The science historian Charles Singer might seem to have shared with positivists a widely held commitment to observation as the foundation of knowledge. Yet in fact Singer's historiography was peculiarly unconcerned with instruments, models and other artefacts. Such tools might have been expected to present crucial empirical evidence for the historical arguments and ideal material for the didactics which pioneers such as Singer associated with their mission of a ‘scientific humanism’. In their hands, physical things did not translate into epistemic (...) things. This was deliberate. Yet while the configuration of science history which would distance it from material objects seems to speak of a shift from the visual to texts, the ocular technologies deployed in Singer's histories rather point to a co-existence of different kinds of visuality in that period's scholarship. As the academic and the museological aspects of science history pulled apart, the visuality of the museum came to be complemented by texts that vitally relied on images. The function of such images was to create proximity with the cognitive desires around whose traffic these histories became paper theatres of knowing. In bypassing material theatres and crafting realities that he understood to be empirically undemonstrable, Singer purposefully developed a non-authoritarian approach to the legacy of the scientific enterprise. He presented the story of understanding nature not as entailing obedience to its established results, but instead as embodying an attitude of continuing enquiry. (shrink)

THE SIXTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS of the History of Science is scheduled to assemble in Bucharest, Rumania, in August 1981. To mark that occasion Isis is pleased to publish two essays on Marxism and the history of science.

In the Spring of 1944, an informal discussion took place in Cambridge between Mr. R. S. Whipple, Professor Allan Ferguson and Mr. F. H. C. Butler, concerning the formation of a national Society for the History of Science. This is the opening sentence of the inaugural issue of the Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, the Society's first official publication. Butler himself was the author of this outline account of the subsequent approach to the Royal Society, (...) the parallel moves to establish a National Committee of the International Academy of the History of Science, the formation of a provisional committee to prepare a draft constitution for a national society, and the proceedings of the first Annual General Meeting in May 1947. Whipple had been in Cambridge to discuss his offer to present his collection of old scientific instruments to the University and the possible foundation of a new museum, and Butler, as Secretary of the History of Science Committee in Cambridge, was the chief mover in both this development and an initiative coupled with it to establish a department of the history of science. (shrink)

The Marxist history of science has played an enormous role in the development of the history of science. Whether through the appreciation of its insights or the construction of a political fortress to prevent infusion, its presence is felt. From 1931 the work of Marxists played an integral part in the international development of the history of science, though rarely have the connections between them or their own biographies been explored. These networks convey a distinct history, alongside political, methodological and (...) personal implications, impressing on us a greater understanding of the possibilities that were present and were lost in the most turbulent of decades. Two of the most notable were Boris Hessen, a founder of Marxist history of science, and J. G. Crowther, one of its most prolific exponents. My examination explores aspects of the dialogue between these controversial figures, starting with brief biographical sketches. Their lives became briefly entwined following the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology in 1931, demonstrated with reference to the meeting and the correspondence between them until Hessen's death. In doing so, some new facts and old controversies surface, though most importantly the nature of the correspondence carries implications for the Marxist history of science and for the wider movement of which it is part. The Russian delegation to the congress declared that science was at a crossroads. The history of science was at a similar crossroads in the 1930s. (shrink)