Unfocused: Science, Technology, and the Cold War November 28, 2010
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.Tags: Anatol Rapoport, David Engerman, David Kaiser, Hunter Heyck, Joel Isaac, Kristie Macrakis, Paul Erickson, Rebecca Lemov, Robert K. Merton, Thomas Schelling, Zuoyue Wang
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Collectively, historians know a lot about science and technology during the Cold War. A significant number of books and articles have been written about the ambitious technological systems developed during the era, the enormous scientific endeavors made possible by expanded state and military funding, the rise of new intellectual programs in fundamental physics and molecular biology, the expansion of geoscience and social science and the development of new methods in them, the global integration of scientific work, and the importance of digital computation, among other subjects. Accordingly, the present is an excellent time to reflect on and consolidate what has been learned, render the history of the era more navigable, and to suggest forward-looking research programs.
Unfortunately, this past summer’s Isis Focus section, edited by David Kaiser and Hunter Heyck did not take the opportunity to do that. The limit of the section’s synthesis essentially said what the paragraph above said at greater length, and left the rest of the space as a forum for the individual contributors to showcase their own research projects, which are taken to “exemplify” recent research trends. In this way, this Focus section is little different from past sections, which position themselves as the beginnings of new conversation, present some new empirical work, but mainly simply recapitulate basic ideas that can be considered the agreed-upon points in an aging scholarship, while reciting the perpetual mantra that “more work is needed” for any real understanding to occur. This blog typically does not take these sections up. But, since Cold War-era science is my own specialty, I thought a (now rather belated) critique of this particular section might be in order.
Preliminary Survey: Literature on Agricultural Research to 1945 November 19, 2010
Posted by Will Thomas in Technocracy in the UK.Tags: Abigail Woods, Alfred Daniel Hall, Barbara Kimmelman, Bernd Gausemeier, Berris Charnley, Christophe Bonneuil, Colin J. Holmes, David F. Smith, Deborah Fitzgerald, Edith Rebecca Saunders, Edward John Russell, Gilles Denis, Gregor Mendel, Jean-Luc Mayaud, John Boyd Orr, John Winnifrith, Jonathan Harwood, Justus Liebig, Karin Matchett, Keith Vernon, Louis Pasteur, Margaret Rossiter, Marsha Richmond, Neil F. McCann, Paolo Palladino, Paul Brassley, R. A. Fisher, Robert Olby, Susanne Heim, Thomas Wieland, Tiago Saraiva, Timothy DeJager, William Bateson
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The importance of agricultural research in the intellectual history of science should be self-evident. Justus Liebig (1803-1873) was a key figure in both the development of laboratory methodology and agricultural science. Gregor Mendel’s (1822-1884) famous experiments were in plant breeding. Louis Pasteur’s (1822-1895) most celebrated work was on the cattle disease, anthrax. William Bateson (1861-1926), who coined the term genetics, was the first director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution in London, 1910-1926. Statistician, geneticist, and eugenics proponent R. A. Fisher (1890-1962) was employed by the Rothamsted Experimental Station, 1919 to 1933 (and temporarily relocated there from 1939 to 1943). Interwar and postwar virologists and molecular biologists did a great deal of work on the economically destructive tobacco mosaic virus.
In these examples, problems of agriculture form a motivating context for contributions to biology, statistics, and other fields. The history of agricultural research itself remains somewhat difficult to discern, even though it apparently constitutes a long, sizable tradition. We do have some enumeration of accomplishments in research and technique, written in retrospect by practitioners. For the case of the UK, the following resources are available:
The Archive, Navigability, and the Sum of Historiographical Knowledge November 13, 2010
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.10 comments
Will you reclaim history from the archive, or will the archive claim you? (Photo from Wikimedia Commons; click for the original)
Historians owe a great deal to librarians and archivists, as well as to those who have preserved their own papers. However, “the archive” — referring broadly to books, journals, papers, artifacts, etc. — is pointless if it is not used. We can scarcely claim to know about history if all we have done is preserve it rather than read it, publish it, and talk about it. This post is a meditation about how it can be claimed that history is known, and how this relates to the use of the archive.
Publication, in itself, cannot be strictly identified with use. Publication is perhaps a step above reading the archive — it is an essentially personal act that is more or less pointless unless the publication is read. If the publication is not read, then it sits on a shelf (and maybe a server), which means that it has essentially become part of the archive itself. Perhaps the archive has been made more accessible, but this point is moot if it is not accessed.
Systems-Thinking and Robert Redfield November 9, 2010
Posted by Christopher Donohue in History of the Human Sciences.Tags: Adam Smith, Alexis de Tocqueville, Edward Sapir, Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies, Franz Boas, Georg Simmel, Hebert Spencer, Max Weber, Montesquieu, Oswald Spengler, Robert Park, Robert Redfield, Victor Turner, Wilhelm Windelband
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Robert Redfield
Robert Redfield (1897-1958) earned his degree in sociology and anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1920. More than any anthropologist of his generation, argues Clifford Wilcox, Redfield adopted a “pronounced sociological approach to anthropology.” According to Wilcox, two broad intellectual currents influenced Redfield’s development: “the deep-seated critique of civilization that emerged among European and American intellectuals following World War I,” and “his father-in-law, University of Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park ” (Social Anthropology, xiv.)
In contrast to the assertive Victorian belief in progress, in the period following the First World War, intellectuals began to “question the nature not only of Western civilization, but of civilization itself, particularly the equation of civilization with progress.” Among those who penned withering critiques of civilization were Oswald Spengler and Edward Sapir. (more…)
Technocracy in the UK November 6, 2010
Posted by Will Thomas in Technocracy in the UK.7 comments
Having managed to get settled pretty well at Imperial College London and in my new place in Shepherds Bush, I am now starting my new project in earnest. After a few days of preliminary research, I have found myself knee-deep in the historiography of British agricultural science, which already is pretty fascinating. In the earlier part of the century, the agricultural experimental stations (and this is something historians of this stuff know well) turn out to be caught between problems of improving agricultural yield, studying the nutritional requirements of plants and livestock, suggesting how agriculture can best meet the nutritional requirements of the nation, but also doing academic research in the nascent field of genetics.
The key figures immediately turn out to be politically interesting, as agricultural science is hyped heavily for its social relevance. At the same time the science becomes a central battleground over the question of the “planning” of fundamental science when the genetics of Lysenko become a scandal. John Boyd Orr — director of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen from 1914 to 1945, and first director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization — turns out to be an advocate for world government who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949. (World government, by the way, is a topic explored in respect to airpower and atomic weapons in the thesis of recent Imperial PhD Waqar Zaidi)
But all this is getting ahead of myself, and there will be more details to come. What I’d like to do now is introduce the broader research program of which all this is a part. The title of my project is “British State Expertise in Food, Construction, and Defence, 1945-1975″. (more…)
Paul Ceruzzi’s Internet Alley November 3, 2010
Posted by Will Thomas in EWP Book Club.Tags: Charles Shrader, Christophe Lécuyer, Paul Ceruzzi
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Not too long after I arrived in Washington, DC for my post-doc at AIP, I gave a talk on some of my work on operations research and systems analysis at the National Air and Space Museum. Afterward NASM curator Paul Ceruzzi (who is, by the way, the primary contributor to the IT History Society blog) told me about the role that these fields took in his book Internet Alley: High Technology in Tysons Corner, 1945-2005 (MIT Press, 2008).
Tysons Corner is an area in the Virginia suburbs just outside of Washington. While I worked at AIP, I lived in the city and commuted out to Maryland on the DC Metro. Nevertheless, I did cross the Potomac River into Virginia from time to time, and, when I went to Dulles Airport or the Leesburg outlet mall, I traveled through the region that is the subject of this book.
On the surface, the place is a typical stretch of the American suburbia that can be found in most metropolitan regions: highway, surrounded by housing subdivisions, chain stores in strip malls, and unremarkable office buildings. Ceruzzi is a longer-term resident of DC, and, in the opening to his prologue, he describes how this same scene captured his curiosity:
Many of the buildings had the names of their tenants displayed in bold lettering on the top floor. Some names suggested high technologies: names ending in ‘-tronics,’ ‘-ex,’ or the like. Others consisted of three-letter acronyms, few of which I recognized. As I drove by, all I could think of was the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: ‘Who are those guys’?
This question, really, is the essence of “positive portraiture”, giving the development of knowledge about the past priority over interpretation of the past. As a regional study, Ceruzzi’s book has no particular topic aside from identifying a clear phenomenon — the presence of these buildings — and then studying the confluence of various contexts, which can explain that phenomenon. (more…)
Will Thomas
Christopher Donohue
