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Dear HESers,
Steve Fuller has written a paper on "Who's Afraid of the History of
Contemporary Science?" that relates to issues brought up in the editorial
and the ensuing discussion. Below is an abstract he sent me of the paper.
The full-length version of the paper is available, with Steve Fuller's
permission, at
http://cs.muohio.edu/~HisEcSoc/Resources/Editorials/Weintraub/Fuller.shtml
As a reminder, if you would like to read all the replies to the editorial,
connect to
http://cs.muohio.edu/~HisEcSoc/Resources/Editorials/Weintraub/discussion.shtml
This site is updated at least once a day.
Sincerely,
Esther-Mirjam Sent
HES co-editor
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Abstract of
WHO'S AFRAID OF THE HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE?
Steve Fuller, Dept of Sociology & Social Policy, University of
Durham, UK (E-mail: [log in to unmask])
(To appear in T. Soederqvist, ed., The Historiography of Contemporary
Science and Technology (Reading UK: Harwood, 1996).
In "Who's Afraid of the History of Contemporary Science?", I argue that the
history of contemporary science offers historians a unique opportunity to
re-establish their relevance to the disciplines they write about. I observe
that
even though the history of science enjoys unprecedented financial and moral
support from the scientific community, it is also completely irrelevant to
the popular histories that scientists write to justify their activities to
novices and the wider public. It would seem that a Faustian bargain (one
endorsed by Thomas Kuhn) has been struck, whereby the price paid for the
history of science's autonomy from science is its contemporary irrelevance.
Consequently, a very powerful source of science critique has been lost. The
irrelevance of history to critiques of contemporary science was first felt
early in this century in the wake of the Planck-Mach debates over the form
that physics education should take. Mach believed that past sins should
revisit successive generations of physicists until they are properly
addressed, whereas Planck believed in a statute of limitations for holding
current research programs accountable for past sins -- namely, once the
programs had registered enough substantial results in their own terms.
Planck's view has clearly won, but historians of the social sciences -- by
remaining affiliated primarily to their home discipline rather than the
history of science -- keep alive the Machian vision of the relevance of
critical-historical inquiry to the growth of science.
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