About Aileen Fyfe's observation that most post-grad students work on
19th and 20th century history of the life sciences, including medicine -
and what shall be done to encourage students to tale up pre-18th century
topics:
Colin Axon is probably right when he writes that the interest in the
history of the life sciences is due to their recent impact, both
intellectually and economically. But this does not explain why students
prefer to work on 19th and 20th century topics. My experience from the
Danish and Swedish scene is that the `classical language factorŽ is the
best explanation. Hardly any student recruited to the field today has
any training in Latin (or Greek), and those who have have nobody to
share their interest with.
Some departments require German and/or French for graduate work - but
few departments require Latin and Greek. So probably an enforced
classical language requirement would change the trend towards pre-1800
history of science again - if that is what you want.
You can also turn the argument and say, that, after all, 90% of all
historians still work on pre-1945 science, whereas 90% or more of all
science in world history has been produced after 1945 - so the problem
is not the lack of scholarship in pre-1800 history of science, but that
post-1945 history of science is still lacking far behind the enormous
amount of scientific research done in this period - and that the bulk of
this consists of research in the life sciences and medicine.
Thomas Soderqvist
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Thomas Soderqvist, PhD, dr.phil.
Research Professor in Science Studies
Department of Philosophy and Science Studies, Roskilde University
P.O. Box 260, DK-4000 Denmark
secretary phone: (+45) 4674 2587; fax: (+45) 4674 3012
home address: Strindbergsvej 24, DK-2500 Valby, Denmark
home phone: +(45) 3645 2086
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