Sean F. Johnston - History of Science: A Beginners Guide

ONEWORLD BEGINNERS GUIDES combine an original, inventive, and engaging approach with expert analysis on subjects ranging from art and history to religion and politics, and everything in between. Innovative and affordable, books in the series are perfect for anyone curious about the way the world works and the big ideas of our time.

aesthetics

africa

anarchism

aquinas

art

artificial intelligence

the bahai faith

the beat generation

biodiversity

bioterror & biowarfare

the brain

british politics

the buddha

cancer

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classical music

climate change

cloning

cold war

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crimes against humanity

criminal psychology

critical thinking

daoism

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energy

engineering

the enlightenment

epistemology

evolution

evolutionary psychology

existentialism

fair trade

feminism

forensic science

french revolution

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hinduism

history of science

humanism

islamic philosophy

journalism

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life in the universe

literary theory

machiavelli

mafia & organized crime

magic

marx

medieval philosophy

middle east

NATO

nietzsche

the northern ireland conflict

oil

opera

the palestineisraeli conflict

paul

philosophy of mind

philosophy of religion

philosophy of science

planet earth

postmodernism

psychology

quantum physics

the quran

racism

renaissance art

shakespeare

the small arms trade

the torah

sufism

volcanoes

A Oneworld Paperback Original

Published by Oneworld Publications 2009
This ebook edition published in 2012

Copyright Sean F. Johnston 2009

The right of Sean F. Johnston to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781851686810
ebook ISBN 9781780741598

Typeset in Jayvee, Trivandrum, India
Cover design by A. Meaden

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Historical studies of science and technology have acquired immense importance since the Second World War, and especially over the past few decades. Science itself has grown exponentially to involve more activity within living memory than through its previous history. Academics, government policy-makers, businesses, public interest groups and scientists themselves increasingly recognize the crucial role these subjects have had in extending knowledge, driving economies, influencing opinion and shaping culture. Science in the modern world is all-encompassing and contentious. Acronyms jostle for attention and comprehension in newspaper stories: GMOs, BSE, vCJD, WMD. We consume science in the films we watch, the electronic products we buy and the medications we choose. Science subtly determines our perceptions and powers, our lifestyles and longings.

Aspects of what we recognize as science have been part of human cultures since prehistory, though. As these activities have impinged increasingly on the consciousness of scholars and the public, the history of science has attracted further attention and been applied to conflicting purposes. For the British philosopher William Whewell, writing during the early nineteenth century, science (and the people defined by his new term, scientists) had long provided the key factor behind intellectual advancement. His History of the Inductive Sciences, published in 1837, helped to launch a new discipline. From the Victorian era until the Great Depression, the history of science was marshalled to show the inevitability of material progress. And for both American and Soviet philosophers after the Second World War, the trajectory of science in their nations represented the superiority of their respective political systems. But according to the counterculture ideals of the late 1960s, the history of science revealed a long-standing linkage between scientific knowledge and military and corporate power. Historians today recognize science as a human activity responsible in large part for the culture that we have inherited.

This book introduces both the history of science and the nature of the evolving discipline, and explains why they matter in contemporary society. It seeks to provide a brief historical survey of science and its relationship to culture and, at the same time, to inculcate in its readers an awareness of the changing definition of science and sensitivity to its historical interpretation. This traditionally has been a minefield for educators, with science students sometimes presuming that a history should reveal the progress or even moral improvement of humankind, and humanities students more often presuming tarnished or questionable ideals of what in the twentieth century became a pervasive cultural activity. The tone of the book seeks to give a nuanced appraisal of the evolution of science and rational approaches to the natural world from prehistory to the present day, and its integration into the practices and goals of Western societies over the past three centuries in particular. At the same time inevitably selective and limited in coverage it explores the nature of academic knowledge by providing an overview of the evolving discipline of history of science. The received wisdom about past science has changed dramatically in the last generation. This short book seeks to chart those changing directions.

I thank Marsha Filion of Oneworld Publications, who invited me to write this book, my students, who helped shape it, and my wife Libby and sons Daniel and Sam, for their ideas and support.

Sean Johnston

History of science past and present

What is history of science? You have picked up this book with expectations, and maybe even unconscious assumptions. Today, more than ever, your assumptions may be different from those of others around you.

More than other forms of history, the history of science has often been written with a purpose, but those purposes and the conclusions they cite are today increasingly questioned. Are you looking forward to reading about geniuses and their life stories? About scientific breakthroughs and inevitable material progress through invention? About the challenging experiments, toil in the face of personal, institutional or military adversity, and the ultimate triumph of the intellect? Or (I hope) something more?

History of science has been all these things, but today strives to be much more. Written by scientists, history can seem self-serving; by philosophers, it can suggest a logical trajectory that is far too clear in retrospect. This potential for misrepresentation can have undesired side-effects: it can encourage unsustainable faith in sciences achievements, or provoke unreasonable criticisms of the cases that do not meet the mark, and may deter even bright students from confidently considering science as an attainable career.