The origin, character, and reception of the Development Act of 1909 are described. Extant evaluations of its historical significance are presented and criticized. It is claimed that the significance of the Act for the promotion of scientific research in agriculture, horticulture, and forestry has been largely overlooked. The way in which the Commissioners of the Act interpreted their brief by establishing scholarships, new research institutes, and developing existing institutes is described.

Alexandre Koyré was one of the most prominent historians of science of the twentieth century. The standard interpretation of Koyré is that he falls squarely within the internalist camp of historians of science—that he focuses on the history of the ideas themselves, eschewing cultural and sociological interpretations regarding the influence of ideologies and institutions on the development of science. When we read what Koyré has to say about his historical studies , we find him embracing and championing this Platonic view (...) of his work. Ultimately I think this interpretation of Koyré's history of science is lopsided and in need of correction. I claim, rather, that a careful reading of Koyré's work suggests that a tension exists between internal and external methodological considerations. The external considerations stem from Koyré's commitment to the unity of human thought and the influence he admits that the ‘transscientifiques’ have on the development of science. I suggest in conclusion then, that if we are to put a philosophical label on his work, rather than ‘Platonist’, as has been the custom, ‘Hegelian’ makes a better fit. (shrink)

Traditionally the domain of scientists, the history of science became an independent field of inquiry only in the twentieth century and mostly after the Second World War. This process of emancipation was accompanied by a historiographical departure from previous, ‘scientistic’ practices, a transformation often attributed to influences from sociology, philosophy and history. Similarly, the liberal humanists who controlled the Cambridge History of Science Committee after 1945 emphasized that their contribution lay in the special expertise they, as trained historians, brought to (...) the venture. However, the scientists who had founded the Committee in the 1930s had already advocated a sophisticated contextual approach: innovation in the history of science thus clearly came also from within the ranks of scientists who practised in the field. Moreover, unlike their scientist predecessors on the Cambridge Committee, the liberal humanists supported a positivistic protocol that has since been criticized for its failure to properly contextualize early modern science. Lastly, while celebrating the rise of modern science as an international achievement, the liberal humanists also emphasized the peculiar Englishness of the phenomenon. In this respect, too, their outlook had much in common with the practices from which they attempted to distance their project. (shrink)

: I argue and demonstrate in this essay that interconnected systems of science and technology, or technoscience, existed long before the late nineteenth century, and that eighteenth-century chemistry was such an early form of technoscience. Based on recent historical research on the early development of carbon chemistry from the late 1820s until the 1840s—which revealed that early carbon chemistry was an experimental expert culture that was largely detached from the mundane industrial world—I further examine the question of the internal preconditions (...) within the expert culture of carbon chemistry that contributed to its convergence with the synthetic-dye industry in the late 1850s. I argue that the introduction of new types and techniques of organic-chemical reactions and organic substances in this experimental expert culture, along with the application of chemical formulae as paper tools for modeling reactions as well as the chemical constitution and structure of substances, enabled academic chemists to make specific, novel contributions to chemical technology and industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The mismatch between common representations of “science” and the miscellany of materials typically studied by the historian of science is traced to a systematic ambiguity that may itself be traced to early modern Europe. In that cultural setting, natural philosophy came to be rearticulated as involving both contemplative and practical knowledge. The resulting tension and ambiguity are illustrated by the eighteenth‐century views of Buffon. In the nineteenth century, a new enterprise called “science” represents the establishment of an unstable ideology of (...) natural knowledge that was heavily indebted to those early modern developments. The two complementary and competing elements of the ideology of modern science are accordingly described as “natural philosophy” and “instrumentality” . The history of science in large part concerns the story of their shifting, often mutually denying, interrelations. (shrink)

In the 1940s the Marxist mathematician and historian of science Samuel Lilley made a substantial contribution to British history of science both intellectually and institutionally. His role, however, has largely gone unnoticed. Lilley is otherwise portrayed either as exemplifying the immaturity of Marxism, most famously by Rupert Hall in ‘Merton revisited’ , or as a tragic figure marginalized during the Cold War because of his communist commitment. But both themes of exclusion and victimization keep Lilley's legacy hidden. By revisiting Lilley (...) and his long-standing commitment to developing our discipline, this essay challenges the notion of radical discontinuity with respect to Lilley's legacy and argues for a more sustained contribution by Marxist historiography of science. This, in turn, requires a more appreciative understanding of the moderate Marxist model developed by Lilley in his popular, political and professional publications on the history of the social relations of science. (shrink)

Originally published in 1830, this book can be called the first modern work in the philosophy of science, covering an extraordinary range of philosophical, methodological, and scientific subjects. "Herschel's book . . . brilliantly analyzes both the history and nature of science."—Keith Stewart Thomson, American Scientist.

Forty-three years ago Max Weber observed that “the belief in the value of scientific truth is not derived from nature but is a product of definite cultures.” We may now add: and this belief is readily transmuted into doubt or disbelief. The persistent development of science occurs only in societies of a certain order, subject to a peculiar complex of tacit presuppositions and institutional constraints. What is for us a normal phenomenon which demands no explanation and secures many ‘self-evident’ cultural (...) values, has been in other times and still is in many places abnormal and infrequent. The continuity of science requires the active participation of interested and capable persons in scientific pursuits. This support of science is assured only by appropriate cultural conditions. It is, then, important to examine those controls which motivate scientific careers, which select and give prestige to certain scientific disciplines and reject or blur others. It will become evident that changes in institutional structure may curtail, modify or possibly prevent the pursuit of science. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Historians of science, inasmuch as they are concerned with knowledges and practices rather than institutions, have tended of late to focus on case studies of common processes such as experiment and publication. In so doing, they tend to treat science as a single category, with various local instantiations. Or, alternatively, they relate cases to their specific local contexts. In neither approach do the cases or their contexts build easily into broader histories, reconstructing changing knowledge practices across time and space. (...) This essay argues that by systematically deconstructing the practices of science and technology and medicine (STM) into common, recurrent elements, we can gain usefully “configurational” views, not just of particular cases and contexts but of synchronic variety and diachronic changes, both short term and long. To this end, we can begin with the customary actors’ disciplines of early modern knowledge (natural philosophy, natural history, mixed mathematics, and experimental philosophy), which can be understood as elemental “ways of knowing and working,” variously combined and disputed. I argue that these same working knowledges, together with a later mode—synthetic experimentation and systematic invention—may also serve for the analysis of STM from the late eighteenth century to the present. The old divisions continued explicitly and importantly after circa 1800, but they were also “built into” an array of new sciences. This historiographic analysis can help clarify a number of common problems: about the multiplicity of the sciences, the importance of various styles in science, and the relations between science and technology and medicine. It suggests new readings of major changes in STM, including the first and second scientific revolutions and the transformations of biomedicine from the later twentieth century. It offers ways of recasting both microhistories and macrohistories, so reducing the apparent distance between them. And it may thus facilitate both more constructive uses of case studies and more innovative and acceptable longer histories. (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.

The nineteenth-century engineering hero Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a prominent patent abolitionist in debates about the patent system in Britain. His opposition is usually regarded as principled, that is, based in liberal laissez-faire opposition to monopolies and to the constraints of bureaucracy. Against this it is argued that Brunel's views on patents evolved. As late as 1840, despite lessons about patents from the bad experiences of his father, Brunel could still consider taking out a patent himself, something that a decade (...) later he denied he had ever contemplated. Brunel's engineering persona, his experiences and conduct of engineering practice were the base from which he eventually formulated principled opposition to the patent system. The paper examines his responses to importunate inventors who pestered him with inventions in the 1840s and elucidates how he dealt with the patented inventions of others that he wanted to use in his projects. It is suggested that for Brunel patent abolitionism was in effect a way of doing business before it became a political cause. The case suggests the value of approaching the history of patents and, by implication, of intellectual property more generally, through detailed examination of practices. (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)

From Galileo to the Bhopal tort litigation, Scopes to OncoMouse®, Lysenko to the lie detector, the agonistic and alethic forum of the courtroom has offered unique opportunities to witness science and scientists being made and unmade. Evolving legal systems have consistently been forced to draw on (or defensibly away from) scientific knowledge, scientific methods, and scientific experts in the pursuit of truth and justice. At the same time, courts—in many ways the original site for the production of social facts—have to (...) a significant extent shaped both the theories and the practices of knowledge production central to the emergence of modern science. This Focus section draws together a set of scholars at work on these borrowings and aims to stimulate more research in an important and fast‐expanding area of scholarship. (shrink)

Utility patent protection has been granted broadly to living organisms in the United States only in the last quarter century, but in the late nineteenth century, for reasons related to the nationalization of agricultural markets, animal breeders and plant innovators began attempting to devise alternative arrangements to protect intellectual property in their living products. The arrangements had to take into account both the requirements of IP protection and the various ways the organisms could be reproduced. For animals, prior to patentability, (...) the arrangements involved mainly breed associations and registries. Plant innovators tried to achieve returns from their IP through pricing strategies and trademarks. Finding neither adequate, they began to agitate for legislation that would protect their type of IP, an effort that resulted in the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 1930, the first legislation anywhere to extend a type of patent protection to living products. (shrink)

In late 1916 the British Government finally bowed to pressure from scientists and sympathetic elements of the public to organize and fund science centrally and established the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research . Since just before the turn of the century state funding for science had steadily increased: the National Physical Laboratory was established in 1899, the Development Commission in 1909 and the Medical Research Committee in 1913. The establishment of the DSIR marked an end to piecemeal support and (...) it was therefore a watershed when the statefinally accepted its responsibility to fund science properly, to develop a coherent science policy and thus recognise that science and scientists were crucial components of modern national life; not just in wartime, but in the development of the peacetime economy as well.At least this is how the history of the DSIR is currently still represented. The following analysis is more sensitive than previous treatments as it points out that the state's organization of a centrally planned and funded national policy for science began before the DSIR, and that this new body reflected priorities established before the outbreak of the war. In previous accounts the DSIR was presented as a total break with the laissez-faire past. So, as historians we no longer follow the special pleading of the contemporary science lobby in arguing that the state was deaf to the needs of modern science. However, I want to argue that we are still deaf to the wider concerns of this contemporary pro-science rhetoric, which argued not only for centrally planned and funded science, but also often that scientists themselves should make policy for science. (shrink)

I make three related claims. First, certain seemingly secretive behaviours displayed by scientists and inventors are expression neither of socio-professional values nor of strategies for the maximization of the economic value of their knowledge. They are, instead, protective responses to unavoidable risks inherent in the process of publication and priority claiming. Scientists and inventors fear being scooped by direct competitors, but have also worried about people who publish their claims or determine their priority: journal editors or referees who may appropriate (...) the claims in the manuscript they review or patent clerks who may claim or leak the inventions contained in the applications that cross their desks. Second, these protective responses point to the existence of an unavoidable moment of instability in any procedure aimed at establishing priority. Making things public is an inherently risky business and it is impossible, I argue, to ensure that priority may not be lost in the very process that is supposed to establish it. Third, I offer a brief archaeology of regimes and techniques of priority registration, showing the distinctly different definitions of priority developed by each system. (shrink)