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A new book of interest for those who write the history of recent 
and contemporary science and technology 
 
Thomas Soederqvist (ed.) 
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 
AND TECHNOLOGY 
Harwood Academic, Reading, England (Studies in the History of 
Science, Technology and Medicine, Volume 4) 
 
More than 90 percent of all scientific history has been made during 
the last half century. So far, however, only a fraction of historical 
scholarship has dealt with this period. Merely a decade ago, most 
scientific historians considered recent science -- the scientific 
culture created, lived and remembered by contemporary scientists -- 
an area of study best left to the historical actors themselves. 
   Today, an increasing number of historians are turning to the study 
of contemporary science. When doing so, they are confronted with new 
and unfamiliar methodological and theoretical problems. How to 
handle the huge amounts of published and unpublished source 
materials? What level of scientific training is necessary to 
understand contemporary science? Does the lack of historical 
perspective prevent good scholarship? Can (and will) historians of 
recent science share the turf with other professional groups, such as 
active scientists, scholars of science and technology studies, and 
science journalists? This volume aims to provide answers to these 
questions. 
   The thirteen contributors are active researchers in what has been 
called "the last frontier" in the history of science. The book itself 
is the outcome of an International Workshop on Historiographical 
Problems in Contemporary Science, Technology and Medicine, held at 
Gothenburg University, Sweden, in September 1994. 
 
Contents: 
- Thomas Soderqvist: `Who Will Sort Out the Hundred or More Paul 
Ehrlichs? Remarks on the Historiography of Recent and Contemporary 
Technoscience' 
 
- Jeff Hughes: `Whigs, Prigs and Politics: Problems in the 
Historiography of Contemporary Science' 
 
- Susan M. Lindee: `The Conversation: History and History as it 
Happens' 
 
- Soraya de Chadarevian: `Using Interviews to Write the History of 
Science' 
 
- Joseph Tatarewicz: `Writing the history of Space Science and 
Technology: Multiple Audiences with Divergent Goals and Standards' 
 
- Ilana Lowy: `Participant Observation and the Study of Biomedical 
Sciences: Some Methodological Observations' 
 
- Jean-Paul Gaudilliere: `The Living Scientist Syndrome: Memory and 
History of Molecular Recognition' 
 
- Skuli Sigurdsson: `Electric Memories and Progressive Forgetting' 
 
- Susan E. Cozzens: `Knowledge of the Brain: The Visualizing Tools of 
Contemporary Historiography' 
 
- Frederic L. Holmes: `Writing About Scientists of the Near Past' 
 
- Paul Forman:`Recent Science Later-Modern and Post-Modern' 
 
- Ronald E. Doel: `Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors and 
Intelligence Agents' 
 
- Steve Fuller: `Who's Afraid of the History of Contemporary Science? 
 
Late May 1997 * 256pp 
Cloth * ISBN 3-7186-5906-9 * A 
US$52 / stlg34 / ECU43 
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