Summary
Historians of science in Britain lack a firm institutional base. They are to be found scattered around in various departments in universities, polytechnics and museums. Their history over the last thirty-five years can be seen as a series of flirtations with those in more-established disciplines. Beginning with scientists, they then turned to philosophers, moving on to historians and then to sociologists: from each of these affairs something was learned, and the current interest determined which aspects of the history of science were seen as most interesting. At first it was settling who really discovered what; then an interest in concepts, methods and case-studies; then understanding the broader historical context of science; and after that seeing science in its social context, with special emphasis on institutions and professionalization. Where we shall go next is unclear: these vagaries may be no more than examples of intellectual fashion, but we may hope that they represent a zig-zag route towards deeper understanding.
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References
A recent textbook in this genre is J. Marks,Science and the making of the Modern World, London, 1983; a distinguished monograph might be C. A. Russell,The History of Valency, Leicester, 1971.
T. S. Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., Chicago, 1970. On science and culture, see M. Pollock (ed.)Common denominators in Art and Science, Aberdeen, 1983.
For terms and concepts in the history of science, see W. Bynum et al, ed.,Dictionary of the History of Science, London, 1981; though one looks in vain for ‘pollution’, ‘poison’ or ‘weapon’.
See M. Hesse,Forces and Fields, London, 1961, for a good example of this genre; A. R. Hallam,A Revolution in the Earth Sciences, Oxford 1973, applies Kuhnian ideas to recent history. On ethics in science, see J. Ravetz,Scientific Knowledge, and its Social Problems, London, 1971.
Whewell features in S. F. Cannon,Science in Culture, Folkestone, 1978, and in J. Morrell and A. Thackray,Gentlemen of Science, Oxford, 1981. For bibliographies generally, see S. A. Jayawardene,Reference Books for the Historian of Science, London, 1982, and mySources for the History of Science, Cambridge, 1975. TheBritish Journal for the History of Science (BJHS) carries articles from time to time on collections in various centres.
A. C. Crombie,Augustine to Galileo, London, 1952.
I. Lakatos,Philosophical Papers, Cambridge, 1978; and on case studies, see the papers by T. H. Brooke and by N. Fisher on Avogadro's hypothesis, inHistory of Science 19 (1981) 235–73, and 20 (1982) 77–102, 212–231.
My book wasAtoms and Elements, London, 1967; P. Harman,Energy, Force, and Matter, Cambridge, 1978. Cf. also myTranscendental Part of Chemistry, Folkestone, 1978.
H. Butterfield,The Origins of Modern Science, London 1949; an earlier work by an eminent historian was G. Clark,Science and Social Welfare in the Age of Newton, Oxford, 1937.
J. Ziman,Public Knowledge, Cambridge, 1967; the literature of science has attracted various authors: see J. Meadows, ed.,The Development of Science Publishing in Europe, Amsterdam, 1980; W. Blunt,The Art of Botanical Illustration, London, 1950; myZoological Illustration, Folkestone, 1977, andNatural Science Books in English, London, 1972, lists author-bibliographies which are a very valuable tool for the historian of science; e.g. G. Keynes,A Bibliography of Dr Robert Hooke, Oxford, 1960.
Notable biographies include A. J. Meadows,Science and Controversy ... Norman Lockyer, London, 1972; A. E. Gunther,A Century of Zoology, Folkestone, 1975 (J. E. Gray and A. Günther); M. Crosland,Gay-Lussac, Cambridge, 1978. British historians have interested themselves in French science particularly: e. g., M. Crosland,The Society of Arcueil, London, 1967; W. A. Smeaton,Fourcroy, London, 1962; R. Fox,The Caloric Theory of Gases, Oxford, 1971; J. G. Smith,The Origins and Develop ment of the Heavy Chemical Industry in France, Oxford, 1979.
The standard Newton biography comes from America: R. Westfall,Never at Rest, Cambridge, 1981. See also Newton'sCorrespondence, ed. H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall and L. Tilling, Cambridge, 1959–78, andMathematical Papers, ed. D. T. Whiteside et al., Cambridge, 1967–81. On magic etc., F. Yates,Giordano Bruno, London, 1964; K. Thomas,Religion and the Decline of Magic, London, 1971, andMan and the Natural World, London, 1983.
C. Hill,Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, Oxford, 1975; C. Webster,The Great Instauration, London, 1975.
M. Hunter,Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge, 1981 andThe Royal Society and its Fellows, 1600–1770, Chalfont St. Giles, 1983; these have useful bibliographies. J. Henry, ‘Atomism and Eschatology: Catholicism and Natural Philosophy in the Interregnum’,BJHS, 15 (1982) 211–39. A. R. and M. B. Hall (ed.)The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, Madison, 1965.
M. C. Jacob,The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, Hassocks, 1976, andThe Radical Englightenment, London, 1981, and see G. C. Gibbs' essay-review,BJHS, 17, (1984), 67–81.
Crosland, Gay-Lussac, note 11 above; C. A. Russell, N. G. Coley, and G. K. Russell,Chemists by Profession, Milton Keynes, 1977.
I. Inkster and J. Morrell,Metropolis and Province, London, 1983; social anthropology is used as a key by C. B. Wilde, ‘Matter and Spirit as Natural Symbols in 18th-century British Natural Philosophy’,BJHS, 15 (1982) 99–131, and by Thomas,Decline, note 12 above. I. Inkster, ‘Science and the Mechanics’ Institutes’,Annals of Science, 32 (1975), 451–474.
Morrell and Thackray, see note 5 above; also there, Cannon, ch. 2 on the ‘Cambridge Network’. R. Macleod and P. Collins,The Parliament of Science, London, 1981; a social explanation is also prominent in D. A. Mackenzie,Statistics in Britain, 1865–1930, Edinburgh, 1981, featuring Galton, on whom see R. E. Fancher, ‘Francis Galton's African Ethnology’,BJHS, 16 (1983) 67–79. C. A. Russell,Science and Social Change, London, 1983, produces evidence against the view that science functioned as a method of social control.
This was the theme of my book,The Nature of Science, London, 1976. Different sciences have their different histories; compare Harman, note 8 above, with A. Desmond,Archetypes and Ancestors, London, 1982, and myOrdering the World, London, 1981. But the boundaries between the sciences have been differently drawn in different times and places. On science in various countries, see M. P. Crosland, ed.,The Emergence of Science in Western Europe, London, 1975. Probably because French is always the first foreign language learned in Britain, German science has been less studied here than French, which is misleading for those working on the nineteenth century: but histories of chemistry have been unable to omit Germans! See e. g. W. H. Brock, ‘Liebigiana’,History of Science, 19 (1981) 201-18; and Eric Forbes, who has worked on Mayer and other astronomers —The Euler-Mayer Correspondence, London, 1971.
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Knight, D.M. The history of science in britain: A personal view. Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 15, 343–353 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801367
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01801367