect that might have made any instructor quake. But Sam turned out to be the most gentle and helpful of students (while Diane was somewhat more devilish). Although Sam had already finished “The Origin of the Origin Revisited” (1977), in which he advanced a new interpretation of the methodological issues in the development of Darwin’s theory, in his trademarked modest and self-effacing way, he told John nothing about himself apart from the fact that he was a physicist. Thus John was left to attribute his extraordinarily thoughtful questions and remarks to some sort of brilliant, untrained intuition. And in typical fashion, Sam became the mentor and John the mentee. To John, Sam was an angel sent to minister specifically to him. Then he realized on how many young people Sam lavished just as much care. That generosity of spirit is equally evident in Sam’s scholarship, where from the start, he showcased the work of younger scholars, including those whose interpretations differed from and even contradicted his own. For Sam, doing history was simultaneously a cognitive and a social endeavor, for it encompassed the building and nurturing of an intellectual community. Given Sam’s background, one might also have expected him to adopt what at the time was termed an “internalist” approach to the subject, and perhaps to rely on sheer analytic ability, rather than plunge into the even-then voluminous published literature and extensive archival sources on the Darwinian revolution. K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 113–118. © 2007 Springer.

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Nothing could have been further from the case. All of Sam’s essays on the history of evolution, including “The Origin of the Origin Revisited,” which at eighty-seven printed pages had the heft of a small book, “Darwin and the Political Economists: Divergence of Character” (1980), which at ninety-four pages was even longer, “The Wider British Context in Darwin’s Theorizing” (1985), “The Correspondence of the Young Darwin” (1988), and “John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A Study in Parallel Lives” (1989) aimed to link intellectual content and social context, and drew extensively on archival and often obscure primary sources. At the time Sam entered the field of Darwin studies, scholarship was coming increasingly to focus on the meticulous examination of Darwin’s unpublished manuscripts and letters with the aim both of elucidating the cognitive process that led to the theory of natural selection, and of linking that process to wider intellectual, social and cultural currents. Particularly contentious at the time among Darwin scholars was the significance of Darwin’s September 1838 reading of Thomas Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” Immersing himself in Darwin’s notebooks and correspondence and the books, articles and reviews Darwin was known to have read (in geology, philosophy, history, and political economy – even the chemistry texts he read as a teenager) and those he might presumably have read, Sam argued that, while Darwin had comprehended all the essential elements of his theory before he read Malthus, nonetheless, his encounter with Malthus’s essay on population played a critical role in allowing Darwin to integrate the various pieces into a coherent whole. Sam also emphasized the significance for Darwin’s theorizing of a slew of other political economists, historians, sociologists, scientific agriculturalists, and philosophers of science – including Quetelet, David Brewster, William Whewell, John Herschel, Charles Babbage, David Hume, James McIntosh, Dugald Stewart and Adam Smith and his disciples, whose influence on the development of Darwin’s thought was much less well known. He showed just how many and diverse were the influences that converged to allow Darwin to apprehend the principle of natural selection, ranging from the chemical texts and investigations of his adolescence, from which he learned to conceptualize organisms as (self-reproducing) machines, to Whewell, Herschel and Babbage, from whom he inherited a Newtonian style of theorizing, to Dugald Stewart and other writers on scientific agriculture, from whom he learned a maximalization approach, and to a host of Scottish political economists, who taught him that the elements of chance and necessity could be coupled in a lawful theory, that the individual should be the central unit of analysis and that whole systems could be understood in terms of their individual parts and interactions. In later works, Sam turned his attention from Darwin’s first great insight, natural selection, to his second, the principle of “divergence of character,” which he invoked in order to explain how so many different forms of animals and plants had arisen from one or a few original forms. In “Darwin and the Political Economists” and “The Wider British Context,” Sam extended the analysis of the impact of the Scottish

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Enlightenment and especially Scottish views on the workings of the market, on Darwin’s thinking about divergence. We feel that this is Sam’s boldest contribution to Darwin scholarship. It fills the largest gap in Marx’s appraisal of Darwin’s work (see Marx’s reference to “division of labor” above). Unsurprisingly, this has also been Sam’s most controversial contribution. So we would like to discuss it in more detail. The Schweber thesis, in brief, is this. In order to explain diversification of organic form, Darwin employed a line of reasoning similar to Adam Smith’s account of the division of labor. According to Smith, individuals who adopt more specialized occupational roles in the economy acquire competitive advantages. Similarly, for Darwin, organisms that are able to occupy unused niches in the economy of nature also gain competitive advantages. Darwin never acknowledged Smith as the source of his views on evolutionary divergence. Instead, he cited the comparative physiologist, Henri Milne-Edwards, who had formulated a principle of the “physiological division of labor,” according to which organisms work more perfectly to the extent that their parts are more highly differentiated and serve more specialized functions. As Sam notes, Milne-Edwards had pointed to the similarities between his principle and the reasoning of “economists.” But Darwin was reluctant to credit the economists. Although Darwin was indeed indebted to Smith, he preferred to acknowledge Milne-Edwards, an established naturalist, rather than tarnish his views by association with political economics. Or so the argument goes. The Schweber thesis has been challenged by the historians of economic thought, Scott Gordon (1989), Margaret Schabas (1990) and William Tammone (1995). Gordon argues, among other things, that there is no evidence that Darwin ever read Wealth of Nations. He notes that Darwin never cited Smith in connection with discussions of evolutionary divergence and left no record in his notebooks or diaries of having read the book; and no copy of the book was found in his library. Thus, there is no reason to believe that Smith, rather than Milne-Edwards, was the ultimate source of Darwin’s views. Schabas notes, even more pointedly, that Darwin never hesitated to cite the political economist Thomas Malthus as another source of his views (on population growth and the inevitability of competition for scarce resources). So why would Darwin hesitate to cite Smith in connection with divergence? Tammone argues that Sam misinterpreted the positions of Darwin, Smith and Milne-Edwards. In defense of Sam’s thesis, we would like to make a few points. First, with regard to whether Darwin read Smith, perhaps he did not after all. But as Sam himself explained, there were other well-evidenced routes by which Darwin had become acquainted with Smith’s views, including texts in political economy on which Darwin took notes. Second, we agree with Tammone that Sam’s interpretations of Darwin, Smith and Milne-Edwards are open to question in certain respects – but not in the respects that matter most. Indeed, correctly interpreted, Darwin’s views are much more

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similar to Smith’s than to Milne-Edwards’. Darwin and Smith were both interested in the process of transformation by which one form gives rise to many, and both emphasized the role of competition in this process. Darwin argued that variants of a species that are able to occupy a new niche are able to escape competition with other members of the species and thus prosper. Smith had argued that individuals who take up more specialized occupations are able to compete better against fellow group members (to provide a service that they could trade for other services). MilneEdwards, on the other hand, was not (at least explicitly) interested in the process by which new, higher, more perfect forms appear. And he had hardly anything to say about competition among individuals. Finally, with regard to the apparent inconsistency between Darwin’s frequent citations of Malthus-the-economist and his hesitation to cite Smith, it is important to consider that Malthus’s reasoning about population size and the inevitability of competition – especially in the sixth edition of his essay, the version that Darwin read – concerned not just humans but life in general. Thus the difference was not just a matter of political economy. (Schabas’s query about the inconsistency of referring to Malthus but not Smith is just one small point in a rich essay, but it is a smart question that made us think!) In the first two paragraphs of his essay, Malthus made clear his concern to expose the impediments to the progress of mankind. Malthus immediately proceeded, in the third paragraph, to identify the chief obstacle: “The cause to which I allude is the constant tendency in all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.” The fourth, fifth and sixth chapters are mainly about “plants and animals.” Malthus’s main point here was that, “The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and the race of man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.” Thus, Malthus would at least have us believe that he was bringing a basic biological principle to bear on political economics, rather than the other way around. That is also the direction of influence that Darwin preferred to advertise. But there was no way to present Wealth of Nations as biology. (For a very different understanding of Malthus and his influence see Winch 2001). We feel that the Schweber thesis on divergence of character is deeply telling – even if it is not the whole story – and worth pursuing in connection with Darwin’s general debt to political economics. In any case, whether he was right or wrong with respect to individual details, the cumulative effect of Sam’s deeply-researched essays was to raise the level of Darwin scholarship by demonstrating that a social analysis of Darwin’s “path to natural selection” could also be subtle and sophisticated. In 1977, when “The Origin of the Origin” was published, a debate still raged between scholars who attributed Darwin’s grasp of the principle of natural selection to his reading of Malthus, tending as had Karl Marx to view natural selection as simply the generalization to nature of the world-view of the English bourgeoisie, and others who insisted that the critical element was actually Darwin’s experience of plant and animal breeding. Although Sam’s own work focused on Darwin’s

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debt to moral philosophy and political economy, he never thought it necessary to make a simplistic choice between the technically-scientific and social aspects of his thought. Nor did he claim that in showing how Darwin’s reading of specific books and essays shaped the development of his theory that he had exhausted all there was to say about the importance of context, social, institutional, or personal. He acknowledged, indeed emphasized, that Darwin did more than read books, consequential as these were; that he was also a teenage chemical investigator, a nature-lover, the motherless son of a domineering father, a respected member of scientific societies and breeders’ clubs, an active experimentalist with both plants and animals, a devoted friend, brother, and father, a loving husband, and an invalid, among other roles and relationships that importantly influenced the nature and direction of his work. Indeed, from the beginning, Sam linked the affective and cognitive aspects of Darwin’s life. In “The Origin of the Origin,” discussing Darwin’s long reluctance to publish and the quasi-religious language he uses in the “Essay” of 1844, he cites the lines Darwin appended to a letter his devout wife Emma wrote to him shortly after they married: When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed and cryed over this. C.D. The Darwin who emerges from Sam’s scholarship is a person with a rich emotional life, which shapes his scientific choices. He both shows and inspires affection and loyalty, loves deeply, craves recognition, seeks father-surrogates, fears being ostracized (and is determined to overcome that fear) and gains an enormous amount of sheer pleasure from his work. His feelings, especially for his father and his wife, provide keys to understanding the appeal of natural history as well as specific intellectual preferences. In Sam’s account, there is no dichotomy between reason and emotion, cognition and feeling. Instead, we see how emotion helped shape Darwin’s intellectual inclinations and aims. Thus, in comparing the divergent intellectual paths of Herschel and Darwin, Sam argues that Herschel found a longed-for serenity in the deterministic physical sciences, whereas Darwin was psychologically able to accept the uncertainty that accompanied his own study of natural history. It is also worth noting that Sam has modeled in his life as much as his writing how history of science should be conducted. In his work, Sam describes the importance to Darwin of a zoological community that provided him with specimens, information and emotional support. His own life exemplifies the spirit of cooperation that he recognizes as having animated the members of Darwin’s network. Thus Sam’s career is testimony not only to the fact that there is no need to choose between social, scientific, and structural analysis or between cognition and feeling, but most important, that history is – or should be – as

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much a cooperative activity as physics, and that intellectual communities do not automatically come into being, but must be consciously created and constantly cultivated. Political Science Department, University of Massachusetts Boston Philosophy Department, University of British Columbia REFERENCES Gordon, Scott. 1989. “Darwin and Political Economy: The Connection Reconsidered.” Journal of the History of Biology 22:437–459. Schabas, Margaret. 1990. “Ricardo Naturalized: Lyell and Darwin on the Economy of Nature.” In Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. III, Classicals, Marxians and Neo-Classicals, ed., D.E. Moggridge. Hants, England: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited (published for the History of Economics Society). Schweber, Silvan S. 1977. “The Origin of the Origin Revisited.” Journal of the History of Biology 10:229–316. —— “Darwin and the Political Economists: Divergence of Character.” Journal of the History of Biology 13:195–289. ——. 1985. “The Wider British Context in Darwin’s Theorizing.” In The Darwinian Heritage, David Kohn, ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 35–69. ——. 1988. “The Correspondence of the Young Darwin.” Journal of the History of Biology 21:501–519. ——. 1989. “John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A Study in Parallel Lives,” Journal of the History of Biology 22:1–71. Tammone, William. 1995. “Competition, the Division of Labor, and Darwin’s Principle of Divergence.” Journal of the History of Biology 28:109–131. Winch, Donald. 2001. “Darwin Fallen Among the Political Economists.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145:415–437.

DOMINIQUE PESTRE

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND INDUSTRIAL TECHNOSCIENCE TODAY: THE DIFFICULT QUESTION OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Sam Schweber is an exceptional historian and someone whose knowledge in science (and in physics in particular) is constantly put to perfect use in our field. These points do not deserve sophisticated or very long arguments—they are plainly obvious to us all. Sam Schweber is also, and this paper is dedicated to him for that reason, a great humanist, someone attentive to people and individuals, and someone attentive to political problems and social needs. Sam is the most attentive person to students and colleagues you could dream of—you immediately notice it when you arrive in Harvard as a foreigner—but also to ‘big questions’ at the interface of science and society. Following his example, in this short text I would like to consider what is now commonly called the question of ‘accountability’ in and around today’s sciences—who is responsible for what and to whom—and more precisely, how to properly conceptualize accountability around technoscience and techno-scientific products. In what follows, I will freely elaborate, deliberately mixing theoretical tinkering and particular case studies. I am not advanced enough in this project to present a systematic argumentation – but enough to give an idea of what I would like to do in the near future. Thus, today I will only give a quite general frame of interpretation and sustain the argument with two particular exemplars. HOW TO CONCEPTUALIZE THE QUESTION OF ACCOUNTABILITY The Various Cités de Justice Let me immediately consider the following set of related notions: responsibility, participatory politics, public sharing in techno-scientific decisions – and of course ‘accountability’ which is supposed to have become ubiquitous in our post-modern age.1 I know that not everybody uses these terms carelessly, but I still believe that 1

A perfect place to get an idea of the ubiquitous character of these notions, under the general heading of ‘good governance’, is the European Community website. For a more academic presentation of the question, see Blondiaux & Sintomer ( 2002).

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 119–133. © 2007 Springer.

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their dominant usage tells us more about common political ideologies and wishful thinking than about what is going on ‘in the real world out there’. Paraphrasing Honneth’s criticism of the common usage of ‘identity politics’, I would say that the problem is (1) that talks asserting a growing accountability in our societies only consider a tiny and selective set of examples; (2) that the examples that are offered to praise today’s accountability all go in the same direction and give only a rosy, positive picture of social relations, and (3) that, because these talks consider accountability a new preoccupation and because they lack historical insight, they have difficulties describing precisely the tensions between various practices and norms of accountability today. I am not saying that nothing has changed for centuries; I am saying that accountability has always been a central concern, that it has always been precisely monitored by people in power, and that it has always been thought of and practiced according to explicit or implicit regimes of justice.2 Let me suggest precisely how to tackle the question. I would start with the idea that the notion of accountability presupposes what Boltanski and Thévénot have called a cité de justice, a universe of reference telling what is good and just, what the moral and social expectations are—and, just as important, what institutions and people are legitimated to define and implement theses norms. In their book, Les économies de la grandeur, Boltanski and Thévénot describe cités de justice as the common worlds people inhabit, the embedded political and moral philosophies that social actors mobilize to give meaning to their daily activities and decide what is fair and unfair. They stress a second aspect that makes the universal discourse about an expanding and general ‘accountability’ problematic – namely that there are of course several such common worlds at any given time; that competing sets of values coexist; that modes of moral justification are numerous – and that people refer to one or another of these at different moments and in different situations. Before trying to transcend these different cités de justice in a Hegelian kind of Aufhebung, it is probably better to identify a certain number of them and the values they promote. It is only in a last move that we might possibly propose our own normative stance. I say ‘possibly’ because nothing proves that one unique set is or should constitute a socially useful and workable solution.3 Let me give some flesh to that first scheme. One such universe of reference has to be la cité marchande, the universe of the market economy with its set of accepted practices and norms. It is certainly the one now (I mean since the 1970s) most often imposing its criteria as the universal ones. Ideologically, it has become hegemonic through battles fought on economic and political levels against the welfare state and its principles; practically, it has won legitimacy through many actions: a restructuring of managerial rules on the business level; a new hierarchy between financial and industrial values; a drastic change in patents and intellectual 2 3

Fraser & Honneth (to be published in 2004), 124–125. Boltanski & Thévénot (1991).

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property rights; and a capacity to act on the supra-national level, bypassing states’ constraints while imposing the new basic rules structuring international relations (think of the World Trade Organization). In that cité marchande, accountability is first and foremost to shareholders – even if we now hear more and more about the social and environmental sense of responsibility of the world of business (business is now said to be accountable in social, ethical and environmental terms).4 A second growing world of justice is what I would call the new cité civique, the new civic universe of reference built around actors from ‘civil society’, who range from international and environmental NGOs to the anti-globalization movement. The emergence of that new cité (which is not as unified as the one previously discussed) has to do with the changes that affected the social body itself in its composition (reduction of blue-collar population, growing number of well-educated people, etc.) as well as in its subjectivities (growth of individualism and of identity politics—whatever these expressions exactly mean). The emergence of this second world of reference also has to do with the loss of influence and legitimacy of the state as the dominant regulating body of the former period. Because a large segment of the social body experienced disenchantment with the promises of the national, welfare, developmental and laicistic state of the post-war and decolonization periods, new social legitimacies appeared on the scene. The consequences are that social perceptions and certainties are not the same anymore. In science, belief in an obvious and continuous progress is eroding, and the rationality of science and public action is contested. Fewer people believe that technoscience is evolving in the right direction; many think that the main regulatory rules concerning industrial technoscience are deficient; and decisions made by experts meeting behind closed doors are suspect. A third cité de justice, this one diminishing and—in the poorest parts of the South—nearly dismantling, is the cité politique, the universe of traditional politics with the state as the determinant actor. Because I cannot now be more precise about all the cités we have to identify and because the list of cités, or worlds of reference, cannot be defined once and for all, since it evolves with time, I will only suggest that the list should include les cités inspirées, worlds determined by God’s laws, which are quite vibrant again these days, and la cité industrielle. Suffice it to say that each one is structured by a set of norms and values defining what is good, by legitimate bodies and institutions to reassert the norms when needed, by accepted ways of arguing internally, and by ways of dealing, through arguments and Realpolitik, with the other cités de justice. Freely borrowing from Boltanski and Thévénot, I would characterize the ‘common worlds’ of the 1950s and 1960s, at least in Europe, in the following way: on the one hand, there were three major ‘cités de justice’ defining what made a ‘good society’: (1) the civic world of the nation-state, personified by representative bodies like the state apparatus or by institutions like the labor contracts signed by worker 4

For more details, see Pestre (2003).

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unions and managers under its auspices; (2) the industrial world of the enterprise, interested in efficiency and planning, but also in integrating the workforce into the company as a long-term partner; (3) the hierarchical world of tradition, the topdown modes of conceiving authority and greatness. Together, these three common worlds of social justice defined a dominant way of being in society, stressing respect for labor and merit, for integration and social protection, for social progress and the global and rational development of the (national) group. The social-democratic welfare states of Scandinavia are probably the best examples of this. Then on the other hand, organized around quite different references for justice, was the market world, with its appetite for more movement, laissez-faire, and opportunistic action, but which still accepted partial state regulation and contractual relations between social groups. Over the last decades, a new ‘common world’ has emerged, a new set of values for social behavior and justice—and it has progressively reordered the dominant sense of justice. This new common world is quite diverse and took its first shape among industrial managers in the late sixties/early seventies when they confronted the near impossibility of managing the workforce by means of the classical, Taylorian and Fordist tools. In this new ‘common world’, personal engagement and participation, networking and responsibility—but of course mobility and flexibility—were the values that mattered. In this cité, a great person is someone said to be able to overcome the ‘old-fashioned’ oppositions between work and leisure, paid and unpaid, public and private, profit-sharing and volunteer work, business and ethics. Derived from this cité are the notion of governance advocated by all European governments and think tanks; business engagements for ‘social and environmental responsibility,’ so in vogue at the moment; and most actions in the underdeveloped world, when shaped by NGOs funded by the North. This new ‘spirit’ is quite powerful; it organizes a large part of what goes on in today’s values, and it would be wrong not to use it as a starting point when striving for efficiency in defining which policy to advocate and follow.5 The Core of Democracy: A Proposal Let me now consider the second step of my reflection: what to do with this variety of worlds of reference? Should we stop after the first step, claiming that this variety is the way societies work? Would it be better, on the contrary, to try to choose between them, to define THE one best set? Or should our first rule be to contribute to the maintenance of ‘healthy biodiversity’ and help the weakest worlds of reference resist elimination? To try to answer these questions, I will start with two quotations. 5

A good introduction to that new order of things is found in Boltanski & Chiapello (2000). See also Veltz (2000). For an incisive critique of the notion of governance, see Moreau Defarges (2001); on the NGOs in the South, Kalaora (1999).

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First quotation: (…) une démocratie n’est pas un régime politique sans conflits, mais un régime dans lequel les conflits sont ouverts et en outre négociables (…) Sous ce régime, le conflit n’est pas un accident ni un malheur; il est l’expression du caractère non décidable de façon scientifique ou dogmatique du bien public (…) La discussion politique est sans conclusion, bien qu’elle ne soit pas sans décision.6

The point I want to make with Ricoeur, the author of these lines and one of the most stimulating French moral and political philosophers, is that in political matters and decision-making processes, it would be morally wrong and pragmatically inefficient to imagine we could scientifically, rationally, or—to speak theologically— dogmatically find the one best solution. No science, no system of ethics, no human brain alone can provide such a solution in political matters. To be more to the point, we can say that the solution cannot be conceived through a purely intellectual process, but that the best solution can emerge only through democratic procedures— even if these procedures are never perfect. Discussion and reason are essential in human societies, but we can only make decisions, not reach logically constraining conclusions. If Ricoeur is right, the implications are immediate for a first kind of normative stance we should take in these matters. My second quotation is taken from an economist influential in political circles in France. He writes: La démocratie, en empêchant l’exclusion par le marché, accroît la légitimité du système économique et le marché, en limitant l’emprise du politique sur la vie des gens, permet une plus grande adhésion à la démocratie (…) La démocratie, pour que l’économie de marché soit acceptable, doit donc avoir son mot à dire dans les décisions de dévolution des revenus et des richesses.7

If I were to freely generalize Fitoussi, I would say that it is essential for market democracies—which is a way to define our societies—to keep various parallel and competing means for the devolution of material and symbolic goods. If we were to give one single ‘law’, I suggest, following Fitoussi, that it should be that democratic societies rely in an essential way on not obeying one unique set of norms and not depending on one unique distributive system, that recognition of people and distribution of goods are performed by different logics—and that this state of affairs is good in itself. If societies were governed solely by market rules, for example, if nothing else were to counterbalance them, societies would disintegrate very quickly and come to violence, riots and terrorism. In this sense, political space is decisive, since it is open to other actors than those dominant on markets. Symmetrically, a world completely dominated by (the rational action of) an omniscient state, or whose allocation of goods would only be carried out by democratic procedures (by mere voting procedures, for example), would lead to as dramatic a disaster. No doubt the 6 7

Ricoeur (1991). Fitoussi ( 2002).

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dreams of rational action and of completely transparent democracy were integral to modernity—but twentieth-century history made us very cautious: we know too well now how well-identified minorities can be systematically excluded by means of totally democratic procedures. If majority votes could decide everything, the most enormous injustices would result. In the spirit of increasing social diversity, however, attention should not be limited to these two aspects. It should rather be extended to other rules and sets of norms, those of meritocracy for example. In short, here are my suggestions: (1) In what follows, I will consider that it is vital for market democracies to keep independent and competing means for the devolution of goods. Democratic societies rely in an essential way on not obeying a single set of norms and on not depending on a single distributive system. Equally disastrous would be a world whose allocation of goods would be brought about only by democratic decision or managed only by rational analysis and action (through an enlightened elite or state); (2) I also believe that it would be intellectually misleading, pragmatically dangerous and morally wrong to imagine that it would be feasible and good to make decisions in society based solely on reason and science. Certainly we have to make collective decisions and be informed by all kinds of knowledge, but political discussion and contradictory debates involving ends (What should be the future shape of our society?) and means (What should be the democratic tools?) remain and must remain the key. No science will ever lead to compelling and definitive conclusions and nothing can replace the expression of conflicting worldviews and common worlds. The New Relations between (Techno-)Science and the World of Production Today The third point of my scheme will not be opened by a quotation. I nevertheless need an idea of what has been going on over the last decades, an idea of the directions in which things have been changing, an idea about today’s equilibrium between the different cités de justice and between them and science. My claim here is that we have moved toward a neo-liberal regime of economic and political regulation dominated by finance and with weakened states, and that this change has contributed to the radical transformation of the scientific landscape. The university system has lost its centrality in most natural sciences, and venture capital, pension funds, and NASDAQ have become key actors in the science business. In biotechnologies, but also in computing, electronics, material sciences, nanotechnologies, pharmaceuticals, and so on. Today, even mathematics is affected. In this shift, lawyers have become central players. One result is that private knowledge has come to dominate public knowledge—to the point where excessive contractual and legal concerns may now be slowing down the whole process of innovation. For scientists, this has also meant other ways of working, other ways of publishing and of dealing with colleagues and results.8 8

On this aspect, see Pestre (2003).

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Let me give some precision to this point and look at patent laws and the definition of intellectual property rights. Since the early 1980s, in the United States, proprietary rights have been granted to more and more fundamental work, to research previously considered public science and far upstream of any development scheme. Constraints traditionally attached to patents in terms of precise description of the invention and its usages have been relaxed, and patentability has been opened to laboratory interventions in living entities. This started with the patenting of a bacteria in 1980 and of a genetically modified mouse in 1988 and continued up to the patenting of DNA sequences. Today, patenting is also common for software, electronic data banks, management tools, and so on.9 Many jurists speak of a new movement of enclosure. They mean that this move in patent regulation signifies a privatization of the ‘commons of the mind’ (public science) that recapitulates, several centuries later, the privatization of the ‘common land’ in early modern Britain. We know that this movement led to a massive redistribution of wealth, but that it was justified by the new productive possibilities it offered. Economic historians asserted that this new property regime limited overuse of a land owned by ‘nobody’ and that it created incentives for large-scale investments. The question now is how to use this metaphor—whether it is true that public science leaves too much knowledge lying fallow, whether things are always improved by privatization, and who the losers and the winners might be.10 This drastic modification of property rights on scientific knowledge corresponded to fears vis-à-vis Japan in the 1980s—a country which was then said to be poised to outstrip the United States in new technologies, primarily because the United States had not been protective enough of its fundamental discoveries In a recent article, however, Coriat and Orsi proposed a complementary picture. They stressed that NASDAQ was also transformed into a stock market for high-tech companies at precisely the same moment that pension funds were allowed to be invested in both venture capital and NASDAQ companies—in short, that change in patent law was part of a larger scheme aimed at making fundamental science first and foremost a product on financial markets.11 Can we assess the effects of this new set of laws on the dynamics of the knowledge enterprise? In part yes, even if the debate is still heated. Twenty years later, and even if stakes are tremendously high, some lessons can indeed be drawn. Today I will limit myself to one particular aspect of the debate, namely the idea that patenting should favor innovation by rewarding the inventor while yet abnegating the function of a kind of sinecure that would constrain further innovation. An equilibrium must be maintained, so goes the argument, between a fair return on investment for the

9

10 11

On this aspect, see the special issue of Daedalus, Spring 2002. In it, Richard A. Posner comments (criticizing the nearly perpetual patents that can now be taken on ‘business methods’): “Imagine if the first person to think of the auction had been able to patent it.” (on page 5). Boyle (2002). For Japan, see Buderi (2000); Coriat & Orsi ( 2002).

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inventor and protection of the common good, which needs a quick diffusion of the invention. The most commonly accepted idea is that if the new equilibrium between private and public science initially gave a push to knowledge production, it might well be that the move went too far. The practice of taking out patents on quite fundamental work may have ended by limiting the number of potential contributors, by making basic research too expensive, and by slowing down the innovative principle. This seems to have been largely recognized by the large companies themselves, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry. Bemoaning the fact that there are too many patents on gene fragments, ten of them chose to recollectivize parts of their data and to make access to them free. In the same spirit, the NIH largely moved against the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 during the second part of the genome project. Their policy was to create large public databases, which often led the people who had banked on profit-oriented databases to lower their prices.12 One could finally anticipate the next section by saying that many people in this field refuse the doxa that the private is better and the non-private is necessarily inefficient. Citing the Linux experience—an open-source software that all could develop for the good of all and that continues to seize market sectors from Microsoft and others—they claim that collective work done in a free way is not only a positive value that deserves protection, but a very effective way of inventing. The question is of importance, because this libertarian practice is quite old in computing (it started in California in the 1960s) and because it has become an explicit target for large software companies. The latest instance to date is that, largely under private companies’ pressures, Linux practitioners were excluded from the international and intergovernmental forum that gathered in Geneva in December 2003. IDEAS ON HOW TO MANAGE ACCOUNTABILITY TODAY It is time now to take the plunge and make some concrete proposals. To do a proper job, I should by rights systematically consider the principles and interactions of as many ‘cités de justice’ as possible and the way each of them opposes or is ready to compromise with the others. That is the only way to get a fair idea of what is at stake between them—and thus to help us imagine possibilities for reflection, action and accountability. I cannot do this for the moment, however, so I will content myself with giving just two abbreviated such examples. This will allow me to show how I intend to work in the coming months—even if what I have to say now remains on a purely schematic level. This too-short a presentation might also give the impression that I am mainly advocating against states and markets—and so favor NGOs and ‘civil societies’ actions. That would be a mistaken impression, based mainly on the two case studies I started with. I do not want to say that ‘civil society’ ways of acting would always be the best solution, that it would be without 12

The articles in Daedalus, Spring 2002, comment at length on these questions.

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major drawbacks, that states should no longer play a role—or that markets are only the bad guys in the story. La cité marchande and its Relations to Other Cités Let me start with the cité marchande in its relation to the state and the new cité civique—as far as science and technology are concerned. If we accept the principles I have just suggested (notably the importance of having competing modes in the allocation of material and symbolic goods and the importance of defending the autonomy of the various cités de justice) and if we accept that there is a growing privatization of knowledge today (which I have evoked in the last paragraphs), working to guarantee the plurality of knowledge-producing institutions as well as protecting their different moral economies and value systems seems a good principle for action. It might be translated in one of the following ways: (1) It seems worth defending the institutional and financial autonomy of the university structures, because the universities are becoming the weakest link in the science system. This defense necessarily implies a parallel principle, namely that of being open to a wide array of social demands. In particular, universities should not align themselves too quickly with market demands, and substantial freedom of decision should be left to the universities as collective bodies of practitioners (I still consider academic freedom a social plus, something to be defended). I also suggest we follow Daniel Kleinman’s advice when he recommends that ‘co-operation with citizen groups or NGOs be recognized as part of the service component considered in [university] tenure’ when collaboration with industry is considered. If the latter is normal, then why not to have the former become normal too?13 (2) For the institutions whose official function is the protection of the ‘public good’ (like the American NIH), this could mean carefully examining spheres that private interests do not consider. A classic example is chronic diseases in developing countries; another is the production of knowledge in agro-sciences. As many population geneticists in agronomy will tell you, competition with the large agribusiness companies is terribly unequal. Monsanto and others have thousands of people working to produce one GMO after another. As soon as they are ready, the pressure is enormous to have these GMOs immediately disseminated throughout the world. On the other hand, there are only some dozen population geneticists trying to assess the effects these disseminated GMOs might have on ecosystems. If scientific or state institutions consider it useful or prudent to make these assessments before commenting on the possible long-term effects of GMOs (and to allow them to be sold on markets), public money should be made available to back this kind of research.

13

Kleinman (1998).

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More generally, these institutions should use as a model the large technoscientific companies (like the former Bell Laboratories) that have their patent officers systematically survey what is going on in the companies to assure that everything is being put to good use. These institutions should set up committees whose function would be to emulate companies’ patents officers. Drawn from various interest groups, these committees should systematically identify what is not being tackled in the private sector, they should issue recommendations as to what is ignored or understudied, and the NIH and other bodies must declare themselves accountable to the recommendations made by these committees. (3) A third aspect is what kind of social accountability might be devised for companies other than to its shareholders (which is and will remain, fairly enough, the dominant aspect). The point is central, since techno-scientific products affect us all and profoundly alter our lives. Let me take the example of the commercial logic at work in environmental issues. According to Dasgupta, markets are not the most appropriate institutions for protecting the environment. The structural reason he gives is that they ‘cannot be relied upon to provide us with prices which would signal true environmental scarcities’. Environmental resources are considered free by most techno-industrial interests (or are consistently undervalued), and there is little incentive to economize their use. If we can believe Dasgupta, and if we agree that something major is at stake here in terms of the ‘common good,’ it may be essential, for example, to join ecologists and economists in urging public authorities to constitute groups of experts to estimate ‘the value of ecosystem services’.14 In the same way, the question of which institutions should be allowed to define, de jure or de facto, the norms of the ‘common good’ for technoscientific products is decisive. One example is the Codex Alimentarius and the function it has fulfilled since the WTO decided to make it the scientific reference for international trade. Established in 1962 by the WHO (World Health Organization) and the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), the initial role of the Codex was to provide minimum safety norms for food; governments and producers, of course, remained free to employ stricter standards. Since its de facto redefinition by the WTO, the Codex Alimantarius now means ‘what can be demanded in terms of a product’s quality for international trade’; stricter rules can thus be declared mere unfair trade practices—and regions or governments that propose tighter regulations on food production (or even certain explicit labeling on these products) can be sued. Again, if we believe that the cité marchande is using science in an excessive way here, then we must find ways of addressing the situation.15 What are the possibilities for other kinds of accountability of business? First, there are the national and international laws and regulations proposed by 14 15

Dasgupta (2000). Romi (to be published).

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states—even if this solution seems to have lost ideological currency and even if it seems less practical with the weakening of the state as a major regulatory body in a globalized world. Another possibility, as experienced by Nike (with child labor) and Shell (with the environment), is the threat of boycott. But other approaches are indeed conceivable. I will mention only one that has started to take shape very recently. It is a reaction to the multiplication of ‘charters of corporate responsibility’ proposed by most large companies nowadays. In these texts, whose social and political functions are quite varied, company managers state what their social and environmental commitments are. Rating agencies (comparable to those established on the financial market) have thus started to appear—the most famous one in France being established by the former head of one of the major trade unions. Their idea is to assess what companies actually do in social and environmental terms, to compare their doings with their claims, and to make these assessments public. The new rating agencies claim that this will help give more weight to these voluntary business commitments, that it will help make these charters public contracts, and that they will make companies more accountable—which, I think, is hardly a naïve notion. (4) We need not be too pessimistic, however, and I would like to give an example demonstrating that social actors (researchers in parallel with other people in society) have to (re)define their norms of justice and worlds of accountability in creative ways every day—but that they have to do it in accordance with larger social choices. The study conducted by Maurice Cassier and Jean-Paul Gaudillière in Paris concerns the genetics of breast cancer. In their study, the authors identify different (and conflicting) modes of research in this domain, along with their concomitant moral and political economies. They show that alternatives do exist and that social choices are indeed at stake at the core of research itself. The first mode they identify is organized around the emblematic and much-admired figure of the scientist-entrepreneur, who depends on the new law regulating the patenting of genes and on the trend toward private insurance companies managing medical care. For the scientistentrepreneur, the best solution (which is simultaneously scientific, medical, social, and financial) would emerge from commercial operations in a free market. The company Myriad Genetics provides the perfect example here: a start-up controlling most of the field through key patents granted on very general grounds, doing research, selling genetic tests, and trying to keep competitors at bay.16 However, other effective modes of research do exist. One of them relies more upon the association between public research and patient associations (the case of Marie-Claire King at the University of California, who in 1990 identified the first gene associated with a predisposition to breast cancer), another on the hospital-based practice of the clinical profession in the context of a public 16

Cassier & Gaudillière ( 2000).

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social security system (the case of France). The three modes (but other modes do exist) imply different types of networks and social values and the Cancer Research Campaign in the United States patented its works to preserve the public accessibility of genes against Myriad Genetics. It fought for a reversal of the American patent law on living entities, it contested the constitution of commercial monopolies in the health sector, it petitioned for the establishment of public rules for assessing the clinical utility and the social use of Myriad Genetics tests—in short, it advocated another ‘common world’, another cité de justice.17 In short, different regimes de facto coexist, and the list of possible arrangements is not limited. There is no evidence that one mode of production (of knowledge and of society) is superior to another—and I strongly believe that this diversity has to be protected. The State and the New cité civique I would now like to make four remarks regarding states’ relations to the new civil society initiatives. 1) Because business and the state can be very closely entwined and both fear interference from ‘civil society’, I would first stress the importance of protecting the initiatives taken by the new cité civique. In terms of science, that might mean protecting non-governmental research organizations that have been created over the last decades. I have particularly in mind the case of the Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendante sur la Radioactivité (CRII-RAD), an independent French group of experts (mainly scientists) created in the 1980s that monitors the information provided by France’s highly secretive nuclear state-industrial complex. This group proved crucial in its ability to measure radioactivity and then circulate the information. The mad-cow epidemics also argue for an active defense of a multiplicity of independent expert sites: all studies (in Britain as in Europe) have shown that the techno-administrative milieus in charge of handling the various cases in Britain regularly withheld seminal information. Another decisive aspect is the conflict of interests in the testing and marketing of new drugs at a time when, at least in the United States, it has become not so unusual to have the company itself pay to test the effectiveness and undesirable effects of new drugs (and to use profit-oriented private companies rather than more ‘neutral’ bodies like state-governed or academic laboratories). The growing influence exerted by drug companies on the evaluation of their own products leads to research being directed in a narrow way and, according 17

Thus, while most biotechnology companies oppose any intervention by the Food and Drug Administration on these questions, the Breast Cancer Coalition and many academic geneticists and specialists in public health support it.

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to Angell and Relman, sometimes to ‘compromising the integrity of the clinical research enterprise’.18 Here, I believe academics could prove decisive in protecting these structures from state and industrial interests and interventions. 2) A second point regards the organization of formal expertise—since state administrations remain central in the setting up of expert committees. This topic has been thoroughly studied and I am pleased to say that, at least in Europe, real progress has been made in opening up these structures. It is now rather common to have committees that include people representing all concerned parties, to have minorities publicly express their disagreement in expert reports, and to have different kinds of review processes (expert committees as well as public hearings, citizen conferences, etc.). What has been won here is the right for people who are not scientists, company engineers, or state officials to be full members of the process from the very beginning and thus be able to frame the questions right from the start. 3) This, however, raises one of the more complicated questions—namely the relation to be established between these various kinds of power. Conflicts of democratic legitimacy are unavoidable here, and there is no ideal prefabricated solution. Elected bodies can claim they are legitimate when defining norms and establishing controlling bodies (e.g., for health or food), but one might claim that democracy is not reducible to these, that other practices can compete for legitimacy, that involving citizens in core decisions is often beneficial. In the matter of techno-scientific products, some governments in Europe have proposed means by which key questions could be publicly assessed and debated. The movement started in Denmark with what has since been dubbed ‘consensus conferences’. The question remains, however, as to who has the last word and how to establish explicit reciprocal commitments. If ‘citizen conferences’ are held, governments should declare beforehand whether and how they intend to act on their recommendations. 4) The problem becomes even more complex as soon as we address intergovernmental agreements. These are crucial to techno-scientific products and the environment (because of the globalization process), but very little will come of them if governments do not deal in good faith. Unfortunately, recent events are not reassuring. Two examples are the Montreal Protocol on the elimination of methyl bromide in pesticides, and the Kyoto Protocol. The first was signed in 1987, has been in force for fifteen years, and use of that particular chemical 18

Angell & Relman ( 2002). On page 109, they write: “Drug companies are increasingly funding trials not to discover new agents and new approaches to treatment, but to get FDA approval of me-too drugs and to buttress marketing claims.” Angell & Relman even provide an interesting example about integrity. After having “tried to stop publication altogether [of a report on one of their products] a company demanded 7 to 10 million dollars in damages [from the group that had been asked to organize the clinical trial of their product] on the grounds that publication had hurt the company’s financial prospects.”

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agent has dropped significantly. At the conference in Nairobi in November 2003, however, the American administration refused continued adherence to the protocol and asked that it be allowed to raise its own quantities. Since the Montreal Protocol is the only functioning international agreement of its kind, this move was a great disappointment. As for the Kyoto Protocol, you all know that the Bush administration is not party to it—thus reversing what the Clinton administration had already decided. But if the simulations constructed by scientists are to be believed, the consequences of not acting now might be terribly damaging. Means of action here are limited—even if Ulrich Beck and others have been working on this question and have forwarded some interesting proposals.19 TO CONCLUDE The questions to be considered are still numerous, it is most obvious, and I intend to consider them more carefully in the future. I guess, however, that one can get a feel for my way of posing the question. My main point is that talking about accountability and responsibility might become an empty exercise if we do not try and spell out the many situations in which the questions are concretely posed, if we do not spell out precisely the various interests and sets of norms that make our societies—if we do not load them with all their specificities and contradictions. It might also become an empty exercise if we do not spell out and confront our normative stances, if we do not discuss what we consider, explicitly or not, a ‘good society’. Scientific intellectuals should realize in particular that they do and must fulfill different functions in society. As academics, they are specialists in their field and try to advance knowledge, which is fine; they often accept another role and become experts for various groups in society—and in particular for the state or for companies—which is also fine, even if we have no reason to forget Kleinman’s suggestion. They should also remember, however, that they also might be social critics—and that they are citizens, like everybody else, with everything that implies. Directeur d’Etude, EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) REFERENCE Angell, Marcia & Relman, Arnold S., ‘Patents, profits and American medicine: conflicts of interests in the testing and marketing of new drugs’, Daedalus, Spring 2002, 102–111 Beck, Ulrich, Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitalter (Suhrkamp, 2002) Boltanski & Thévénot, De la justification, Les économies de la grandeur (Gallimard, 1991) Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) Boyle, James, ‘Fencing off ideas’, Daedalus, Spring 2002, 13–25 Blondiaux, Loïc & Sintomer, Yves, ‘L’impératif délibératif’, Politix, 15 (57), 2002, 17–35

19

Beck (2002).

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Buderi, Robert, Engines of Tomorrow (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000) Cassier, Maurice & Gaudillière, Jean-Paul, ‘Recherche, médecine et marché: la génétique du cancer du sein’, Sciences Sociales et Santé, 18, 2000, 29–50 Coriat, Benjamin & Orsi, Fabienne, ‘Establishing a new intellectual property rights in the United States, origins, content, problems’, Research Policy, 31 (7–8), décembre 2002 Dasgupta, Partha, ‘Science as an Institution: Setting Priorities in a New Socio-economic Context’, World Conference on Science, Science for the 21st century, A New Commitment, (Paris: UNESCO, 2000), 264–271 Fitoussi, Jean-Paul, ‘Démocratie et mondialisation’, Revue de l’OFCE, hors série, mars 2002, 7–18 Fraser, Nancy and Honneth, Axel, Redistribution or Recognition? A Political – Philosophical exchange (London: Verso, to be published in 2004) Kalaora, Bernard, ‘Global experts: la religion des mots’, Ethnologie Française, XXIX, 1999, 513–527 Kleinman, Lee, ‘Beyond the science wars: Contemplating the democratization of science’, Politics and the Life Sciences, 16(2), September 1998, 133–145 Moreau Defarges, Philippe, ‘Gouvernance’, Le Débat, 115 (mai-août 2001), 165–172 Pestre, Dominique, Science, argent et politique, un essai d’interprtation (Paris, INRA, coll. Sciences en Question, 2003) Posner, Richard A., ‘The law and economics of intellectual property’, Daedalus, spring 2002, 5–12 Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Postface au Temps de la Responsabilité’, Lectures 1, Autour du politique (Paris : Seuil, Essais, 1991) Romi, Raphaël, ‘Codex Alimentarius: de l’ambivalence à l’ambiguïté’, to be published Veltz, Pierre, Le nouveau monde industriel (Gallimard, 2000)

JOAN RICHARDS

THE CHARACTER OF TRUTH

I was first introduced to Sam Schweber in Harvard’s history of science department, in the 1970s. At the time I was deep in a study of Victorian mathematics and Schweber was captivated by John Herschel.1 Soon thereafter Schweber shifted his gaze to the twentieth century world he knows so uniquely well, but I remained in Victorian England, where Herschel still speaks to me with Schweber’s quiet, gentle voice. One of the central things that he, that is Herschel, says is: “The grand and indeed only character of truth is its capability of enduring the test of universal experience, and coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair discussion.”2 Herschel offered this definition of truth to fend off a certain kind of defensive religious view of science, but the writing that surrounds his description shows that for him scientific truth was at best tenuously distinguished from the religious “truth that sets us free”. Herschel’s views of scientific and religious truth-seeking flowed seamlessly into one another as in his description of natural philosophers as “the best and noblest benefactors of our species” whose work has “raised them above their fellow mortals, and brought them nearer to their Creator.”3 In the 1970s and 1980s, when Schweber and I were traveling together in Victorian England, Susan Cannon was recognizing this view of truth as an essential aspect of the world of the early Victorians; the way Cannon put it was that “for cultured early Victorians, natural science provided a norm of truth.”4 The defining feature of this Victorian view of truth was its unity, the conviction that all that was scientifically or religiously valid was encompassed by a single truth. Cannon saw this unitary view of truth as having been “shattered” after 1859, when “moralists and theologians” refused

1

2 3 4

Schweber’s work on Herschel appeared in a number of places, most notably in the “Introduction” to S.S. Schweber, ed. Aspects of the Life and Thought of Sir John Frederick Herschel (New York: Arno Press, 1981); “John Herschel and Charles Darwin: A Study in Parallel Lives” Journal of the History of Biology 22(1989): 1–71; “Scientists as Intellectuals: The Early Victorians.” Victorian Science and Victorian Values. James Paradis and Thomas Postlewait, eds. New York Academy of Sciences Annals, vol. 360, 1981. 1–37. John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. With a new foreword by Arthur Fine. (1830; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 9–10. John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. With a new foreword by Arthur Fine. (1830; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 16–17. Susan Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period. (New York: Dawson and Science History Publications, 1978) 2.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 135–137. © 2007 Springer.

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to grant normative value to Darwin’s Origin of Species, “and” Cannon explained, “that is why I have limited this discussion to the early Victorian period.”5 At the time Cannon’s work was path-breaking in its insistence that the early Victorians be engaged on their own terms, and that their views of truth essentially differentiated them from us. In the succeeding decades a whole series of studies have followed the Victorians into the special world they inhabited, beyond twentiethcentury polarities of internal and external, of science and religion. To mention just a few of the most stellar examples, Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s Darwin6 moved resolutely beyond the classic model of scientific biography, in which scientific ideas were cleanly separated from the rest of life, to paint a picture of a man and a science totally intertwined with the complex political and social world of the mid-nineteenth century. That Janet Browne’s more recent, and equally magisterial work, added Darwin’s first name to her title7 signals the way her study subtly shifts Darwin’s center of gravity into a more personal setting, filled, among other things, with women and children. Darwin is not the only Victorian scientist to have been re-humanized in recent years. Particularly notable because of its engagement with highly technical physical problems is Crosbie Smith and Norton Wise’s Energy and Empire, from which William Thomson emerges as a practical man for whom electricity, for example, was as much a product flowing through the Atlantic Cable as it was the subject of philosophical and physical musings.8 A number of other studies have moved beyond the focus on individuals to paint vivid pictures of the broader world in which Victorian science flourished. In Mesmerized,9 Alison Winter followed the Victorian’s fascination with mesmerism as a guide into their understanding of themselves and their minds. In Victorian Sensation10 James Secord explored the implications of the ways the community as a whole organically responded to the phenomenon of an anonymously crafted best-seller. A large part of what makes these studies so powerful is their down-to-earth portrayals of people and community. They use concrete example and vivid detail brilliantly and draw their readers into a complex Victorian world filled with human warmth, industrial power and vibrant energy; they pack the Victorian intellectual landscape with seething crowds, searching souls, raging controversies and 5 6 7 8 9 10

Susan Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period. (New York: Dawson and Science History Publications, 1978) 3. Adrian Desmond & James Moore, Darwin. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1994). Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: A Biography (New York: Knopf) v. 1 Voyaging. (1996) v. 2 The Power of Place. (2002). Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin. (Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Alison Winter, Mesmerized: The Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). James A. Secord, Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

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unexpected outcomes. As they do so they render all but absurd the kind of neat picture that Cannon drew in which a book, Darwin’s Origin of Species, somehow single-handedly destroyed a monolithic view of truth. Nonetheless, even as we embrace the richness of the new historiography, it would be a dreadful mistake to lose sight of the ideal among the details of the real, to forget that it was a search for truth that generated so many actions, reactions and unintended consequences. It is certainly the case that over the course of the century scientific and religious truth became more clearly distinguished, or more sharply contested. Darwin’s evolutionary ideas challenged for many the “truth is single and consistent with itself,”11 theories of electricity and magnetism were raising the possibility of irreconcilable differences even in the heart of physics, and nonEuclidean geometries raised questions about whether truth was attainable even in mathematics. Nonetheless the search for truth remained a powerfully motivating ideal from Herschel to Huxley and beyond. A large part of what emerges from the distance of more than a century is the ways that they were deluded, short-sighted, and inadequate to their quest for a truth greater than themselves. Nonetheless, the ideal essentially structures the world they bequeathed to us. At a time when the United States is ruled by an administration that routinely disregards the claims of scientific truth, we must more than ever listen to the Victorians. Their commitment to searching for a truth capable of “coming unchanged out of every possible form of fair discussion,”12 is not only a “grand” and noble vision, but an essential one we must do all in our power to protect. Professor of History Brown University Providence RI, USA

11 12

John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. With a new foreword by Arthur Fine. (1830; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 14. John Herschel, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. With a new foreword by Arthur Fine. (1830; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 9–10.

JOSÉ M. SÁNCHEZ-RON

SCHWEBER, PHYSICIST, HISTORIAN AND MORAL EXAMPLE

For those of us who are theoretical physicists converted into historians of science, Sam Schweber is more than an example to be followed: he is an avatar, an almost mythical figure. Who among us, having had as one of the basic references in our courses of quantum field theory – albeit long ago – Schweber’s Introduction to Relativistic Quantum Field Theory (1961), can read in the opening passages of his preface to In the Shadow of the Bomb the words “I used to be a theoretical physicist…” without feeling that here is one of us, without feeling that never-lost love for physics, the science that we learned when we were still young and that we tried to develop farther. These feelings are all the stronger as most of Schweber’s historical writings bring before us intellectual heroes of our profession – Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Hans Bethe, Freeman Dyson, J. Robert Oppenheimer. However, Schweber hesitated at first to approach these “off-scale” physicists and began his work as historian with studies on Darwin. It was Frank Manuel, remembered and admired especially for his books on Newton and Marx, who, Schweber tells us, “urged me to make greater use of my past training as a physicist in my historical studies.”1 For those of us who had no Manuel nearby, it is reading Sam’s writings that has worked upon us in much the same way. We felt that he has, over many years, been urging us never to forget what we learned as physicists – but also not to remember it in such a way that our reconstructions are exclusively internalist. As Sam said in that preface to Shadow of the Bomb, “Although my historical studies have placed heavy emphasis on the individual scientist, I have always stressed the importance of the social and institutional setting in which the scientific activities were carried out. And, when considering the psychological factors involved in the creativity of the theorists that I have studied, I have been sensitive about the social psychology of the theoretical physics community”.2 “GREAT HISTORY” AND “GREAT PHYSICS” There is, however, a problem in following Sam’s example for those historians of physics who belong to countries having no such great figures as those that he has studied, nations that cannot boast of having had Feynmans, Bethes or Diracs. 1 2

Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men who Made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga (Princeton, 1994), p. xi. Silvan S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb. Bethe, Oppenheimer and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton, 2000), p. xii:

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Schweber’s example is so powerful and so attractive that we cannot help but think that the “great history” that we all, in some measure, aspire to is to be found only in case-studies of “great physics,” of research efforts and achievements at the core of physics as we studied it and worked at it, efforts and achievements that Schweber has written of with such complete understanding. To take examples from my own country, Spain: studies of the life and work of researchers like Blas Cabrera, Miguel Catalán, or Arturo Duperier – and these were the best Spanish physicists of the first half of twentieth century – would appear, by comparison, an historical task of second-order.3 We know, of course, that that is not so; that from the point of view of what is, and what should be history, it is not a second-order task; that as historians we must understand all the past, including the works of scientists who did not achieve a level of distinction that sets them off in a class by themselves – or did so only among the scientists of their own country. The scientific past is not foreign to any country; native in some degree everywhere, it belongs equally to scientists everywhere. And so for us, formerly physicists, the temptation to dedicate our own efforts to the Einsteins and Feynmans, rather than to the Cabreras and Cataláns, remains. And Sam contributes to it through his wonderful works in the history of physics. However, at the same time that he is a source of “temptations”, Sam Schweber provides also solutions with his insistence, already noted, on the importance of the social and institutional setting in which scientific work is carried out. This duality in Sam’s view of science, and in his work on the history of science, is a great aid and a great comfort for those of us who would not abandon the idea of contributing to the “great history” of physics, yet want also to understand the scientific past of our own countries. Several factors cooperate in forming this inclination toward researching our national history in science. The legitimate and understandable desire of knowing what our nation has contributed to science. The belief that our nation’s past cannot be understood, with all its scientific limitations, without taking into account what happened in the broader setting that is its political, economical and social history, that is, its “general” history. And of course the equally understandable desire to benefit from archives more readily at hand, while those that contain the wonders of that “great science,” though never “foreign,” are generally far away. There is, I think and hope, a moral dimension in such undertakings: the belief that if we understand fully the reasons why there have been no Einsteins or Feynmans in our countries, why not even somewhat less great figures – Weisskopfs or Slaters, let us say –, then our work in the history of science would contribute to the bettering 3

Cabrera contributed to magnetism and was member of the Commission Scientifique Internationale of the Institut International de Physique Solvay; Catalán discovered the multiplets in 1922 and Duperier made some noteworthy contributions to cosmic ray physics. For information regarding these scientists, see: José M. Sánchez-Ron and Antoni Roca-Rosell, “Spain’s first school of physics: Blas Cabrera’s Laboratorio de Investigaciones Físicas,” Osiris, 8 (1993), 127–155; José M. Sánchez Ron, Miguel Catalán. Su obra y su mundo (Madrid, 1994); Francisco González de Posada and Luis Bru Villaseca, Arturo Duperier: mártir y mito de la ciencia española (Ávila, 1996).

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of our countries, to making them more modern and rational societies. This is, to be sure, a different sort of moral concern than that about which Sam wrote in Shadow of the Bomb – subtitled, significantly, Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist. It is, rather, the moral concern and responsibility of the historian, the very same concern that has guided so many of Schweber’s writings and actions. This is the moral concern that led Paul Forman to write:4 “The more we understand ourselves as independent of science, however, just so much more necessary is it that we assume the responsibility that is inseparable from moral and intellectual independence – the obligation to decide for ourselves what is the good of science, and by our historical research and writing to advance that good.” Schweber’s much admired Frank Manuel wrote in the closing pages of his wonderful book, Isaac Newton Historian:5 “When Newton as historian applied to human events the rules of the physical sciences, he had a way of reducing experience beforehand to what was mathematically measurable, of isolating such aspects of phenomena as were more readily adaptable to the ways of science as he defined them… A few principles sufficed him. Newton was able to discover a series of postulates for history because he had restricted its domain from the outset. The history he understood best was plain, practical, and Puritanical, and it served a monistic purpose. It lent itself to description in terms of statistical averages, of geography, of time sequences, of increase and decrease in physical dimensions. Time and space were absolute, and so was historical truth… In the end there are hardly any conscious subjects in Newton’s historical world, only objects.”

Manuel’s deeply probed Newton and Manuel’s faithful friend Schweber are very different in their understanding of history – a difference arising from their different awarenesses and their different valuations of physical objects and of conscious subjects. Reading Schweber, it is evident that human beings do not stand behind objects in his field of awareness. And that is perhaps why he did not remain a theoretical physicist, dedicated to studying a world comprising only objects. Surely that is why Schweber’s conversion to historian, unlike Newton’s, was a genuine conversion. THE VALUE OF SCIENCE (AND OF PHYSICS) Physics used to be considered a wonderful instrument for understanding nature. That that understanding could also be used to make, or suggest, practical gadgets of social and economic value was never ignored. But in prior centuries few questioned the primacy of physics’ quest for “pure” knowledge. Today, in the technoscientific and biomedical world in which we live, it is not clear that physics in its most basic branches remains respected for what it has already achieved, and what it may still achieve, in the realm of understanding “how the universe works.” A symbol, 4 5

Paul Forman, “Independence, not transcendence, for the historian of science”, Isis 82 (1991), 71–86, p. 86. Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton Historian Cambridge, (Mass., 1963), pp. 192–193.

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perhaps, of the present difficulties of physics is the cancellation in 1993 of the planned Superconducting Supercollider, an instrument that many physicists argued was essential for advancing our most basic understanding of matter. There is an essential tension in human interests as regards science: on the one side, the inclination towards the applied, towards knowledge which may serve us in our daily lives, and on the other, the desire to know for its own sake. If that essential tension is broken, if the balance between those two opposed forces is destroyed, our future, our culture and history, may perhaps be darker. Schweber has fought against such deformations of our culture’s conception of the meaning of science. In particular, he has stressed the importance of retaining research aiming not at know-how, but at fundamental knowledge of our physical universe:6 “I… believe that fundamental physics has a special role to play precisely because of its remoteness from everyday phenomena and its seeming lack of relevance to utilitarian matters – what its proponents after World War II called its purity, There ought to be part of the scientific enterprise that does not respond easily to the demand for relevance. It has become clear that that demand can easily become a source of corruption of the scientific process. Elementary-particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology are among the few remaining areas of science whose advancement is determined internally, based on experimental findings within the field and on its own intrinsic conceptual structure. Particle physics and cosmology have not been ‘stabilized’ and may never be. Scientists engaged in fundamental physics have a special role –and a special responsibility – as a community committed to the visions of Bohr and Charles Sanders Peirce… Scientists constitute a model of what Jürgen Habermas has called a communicative community: one that exists under the constraint of cooperation, trust and truthfulness, and that is uncoerced in setting its goals and agenda. That community is a guarantor that one of the most exalted of human aspirations –‘to be a member of a society which is free but not anarchical’ – can indeed be satisfied”.

For all this, we must thank and honor Sam. Departamento de Física Teórica Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Cantoblanco 28049 Madrid (Spain)

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Silvan S. Schweber, “Physics, community and the crisis in physical theory”, Physics Today (November 1993), pp. 34–40; p. 40.

TERRY SHINN

WHAT’S NEW IN SCIENCE?

In certain ways early twenty-first century science may indeed look very different from the science of a century ago, but does this necessarily mean that the science of today constitutes a qualitative and fundamental discontinuity with the past? Has science become, or is it in the process of becoming, substantively different from what it was in previous periods? Are its historical continuities today targets of radical change? Some observers of science suggest that science is destined to disappear or, alternatively, that a breed of learning possessing an entirely new epistemology and new set of evaluative criteria (which are indifferent to “truth” – “truth is merely a political trap” – and exclusively relevant to business or social concerns) is in the process of emerging and will soon become the dominant species of knowledge.1 During the last decade, these and related issues in the evolution of science have been pondered by Sam Schweber, historian and physicist, my colleague and friend. A rigorous elucidation of these topical and important questions calls for reflection on two complementary fronts: first, consideration of the underpinning logic of science’s epistemology, structures, constraints and dynamics in the past and today; second, comparison between the professional/institutional settings and objectives of the decline-circle (often connected to politicians, science policy makers and journalists), on the one hand, and the professional situation and pursuits of the intellectuals who are investigating the dynamics of science’s roots and trajectory, on the other. SCIENCE AS FLUX It is wrong to portray science as historically monolithic, as unchanged in epistemology and as structurally homogeneous. Cognitively, it has changed constantly and considerably across the centuries. The theories of caloric, phlogiston and 1

Michael Gibbons, Camilles Limoges, Helga Novotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott et Martin Trow, The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, London, Sage, 1994; John Ziman, Prometheus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994; Helga Nowotny and Ulrike Felt, After the Breakthrough: The Emergence of High-Temperature Superconductivity as a Research Field, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997; Shila Slaughter and Larry Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1997; Henry Etzkowitz, “The Norms of Entrepreunarial Science: Cognitive Effects of the New UniversityIndustry-Linkages”, Research Policy, 27, 1998, 823–833; Helga Nowotny, Michael Gibbons and Peter Scott, Re-thinking Science: Knowledge Production in an Age of Uncertainty, Oxford, Polity Press, 2001; John Ziman, Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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vitalism contributed to the learning of their time and have been superseded by more precise, complete and productive concepts. Quantum theory and relativity today stand beside Newtonian mechanics, and molecular biology and genetics stand at the center of the life sciences. Biomedical studies are often regarded as the cutting edge of science today, while a century ago it was physics and an additional century back it was chemistry. Over the last three hundred years science and technology have been characterized by an uninterrupted multiplication in the quantity and diversity of new sub-disciplines and specialties, and this process has often been accompanied by the extension of new applications and forms of interaction with interests and groups based outside science. Though the organization of knowledge has been recast and theory has considerably shifted, one can point to four fundamental stabilities and continuities in science’s evolution. Scientific work and thought continue to be grounded on principles of critical rationality. There also persists an organic and paradoxical connection between the acceptance of and capitalization on historically constructed, demonstrated and tested propositions on the one hand, and the drive to intellectual innovation through deviating from history, on the other.2 Additionally, whatever “truth” may indeed be, in order to be a member of the science community, scientists must be committed to the articulation of truths (or must at least behave as if they were).3 Finally, albeit scientists have long had established links with bodies outside the laboratory and beyond science, the evaluation of research findings by peer experts was nevertheless historically, and is still, the touchstone of validation and legitimacy. In view of these considerations, it is more appropriate to view science as an endeavor and profession that has historically been and continues to be, characterized by flux, as opposed to seeing it as today undergoing some kind of historical mutation, as some proponents of the radical discontinuity interpretation of science’s trajectory are prone to do. In effect, change is part and parcel of science’s dynamic but transformations, even extensive ones, need not spell mutation.4 The claim that science as we have long known it is on the wane or mutating is also rooted in the erroneous belief that science can somehow be spoken of in a single breath; in effect, that science is homogeneous and internally undifferentiated. In reality, science embraces several regimes of knowledge and technology production and diffusion the disciplinary, utilitarian, transitory, and the transverse regime of knowledge production and diffusion.5 Each regime evinces a specific 2

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Pierre Bourdieu, “Le champ scientifique”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 2/3, 1976, 88–103; Pierre Bourdieu, Les usages sociaux de la science. Pour une sociologie clinique du champ scientifique, Paris, INRA, 1997; Pierre Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité, Paris, Raisons d’agir Editions 2001. Bourdieu, 2001, op. cit. Terry Shinn, “Change or Mutation? Reflections on the Foundations of Contemporary Science”, Social Science Information, Vol. 38, n 1, 1999, 149–176. Bernward Joerges and Terry Shinn (eds.), Instrumentation between Science, State and Industry, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001; Terry Shinn and Bernward Joerges, “The Transverse

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division of labor, history, and habitus. The disciplinary regime, initiated in the late seventeenth century, is academically based, linked to university departments, disciplinary journals, and to scholarly societies. Legitimacy is the product of cognitive originality. This regime constitutes a self-market for its own productions.6 The utilitarian regime, institutionalized in the nineteenth century, is populated by engineers and technicians, by consultants and experts, by industrialists and employees of state technical services. Occupational apprenticeship and engineering schools provide opportunities for training. Members are organized in professional associations. The epistemology of the regime is grounded on approximation, testing, scaling and risk assessment. Production takes the form of artifacts, patents, expertise (reports) and sometimes publications.7 The transitory regime arose in the mid-nineteenth century. The career of Kelvin may be regarded as emblematic of this mode of science and technology production, in which practitioners move in a restricted fashion between academia and industry.8 The disciplinary referent nevertheless remains the principal source of legitimacy and temporary deviation to industry and application stands as an enriching supplement to scientific endeavor. Finally, the transverse regime of science production and diffusion is non-institutionalized, or only weakly so, standing independent of disciplines and standard employment organizations. Practitioners thus operate in an interstitial arena, and produce generic apparatus, methodologies and sometimes reasoning modes or even paradigms (research-technologies) that traverse the boundaries of specialties and functions, while at the same time leaving unaffected the autonomy and internal working of the latter. It is thus this regime that confers a measure of convergence on the many disciplines that constitute science and acts as a coupling mechanism between the various science regimes and other forms of individual and collective human endeavor.9 Proponents of the thesis that science is doomed, or must be radically redefined,10 limit their attention to the dealings of the utilitarian regime and to the vitality and renewal of this mode of knowledge and artifact production. This is indeed justified. More and better studies of the regime are badly needed and would be highly welcome, not least of all because this division of cognitive and technical labor appears to be in fascinating flux. The difficulty does not lie here but is instead the grave misperception that the very existence and the contributions of this regime

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Science and Technology Culture: Dynamics and Roles of Research-Technology”, Social Science Information, 41 (2), 2002, 207–251. Lemaine Gérard, Roy MacLeod, Michael Mulkay and Peter Weingart (eds.), Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines, The Hague, Paris, Mouton, 1976. Jean-François Auger, “Le régime de recherche utilitaire du professeur-consultant de chimie industrielle au cours de la Seconde Révolution industrielle”, Annals of Science, 2004; Walter Vincenti, What Engineers know and how they know it: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History, Baltimore, John Hopkins University, 1990. Crosby Smith and Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989. Joerges and Shinn, op. cit. Gibbons et al., op. cit.

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are historically unprecedented11 and that its further development and expansion must be accompanied by the atrophy and eventual collapse of the other regimes of science production and diffusion. However, innumerable careful empirical studies of recent science and technology show convincingly that flux in the utilitarian regime is in fact not being accompanied by contractions in other regimes.12 The praiseworthy sensitivity and considerable energies manifested by the doom-of-science cohort might be more productively exercised in reflection and research into the following question: are the cognitive, technical, economic and institutional realignments of the post-World War II decades promoting the genesis of an additional regime of science production and diffusion in the form of what is today referred to as “technoscience”? Is technoscience something more than a trendy label, and if so, of what does it consist? what are its specificities, the particularities of its division of intellectual and social labor, and where is it located with reference to the other long-standing regimes of science production and diffusion? THE POLITICS OF MUTATION Along with its portrayals of science and its evolution, the institutional/professional location and objectives of the science-doom cohort contrast markedly with the profile developed by historians and sociologists of science, who propose division of labor and historically-grounded analyses of science and technology. The scholars who propose an appreciation based on the study of micro cultures and trading zones,13 styles of thought,14 scientific fields,15 regimes of science,16 and technology production and diffusion, and the transversal perspective17 (to mention only a few), or scholars who set out remarkably precise and complete descriptions of particular research events and settings reside in academic departments or research institutes, are members of long-standing disciplines having their specific and well set evaluation criteria.18 The exclusive aim is the elucidation of 11 12 13 14

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Dominique Pestre, “La production des savoirs entre académies et marché”, Revue d’économie industrielle, LXXIX, 1997, 163–174. Benoît Godin et Yves Gingras, “The Place of Universities in the System of Knowledge Production”, Research Policy, XXIX (2), 2000, 273–278. Peter Galison, Image and Logic: Material Culture of Microphysics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997. Ian Hacking, “Statistical Language, Statistical Truth, and Statistical Reason: The Self-Authentication of a Style of Scientific Reasoning”, in E. McMullen, Social Dimensions of Sciences, Université de Notre Dame Press, 1991. Bourdieu, 2001, op. cit. Joerges and Shinn, op. cit. Joerges and Shinn, op. cit. For example, Gavroglu Kostas and Yorgos Goudaroulis, Methodological Aspects of the Development of Low Temperature Physics 1881–1956, Concepts out of Context(s), Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989; Mary Joe Nye, From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800–1950, Berkeley, University of California Press,

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science’s dynamics, and the main market for the research product is academia and a very narrow range of disciplines. In counterpoise, those who anticipate science’s atrophy or demise are more loosely connected to academia. They tend to stand at the intersection of numerous disciplines, and thus escape tested and tough disciplinary evaluation and sanction.19 They are frequently associated with, and at times are employed by, national science policy agencies, and connected with the OECD and other international bodies.20 In this capacity, they serve governments and frequently seek to promote science’s connection to business – the so-called “knowledge economy”. The outlet for discourse is thus inter disciplinary and multi-disciplinary, including psychology, pedagogy, political science, management, public policy, and government, and only to a very small degree the history, philosophy and sociology of science and technology.21 It is often suggested by the latter group that the claims of the demise-of-science cohort constitute “performative” knowledge versus analytic propositions: that is to say, indications about how one hopes that the world should become, as opposed to critical observation of how the world really is!22 One thing is clear though, such representations of science, and predictions about where science is going, are coherent with the demands and interests of many governments and businesses today, and consistent with dominant ideology in many quarters.23 RESEARCH AVENUES Sam Schweber’s extensive research and writings in the history of science, and his reflections on more contemporary science issues, point the way to a simultaneous two-pronged approach to science and technology studies. Science is patently on the move, but has it not always been so? The challenge is to determine precisely

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1993; Kostas Gavroglu, Fritz London: A Scientific Biography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995; Silvan S. Schweber, QED and the Men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995; Myles W. Jackson, Spectrum of belief: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Craft of Precision Optics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000; Silvan S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000 Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test-Tube, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997. Terry Shinn, “The Triple Helix and New Production of Knowledge: Pre-packaged Thinking on Science and Technology”, Social Studies of Science, 32 (4), 2002, 599–614. Lionel Vecrin, La Naissance d’une Triple Hélice: Le Programme des Actions concertées du Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et la Technologie, Mémoire présenté comme exigence partielle de la Maîtrise en Sociologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Décembre 2003. Shinn, 2002, op. cit. Benoît Godin, “Writing Performative History: The New Atlantis? Social Studies of Science, XXVIII (3), 1998, 465–483. Sheldon Krimsky and Ralph Nader, Science in the Private Interest: Has the Lure of Profits Corrupted Biomedical Research, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.

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what is novel, the extent of novelty, and what lies behind today’s fluctuation. Constraints of history, habitus,24 and brute material efficiency affect the condition of possibility which underpin the many manifestations of science. It is through a historically informed deeper and more detailed appreciation of how different divisions of labor function in specific regimes of science production and diffusion that a sharper understanding of what science has been, and where it is going, can be generated. CNRS Paris

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Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus, Paris, Minuit, 1984.

SKÚLI SIGURDSSON∗

ON THE ROAD

Looking back to my childhood in Iceland in the 1960s it is clear to me why I liked the National Geographic but found The New Statesman quite dull. The former was filled with photographs, whereas the latter only had occasional caricature drawings. With the aid of these publications and others, e.g., the Danish edition of Donald Duck, my parents provided me with a window to the outside world and ample material to nurture my curiosity.1 They also took me to concerts and the movies.— Jürgen Renn and Kostas Gavroglu write (Berlin May 14, 2003): “We would like to have your views concerning the state of history of science today and the issues that you feel are related to its future.” My first response is: I wish historians of science were more curious and appreciative of the richness of the world. Gillian Beer notes in Darwin’s Plots (1983): Despite manifest divergencies the primary procedures of scientific theorising and of the making of fiction have much in common: hypothesising, a reliance upon the future for confirmation, projecting possibilities rather than confirmed data; replotting observed relations of cause and effect or of possibility; observation; perceiving underlying patterns by means of analogy; a pleasure in boldness, a sense of the insufficiency of present understanding, the recognition of a world beyond the compass of our present knowledge.2

It is my great fortune in life that my parents, Sam Schweber and others have showed me a “world beyond” and encouraged me to explore it. They have answered questions. They have cultivated curiosity and independence. They provided and have continued to provide love and affection. My second reply to Jürgen and Kostas reads: I wish historians of science were more independent and loving. Why has it proven so difficult for the history of science community to bring their valuable insights from studying the deep entanglement of domination, exploitation, knowledge and power to bear on their own predicament? Why this studied value neutrality? When I began in graduate school in the history of science in 1984 the ∗

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I thank the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte for its hospitality. For encouragement, inspiration and help writing this essay I thank Michael Becker, David Bloor, Mary Baine Campbell, Lorraine Daston, Lindy Divarci, Paul Forman, Mike Fortun, Karl Hall, Jonathan Harwood, Helgi Skúta Helgason, Christopher Kelty, Elaheh Kheirandish, Hotze Mulder, Sybilla Nikolow, Regine Reichwein, Simon Schaffer, Elvira Scheich, Erhard Scholz, Sam Schweber, Sven Th. Sigurdsson, John Stachel and Andrew Warwick. Skúli Sigurdsson, “Journals and the Passage of Time,” hochschule ost. politisch-akademisches journal aus ostdeutschland, 6:3–4 (1997), 9–20. Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and NineteenthCentury Fiction (London: ARK/Routledge and Kegan Paul, [1983] 1985), p. 90.

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Cold War was still at its height and Star Wars was looming on the horizon.3 When I was a post-doctoral fellow in Berlin and Göttingen at the beginning of the 1990s the Berlin Wall had been dismantled and what was left of it sold to tourists by street vendors. However the Mother Courages of the next millennium did not need to fear that peace had broken out.4 War comes in many forms: war against poverty, war against cancer, civil war, guerilla war, nuclear war, Darwin’s war of nature, desert war, etc. Historians of science found their own martial niche in the 1990s: Science Wars.5 It ate up the soul of the community, eroded the communal fabric, drew inordinate attention outside professional circles, and diverted attention from issues of social and political significance. My third reply to Jürgen and Kostas is: I wish historians of science were more courageous and willing to take a public stand. It may be unrealistically demanding for members of the community to do so, nevertheless I urge them to assess the legacy of Science Wars and the legitimacy and necessity of social studies of science. If historians of science cannot confront and analyze painful memories from their own “family life” and give expression to the lingering unease and pain, will they be able to do so adequately in their own historical research? More seriously, what will be the legacy of this episode for generational change in the community? What values and visions did this internecine “warfare” with its celebration of common-sense realism inculcate in neophyte historians of science in the 1990s? Why this fear of theory and historiographical novelty among historians of science? Why this lack of openness? Thinking about the current and future state of the history of science I am therefore reminded of Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History” of the spring of 1940. The ninth thesis reads: A [Paul] Klee painting named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history.

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Paul Forman, “Behind Quantum Electronics: National Security as Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940–1960,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences [hereafter HSPS], 18:1 (1987), 149–229, and errata appended to HSPS, 18:2 (1988). Scene eight of Bertolt Brecht, Mother Courage and Her Children: A Chronicle of the Thirty Years’ War (English version by Eric Bentley) (New York: Grove Press, [1940] 1979), p. 84. Mother Courage: “Don’t tell me that peace has broken out—when I’ve just gone out and bought all these supplies!” One wonders why a book such as Dominick Jenkins’s The Final Frontier: America, Science, and Terror (London: Verso, 2002) is rather an exception in history of science and science studies? Silvan S. Schweber, “Reflections on the Sokal Affair: What Is at Stake?” Physics Today March 1997, pp. 73–74. Furthermore, Loren R. Graham, “Do Mathematical Equations Display Social Attributes?” The Mathematical Intelligencer, 22:3 (2000), 31–36; H.M. Collins, “The Science Police [review of Noretta Koertge, ed., A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths about Science (1998)],” Social Studies of Science, 29 (1999), 287–294; and Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins, eds., The One Culture? A Conversation about Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001).

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His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.6

Where are we historians of science as members of the human species being thrust backwards? More manageably—my fourth response to Jürgen and Kostas—might it not be salubrious for historians of science to engage with their own professional past for exploring what areas of singed earth reside there? The 1920s and 1930s constitute a formative period in history, philosophy and sociology of science. Issues which still haunt its practitioners were then adumbrated: value neutrality (Merton), zooming in on discovery (Reichenbach), sociology of knowledge (Mannheim), thought collectives and styles (Fleck), and fixation on Albert Einstein and relativity theory as a model of scientific inquiry (Berliner and Wiener Kreis). Recently it has been observed: “It may seem perverse to begin a discussion of eighteenth-century science by reference to the 1930s. Yet it is that decade that we find particularly salient for the production of Enlightenment historiography.”7 This is an important observation. By coming to terms with the legacy of the interwar years—whether gazing backwards or forwards— historians of science might be able to acquire the requisite emotional resources to confront their own immediate past. Was Benjamin’s vision an exception? If not, what would an exploration of the angelic vision of history, and the interwar period, yield for future practitioners of the history of science? Such an undertaking might provide Jürgen and Kostas with two additional responses. On the one hand, it would make clear that the ruptures caused by twentieth-century totalitarian regimes left wounds at the affective core of the history of science as a discipline which is still not properly understood. One way of 6

7

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt; translated by Harry Zohn) (London: Collins/Fontana Books, [1955, 1968] 1973), pp. 255–266, on pp. 259–260. The ninth thesis starts with a poem by Gerhard Scholem: “Gruss vom Angelus.” The original Benjamin text reads: “Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradies her, der sich in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das, was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm.” In Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1:2 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, [1974] 1990), pp. 691–704, on pp. 697–698; emph. in orig. William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, “Introduction,” in Clark et al., eds., The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 3–31, on p. 4.

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beginning to think about them is to contemplate what it meant that fruitful investigative pathways were either blocked or impeded. The work of Karl Mannheim and Ludwik Fleck, with its reception in the 1970s, demonstrates the relevance of this observation.8 Historians of science need to acknowledge the inadequacy of their positivistic tools when venturing into the explorative space of trauma. They can learn much from recent theoretical work on memory and trauma. Despite its importance, archival work must be supplemented when it comes to comprehending the sheer destructiveness of a political system such as the Third Reich.9 How, e.g., does void, silence and trauma affect past and current analyses of science in postwar West Germany with its suppressed memory of German Jewry? Can historians of physics resist being pulled into the void?10 On the other hand, such an undertaking would confront historians of science with the meaning of helplessness. If they feel helpless, can they express it? Might it after all be important for historians of science to acquire and cultivate the skills needed to articulate a feeling of helplessness? An emotive-narrative experiment of this kind might add novel spin to Paul Forman’s plea for independence, not transcendence, for historians of science.11 They clearly need to avoid going native among the grand seekers of transcendence, yet can historians of science really gain independence? Do they desire it? Here it may be helpful to distinguish between history inside and outside of the discipline. In both realms one may be able to draw upon literary work as a source of humility, insight, consolation, and strength. The late Susan Sontag wrote: A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not being corrupted—made cynical, superficial—by this understanding.

Sontag also observed: Who would we be if I we could not sympathise with those who are not us or ours? Who would we be if we could not forget ourselves, at least some of the time? Who would we be if we could not learn? Forgive? Become something other than we are?12

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Furthermore, the work of Jacob Klein in the history of mathematics comes to mind. See his “Phenomenology and the History of Science,” in Marvin Farber, ed., Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press [for University of Buffalo], 1940), pp. 143–163, and Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, [1934, 1936] 1968). Istvan Deak, “The Incomprehensible Holocaust,” The New York Review of Books, September 28, 1989, pp. 63–72. Elvira Scheich, Von “Forschergewissen” und “Friedensfrauen”. Das politische Gedächtnis der westdeutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft und die Wissenschaft der Physik (Habilitationsschrift Technische Universität Berlin, 2003). Paul Forman, “Independence, Not Transcendence, for the Historian of Science,” Isis, 82 (1991), 71–86. Susan Sontag, “The Fragile Alliance,” The Guardian: Review, October 18, 2003, pp. 2–4, on p. 4. This was her acceptance speech delivered upon being awarded the peace prize (Friedenspreis) by the German book trade association at the Frankfurt book fair in the fall of 2003.

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I believe that historians of science have much to learn from writers of fiction, namely an ability to articulate the joy of novelty and otherness, the inadequacy of current understanding, how it may be possible to avoid cynicism and a sense of paralysis in helpless situations, and how to relish and understand the awesome power of human language. Although studies of science and literature have grown immeasurably in the last decades and yielded liberating results, much remains to be done. Historians of science and technology still have to bring the fruits of these labors to bear on their own work and predicament. Might they then reach a larger readership? Might they thus be able to get a handle on certain aspects of the past which otherwise will continue to slip through their linguistic gills? In order, e.g., to understand the astounding fertility of the Central European world of mathematics and physics in the decades preceding the Second World War, historians of science, like imaginary ethnographers, must cross high mountain passes. On the other side is a world of philosophical and literary discourse nourished by the German language. It is a world in which theoretical inquiry was still not driven by accelerators and high technology.13 Understanding the richness of the German-language culture, mutilated beyond recognition during the Third Reich and afterwards tucked away in a shabby freezer, points to a major unresolved dilemma for future historians of science. Practitioners of the history of science are steadily being propelled closer to the present. This is a process abetted by increasing Anglo-Saxon domination of the history of science and the rise of the United States to a hegemonic position in the natural sciences after 1870. How are historians of science going to get a linguistic handle on a partly pre-Anglophone past?14 This is a past in whose interstices pain, destruction and trauma may be buried. If historians of science manage to cross the great divide, will they be able to comprehend what they find? Will they be able to stomach what they discover? Can they put it into words? Ludwig Wittgenstein ends Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (completed in 1918) by stating: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” The mathematican Hermann Weyl received his doctorate and Habilitation in Göttingen (1908 resp. 1910).15 He worked intensively on the rapidly changing border of mathematics, physics and philosophy. He became increasingly known outside professional circles in the wake of the Great War with his work on the 13

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Skúli Sigurdsson, “Journeys in Spacetime,” in Erhard Scholz, ed., Hermann Weyl’s Raum-Zeit-Materie and a General Introduction to His Scientific Work (DMV Seminar Series, 30) (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2001), pp. 15–47, on pp. 17–21. On the varieties of Central European culture at the time, see Malachi Haim Hacohen, “Dilemmas of Cosmopolitanism: Karl Popper, Jewish Identity, and ‘Central European Culture’,” The Journal of Modern History, 71 (1999), 105–149. Skúli Sigurdsson, “17,000 Reprints Later: Description and Analysis of the Vito Volterra Reprint Collection,”HSPS, 22:2 (1992), 391–397, on pp. 396–397. Skúli Sigurdsson, “Unification, Geometry and Ambivalence: Hilbert, Weyl and the Göttingen Community,” in Kostas Gavroglu, Jean Christianidis, and Efthymios Nicolaïdis, eds., Trends in the Historiography of Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 151) (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 355–367.

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general theory of relativity and unified field theory (Raum-Zeit-Materie 1st ed. 1918) and the foundations of mathematics. His philosophical orientation, indebted to Edmund Husserl and German idealism, was antithetical to that of logical positivism. Yet, in a 1928 review of Weyl’s book on the philosophy of mathematics and natural science the Viennese mathematician Hans Hahn spoke approvingly of the comprehensive and wide-ranging manner whereby Weyl analyzed philosophical problems stemming from mathematics and physics. Hahn, a founding member of the Wiener Kreis added, having cited lavishly from Weyl’s book, that: die zahlreichen wortgetreuen Zitaten geben Zeugnis von dem glänzenden und suggestiven Stil, der dem Verfasser zu Gebote steht—freilich empfindet man vielleicht manchesmal inmitten dieser oft poetisch schwunghaften Sprache ein leises Heimweh nach der schlichten Symbolik des Logikkalküls—aber dann muß man sich gerechterweise sagen: Das meiste, wovon hier die Rede ist, gehört ja zu dem, was nach Wittgensteins Lehre überhaupt nicht sagbar ist oder, weniger radikal ausgedrückt: was nur in schönem Stile, aber nicht in trockenen Formeln sagbar ist.16

In my seventh and last response to Jürgen and Kostas I would like to stress the need for future historians of science to swim often in the vast ocean of literature and language. Thus they might see that it is unhelpful to think about science as not being literature.17 Rather they should think of the two as homologous structures sharing a common future. The future with its melting icecaps and continued ecological destruction is crucial, and makes me so dissatisfied with the current state of the history of science. As a whole, disciplinary members do not protest loudly and lovingly, being propelled into a future of bleak dimensions. Can they resist boarding the express train? Probably not, but they might consider reaching out for the emergency brake and jumping off to do their historical work. I am reminded of what the late Frederic L. Holmes wrote about the history of science and the study of the near past: “The dilemmas we face due to the smallness of our numbers in proportion to the vast scale of the activity of those we seek to study are so deep, I believe, that they overshadow all of the many other problems we may pose for the writing of the history of contemporary science.”18 16

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Hans Hahn, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik: Literaturberichte, 35 (1928), 51–55, on pp. 54–55. “the numerous literal quotations bear witness to the brilliant and suggestive style at the author’s command—of course, in the midst of the often poetic buoyancy of this language one may occasionally with a tinge of homesickness yearn for the plain symbolism of the logical calculus—but to be fair one then must admit: Most of the issues discussed here cannot—according to Wittgenstein’s dictum—be spoken of at all, or, to be less radical: Can only be spoken of in an eloquent style, but not with the aid of dry formulas.” My transl. On this question see George Levine, “Why Science Isn’t Literature: The Importance of Differences [1991],” in Allan Megill, ed., Rethinking Objectivity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), pp. 65–79. Furthermore, Gillian Beer, “Translation or Transformation? The Relations of Literature and Science [1990],” in Beer, Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 173–195. Frederic L. Holmes, “Writing about Scientists of the Near Past,” in Thomas Söderqvist, ed., The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology (Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 4) (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 165–177, on p. 175.

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The present is a highly ambivalent zone for historians of science, both because of the proximity to the powers to be and because by dwelling there for too long they may sever essential ties to their emotional and professional past. They risk losing their orientation by taking a scientific express train uptown. As a tonic and tranquilizer, it might be helpful to recall earthworms and snails.19 They are creatures which undoubtedly will continue to inhibit the Earth’s surface for millennia, and to which one should feel a crawling affinity. In 1923 Weyl, speaking about his recent work on the problem of space, wrote: “Reality does not move into space as into a right-angled uniform tenement house along which all its changing play of forces glides past without leaving any trace; but rather as the snail, matter itself builds and shapes this house of its own.”20 Weyl is correctly seen as a grand theorizer in mathematics and mathematical physics, but he was also a master of the German tongue. How is one to interpret his words and how might such an understanding bear on the present and future state of the history of science? Was Weyl himself always cognizant of the potent meaning of what he wrote? What is one to make of the surplus value of language in his writings? These questions are fuelled by my impatience with the history of science today. Despite frequent references to technoscience, historians of science still have to fully grasp the implications of the modern technological order with its conglomeration of machines, standards, feedback loops, speed regimes, spatial expansions and inversions, and technological systems.21 The snail in Weyl’s writing abhorred the ugliness and poverty of the tenement house (Mietskaserne) which is uniform and reeking of the mechanical rigidity so suspect in Weimar Germany in the aftermath of the Great War. This is not an isolated instance of the technological order rearing its entangled head in Weyl’s writing. When defending, against the mighty objection of Albert Einstein, his idea of infinitesimal geometry and a unified field theory Weyl retorted: “An jeder einzelnen Weltstelle muß die Streckeneichung vorgenommen werden, diese Aufgabe kann nicht einem zentralen Eichamt übertragen werden.”22 In Weyl’s world the banishment of a geometrical action-at-a-distance with its 19 20

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On the Darwinian reference, see Gillian Beer, “‘The Death of the Sun’: Victorian Solar Physics and Solar Theory [1989],” in Beer, Open Fields (1996), pp. 219–241. Quoted in Erhard Scholz, “Hermann Weyl’s Analysis of the ‘Problem of Space’ and the Origin of Gauge Structures,” Science in Context, 17:1–2 (2004), 165–197, on p. 176. The original German reads: “Das Wirkliche zieht in den Raum nicht ein wie in eine rechtwinklig-gleichförmige Mietskasern, an welcher all sein wechselvolles Kräftespiel spurlos vorüber geht, sondern wie die Schnecke baut und gestaltet die Materie sich ihr Haus.” Furthermore, Tilmann Buddensieg, “Von der ‘Maske’ der Mietskaserne zum ‘Gesicht’ der Gross-Siedlung. Die Berliner Mietskaserne, Alfred Messels Genossenschaftsarchitektur und Bruno Tauts Arbeitersiedlungen,” in Buddensieg, Berliner Labyrinth. Preußische Raster (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1993), pp. 56–73. Furthermore, Leo Marx, “The Idea of ‘Technology’ and Postmodern Pessimism,” in Yaron Ezrahi, Everett Mendelsohn, and Howard Segal, eds., Technology, Pessimism, and Postmodernism (Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, 17) (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 11–28. Hermann Weyl, “Eine neue Erweiterung der Relativitätstheorie,” Annalen der Physik, 59 (1919), 101–133, reprinted in Weyl, Gesammelte Abhandlungen Ed. K. Chandrasekharan

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Victorian overtones, a novel metrological order, and an idealistic yearning for a world beyond wordly materialism went hand in hand.23 In order to attend to its history one must learn to listen to the past. One must connect words and things. Historians of science need to shed the last remnants of linguistic idealism and fear of sociological approaches which still impede their work. In the process they might be able to listen to voices from their professional past and get an inkling of the future lurking behind their backs. Historians of science could do worse than take their cue from Weyl when facing and exploring the consequences of the linguistic-technological neglect in their work. Thus, they might be able to commence a long overdue investigation of the painful legacy of the 1920s and 1930s (or other similar periods). They might then begin to appreciate what Victor Klemperer wrote in LTI. Notizbuch eines Philologen (completed in 1946). The acronym LTI stands for Lingua Tertii Imperii or the language of the Third Reich. Klemperer worked in French literature. He taught at the Technical University of Dresden 1920–1933, and in Greifswald, Halle and Berlin after the Second World War. He was Jewish but his wife was German (“Aryan”). The Klemperers lived in Dresden throughout the war. Aerial bombing of the city in early 1945 saved him from a deportation to a KZ. Klemperer’s work was “discovered” in the West in the 1990s. In LTI he wrote in the section “Aus dem Zug der Bewegung …”: Intransitive Verba, denen die Technik neue Bereiche zugewiesen hat, werden zu transitiven aktiviert: man fliegt eine schwere Maschine, man fliegt Stiefel und Proviant, man friert Gemüse im neuen Verfahren der Tiefenkühlung, wo man früher umständlicher von gefrieren machen sprach. Hier wirkt wohl auch die Absicht mit, sich straffer und eiliger auszudrücken als sonst üblich, die gleiche Absicht, die den Berichterstatter zum Berichter, den Lastwagen zum Laster, das Bombenflugzeug zum Bomber macht und deren letzte Konsequenz an die Stelle des Wortes die Abbreviatur setzt. So daß also Lastwagen, Laster, LKW einer normalen Steigerung vom Positiv zum Superlativ entspricht. Und schließlich ist die gesamte Tendenz zum Superlativgebrauch und in allerletzter Erweiterung die gesamte Rhetorik der LTI auf das Prinzip der Bewegung zurückzuführen.24

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(Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 55–87, on pp. 56–57. “At each individual world point lengths have to be calibrated, this task cannot be delegated to a central bureau of standards.” My transl. On the Faraday-Maxwell-telegraphic dimension in Weyl’s work and that of the Göttingen community see Sigurdsson, “Journeys in Spacetime,” in Scholz, Hermann Weyl’s Raum-Zeit-Materie (2001), pp. 21, 38. Victor Klemperer, LTI. Notizbuch eines Philologen (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag, [1947, 1957] 1975), pp. 287–294, on pp. 289–290. “From the breath of the movement …” “Intransitive verbs, that technology has allocated to new fields, are being activated as transitive verbs: one flies a powerful machine, one flies boots and supplies, one freezes vegetables in a new process of refrigeration, where one formerly in a more cumbersome manner spoke of ‘make freeze’. Here without doubt the intention to express oneself more tightly and swiftly than otherwise usual plays a role; the same intention which turns the writer of a report into a reporter, a large motor vehicle for carrying goods [Lastwagen] into a truck [Laster], the aircraft carrying bombs into a

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The modern technological world is one of astounding complexity, creativity, power and destructiveness. As pointed out by Klemperer it has engendered a novel linguistic order. The acronym is its hallmark as aptly exemplified by the title of Klemperer’s book. The truck becomes an LKW, the technology of using radio waves for detection becomes a radar, and a defense strategy is dubbed MAD.25 The technological complexity spawned a new stenographic language. Modern technology is about space, communication across vast divides, linguistic regimes, circulation of standards and speed. It is also about producing and governing complexity.26 In that sense the beat poets in the postwar era such as Jack Kerouac were right on target. When one peruses Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958) it is hard not to be struck by the fact that the technological system is writ large on its photographic surfaces.27 I first came across Frank’s haunting book when I was finishing my undergraduate studies at Brandeis University. It helped me to make sense of the bewilderment of experiencing the United States in its strange richness and being away from home for the first time. A quarter century later I am still on the road. I wish that the future, into which we historians of science are being rushed so helplessly, will make it possible for us to cultivate a sense of community and home across space and generations—a sense of community based on independence, love, curiosity, and respect. In order to answer the questions awaiting us we will need courage and stamina. It will also require wisdom and a moral vision, both of which Sam has provided so amply and lovingly. Affiliated Researcher, Science Institute, University of Iceland

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bomber; and which in its final consequence replaces the word with its abbreviation. Therefore a Lastwagen, Laster, LKW corresponds to a normal heightening from definitive to superlative. In the last instance, the tendency to employ superlatives and in its ultimate extension the rhetoric of LTI can be traced back to the principle of movement.” My transl. See also the chapter, “Fresh Idiom” in Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 251–267. LKW = Lastkraftwagen, radar = radio detecting and ranging, and MAD = mutually assured destruction. Thomas P. Hughes, “Managing Complexity: Interdisciplinary Advisory Committees,” in Robert Fox, ed., Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology (Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, 1) (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996), pp. 229–245. Robert Frank, The Americans (Introduction by Jack Kerouac) (Millerton, New York: Aperture, Inc., [1958, 1959] 1978).

THOMAS SÖDERQVIST∗

PLUTARCHIAN VERSUS SOCRATIC SCIENTIFIC BIOGRAPHY

I was working on a draft to the first chapter of my biography of Niels Jerne1 when his elder son called me on a Friday morning in October 1994 to tell me that Jerne had died during the night. The funeral would take place on the following Monday. I hastened to say that I was on my way to a History of Science Society meeting in New Orleans and that biographers oughtn’t attend their subjects’ funerals anyway (except perhaps discreetly observing the event from a distance). My excuses were accepted without further ado. Two days later, while waiting for my connecting flight at the JFK, I bought a copy of the Sunday New York Times which to my pleasant surprise carried a half-page obituary of Jerne, a nice piece of top-notch science journalism. And when arriving at the conference hotel a few hours later, I realized that many other historians of science too had read the obituary, because friends and colleagues who knew about my project came up and gave me their condolences. “I’m so sorry”, said one. “Bad news about Jerne”, said another. “You must be devastated”, said a third. I felt somewhat uneasy, didn’t know what to think, even less what to say. I got my keys and was just about to go up to my room and get a night’s welldeserved sleep when a tall, white-haired, handsome man in his sixties wearing a worn tweed jacket came out of the restaurant. He caught my eyes, strolled up to me, somewhat hesitantly, and greeted me with a shy smile on his bearded face: “Thomas, you must be relieved!” In my jet-lagged state I didn’t quite hear if he was serious or in a joking mode. Whatever, his words hit a chord inside me. I stretched out as if to embrace him, then realized that this was perhaps not quite proper procedure, and cried out so that everyone around could hear: “At last, someone who understands how I feel!” That someone was Sam. Silvan S. Schweber, of all people at the HSS meeting, understood. Not only because he is one of those rare members of American academia who listens to, contemplates and understands what you tell him (another member of this rare breed of academics was the late Larry Holmes). But also because Sam too was living with a problem that had bothered me for years, viz., how to research and write the biography of a living scientist.

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∗ [email protected] Thomas Söderqvist, Science as Autobiography: The Troubled Life of Niels Jerne (New Haven: Yale University Press 2003).

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 159–162. © 2007 Springer.

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A few months before the HSS meeting, we had both attended a meeting at Stanford on oral history of science. Sam and I were the only participants who were writing biographies. I talked about my ongoing study of Jerne, Sam about his work with Hans Bethe. We discovered that not only had we both devoured our subjects’ scientific publications and delved into their personal document files, but also interviewed them at length. And more importantly, we were both interested in the moral lives of our subjects. To me ethical questions were something new. Sam on the other hand had already spent the better part of a lifetime reflecting on the moral landscape of science, in his case bomb physics.2 He was, of course, never involved in any bomb work himself, but the moral aspects of physics have nevertheless loomed large in his intellectual development. Already when arriving in Princeton in the fall of 1949 to do graduate studies in theoretical physics, he was confronted with the debate on whether to develop a hydrogen bomb; he continued as a postdoc with Bethe at Cornell and later became actively involved in the creation of the physics department at Brandeis. The student unrest that followed in the wake of the escalating Vietnam war in the late 1960s got him even more deeply involved in the moral issues of academia. In the course of this journey Sam has also made a significant detour to the moral grove of biography. In the Shadow of the Bomb (2000) summarizes many years of close insights into the development of theoretical and nuclear physics. In the form of a parallell biography — or rather a sort of modernized, i.e., strongly contextualized, version of the classical Plutarchian format — Sam analyzes the shaping of Bethe’s and Robert Oppenheimer’s moral outlooks and their ensuing struggle with the ethical and political aspects of the new knowledge and technology of atomic fission and its consequences for humankind. Was the Enlightenment ideal still valid? Was knowledge always a good in itself? Should some knowledge be forbidden? The gist of a Plutarchian biography is the ethical evaluation of two political actors who handle similar kinds of problems in different ways. Oppenheimer and Bethe had much in common, including a strong faith in reason, a conviction that science is always good, and that shared knowledge will sooner or later lead to progress. But they also differed in important respects, and in Sam’s interpretation this was most evident in the way they positioned themselves in the spectrum between individuality and communality. Whereas Oppenheimer tended to seek individualistic solutions to moral problems and became “a lonely and somewhat solitary personage” (p. 184), Bethe sought solutions at the level of community. Whereas Oppenheimer could so eloquently voice (“and perhaps only voice”) love and the care of mankind, almost

2

I have borrowed the phrase “moral landscape of bomb physics” from Gregg Herken’s review of Silvan S. Schweber, In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientists (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 2000) in American Scientist, vol. 88, nr 4 (July–August), 2000 (quoted from on-line version: http://www.americanscientist.org/ template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/25926).

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as if he were a poet, Bethe created a strong community around him that gave him “sustenance, fortitude, and caritas” ( p. 27). If Sam would have to choose between the two, he would undoubtedly turn up on Bethe’s side. He does indeed respect Oppenheimer, but his former mentor at Cornell — the subject of the full biography yet to come — is closer to his heart. Even for those of us who do not know Sam well personally, it is evident that Bethe’s ideals are also his. In this sense In the Shadow of the Bomb is a labor of love and a practical demonstration of a central aspect of the Plutarchian biographical tradition, viz., to be edifying. Sam has been edified and wants us to be too. Much as I sympathize with Sam’s biographical position, however, I am not sure that the future of biography’s edifying capacities lies here. Not because In the Shadow of the Bomb focuses on great men as such and their theories that shook the world; after all, this seems to be a valid account of the situation at the time. But rather because this great men/big theories/dire consequences-kind of biographical poetics may be difficult to apply outside the atomic age, which is unique in that the chain of events could have resulted in the eradication of all of humankind in one singular political act (as it perhaps almost did during the Cuban crisis). The ethical problems involved in, say, the present development of the biomedical sciences, seem to be of a quite different kind. Unlike classical big physics, biomedicine is a network-like pattern of interaction between the demands of millions of consumers of biomedical products and hundreds of thousands of more or less proletarianized laboratory scientists (with few theoreticians or classical intellectuals among their ranks) in both public and private laboratories; the two sides are mediated by a large number of private biotech companies operating against the backdrop of a volatile stock market. In this scenario there is hardly any place for noble theoreticians who feel responsible for the catastrophic consequences of scientific discoveries. In other words, even though Sam’s biographical project is commendable for giving us an understanding of the moral dilemmas and responsibilites of scientists in the state-driven atomic era, I believe that today’s fragmented, individualistic, narcissistic and market-driven global technoscientific culture calls for a different sort of ethically-oriented life writing. In short, I suggest that the future for biography as an ethical genre — in contrast to the standard function of the genre as an ancilla historiae, i.e., a way of writing the history of science by other means, or as sophisticated entertainment á la Dava Sobel — relies on its ability to resonate with the technoscientific culture of the twenty-first century. This resonance lies, I believe, in its capacity for being a Socratic exercise, i.e., for being a genre devoted to the project of “knowing oneself ”. Whereas Plutarchian moral biography has raised monuments to model scientists for us lesser mortals to gaze upon with awe, a renewed Socratic genre of scientific biography (single or double) would rather consist in portraits of how members of the new global technoscientific network (it is rather difficult to see it as a community in the old Mertonian sense), create their scientific and life projects. Such portraits do

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not have to be restricted to books — in the last decade the film format has proved an increasingly interesting medium for biographical portraits.3 A theoretical and methodological grounding for such a Socratic approach to a renewed ethical biographical genre might be developed with reference to works such as Martha Nussbaum’s, which involves reading fiction as a continuation of the Hellenistic practice of “therapy of desire”, and Pierre Hadot’s — who inspired Michael Foucault to the concept of “souci de soi” (“care of self ”) — proposal that the ancient role of philosophy as a genre for the cultivation of “spiritual exercises” has interesting late modern repercussions.4 By viewing/reading about the cognitive yearnings, professional passions, and life choices of other actors on the technoscientific stage, twenty-first century scientists may thus learn to be more reflexive in their daily life-practices and more willing to engage in practical virtue ethical training. In that way scientific biography might help undo some of the a-morality that permeats today’s global technoscience, not least its biomedical sector.5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to Finn Aaserud, Adam Bencard, Janet Browne and Ron Doel for constructive remarks. Professor Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen Bredgade 62, DK-1260 Copenhagen Denmark

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Like Richard Eyre’s A Memoir of Iris Murdoch (2001). I must confess, however, that I rather prefer Helen Mirren’s portrait of the daily life and work and moral quanderies of fictional detective chief inspector Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect (1991–1996) to Russell Crowe’s quasi-realistic and sentimental rendering of mathematician John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001). Martha Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1994); Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press 2002); Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité. 3: Le souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard 1984). For a more extensive discussion of scientific biography as a genre of virtue theoretically based research ethics, see, e.g., Thomas Söderqvist, “Immunology á la Plutarch: biographies of immunologists as an ethical genre,” pp. 287–301 in: Anne-Marie Moulin and Alberto Cambrosio, eds., Historical Issues and Contemporary Debates in Immunology (Paris: Elsevier 2001), Thomas Söderqvist, “Wissenschaftsgeschichte à la Plutarch: Biographie über Wissenschaftler als tugendetishe Gattung,” pp. 287–325 in: Hans Erich Bödeker, ed., Biographie Schreiben (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2003), and Thomas Söderqvist, “What is the use of writing lives of recent scientists,” pp. 99–127 in: Ronald E. Doel and Thomas Söderqvist, eds., The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine (London: Routledge 2006).

JOHN STACHEL

PROBLEMS NOT DISCIPLINES∗

One of my goals … is to try and develop a vocabulary for talking about human projects that does not imply that the outcome of such a project is foreordained by “objective reality,” on the one hand; nor, on the other, that “anything goes”– that there are no objective constraints on such projects (Stachel 1994, p. 140).

In spite of many rumors to the contrary, I am not now and never have been a “historian of science”– indeed, I am opposed to the definition of any human being by discipline or profession.1 So I find it difficult to respond to the editors’ request to comment on the current state of, and future prospects for, the history of science.2 But, wishing to honor a dear friend and colleague within the parameters set by the editors, I shall attempt to explain briefly how I view my own work, in the hope that such an account may prove instructive to others– if only as another example of human folly.3 In order to avoid excessive repetition of the “I” word, I shall formulate my general comments in an impersonal mode and then give some examples of my own concerns. Scholarly work should focus on some problem (or problem complex) as its object of inquiry, and follow this problem wherever it leads. There are two sides to this injunction: the problem and the person (or persons– for brevity the plural will be ∗

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Dedicated, with great affection and admiration, to Sam Schweber, whose concerns for the future of science and of humanity provide an example for and an inspiration to many of us4 . I am enough of an Emersonian to heed his voice in “The American Scholar,” with the caveat that his use of “man” should be taken as embracing woman: “Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state, these functions are parceled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. … But unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. … In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking” (Emerson 1837). I would have liked to contribute a piece entitled “Marx on Measure” (Stachel 2004a), attempting to apply some concepts developed in Karl Marx’s analysis of the measure of value to the analysis of the measure of various physical quantities. I believe it was Einstein who observed that the only way to really teach is by example, good example if possible, but if not. … See the “Preface” to Schweber 2000, pp. ix-xvi, for a brief autobiography, and the entire book for an example of his moral approach to science.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 163–167. © 2007 Springer.

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omitted hereafter) formulating and working on it. The talents and past experience of the person undoubtedly shape the initial formulation of the problem, if it is original; or the choice of a particular problem, and its interpretation, if it is one that already has been formulated. The interaction between person and problem will then shape the course of further work. Shape, but not determine, since at various stages of any such project choices constantly will have to be made between alternatives, many of which might be followed.5 Both person and problem are reshaped by any such work if the choices made are at all fruitful. Any production process is based upon some form of labor exerted upon the object of labor (“raw materials”) with suitable instruments of labor (“tools”).6 Purposeful intellectual labor on some problem, its object, has been mentioned already; so it remains to discuss the instruments of intellectual labor. Here is where the various disciplines enter the story: they provide the intellectual laborer with tools to apply to the problem at hand.7 Again, personal history plays a great part in determining just what tools are readily available to the laborer; or, if initially lacking but found necessary in the course of the work, may be brought to hand with more or less facility. In short, rather than viewing disciplines as activities to be pursued separately for their own sake, each with established boundaries to be transgressed only at one’s peril, the disciplines are best regarded as providing tools that often must be used conjointly. Many problems clearly transcend disciplinary boundaries at the time of their formulation; and often work on a problem that arose initially within the confines of a single discipline leads outside that discipline to results of importance to others.8

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Hegel writes: “Die Bestimmtheit ist die Negation als affirmative gesetzt, ist der Satz des Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio. Dieser Satz ist von unendlicher Wichtigkeit” (Hegel 1990, p. 107). [“Determinateness is negation posited as affirmive and is the proposition of Spinoza: omnis determinatio est negatio. This proposition is of infinite importance”(Hegel 1969, p. 113), translation modified] I thank my colleague Aaron Garrett for pointing out that Hegel here slightly misquotes Spinoza. “Die einfache Momente des Arbeitsprozesses sind die zweckmäßige Tätigkeit oder die Arbeit selbst, ihr Gegenstand und ihr Mittel”(Marx 1974, p. 193). [“The simple moments of the labor process are purposeful activity or labor itself, its object and its means”] These tools may be conceptual, such as mathematical techniques or scientific theories; or material, such as experimental apparatus and laboratory notebooks. Even the use of conceptual tools will usually involve a material aspect: textbooks and journal articles, pen and paper, calculator, computer, etc. Indeed, this is the main problem with Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi’s otherwise brilliant analysis of creativity: We cannot study creativity by isolating individuals and their works from the social and historical milieu in which their actions are carried out. This is because what we call creative is never the result of individual action alone; it is the product of three main shaping forces: a set of social institutions, or field, that selects from the variations produced by individuals those that are worth preserving; a stable cultural domain that will preserve and transmit the selected new ideas or forms to the following generations;

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In my case, the tools that come most readily to hand are found in parts of the disciplines of theoretical physics, history of science, philosophy of science, and in a Marxist outlook on social problems. The main example of transcendence of disciplinary boundaries in my work has been work on Einstein’s “hole argument.”9 This arose from the attempt to answer a problem in the history of general relativity: Why did it take over two years from the time that Albert Einstein first realized the need to introduce a metric tensor as the mathematical representation of the potential for the gravitational-cum-inertial field until he adopted the final formulation of the field equations obeyed by this tensor field? Finding the answer to this historical problem led me to some important conclusions about the physical interpretation of general covariance,10 conclusions that have had important bearings on the stillunsolved problem of formulating a quantum theory of gravitation;11 and to some important conclusions, and further questions, about such philosophical issues as the nature and origins of individuality and the distinction between internal and external relations.12 At first sight, it might seem that my Marxist outlook played no role in work on this problem, but it did. Stress on the historical aspects of questions such as this led me to emphasize the importance of the historical sciences; and Marx’s emphasis on the element of intention in all human activity13 led me to eschew deterministic narratives (see the epigraph).14 Indeed, I found fruitful the idea of developing alternate historical narratives in order to show that things need not have and finally the individual, who brings about some change in the domain, a change that the field will consider to be creative (Czikszentmihalyi 1988).

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Indeed, the field and domain act upon the individual’s contribution; but the effects of such contributions may also transcend an individual domain and lead to fruitful interactions between several domains, or even to the creation of a new ones. See Stachel 1989, reprinted in Stachel 2002, pp. 301-337. See Stachel 1993 and references therein to earlier work. See Stachel 2006 See Stachel 2006 “Wir unterstellen die Arbeit in einer Form, worin sie dem Menschen ausschließlich angehört. Eine Spinne verrichtet Operationen, die denen der Weber ähneln, und eine Biene schämt durch den Bau ihrer Wachszellen manchen menschlichen Baumeister. Was aber von vornherein den schlechtesten Baumeister vor der besten Biene auszeichnet, ist, daß er die Zelle in seinem Kopf gebaut hat, bevor er sie in Wachs baut” (Marx 1974, p. 193). [“We ascribe to labor a form, which belongs exclusively to humanity. A spider conducts operations which resemble those of a weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what at the outset distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax” (Marx 1976, p. 284, translation modified)] Again, I have taken my inspiration from Karl Marx’s dictum: “Die Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken, nicht unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Umständen” (Marx and Engels 1973, p. 115). [“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx [1852] 1979, p. 103)].

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happened just as they did. On the other hand, I do not believe that “anything goes,” i.e., that all such narratives are equally plausible or probable.15 To conclude, let me mention two problems that seem to me of great current importance, one theoretical and one social. The theoretical problem– or rather complex of problems– in theoretical physics that seems most compelling at the moment goes under the name “quantum gravity.” Here, my personal equation plays a large role in the choice of this problem. I can well understand that others with a different background will pick a different problem; just as I understand that those who agree with me on the significance of the problem will, based on their differing backgrounds, disagree on the best tools to be used in the attempt to solve it. The social problem that seems most compelling in this epoch is how resistance to the global onslaught of capital on world-wide labor standards,16 commonly known as “globalization,” can best be organized; and whether and how such organized resistance might ultimately be turned into a challenge to the dominion of capital.17 I think the problem itself compels– or will ultimately compel– attention from all persons concerned with the survival of humanity. It might seem that here the tools that I bring to bear from the natural sciences are not of much relevance, but again this is incorrect. Since so much of contemporary society is built upon the basis of the application of modern science to capitalist industry, it is important to understand the development of modern science within the framework of capitalism if one is to formulate effective policies to combat the encroachment of capital on all forms of modern life.18 Center for Einstein Studies Boston University BIBLIOGRAPHY Ashtekar, Abhay et al, eds. (2003): Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics/ Festschrift in Honor of John Stachel (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic). Czikszentmihalyi, Mihalyi (1988): “Society, culture and person: a systems view of creativity,” in Robert J. Sternberg, ed., The Nature of Creativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 325–339. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1837): “The American Scholar,” an Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837. Cited from the website http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm.

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See Stachel 1994. For an example of some alternate scenarios for the development of general relativity with different degrees of probability, see Stachel 2007. Again inspired by Marx, I understand labor as it functions in the modern process of production; that is, in the sense of collective labor, which includes intellectual as well as manual labor. Many people who consider themselves middle class, and have been led to see their interests as entirely distinct from– and even opposed to– those of manual laborers, belong to the working class. See Stachel 1995. See Stachel 1995, 1998. For some hints in this direction, see Stachel 2003, Stachel 2004b.

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1969): Hegel’s Science of Logic, transl. by A. V. Miller (London: George Allen and Unwin/ New York: Humanities Press). ——(1990): Wissenschaft der Logic. Erster Teil/Die Objective Logic. Erster Band/ Die Lehre vom Sein [1832]. Cited from ibid. Neu Heraugegeben, Hans-Jürgen Gawoll, ed. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag). Marx, Karl (1973): Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon [1852]. Cited from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke. Band 8 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag), pp. 113–207. ——(1974): Das Kapital/ Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Erster Band Buch I: Der Produktionsprozeß des Kapitals [1867].Cited from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke. Band 23 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag). ——(1976): Capital: Volume One, transl by Ben Fowkes (Hammonsworth: Penguin). ——(1979): “The Eighteen Brumaire of Louis Napoleon,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 11, Marx and Engels: 1851–1853 (New York: International Publishers), pp. 103–197. Schweber, Sylvan Sam (2000): In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe Oppenheimer and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Stachel, John (1989): “Einstein’s Search for General Covariance, 1912–1915,” in Don Howard and John Stachel, eds., Einstein and The History of General Relativity, (Einstein Studies, vol. 1) (Boston/Basel/Stuttgart: Birkhäuser), pp. 53–100. Reprinted in Stachel 2002, pp. 301–337. ——(1993): “The Meaning of General Covariance: The Hole Story,” in John Earman et al, eds., Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External World: Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag/Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), pp. 129–160. ——(1994): “Scientific Discoveries as Historical Artifacts,” in Kostas Gavroglu, Jean Christianidis and Efthymios Nicolaïdis, eds., Trends in the Historiography of Science (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic), pp. 139–148. ——(1995): “Marx on Science and Capitalism,” in Kostas Gavroglu, John Stachel Marx Wartofsky, eds., Science, Politics and Social Practice (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic), pp. 69–85. ——(1998): “Autobiographical Reflections,” talk given in Berlin, published in Ashtekar et al. 2003, pp. xi-xiv. ——(2002): Einstein from ‘B’ to ‘Z’ (Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhäuser). ——(2003): “Critical Realism: Bhaskar and Wartofsy,” in Carol Gould, ed., Constructivism and Practice: Toward a Historical Epistemology (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield), pp. 137–150. ——(2004a): “Marx on Measure,” to appear in John Stachel, Going Critical, vol. 2, The Practice of Marxism (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer). —–(2004b): “Marx’s Critical Concept of Science,” to appear in John Stachel, Going Critical, vol. 2, The Practice of Marxism (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer). —–(2006): “Structure, Individuality and Quantum Gravity,” in Steven French, Dean Rickles, and J. Saatsi, eds., Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). —–(2007): “The Story of Newstein, or Is Gravity Just Another Pretty Force?” in Jürgen Renn and Matthias Schemmel, eds., Gravitation in the Twilight of Classical Physics: The Promise of Mathematics (The Genesis of General Relativity, vol. 4) (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer).

ROGER H. STUEWER

PHYSICIST-HISTORIANS

Sam Schweber exemplifies par excellence the physicist-historian, an accomplished physicist who turned himself into a leading historian of science. Such a transition is never easy; it involves a great deal of soul-searching. To relinquish one demanding discipline and embrace another with different intellectual norms, methods, and goals requires courage. It means leaving a field in which you have found a comfortable home, honing your skills over a long period of time and building your confidence in your ability to compete successfully in it, and then leaping into an unfamiliar field, being uncertain as to how you will fit into it. In Sam’s case, he did his graduate studies in theoretical physics at Princeton from 1949 to 1952, writing a dissertation on quantum field theory, spent the next two years as a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell working with Hans Bethe, then went for a year as a research physicist to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and in the fall of 1955 accepted an appointment at Brandeis, where he was instrumental in creating its physics department, taught physics courses, and continued his research in quantum field theory. Just as his mentor Bethe never left Cornell, Sam never left Brandeis, but while Bethe remained enormously productive in theoretical physics, Sam was drawn more and more deeply into campus politics during the Vietnam war, experienced difficulty in adjusting to the new developments then taking place in quantum field theory, and found, as he said several years ago in a talk on Bethe, that by the early 1970s he no longer was productive in physics. His transition to the history of science began when he taught a course for non-science majors on the introduction of probability into the sciences and was complete after he spent a sabbatical leave at Harvard during the academic year 1976–1977. Sam’s transition from physicist to historian was by no means unique. Gerald Holton, Thomas Kuhn, Martin Klein, and Laurie Brown – to name just four of Sam’s contemporaries – made similar transitions, as did quite a number of other physicists before and since. I propose, therefore, to take a broader perspective and identify some of the significant contributions that physicist-historians have made and are making to the discipline in light of the evolution of the history of science over roughly the last four decades. One general trend in the history of science, as I see it, has been that the community of historians of science has moved further and further away from the community of scientists, both intellectually and professionally. One milestone in this respect was the decision of the History of Science Society in the late 1960s to no longer meet in alternate years with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That decision had its positive aspects, of course; it opened up the possibility for the HSS K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 169–172. © 2007 Springer.

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to meet jointly with the Society for the History of Technology and the Philosophy of Science Association, for example. Still, when the HSS stopped meeting with the AAAS, historians of science were deprived of an important forum in which they could confer directly with scientists, exchange ideas, and share each others’ concerns. Since, moreover, scientists are a primary audience of historians of science, this contributed, I think, to another trend at HSS meetings, the organization of fewer and fewer sessions devoted to the conceptual history of science. This has reached the point that in recent years some prominent historians and philosophers of science have floated the idea of founding a new professional society whose focus would be on conceptual issues; such a society might well attract an increasing number of scientists back into the fold. Another symptom of the current state of affairs is that Isis, the official journal of the HSS, is today at best of only marginal interest to scientists. These trends stand in sharp contrast to the closer and closer ties that historians of physics and physicists have established with each other over the past four decades, with physicist-historians and physicists working closely together to found new institutions and initiate new activities. Thus, Gerald Holton and John Wheeler played crucial roles in establishing the American Institute of Physics Center for History of Physics in 1961, and concurrently they and Harry Woolf, Thomas Kuhn, and others initiated the Sources for History of Quantum Physics project, which was sponsored jointly by the American Physical Society and the American Philosophical Society and funded by the National Science Foundation. Both have been enormously successful: The AIP Center under the directorships of Charles Weiner and Spencer Weart has become a stellar, multidimensional institution and has served as a model for several other disciplinary centers in other fields. Similarly, the SHQP materials generated and collected by Kuhn, John Heilbron, Paul Forman, and Lini Allen have been expanded over the years to include other areas in the history of physics and related fields and are now found in nineteen repositories throughout the world. That was just the beginning. Two decades later, the ties between historians of physics and physicists were strengthened greatly when another physicist-historian, Laurie Brown, took the lead in organizing the Division, now Forum on the History of Physics of the American Physical Society, which was founded in 1980. In subsequent years, the APS FHP has served as a model for the creation of similar history units in other physical societies, among them the European Physical Society, the German Physical Society, and the Italian Physical Society. Sam served as chair of the FHP in 1993–1994, and today the FHP is one of the largest units of the APS. The FHP publishes a Newsletter (as does the AIP Center), and over the years has sponsored and organized numerous sessions on many aspects of the history of physics at APS meetings. Recently, the FHP has achieved another outstanding success. Benjamin Bederson, chair of the FHP in 2001–2002, served as chair of a FHP committee that raised over $200,000 to establish a joint APS-AIP annual prize of $10,000, beginning in 2005, to recognize outstanding scholarly achievements in

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the history of physics.1 This prize will greatly enhance the prestige of the field. It has been named the Abraham Pais Prize for the History of Physics in honor of another eminent physicist-historian. Thus, there are significant activities underway today that have been initiated by physicist-historians, and many more could be cited, for example, the numerous and splendid activities that Jürgen Renn has carried out and has fostered at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. I might also mention two activities with which I myself have been associated. First, eight years ago John S. Rigden and I founded the journal Physics in Perspective, which is aimed at a general readership and which, among other things, encourages physicists to publish accounts of significant contributions they have made. Second, ten years ago, Lee Gohlike founded and we began to organize the annual Seven Pines Symposia, which brings together leading historians, philosophers, and physicists to discuss foundational issues in physics as they arose in the past and continue to challenge our understanding today. Sam participated in the very first symposium in May of 1997. Physicist-historians thus have played significant roles in initiating a broad range of professional activities that have fostered intellectual and personal communication between physicists and historians. The essential ingredient in the success of these activities has been mutual intellectual respect. A compelling example was when Hans Bethe asked Sam to write his biography. Bethe was confident that Sam, as a physicist, could understand his scientific work at a sophisticated level and would portray it accurately, and he also knew that Sam, as a historian, was attuned to the moral and social dimensions of his life and work. In general, physicists can sense immediately whether or not a historian can grapple with the scientific content of their work – and they tend to shy away from someone who cannot. Physicist-historians also have played vital roles in undergraduate and graduate education, especially if, like Sam, they are members of a physics department. At the undergraduate level, they can enrich physics courses by offering insights into developments in physics and into the lives of the physicists who were responsible for them, and in history courses they can go deeper into the social, political, and institutional settings in which physicists carried out their work. At the graduate level, not to be undervalued is the informal education that takes place when physicists, historians, and their graduate students meet each other on a regular basis, discussing questions of mutual interest, building mutual respect, and laying the foundation for lifelong professional interactions and personal friendships. The history of science today is enormously diverse, encompassing all fields of science, all chronological periods, and all approaches and methodologies. Prior to the second world war and well into the postwar period, the discipline was populated by scientists who had turned to history or by historians who had a solid grounding 1

The other committee members were Gloria Lubkin, Harry Lustig, Michael Riordan, Stephen Brush, Spencer Weart and myself.

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in one or more of the sciences. In recent decades the field has changed significantly, attracting practitioners who have come from various undergraduate and graduate backgrounds, often non-scientific ones. This trend is likely to continue, and of course is not without merit. One consequence of it, however, has been that the intellectual and professional gulf between scientists and historians of science has deepened. Scientist-historians – scientists who have turned themselves into historians – have been a significant force acting in the opposite direction. In the particular case of the history of physics, this phenomenon has deep roots, going back centuries, and certainly will continue long into the future. The fundamental question thus is not whether the number of physicist-historians will diminish significantly, but whether they will be welcomed as historians. In the past, Sam and many other physicists have experienced a warm welcome as they embarked upon their second careers as historians, and the professional developments I have sketched above indicate that this worthy trend will continue in the future. University of Minnesota

STEPHEN J. WEININGER

LETTING THE SCIENTISTS BACK IN

In the spring of 1998 a symposium at UC San Diego honored Martin J. S. Rudwick, who was then retiring. In his remarks Rudwick proposed that it was “time to let the scientists back in”, presumably as colleagues in the crafting of history of science. That was a position from which they had been increasingly marginalized by historians of science over a period of several decades as the discipline underwent professionalization. (While scientists could hardly have been forbidden to write histories of science, their works were routinely dismissed by consigning them to the outer darkness of “whig history”.) Once professionalization had been successfully achieved, keeping scientists at arm’s length was no longer deemed necessary; some even saw it as detrimental. As a symposium attendee I found myself speculating about the conditions under which scientists were to be readmitted to the fold. It was not just idle curiosity, since I have always earned my living as an academic chemist, even as I came increasingly under the tutelage of Sam Schweber and under the sway of history. I was primarily engaged in lecturing, writing textbooks and conducting research in organic chemistry from 1964 to 1987, when I was accepted as a Mellon Fellow in the STS program at MIT, where I first met Sam. In that year I gave my first HSS talk as well. Fortunately, as it happened, acquiring a minimal background in history of science left me little time to read much of the historiographical literature. Thus, I was ignorant of the fact that I might then have been persona non grata in some quarters. As it happened, all the historians whom I met then and subsequently were welcoming and encouraging, to the point that I was asked to comment on a talk at a 1993 HSS session honoring Sam.1 The talk was Paul Forman’s,2 and it extended the argument of his widely read 1991 paper which, among other things, drew a stark distinction between the goals of scientists and those of historians of science.3 I agreed strongly with the thrust of both Forman’s paper and his talk, aware as I was that many scientists had trouble distinguishing history from hagiography. Furthermore, I had found that attempting to function as both scientist and historian felt more like switching heads than merely 1

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“Personality, Reality, and Responsibility: The Scientist and the Historian – Program to Celebrate Sam Schweber’s 65th Birthday”, History of Science Society, 1993 Annual Meeting, Santa Fe, NM, 13 November 1993. Paul Forman, “Physics, Modernity, and our Flight from Responsibility”, paper presented in the session “Personality, Reality, and Responsibility” (cit. n. 1). Paul Forman, “Independence, Not Transcendence, for the Historian of Science”, Isis, 1991, 82:71–86.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 173–176. © 2007 Springer.

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hats. However, as he urged historians to aspire to independence rather than imitate scientists’ striving for transcendence, Forman often used the terms “scientist” and “physicist” interchangeably. I did wonder whether historians would have been in less danger from seductions of transcendence had they been less mesmerized by theoretical physics and physicists. In any case, Forman concluded his 1991 paper by asserting that historians had actually achieved their proper independence. Others may have felt similarly confident as well because attitudes towards such bugbears as whig history began to be less defensive. In a 1995 Osiris article the philosopher Thomas Nickles argued that whig history was not only inescapable but could even be beneficial.4 In the same publication Stephen Brush endorsed presentist history and also made the case for admitting to the ranks of historians those scientists “willing to acquire the skills and background knowledge of the historian of science”.5 Fair enough. But is that the only basis upon which scientists may participate in creating history of science? Scientists do have a more or less well-established position as native informants, but even that role is contentious. Joan Bromberg lamented the discipline’s dependence “upon the good graces of scientists we treat for our raw material – the interviews, access to archival and personal collections, even, occasionally, our funding”.6 (Unlike most groups of anthropological subjects, scientists seem unfortunately to have both the information and the trinkets.) Some historians also discount the value of interviews and reminiscences, believing them to be irremediably tainted by scientists’ need to enlist the past in celebrating the present. Nathan Reingold averred (perhaps jocularly) that he had long avoided grappling with contemporary history in order to “have the illusion of objectively studying my scientists as one would study animals in a laboratory. It is not good experimental form for lab. animals to talk back to the principal investigator”.7 There is thus resistance on several grounds to allowing scientists who have not metamorphosed at least partially into historians to have much say in the writing of “scholarly” history of science. Does this resistance have any debilitating effects on the history that emerges? Brush contends that “social influences on the detailed process of research can be discerned only if one understands the process itself at a technical level,” and that, in the absence of such knowledge, the historian “cannot claim to provide a complete description of the scientific enterprise”.8 This contention applies a fortiori to the writing of contemporary history of science. 4

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Thomas Nickles, “Philosophy of Science and History of Science”, Osiris, 2nd Series, 1955, 10:139–163; on pp. 151–155. Whig history and the sometimes troubled relationships between scientists and historians is a major focus of The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, ed. T. Söderqvist (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997). Stephen G. Brush, “Scientists as Historians,” Osiris, 2nd Series, 1995, 10:215–231; quote on p. 215. Brush, “Scientists as Historians” (cit. n. 4), p. 83. Nathan Reingold, “Science, Scientists, and Historians of Science”, History of Science, 1981, 19:274–283; quote on p. 281. Brush, “Scientists as Historians” (cit. n. 4), p. 229.

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Furthermore, one hopes that history of science will be read as well as written. Denigrating scientists’ understanding of their own experiences not only undermines the “construct[ion of] an honest, vigorous balanced picture of the history” but also runs the risk of alienating a sizeable body of potential readers – scientists themselves.9 Thus, instead of letting the scientists back in we should perhaps consider bringing them back in. That is an approach vigorously advocated for sociology of science by Ullica Segerstråle, who maintains that doing so amounts to “nothing but good contemporary history of science”.10 I would make a similar plea, without harboring any Panglossian illusions that such a move would (or should) eliminate all tensions between historians and scientists. Indeed, there are more than a few obstacles on the road to cooperation, as recent history makes abundantly clear. Not the least of them is the power disparity between scientists and historians, within and without the academy. Bromberg’s complaint eloquently captures the differences in both standing and resources. The fact that some scientists are not shy about exercising their power to punish historians whose work does not meet with their approval can hardly be expected to reassure historians about the benefits of cooperation.11 Even those historians accorded official status as chroniclers of scientific institutions have encountered indifference from the majority of scientists and, from the interested minority, a thinly veiled desire to control the historical narrative.12 Another major issue is the venue for encounters between scientists and historians. Brush notes that in a 1967 conference attended by both historians and physicists the two groups were in complete disagreement over the question of what factors determined access to accelerators.13 With the advantage of 20–20 hindsight one can see that such a public forum is likely to reinforce disciplinary solidarity and discourage openness to contrary viewpoints. Thus, it would seem highly desirable whenever possible to find a “neutral” setting for collaboration, intimate enough to permit the defensive wrappings labeled “historian” and “scientist” to be partially peeled back. One experiment that seems to hold promise as a model has been conducted at MIT since 2000 under the rubric “History of Modern Science and Technology”.14 9

10

11 12 13 14

Mary P. Winsor, “The Practitioner of Science: Everyone Her Own Historian”, Journal of The History of Biology, 2001, 34:229–245; quote on p. 240. See also Steve Fuller, “Who’s Afraid of Contemporary History of Science?” in The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology (cit. n. 4), 245–259, on pp. 247–252. Ullica Segerstråle, “Bringing the Scientists Back In: The Need for an Alternative Sociology of Knowledge”, in Controversial Science: From Content to Contention, ed. T. Brante, S. Fuller and W. Lynch (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 57–82; quote on p. 76 (emphasis in the original). Liz McMillen, “The Science Wars Flare at the Institute for Advanced Study”, Chronicle of Higher Education, May 16, 1997. Dominique Pestre, “Commemorative Practices at CERN: Between Physicists’ Memories and Historians’ Narratives”, Osiris, 2nd Series, 1999, 14:203–216. Brush, “Scientists as Historians” (cit. n. 4), p. 226. http://hrst.mit.edu. This project has been supported by the Dibner and Sloan Foundations.

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Its aim is the creation of open-ended archives of interviews, unpublished documents, videos, simulations and so on. (Sam has been actively involved in the unit on the Physics of Scale.) This enterprise has two novel features: it is web-based (and thus semi-public) and it invites “direct participation of those actively involved” with contemporary developments of science and technology. The collection of archival material is followed up with a series of closed conferences in which a small group of scientists can juxtapose their individual and often differing versions of events. An historian serves as moderator, while raising questions and posing possibilities not forthcoming from the participants themselves. My version would have several historians present who, at some appropriate point, might lay their own cards on the table and allow the scientists to question their methods, presuppositions and so on. If there is to be true collaboration, then the playing field will have to be leveled in all directions. Whatever the mechanism adopted, letting (or bringing) the scientists back in holds out the promise of adding richness and depth to the history of science. Not to be overlooked are the potential benefits for science itself, in particular the teaching of science. Thomas Kuhn’s characterization of science pedagogy as “a dogmatic initiation in a pre-established tradition that the student is not equipped to evaluate” is as true today as it was 45 years ago.15 There is no magic solution to this problem, and the pressures that favor maintaining the status quo are very powerful. Courses in history of science can provide an alternative to the portrait of science as unruffled progress promulgated in science classes, but in the US at least, few science students are exposed to them. For this audience scientists themselves can make a difference, especially those willing to be reflexive about their own professional experience.16 Mutually respectful collaborations between scientists and historians can be a powerful vehicle to promote that reflexivity. It is Utopian to imagine that a cadre of Sam Schwebers will be created thereby, but if a fraction of participants come away infected by his spirit, the outcome for both history and science will be very good indeed. Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA

15

16

Thomas S. Kuhn, “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research”, in The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 225–239, on p. 229. Several colleagues and I have made some modest attempts along the lines I’m suggesting: Jay Labinger, Nicholas Kildahl, and Stephen J. Weininger, “Controversy in Chemistry: A Course that Aims to ‘Tell it Like it is’ ”, Chemical Heritage, Summer 2001, 19:4–5.

M. NORTON WISE

SCIENCE AS HISTORY

Sam Schweber has often and eloquently expressed the view that the goals of scientific explanation changed dramatically in the late twentieth century, and that they have taken on a historical cast.1 This view has become ever more relevant in both physics and biology. Beginning with a characterization of the present situation in those areas, I will suggest their heuristic value for historical practice. PHYSICS Over the past decade physicists have been engaging in a struggle over the goals of scientific explanation with ever greater intensity, perhaps because the traditional role of physics as the queen of the sciences is now under threat. In its starkest form, the epistemological battle pits those who take “fundamental” to mean reduction of natural phenomena to universal laws governing elementary entities (especially elementary particle theorists), against those who insist that the building up problem, from elementary entities to the emergent properties of complex systems, is equally fundamental (especially condensed matter physicists, both experimentalists and theorists).2 In this latter pursuit, the irreducible morphological properties of objects, their shapes and periodicities, take precedence. While the polemics go back at least to the trend-setting article of nobelist Philip Anderson in 1967, “More is Different,”3 they appear with new confidence in a manifesto for the twentyfirst century published in January 2000 by nobelist Robert Laughlin and David Pines. Titled “The Theory of Everything,” it is an outright attack on the view that the pursuit of such a unified theory can be supported by either past accomplishments or future prospects. “The central task of theoretical physics in our time,” they assert, “is no longer to write down the ultimate equations but rather to catalog and 1

2

3

Sylvan S. Schweber, “Physics, Community, and the Crisis in Physical Theory,” in Kostas Gavroglu, et. al., (eds), Physics, Philosophy, and the Scientific Community (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), pp. 125–152; idem., “The Metaphysics of Science at the End of the Century,” in R. Cohen and J. Stachel (eds), Essays in Honor of Abner Shimony (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996). The following description is adapted from M. Norton Wise, “Afterward,” in M.N. Wise (ed.), Growing Explanations: Historical Perspectives on Recent Science (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004). P. W. Anderson, “More is Different: Broken Symmetry and the Nature of the Hierarchical Structure of Science,” Science, 177 (1972), 393–396; reprinted in idem., A Career in Theoretical Physics (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 1–4.

K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 177–183. © 2007 Springer.

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understand emergent behavior in its many guises, including potentially life itself. We call this physics of the next century the study of complex adaptive matter. For better or worse we are now witnessing a transition from the science of the past, so intimately linked to reductionism, to the study of complex adaptive matter … with its hope of providing a jumping-off point for new discoveries, new concepts and new wisdom”.4 Laughlin, Pines and others are now challenging the elementary particle people on their own ground, suggesting that the so-called fundamental laws and elementary particles themselves may be emergent phenomena, emerging perhaps from the chaotic soup of virtual particles thought to constitute the vacuum of space. This line of questioning leads to the cosmological theory of the Big Bang and to whether it was an explosion like other explosions. If so, it would have been highly unstable and unpredictable. “It could well turn out that the Big Bang is the ultimate emergent phenomenon, for it is impossible to miss the similarity between the large-scale structure recently discovered in the density of galaxies and the structure of styrofoam, popcorn or puffed cereals”. Rather than a Theory of Everything based on a small set of underlying physical laws, they envisage “a hierarchy of Theories of Things, each emerging from its parent and evolving into its children as the energy scale is lowered” (to the level of everyday objects and organisms).5 This state of “things” as emergent evolutionary phenomena is deeply troubling to the former arbiters of good science, for it challenges not only their epistemology but their professional identities and values. As David Gross, a leading elementary particle theorist, said in a NY Times interview, “I strongly believe that the fundamental laws of nature are not emergent phenomena”. He holds to his beliefs passionately: “Bob Laughlin and I have violent arguments about this”.6 It is impossible to judge which side will emerge victorious from the epistemological battle but it is apparent that a new contender for scientific explanation is taking up a great deal of space in contemporary physics. It falls squarely within a broad spectrum of explanatory strategies that may be called “growing explanations.” They extend to biology.

4 5

6

R. B. Laughlin and David Pines, “The Theory of Everything”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97 (2000), 28–31, on 30. Ibid., 29–30. Although the new physics would describe a diversity of things, each equally fundamental and obeying its own rules or laws, it might still be said to be unified and reducible through their hierarchy. A considerably more radical version would do away with the hierarchy and the notion of building up (or down in energy). Instead, there would be only different sorts of things, with no lower and higher. The philosopher Nancy Cartwright calls that vision of science a “patchwork of laws” in, “Fundamentalism versus the Patchwork of Laws”, in The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 23–34. George Johnson, “New Contenders for a Theory of Everything”, New York Times, December 4, 2001, F1.

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BIOLOGY When we recall, following Laughlin and Pines, that the problem of emergence arises because the “fundamental law” of ordinary matter (the Schroedinger equation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics) is not accurately solvable for systems consisting of more than about 10 particles, then biological reduction is hard to imagine, or in their more polemical language: “Predicting protein functionality or the behavior of the human brain from these equations is patently absurd”.7 Thus it is no surprise that molecular biologists have also been learning the limitations of reduction, in this case of reducing phenotypes to genotypes by appeal to the existence of genes taken to be elementary units. The alternative appeal to complexity, however, had not become prominent, at least not publicly, until the great event of February 2001 when the two competitors in mapping the human genome simultaneously announced their draft sequences. The big surprise was the small number of genes on the map. The expected number of over 100,000 came down to about 30,000, or only about 10,000 more than a roundworm and 300 more than a mouse. Suddenly it became very difficult to believe that the difference between humans and lower animals depended essentially on the number of genes. Instead, as the leaders of the two projects — J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics and Francis S. Collins of the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium— announced at press conferences, talk shows, and interviews, the difference lies in the complexity of gene-protein networks of interaction.8 In a sense, there is nothing very new here. It has been known for some time that genes cannot be regarded as simple units that code uniquely for a single protein, that the active coding bits of DNA are spread over a considerable distance and can be spliced together in alternative ways to produce a variety of different proteins, that the proteins themselves can be modified by rearrangement and by adding new parts, and that the interactions between genes through a wide variety of regulatory functions of the non-coding parts of a DNA strand are enormously sensitive. Thus complexity, emergence, and contingency were already in play before the mapping result became known. But the reduced number of genes has brought the full panoply of gene-protein scenarios into the spotlight. Other findings have intensified their interest. The proportion of coding regions in the genome, previously only five to eight percent, has been reduced to about one percent. And the clumpy character of the distribution of genes on and between chromosomes has come to look like a rugged mountain range rather than a moderately hilly landscape. These and other qualitatively new features of the genome as a whole have made it look 7

8

Laughlin and Pines, “Theory of Everything”, 28. See also the discussion of biological emergence in R. B. Laughlin, David Pines, et. al., “The Middle Way”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97 (2000), 32–37. The full reports, along with other interpretive articles, appeared in the February 15 issue of Nature, 409 (2001), for the Consortium, and the February 16 issue of Science, 291 (2001), for Celera. Very accessible discussions appeared in the NY Times, February 13, 2001, sec. F.

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ever more like the “complex adaptive matter” of the solid state physicists, whose morphological properties one seeks to understand. Indeed, terms like dynamic, plastic and fluid commonly describe the highly adaptive character of the genome and of gene expression. HISTORY All of this emphasis on the dynamic and adaptive nature of both physical and biological matter suggests that physicists and biologists are, in a limited way, turning into historians. In treating their objects of investigation as emergent systems, which might well have developed otherwise if conditions had been slightly different, they are treating them as historically evolved objects, subject to contingencies analogous to those familiar to historians. This historicity goes beyond the biologists’ traditional evolutionary perspective, which has allowed them to treat the genomes of organisms as essentially static structures. As complex adaptive matter, genomes, like snowflakes and superconductors, demand explanations of how they come into existence, what maintains their relative stability and how they can change, all within a framework in which no underlying laws of the parts can explain the emergent dynamics of the whole. This is not to say, however, that explanations cannot be had. They can be grown. It has often been said that the only way to understand an organism is to grow it. Taking that statement as a motto for the historicity of complex adaptive matter suggests much closer relations between the enterprises of science and history than has been usual. As long as scientists understood their goal as finding causal laws that would deductively subsume phenomena, it was very difficult to see how history and science could share anything like the same epistemology. One famous result of the late nineteenth century was the struggle for academic dominance between the Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften and the enunciation by Wilhelm Dilthey and Wilhelm Windelband of a fundamental opposition between “nomothetic” and “ideographic” methods. Historians have basically had two options: reject the methods of natural science or attempt to accommodate to them. The latter option has meant trying to write causal history, with unsatisfying results. An important example from the recent past of the history of science is the “Forman thesis” on the emergence of an acausal quantum mechanics in Weimar Germany. Paul Forman began his classic account by urging that “the historian…must insist upon a causal analysis” and that he would treat “mental posture as socially determined response to the immediate intellectual environment and current experiences.”9 He then argued that extrinsic cultural influences (causes) led Weimar physicists to abandon their traditional principles of rational, causal, explanation. Capitulating to 9

Paul Forman, “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918–1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 3 (1971), 1–115, on p. 3.

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a hostile intellectual environment, they sought an acausal quantum mechanics. The rich trove of documentation that Forman supplied allowed no one to doubt that he had uncovered something of considerable significance. But what? The ensuing controversy hinged on the now outmoded internal/external debate. Was it really the external causes that mattered, or were there good internal reasons that took priority? What was not subjected to scrutiny was the causal mode of explanation itself. Of course there were good internal reasons and yes, Weimar culture did include important strands of romantic, organicist literature, philosophy and art. But the science and the culture were not separate. Physicists, like other scientists and other people, were participants in the culture, engaged in shaping it and in drawing from it resources for dealing with troubling problems in their own domain. Seen in this way, as a problem of understanding how particular participants in a very messy culture have behaved, a knowledgeable historian like Forman may well be able to enunciate in detail the conditions under which those people acted; what he cannot do is give a causal explanation of their actions. Conditions are not causes; they provide only the conditions of possibility for any given action and that in retrospect. They act as constraints, resources and motivations. The most that historians can possibly hope to do is reconstruct a nuanced and highly plausible account — a narrative that incorporates the maximum empirical information available — of the conditions under which a series of events occurred. Those conditions will likely involve tension, contradiction and contingency and their description can never be complete. The situation is one of complexity. The narratives that we historians construct are our means for growing explanations. Two loose analogies to techniques in physics and biology come readily to mind. One is simulation. In lieu of predicting in detail what behavior a particular complex system will necessarily exhibit under specified conditions, according to a universal law governing its behavior, it has often been found possible to simulate the system in a computer program and run it repeatedly to find out what the possibilities are, how they develop or emerge, how likely they are and how small changes affect them. In a somewhat similar way, historians often attempt to characterize a situation with sufficient detail to be able to write a narrative of how it unfolds. What to include and how to interpret what happens are matters of judgment, so there will be many possible narratives of how, say, the revolution of 1848 grew out of the Vormärz, or the Berlin Physical Society emerged in that same period, but the goal of finding an adequate simulation is nevertheless similar. A second analog may be found in the use of “model systems” in biology, of which model organisms like the fruit fly, the mouse and the zebra fish are common examples.10 Consider how the mouse (or rather a highly standardized strain of mouse) serves in studies of cancer in humans. It clearly is not a model of a human 10

The following is adapted from the “Introduction” to Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and M. Norton Wise (eds), Science Without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

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but rather a stand-in for a human, with sufficient similarities to be exemplary for the processes of cancer formation, especially with respect to gene expression. One relies on generic relatedness, or typicality, rather than on identity, and on observed processes of development in the system, rather than on prediction. Thus, model systems are quite unlike the usual mathematical models in physics, such as the Bohr atom, intended to embody a set of laws from which the behavior of the hydrogen atom could be obtained by deduction (precisely the ideal challenged by Laughlin and Pines). Another difference is apparent. Model systems are real systems, neither abstract nor idealized nor simplified nor isolated from their environment. They exist in the world with all of their specificity, individuality and complexity, which means that they continually throw up surprises. This specificity of the model system is one of its most valuable features for biological research. It is also suggestive for history. History, in the view of Carlo Ginzburg, “is basically about particular cases, whether concerning individuals, or social groups, or whole societies.”11 On this view, which gives priority to exemplary narratives about specific individuals or objects, the historian seeks the universal in the particular. Through detailed renderings of the historical evolution of the particular case, historians come to understand more than that case; they aim also at a generic understanding of the ways in which the individual case is representative of larger developments, even though it can never be abstracted from its specific circumstances. Their method, Ginzburg argues, is a method of clues, like that of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes cared nothing for abstract laws of nature or for such grand schemes as the Copernican system. Instead he used his profound knowledge of the natural historical aspects of sciences like chemistry and geology and of mundane things like tobacco ash and mud to connect one particular case to another by analogy, thereby unraveling the crime. Holmes’ unraveling, of course, always involved the reconstruction of a historical narrative of what had happened under very specific conditions. CONCLUSION In drawing attention to these parallels between contemporary science and history, I am suggesting that historians of science might well think more explicitly of their own explanatory project as one of understanding complex systems. Historical events, actors, relationships and institutions can be thought of as emergent properties of dynamic interactions. The task of explanation is then to articulate the conditions and dynamics with sufficient depth and breadth to be able to treat them as the conditions of possibility for what in fact happens (emerges). The goal is not causal explanation, nor is it prediction, both of which are precluded by the complexity of 11

Carlo Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” in Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok (eds) The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 81–118, on 92.

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the system. Nevertheless, understanding is generated through the production of an evolutionary historical narrative, through growing explanations. An unexpected opportunity presents itself from this scenario of shared explanatory goals for much closer relations between historians and scientists than has been common. Collaborative research, for example, has been difficult without a shared understanding of historical problems. But that situation is changing rapidly in all of those areas where the science itself and its objects have taken on a historical cast. If scientists have not become historians, the gap has at least narrowed and communication is easier. We need to make much more of these new opportunities to cross the old divide between the natural sciences and the human sciences. We could well begin by talking to Sam Schweber and rereading some of his prescient writings. Department of History, UCLA

SAM SCHWEBER

POSTSCRIPT

It is with a keen sense of gratitude that I am writing these remarks in response to the unexpected display of collegiality, affection and friendship by the contributors to this volume. I want particularly to thank Jürgen and Kostas who initiated this project and shepherded it to its completion. When they sent me the manuscript, they expressed the hope that I would comment on the individual contributions. Regretfully, I shall disappoint them by not doing so and will confine myself to some general comments. My first reaction upon reading the articles was to marvel at the range of issues addressed, and to be deeply impressed by the acuity and insightfulness of the observations and recommendations made. Surely, the willingness of the contributors to write something for the volume is an expression of their deep commitment to the field. But what also struck me even more forcefully while reading the essays was how intensely every one of them cared about the future of the profession. For each one of them, doing historical research was more than a profession: it was a channel for intellectual growth, a vehicle for learning more and understanding more of the world in which we live. And for each one of them imparting this curiosity and this search for comprehension to their students is reflected in the passionate sense of responsibility with which they have discharged their educational responsibilities. All of them are concerned with making the history of science – in its various approaches – relevant to diverse audiences. Relevant at a time when the nature and character of the diverse sciences are changing in a dramatic fashion, and relevant at a time when the institutions at which the history of science is taught and practiced as a profession are likewise dramatically changing. During the past two decades there has been a conspicuous restructuring of universities in the United States, as evidenced, among other things, by their entrepreneurial activities, by the creation of a large number of interdisciplinary quasi-autonomous research institutes in their midst, by the changing character of the graduate student body enrolled in the sciences, by the dramatic downsizing of physics and mathematics, and by the dramatic increase in the number of part-time lecturers making up their faculties. The end of the Cold War undermined the rationale for the governmental support of academic research and universities experienced a sharp curtailment of scientific research funds. With the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 and of the Federal Technology Act of 1986 the profit-making potential of intellectual property accelerated and intensified the commercialization in universities – particularly in the areas of nanotechnology, genetics and biotechnology. Knowledge has become valued primarily for its involvement in the creation of products and processes for K. Gavroglu and J. Renn (eds.), Positioning the History of Science, 185–188. © 2007 Springer.

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the near-term market. Universities have ceased to be ivory towers and to a large extent have become entrepreneurial enterprises that intend to derive a profit from their intellectual property.1 There is an additional factor which is more pronounced in the physical sciences, and in physics in particular, the science I am most familiar with. During the past twenty-five years our understanding of the most foundational and accurate representations of the microscopic and submicroscopic domains – quantum field theories–has changed dramatically. What has emerged from the work of Kenneth Wilson, Steven Weinberg and others is the view that all extant theoretical representations of physical phenomena are highly accurate, partial descriptions that depend on the energy at which the interactions are being analyzed. Successful quantum field theories are low-energy approximations to a more fundamental theory that may or may not be a quantum field theory. What Weinberg and others have shown is that the reason that quantum field theory describes physics at accessible energies “is that any relativistic quantum theory will at sufficiently low energies look like a quantum field theory.”2 The justification of our present quantitative description of the microscopic and sub-microscopic world as being hierarchically structured and describable with great accuracy by such theories as quantum electrodynamics and the standard model, does not depend on whether an ultimate “final” theory exists and is attainable. Physicists can work with highly accurate, context-dependent “effective field theories” which incorporate only those entities that are actually important in the energy domain being studied. The approach also explains why the description at any one level can be so stable and is not affected by whatever happens at higher energies (or smaller length scales). It thus justifies a picture of an (approximate) hierarchically structured inanimate physical world, which allows the possibility of the emergence of complexity and novelty. In condensed matter physics these “effective field theory” methods have been used to show that in the description of a many body system, integrating out the short wave lengths, high frequency modes (which are associated with the atomic and molecular constitution) one can arrive at a hydrodynamical description that is valid for a large class of fluids, and which is insensitive to the details of the atomic composition of the fluid. The particulars of the short-wave (atomic) physics are amalgamated into the parameters – density and viscosity – that appear in the hydrodynamic description. The physics at atomic lengths – and a fortiori high energy physics – has become decoupled.

1 2

See the Introduction in Philip Mirowski and Esther-Mirjam Sent, eds. Science Bought and Sold: Essays in the Economics of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2002, pp. 1–68. In other words, that local quantum field theory is the only quantum theory that is special relativistically invariant and is local – meaning no action at a distance. Steven Weinberg. The Quantum Theory of Fields. Volumes 1 and 2. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 1995, 1997.

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High energy physics and condensed matter physics have become essentially decoupled in the sense that the existence of quarks, or that of any new heavy mass particle discovered at CERN or elsewhere, are irrelevant to the concerns of condensed matter physicists – no matter how great their intellectual interest in them may be. Condensed matter physicists are primarily concerned with the exploration and conceptualization of the novelty capable of expression in the aggregation of the entities that populate that realm – novelty that is evidently encompassed in the known “foundational laws” of that level, novelty that does not challenge their “foundational” character. The challenge is how to conceptualize this novelty.3 Furthermore, since the “foundational laws” that govern the phenomena at this level are known, the goal of the researches are no longer solely determined by the community of practitioners. Outside interests are often decisive –and favor the applied, the practical and devices with commercial possibilities. And since the researches at the microscopic and macroscopic level at the usual condensed physics laboratory energies do not depend on the description of the submicroscopic constituents, many universities have cut back on support of high-energy physics, and of such subfields as quantum gravity and string theory. A similar situation seems to be true with respect to pure mathematics and its relation to computer science. There are undoubtedly parallels in the other physical sciences, particularly in those in which simulations with computers are playing an ever greater role. I have focused on physics because of my past professional association with that academic discipline. This devaluation of “fundamental” scientific knowledge has also impacted on the support of the history of science. The closing of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology is indicative of the problems that the field faces in the United States, and some of these difficulties are surely encountered elsewhere too. At one level the Dibner Institute’s failure not to be more involved in undergraduate education at MIT, not to have created sturdier bridges with the science and engineering departments at MIT, made it seem marginal to MIT’s activities and objectives – and therefore vulnerable when renewal of its contractual arrangements with MIT came up. It was also vulnerable by virtue of some of the divisions that have existed in the field as to the directions and emphases of various subfields and the approaches they ought to take. Although the final decision regarding support of research activities in the field is yet to be made, the closing of the Institute will certainly severely limit the opportunities that post-docs as well as more senior scholars will have. The suggestions and recommendations made by the contributors to this volume in answering the question that Jürgen and Kostas posed to them concerning the present and future state of the history of science are timely, thoughtful and valuable. To my mind they 3

This is what Philip Anderson meant by the statement “More is different”. Science (1972) 177:393–399.

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Sam Schweber

justify the present volume and should prove very useful in helping to shape the future of the field. I was very fortunate that when I became a historian of science in the late 1970s the field was in an expansionary phase. I was privileged in that my colleagues in the physics department at Brandeis were very supportive of my new activities. I was also lucky to be able to be associated with the department of history of science at Harvard University and to have its faculty members as models of what it means to be a historian of science and to have Raine Daston, Joan Richards, Diane Paul, Peter Galison, and others as fellow students. I learned from Erwin Hiebert what it meant to be a mentor, from Everett Mendelsohn how stimulating an environment a seminar can be, and from my fellow students and from the junior faculty members – John Beatty and Pietro Corsi, – the value and rewards of being a member of an intellectual community. Graduate students everywhere have been essential in cementing this communal aspect of the field. I found historians of science – whether graduate students, post-docs, or faculty members, whether in the United States, Europe or Israel welcoming, eager to exchange ideas and open to different approaches. Indeed, even more so than the science departments that I was familiar with, I found the history of science community a model of Dewey’s communicative community, one that created a freer and more humane experience, in which all share and all contribute; one that exists under the constraint of cooperation, trust and truthfulness; one that to a large extent is uncoerced in setting its goal and agenda; a community, many of whose members believe that human emancipatory interests are involved in its activities. Like many of the contributors to the volume I believe that the issue confronting the field is to be relevant – relevant in graduate education, relevant to undergraduate students whatever their fields of concentration, relevant to our colleagues in other fields, relevant to scientists and engineers, and relevant to the public at large. Relevant by addressing the past history of the sciences as well as by addressing the issues of recent and contemporary science making use of all the tools at our disposal: history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and always being sensitive to what makes scientific knowledge a particular kind of knowledge. The essays in this volume are guidelines for what can – and should – be done. The challenge is great and the future of the field depends on how it is met. However, I am confident that it will be met successfully. I am confident because the intellectual leadership of the field is in the hands of a generation of impressive, erudite, imaginative, young practitioners who not only have charted new directions and have set new standards of scholarship, but who also recognize the value, distinctiveness, indeed the necessity of the communal aspect of the field and who share Dewey’s aspiration for a communicative community.