The New Internalism and the Organizational Synthesis May 30, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in Methods.Tags: Louis Galambos, Thomas Hughes
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Louis Galambos
Many electrons have been spilled on this blog concerning the epistemic imperative in history of science writing, and the accordant organization of scholarship according to epistemological rather than chronological problematics. Last year I spent some time arguing that this is unfortunate, since chronological problematics, broadly considered, consolidate historiographical gains and hold far more information than does the accumulation of what I like to call “galleries of practice”, which are dedicated to illustrating the variations on practices relating to “how we come to know”.
The epistemic imperative arises from a variety of locations: sociological “relativism” has used the problem to make deeper inquiries into how and why people agree; various lines of critique have sought to provide cogent reminders against the dangers of scientism; a few scholars have sought to chart the history of epistemological attitudes. Ultimately, I am increasingly convinced, the intellectual roots of the epistemic imperative matter less than the overarching fact that this structure of argument has simply become the “house style” of the history of science profession.
The house style, characterized by its use of case study to focus on the material and contingent, and by its concern for epistemological issues broadly construed, accommodates a highly interdisciplinary form of inquiry, (more…)
Primer: Project Matterhorn and Early Fusion Research May 28, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in EWP Primer.Tags: Edward Frieman, Edward Teller, Francis Chen, Gary Weisel, Hans Bethe, Ira Bernstein, Joan Lisa Bromberg, John Wheeler, Lyman Spitzer Jr., Martin Kruskal, Russell Kulsrud
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At this moment, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is preparing to come online at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (see the New York Times story). The goal of NIF is to study small-scale nuclear fusion ignited by a precisely focused array of 192 high-power lasers. Reflecting a situation often seen in higher profile with America’s space program, the project is vastly over-budget, and its worth has been subjected to extensive criticism. Nuclear fusion has for decades remained a subject of intensive study and perpetually unmet promise. The “Array of Contemporary American Physicists” on which I am now at work for the AIP History Center will have fusion and related plasma research as one of its focuses, and includes information on some of those involved in the NIF as well as in prior generations of research.
Lyman Spitzer explains the "stellarator" at the Second Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, 1958
The study of nuclear fusion dates to the 1930s, when an emerging theoretical understanding of subatomic forces and particles suggested a way of accounting for the energy produced by stars and the synthesis of elements within them, as worked out by German émigré physicist Hans Bethe. During World War II, it was understood that artificial fusion could be created by using a fission bomb to ignite nuclear fuel—the idea behind the “super” or “hydrogen” bomb. This possibility was pursued during the war by Hungarian émigré physicist Edward Teller, and, following debate on whether (more…)
Primer: The Royal Academy of Sciences May 22, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in EWP Primer.Tags: Francis Bacon, Franz Mesmer, Jacques Rohault, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Melchisédech Thévenot, Rene Descartes, Roger Hahn
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An imagined visit by King Louis XIV to the Royal Academy of Sciences, 1671.
OK, Hump-Day History got a bit lost the last couple weeks, but to restore some momentum, we present a special Friday edition. I hope American readers have a fine long Memorial Day weekend.
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The organization of scientific work and its communication necessarily involves the reconciliation of tensions between the inherent elitism of advanced inquiry and the aspirations of inquirers to produce universally valid knowledge, as well as between the individualism of personal initiative and the collectivism of rational agreement. Cultures of inquiry and invention have a wide variety of choices of how to enact such reconciliations, and their choices often create a conceptual resonance between scientific practice and the culture and politics beyond the community. This was clearly and influentially the case with the Royal Academy of Sciences, established in Paris in 1666 under the authority of absolutist monarch Louis XIV.
When the Academy was established, it represented a culmination of a decades-long proliferation of circles dedicated to the discussion of philosophical and cultural issues. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the interests of these circles crossed freely between art and rhetoric, general scholarship, the philosophical reformism of people like René Descartes (Jacques Rohault’s, 1618-1672, “Cartesian Wednesdays” in particular), and, of course, the then-recent vogue for experimental natural philosophy often associated with Francis Bacon (and exemplified by the “Academy” run by Melchisédech Thévenot, c.1620-1692).
The short-lived Accademia del Cimento in Florence (est. 1657), and the Royal Society in London (est. 1660), suggested the possibility that centralizing inquiry (more…)
Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives May 20, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.Tags: Hugh Everett, John Wheeler, Niels Bohr
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OK, it’s Wednesday, but this morning’s post is going to be a quick reflection on an episode of Nova I saw last night on Hugh Everett III and his son Mark, better known as E, the leader of the band Eels. Perhaps surprisingly for a historian of physics, I’ve been aware of E much longer than I’ve been aware of Everett—back in college we used to play Eels albums a lot. Their (his) second album, 1998′s Electro-shock Blues is a particularly depressing ride through his reaction to his mother’s death from cancer and his sister’s suicide (but ending in the uplifting “P.S. You Rock My World”). I did not, however, know that E was Everett’s son. Hugh Everett died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 51.
Everett is best-known as the progenitor of the “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics, which he put out to challenge the Copenhagen Interpretation in the late 1950s as a graduate student at Princeton. As a way of circumventing the problem of the seemingly arbitrary “collapse” of wave functions when “observed”, he supposes that instead of collapsing, different possibilities propagate in different realities—in its most technical, least ontological manifestation, this is the idea of the “universal” wave function. Everett’s advisor, John Wheeler, encouraged him, even setting up a meeting with Copenhagen guru Niels Bohr, but found that most quantum physicists rejected his new perspective out-of-hand (egged on behind the scenes by Bohr).
Everett decided against a career in academic physics, going to work for the (more…)
American Observatory History Portal May 12, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.add a comment
Hump-Day History will probably be a day late this week—Chris is working on something, but is also wrapping up the semester. In the meantime, I thought since we get some traffic through here that directs to other sites, it might be useful to put up a list of links to the histories of some major early American observatories. I find the first step to getting a good grip on history is to get familiar with a wide range of players and institutions. To do this, you don’t need any new fangled history—any old institutional history will do just fine, so long as you know the institutions exist. A lot of institutions have put work into making the basic outlines of their history online, so if you need to bone up on your American observatory history, here are a few key institutional histories to get you going. Remember, this is just a sketchy list of institutions with useful online histories, not a complete list of American observatories, or observatories with online histories.
Hopkins Observatory (1834, Massachusetts)
United States Naval Observatory timekeeping (1845)
Dudley Observatory (1856, Albany)
Barnard Observatory (1859, Mississippi)
Leander McCormick Observatory (1885, Virginia)
Lick Observatory (1888, San Jose, California)
Yerkes Observatory (1892, Wisconsin)
Mt. Wilson Observatory (1904, Pasadena)
Palomar Observatory (1936, San Diego County)
People interested might also visit Wikipedia’s List of Observatories, with links to information collected on many others from around the world—of course, it is Wikipedia, so the usual caveats apply, though astronomy and observatory history enthusiasts tend to be conscientious with details.
The Two Cultures at Fifty May 8, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.Tags: C. P. Snow, David Edgerton, Frederick Lindemann, Georgina Ferry, Guy Ortolano, Henry Tizard, Martin Kemp
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On May 7, 1959, C. P. Snow gave his famous lecture on “the two cultures”. The event took on such resonance that there are now 50th-anniversary events taking place in some major institutions of science to acknowledge its significance. See the New York Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the latest Nature, and the folks from my old neighborhood.
The event is taken as an opportunity to reflect on and question the relevance of Snow’s message. But for me Snow has taken on the sort of red-flag qualities that other people in the history of science see in intelligent design or bad pop science. Why am I so exercised by Snow, of all people, and not these other things? Aside from his direct (albeit marginal) place in my research, I think it’s because Snow exists in a somewhat uncomfortable space between the uncontrollable bazaar of public ideas and the coherence of useful conversation. The bazaar will always be with us. But Snow helps experts who should know better think they’re having a good conversation, when it’s not the case at all.
The way Snow did this was through a shrewd combination of good-but-obvious advice, bad history, and issue advocacy. As UVa New York University prof Guy Ortolano details in his new (and lamentably expensive) book, The Two Cultures Controversy (2009), when Snow made his argument, he had specific (more…)
Primer: The Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company May 6, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in EWP Primer.Tags: A F Wolfe, Horace Darwin, M J G Cattermole, Robert Whipple, Willem Einthoven, William Pye
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An ad for the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. Click to see a larger version in an online exhibit at Cambridge
Although it was perhaps the most important center for the development of mathematical physics in the 19th century, Cambridge University did not develop its reputation for experimental science until after its establishment of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1874. And while the era is best known as a time of “string and sealing wax” experimentation conducted with self-fashioned apparatus, the development and production of instrumentation was also carried out by specialist inventors and manufacturers, one of the more important of whom in England was Horace Darwin (1851-1928), the youngest son of Charles Darwin.
Horace Darwin had long been interested in the development of new kinds of instrumentation when in 1881 he acquired a controlling stake in a Cambridge instrument workshop. The workshop had been started a few years earlier by the mechanic Robert Fulcher to fashion and service instruments for Cambridge’s physiology department. It was backed financially by Albert Dew-Smith (1848-1903), a friend of Darwin who had trained at Cambridge in physiology. Fulcher, whose mechanical talents were deemed limited, was apparently driven out, leaving the way open for Darwin and Dew-Smith to become co-proprietors of what they decided to call the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company. Darwin obtained sole ownership in 1891.
Under Darwin’s supervision the company grew steadily, expanding its
(more…)
Historical Insultography and Posture May 2, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in Methods.Tags: Karl Popper, Robert K. Merton
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All good historians know that one of the biggest pitfalls to writing good history is taking historical actors at their word. Testimony from the past is bound to be limited by the witness’ particular perspective and colored by their own interests. For example, a dispute of a scientific claim might be said to be motivated by “jealousy” by one party, where another party might claim the other was “narrow-minded”. Reckless historiography simply takes actors at their word without getting the view of the other side.
Historians are thus challenged to adopt an analytically useful posture to find some way to resolve the problem. One possible posture is to parse all the evidence to “get to the bottom of things”. (One sees this a lot in really old-school historiography, especially out of Britain.) Another possible posture is to see the existence of the controversy as an opportunity to examine some broader issue. Following the epistemic imperative, one might dilute actors’ positions, to show that their position was “not universal” or “limited” or “influenced by tacit interests”. A very common posture is a variation of this: to use controversies to triangulate out a detached position by simply acknowledging the existence of disputes: “but their actions were not without controversy”. For some reason, it has become popular to just assume that narrating a controversy in such a way as to invert the actors’ broad claims is useful historiography regardless of the place of the particular controversy in broader history.
One gets the impression from the historiography that the history of science is nothing but conflicting and contested claims—the Great Inversion of “science’s” claim to be the ultimate model of open and collaborative society—a (more…)
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Christopher Donohue
