The 20th-Century Problem: Krige and National Narrative November 8, 2009
Posted by Will Thomas in 20th-Century-Science Historiography.Tags: Cathryn Carson, Dieter Hoffmann, Gabrielle Hecht, Jessica Wang, John Krige, Kristie Macrakis, Niels Bohr, Philip Morse
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In my last discussion of the challenges involved in writing about the history of science in the 20th century, I noted that local narratives can be taken to be revealing of broader issues, but that such narratives can also simply reflect back some larger narrative already understood to exist. In this post we take this consideration to the case of the national narrative.
John Krige’s 2006 book American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe is, I would say, an important step in the establishment of a historiography of post-1945 science on the European continent. Until recently, the history of scientific Europe in this period has not been systematically explored. 1999’s Science under Socialism, edited by Dieter Hoffmann and Kristie Macrakis (who just joined Krige at Georgia Tech this year), etched out a picture of science in East Germany. Cathryn Carson has written on science in West Germany (publications list here). In 1998’s The Radiance of France (out in a new edition this year), Gabrielle Hecht wrote on the development of the unusually important nuclear power industry in that country. The object here is not to put together a complete bibliography, but if anyone wants to add to the picture of this historiography, please do leave a comment.
Krige’s book covers a lot of important bases, looking at the Marshall Plan, NATO, the State Department and CIA, the activities of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the establishment of CERN (on which he has written more extensively elsewhere) as institutions linking American and European science and politics. (Here one should also make note of Ron Doel‘s ongoing project to study American science’s diplomatic uses.) Similar to Needell’s book on Lloyd Berkner, the emphasis here is on individual cases. In this case, different (more…)
HSS Highlights, Pt. 1 November 24, 2008
Posted by Will Thomas in Uncategorized.Tags: Alberto Martinez, Andrew Warwick, Cathryn Carson, Daniel Kennefick, David Cassidy, Kristian Camilleri, Melinda Bowles, Richard Staley, Scott Walker, Suman Seth, Werner Heisenberg
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I’ve been on two trips since Pittsburgh (Ann Arbor to visit friends and see the Northwestern Wildcats manufacture a sloppy, soggy victory over Michigan–go ‘Cats!–and Maine for an oral history interview). So, doing a recap of highlights of sessions I saw seems less like “hot news” than it might have been. In fact, it seems like ancient history. But I think a recap post is actually better with a slight time delay. One, I promised some folks I wasn’t a conference insta-blogger, and, two, it reduces the ephemerality of the conference experience to come back to it a couple weeks later.
First off, while I’ve sometimes characterized conference presentations here as working along a “colloquium-journal-edited volume” axis of disconnected scholarship, this is more a general criticism of the form. I think it’s OK to pick apart Isis articles from time to time, since it is the flagship journal of the history of science, after all. But picking apart conference talks seems unfair to the tentative nature of the conference talk form, so we won’t be doing that. I will, however, just briefly mention as a lowlight the weirdly rude non-reception given to the welcoming speech by Pitt’s provost. What was up with that?
On highlights, the first thing I want to throw out there is the co-location with the Philosophy of Science Association conference. I think it’s fair to say that for the past two or three decades, the history of science has been much more closely connected to the sociology of science than the philosophy of science, and I think it’s a good project to try and bring the philosophers back in.
I dropped in on some PSA sessions. At a glance, I like the way the philosophers talk and argue: their linguistic precision and the degree to which they engage with problematic issues in a constructive fashion (more…)
Ether Wave Propaganda 