================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
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 
 
 
        ********************************************** 
 
 
                        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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