History and Sociology of Sci.
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Who: Academics, mostly
What: Products
When: A Short History of History
Where: Universities, Museums, Archives
Why: Insights from History of Science
How: Research Methods
Who+Where: Academics
• History of Science Society: 2700 members
• Some in Federal government
• Allied Fields:
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Science, Technology and Society; Science Studies
Philosophy of Science
History of Technology
Environmental History
• ~60 Graduate Programs in US
– most small (5-20 PhD students)
– Biggest up to 40 students (Harvard, Penn, Wisconsin,
Oklahoma)
What: Products
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Book-Writing Discipline
Research Monographs
Textbooks
Journal Articles: 20-60 pages
Surveys for Policy-Makers
How: Methods
• Analytical Narrative: Document and explain the past
• Sources (found in Archives, Libraries, Museums):
– Much more than just research articles
– Private texts: letters, diaries, lab notebooks, annotations,
drafts
– Public Texts: textbooks, journal articles, speeches
– Images: Photographs, diagrams, movies, even
advertisements
– Data sets: Census returns, Membership Surveys, Gov’t and
Business survey data
Physics Leads Forecasting
“It is clear that the ultimate goals of dynamic and
synoptic meteorology can only be obtained
simultaneously: the perfect forecaster would be the
first man who could completely explain the physical
behavior of the atmosphere, and vice versa. … [I]t is
already clear that an understanding of the
atmosphere in physical terms is absolutely essential
for the synoptic meteorologist.”
--Jorgen Holmboe, George Forsythe, and William Gustin,
Dynamic Meteorology, 1945, p. 1.
Tempest
Prognosticator
Uses the “Animal
Instinct” of leeches
to predict storms
(Source: Katharine Anderson,
Predicting the Weather, 173.)
Weather
Cadet
Generation
in 1970
The Air Mass Model of Cyclogenesis
Thomas A. Blair, Weather Elements (New York: Prentice Hall, 1942): 191.
Chesterfield
Cigarettes,
1958
Weather Girl,
The Beverly Hillbillies, 1964
2 Minute History
• 1913: George Sarton, Isis
• 1924: History of Science Society Founded
• 1945-1960s: Science Education, Science in a Free
Society
• 1962: T.S. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific
Revolutions
• 1970s-80s: Social Construction of Science
• 1990s: The Science Wars (0 dead, one job lost)
• 2000s: Science Matters (Climate Change, Katrina,
Evolution)
Why: Insights from Hist. of Sci.
• “Social Construction”
– Scientific knowledge created thru social processes
like negotiation, persuasion, education
• Consequence: Nature and Culture are not
separate
– How groups of people know the world depends
upon social structures and cultural patterns
• Consequence: Political Values inherent in
Objectivity
Environmental History
• Integrated stories about how societies and their
natural environments affect each other
• Example: The Dust Bowl, by Donald Worster(1979)
– Not just a climatic event, but confluence of social
forces, political decisions, economics, and weather
– Pulls together Global War, commodity prices,
government regulatory decisions, cultural
attitudes, and climate statistics to explain how
unrestrained capitalism devastated the people and
soil of the Dust Bowl region
Funding
• Buy us cheap
– Main costs: Salary, Travel, Photocopies
• Sources:
– National Science Foundation (~$8 million/year)
– National Endowment for the Humanities
– 1 Graduate History Fellowship, Am. Met’l Society
• Collary: We’re poor, and can’t pay page charges
to publish