scholarly journals The History of Science as “the History of Rare Fluctuations of Thought and Scientific Work ... like Archimedes and Newton”

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Vladimir Vizgin
Keyword(s):  
Gauge Field ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Biographical Approach ◽  
History Of

The article examines the scientific and biographical approach to the history of science and especially its version, which can be called the method of personification of history. Both methods were proposed by S. I. Vavilov and both are associated with his understanding of the history of science as “a sequence of rare fluctuations of thought and scientific work ... like Archimedes and Newton”. The method of personification of history is illustrated on a number of large-scale fragments of the history of physics of the 19th and 20th centuries. Five cases of such personification are considered. This is, first of all, the case of G. Monge, who personified the science and technology of revolutionary France (analyzed by Vavilov himself). Two casesrefer to two scientific revolutions in physics of the 20th century (to the quantum-relativistic – the case of A. Einstein and to the gauge-field – the case of M. Gell-Mann). And, finally, two cases of personification of the history of Russian physics. In the first, not one, but two essentially opposite key figures of Russian physics on the eve of the scientific revolution are considered: N. A. Umov and P. N. Lebedev. The second case is S. I. Vavilov himself, who in many ways personified the development of Soviet physics in the first half of the 20th century.

scholarly journals The Roles of Mathematics in the History of Science: The Mathematization Thesis

2020 ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Ciro Tomazella Ferreira ◽  
Cibelle Celestino Silva
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
Mathematical Approach ◽  
New Science ◽  
History Of

In this paper, we present an analysis of the evolution of the history of science as a discipline focusing on the role of the mathematization of nature as a historiographical perspective. Our study is centered in the mathematization thesis, which considers the rise of a mathematical approach of nature in the 17th century as being the most relevant event for scientific development. We begin discussing Edmund Husserl whose work, despite being mainly philosophical, is relevant for having affected the emergence of the narrative of the mathematization of nature and due to its influence on Alexandre Koyré. Next, we explore Koyré, Dijksterhuis, and Burtt’s works, the historians from the 20th century responsible for the elaboration of the main narratives about the Scientific Revolution that put the mathematization of science as the protagonist of the new science. Then, we examine the reframing of the mathematization thesis with the narrative of two traditions developed by Thomas S. Kuhn and Richard Westfall, in which the mathematization of nature shares space with other developments taken as equally relevant. We conclude presenting contemporary critical perspectives on the mathematization thesis and its capacity for synthesizing scientific development.

Tolerance and integrity at Johns Hopkins

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-474
Author(s):  
Robert Marc Friedman
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
History Of Physics ◽  
Conceptual History ◽  
Great Freedom ◽  
Departmental Culture ◽  
Academic Mentoring ◽  
History Of

The Department of History of Science at Johns Hopkins shaped by Harry Woolf and Robert H. Kargon brought together diverse scholars who nevertheless shared a basic outlook. Historical questions and scholarly craft took precedent over theo-retical or historiographic positioning. At the same time, students were allowed great freedom to explore and develop new perspectives for analyzing science historically. When Russell McCormmach arrived in Baltimore in the fall of 1972, he joined a departmental culture of intellectual tolerance and forthright expres-sion. In paying homage to Russ and the department I illuminate the departmental culture into which Russ entered, Russ's seminars and academic mentoring, and .nally Russ's vision for combining art and scholarship. Russ shared a deep affection for solid conceptual history of physics while supporting our ventures into new historiographic terrain.

RISE, GRUBENHUND: ON PROVINCIALIZING KUHN

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH R. COEN
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kuhnian Revolution ◽  
Neutral Ground

Bilingualism was Kuhn's solution to the problem of relativism, the problem raised by his own theory of incommensurability. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific theories are separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension. There is no neutral ground from which to judge one theory fitter than another. Each is formulated in its own language and cannot be translated into the idiom of another. Yet, like many Americans, Kuhn never had the experience of moving comfortably between languages. “I've never been any good really at foreign languages,” he admitted in an interview soon before his death. “I can read French, I can read German, if I'm dropped into one of those countries I can stammer along for a while, but my command of foreign languages is not good, and never has been, which makes it somewhat ironic that much of my thought these days goes to language.” Kuhn may have been confessing to more than a personal weakness. His linguistic ineptitude seems to be a clue to his overweening emphasis on the difficulty of “transworld travel.” Multilingualism remained for him an abstraction. In this respect, I will argue, Kuhn engendered a peculiarly American turn in the history of science. Kuhn's argument for the dependence of science on the norms of particular communities has been central to the development of studies of science in and as culture since the 1980s. Recent work on the mutual construction of science and nationalism, for instance, is undeniably in Kuhn's debt. Nonetheless, the Kuhnian revolution cut off other avenues of research. In this essay, I draw on the counterexample of the physician–historian Ludwik Fleck, as well as on critiques by Steve Fuller and Ted Porter, to suggest one way to situate Kuhn within the broader history of the history of science. To echo Kuhn's own visual metaphors, one of the profound effects of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on the field of history of science was to render certain modes of knowledge production virtually invisible.

scholarly journals A scientist is almost always a collectioner

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Andrey Vaganov
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Science Study ◽  
The Social ◽  
Physiological Phenomenon ◽  
Research Collection ◽  
History Of ◽  
Blank Spot

Collecting as a social, psychological and even physiological phenomenon has not been devoted to much serious research. Those that exist focus on the phenomenology of collections. The phenomenon of collecting and collecting remains largely unexplored. The topic of “collectors-scientists” is, in general, a blank spot in the study of science and the social history of science. Nevertheless, there is quite legitimately a special concept - “research collection”. For example, the collection of collections for Goethe was one of the ways of his scientific work. As a result of this work, Goethe became an expert in the field of knowledge, the objects of which he collected. This kind of rapprochement between science and collecting seems to be an interdependent process. Not only collecting in the highest phase of its development is being melted into a scientific occupation, but also an occupation in science has all the features inherent in project collecting. The article makes an attempt to establish some ontological patterns inherent in this process, to outline the paths to the natural science study of the phenomenon of scientists-collectors.

The Dawn of Scientific Biography

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Michael Segre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Model

Abstract This article endeavors to contribute to a better understanding of the literary contexts of early biographies of scientists written during the Scientific Revolution. To what extent are these biographies influenced by stereotypes that are an inadequate fit for modern history of science? Its claim is that there was, indeed, a literary model for biographies of scientists, and that this model had deep roots in Biblical and classical literature. While the model was similar to that used in Renaissance biographies of artists, it did not fully emerge until as late as the seventeenth century.

History of Science and Medicine

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Growth Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.

MOHAMMAD GHOLI MAJD, Resistance to the Shah: Landowners and the Ulama in Iran (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000). Pp. 426. $49.95 cloth.

2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-156
Author(s):  
Afshin Marashi
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Agrarian Sector ◽  
Look Back ◽  
History Of

If the history of the Middle East in the 20th century is a history of fundamental social changes and dislocations, then surely one important part of that story is the transformation that took place in the agrarian sector of many Middle Eastern societies. The politics of landownership and the projects of land reform in the 20th century were indeed among the most ambitious of the statist projects undertaken during what we can now look back on as the “age of modernization.” Like so many large-scale projects of social engineering, land reform in the Middle East captured the optimism and idealism of modernization while producing some of its most brutal and unforeseen consequences.

The History of Science as European Self-Portraiture

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
LORRAINE DASTON
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

Since the Enlightenment, the history of science has been enlisted to show the unity and distinctiveness of Europe. This paper, written on the occasion of the award of the 2005 Erasmus Prize to historians of science Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin, traces the intertwined narratives of the history of science and European modernity from the 18th century to the present. Whether understood as triumph or tragedy (and there have been eloquent proponents of both views), the Scientific Revolution has been portrayed as Europe's decisive break with tradition – the first such break in world history and the model for all subsequent epics of modernization in other cultures. The paper concludes with reflections on how a new history of science, exemplified in the work of Shapin and Schaffer, may transform the self-image of Europe and conceptions of truth itself.

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