I agree with everything Thomas Soderqvist says, especially his remark below,
which reproduces more or less exactly what I was going to say when his
e-mail came through anyway.
>Maybe time is ripe to introduce another factor into the discussion, namely
>the `technical language´ factor. Recent science is so technically advanced
>(relative to the historical observer, of course), that you need a pretty
>advanced technical training if you want to understand the stuff. So, while
>the `classical language´ factor keeps the grad students away from most of
>the literature prior to approx. 1800-50, the `technical language´ factor
>largely keeps them off the post-1945 ground (unless they don´t care about
>the technical content at all). What's left? Well, roughly 1800-1950. Pretty
>narrow time window, isn't it?
Howevr, this does raise the question (and a very interesting one too) of who
does history of science? Historically, historians of science were either
active scientists or scientists who had moved into an area which enabled
them to do history of science (e.g. museums, publishing). At least in my
own field (history of chemistry), it would have practically unknown for a
historian of chemistry not to have a chemical training (at the very least)
before the 1960s. So the "technical language" factor would not have been a
problem especially given the slower rate of change at that time.
Traditionally scientists have wanted to know "how we got here", so in the
nineteenth century and even the early twentieth century, the focus was on
the origins of modern chemistry, spoanning the chemical revolution
(c.1770-1790) to the establishment of atomic weights and the periodic table
(1860s). Later in this century, the emphasis shifted somewhat to the
nineteenth century as a whole, which remians the most popular period in my
subject. If we take "how we got here" as the core question, by now the
emphasis should have moved on to the period 1920-1970, but for the most part
it has not (although nearly all my work has been on this period). This has
arisen, I would argue, because the chemists, above all the active chemsits,
have abandoned the field that was once their own. Hence the technical
language problem. Nonetheless, it is my impression (am I wrong?) that most
historians of science have science degrees, so there must be more at work
here. I would attribute it to two factors: the rapid rate of change and
ever-increasing specialisation of modern science, which makes it alomost
impossible for even scientifically trained scholars to keep up with any
given topic. And if a exceptional historian deos keep abreast of it and
interpret it (I am thinking especially of Peter Galison), very few other
historians will understand what he has written. There is also the
dcoumentation factor. Pre-1800 the documentation is thin on the ground and
much of it will have already been studied (and there is the language problem
as well). Between about 1800 and 1930, there is just about the right amount
of documentation, enough to be getting on with but not too much. After
1930, the documentation is sometimes restricted for reasons of state or
business and if it is available there is usually a daunting amount of it (as
I know well from my own work), then as we approach the present day, new
problems with unrecoverable information in the form of telephone
conversations, e-mails and computer data come into play. Having sais all
that, I still think histoians of science have something of a hang-up about
1945 (a end-point that has been abandoned by other historians for at leas a
decade), I don't know why.
Peter
Peter J. T. Morris, MA, DPhil, CChem, FRSC
Senior Curator, Experimental Chemistry,
Science Museum, London SW7 2DD
(44 + 171 938 8186 -- Fax: 44 + 171 938 9736)
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