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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handle the huge amounts of published and unpublished source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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