It might be helpful to think about the long-range historiography
of these questions. For much of the 19th century, and during the initial
decades of professionalized history of science in c. 20, the interest in
pre 18c science was clearly centered around the question of "emergent
science"--that is, how did the familiar and differentiated science of
the 19th and 20th centuries come into being? Although that question is
well on its way to crumbling of its own weight, there clearly are books
and interests in c 16th-17th science which clearly are still motivated
by that question (say, Leviathan and the Air-Pump) and books which find
that a silly or uninteresting question, and are interested in
maping cognitive practices of a much larger variety: say the Lisa
Jardine-Grafton type of approach, or that of Carlo Ginsburg
(interestingly, a divide here between historians of science and historians
tout court). As one moves forward into the 19c, 20c (as objects of
study), it seems to me the second sort of work is much thinner on
the ground--one finds it more in history of technology (e.g. Stevens'
Grammar of the Machine or Daniel Calhoun's Intelligence of a People)
or history of medicine (John Warner's work). None of these, by the
way, broaching the treshhold of 1900. It would be interesting to think
about the implications of a history of 'science' in the 20th century
which was really more a cultural/social history of cognitive practices--
e.g. of attempting the kind of thing Carlo Ginsburg does for the 16th.
As for work in early modern, it seems to me partially a matter of what
kind of public concerns, if any, one sees oneself addressing with one's
scholarship--in particular, how important the "emergent science" question
is for one. Obviously, there's a broad range of possible responses.
Harry M. Marks
Dept. History of Science, Medicine
& Technology
Johns Hopkins University
1900 E. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21205
410-955-4899
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