Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Previous articleNext article FreeNotes on ContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHarold J. Cook is John F. Nickoll Professor of History at Brown University and was previously Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL. Recipient of the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society and the Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine, he is author of five books and coeditor of six others, together with well over sixty articles. His primary research interests are in the emergence of the new medicines and sciences of early modern Europe; global knowledge exchanges; the coproduction of science and commerce; and processes of translation.William Deringer is Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research excavates the history of economic and political knowledge practices. His first book, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Cambridge, Mass., 2018), reconstructs how numerical calculation became an authoritative mode of public reasoning in Anglophone political culture. His new project, Discounting: A History of the Economic Future (in One Calculation), traces “present value” calculations from their early modern beginnings to contemporary debates about climate change.Julia Fein is a historian of Modern Russia, specializing in the intersecting histories of science and empire. She spent two years as a Mellon Postdoctoral Associate at Rutgers University, where she was affiliated with the “Networks of Exchange” seminar at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. She has also taught modern European history at Macalester College.Courtney Fullilove is Associate Professor of History, Environmental Studies, and Science in Society at Wesleyan University. She is the author of The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (Chicago, 2017) and of articles on claims to natural and cultural heritage. She is currently writing a history of international biodiversity preservation.Arunabh Ghosh is Assistant Professor in the History Department at Harvard University. A historian of modern China, his interests include social and economic history, history of science and statecraft, and transnational history. His book, Making It Count: Statistics and Statecraft in the Early PRC, 1949–1959, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Articles have appeared in the Journal of Asian Studies, BJHS-Themes, and the PRC History Review. He is currently working on two new projects: a history of Chinese dam building in the twentieth century and a history of China-India scientific networks, ca. 1900–1960.Martin Giraudeau is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Sciences Po, in Paris, and a researcher in the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He has published articles on the history of business plans, the invention of entrepreneurship, and the roles of accounting in organizations and society. He recently coedited, with Frédéric Graber, a volume on the modern history of projects: Les Projets: Une histoire politique (16e–21e siècles) (Paris, 2018).Eugenia Lean is Associate Professor of Chinese History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. She is the author of Public Passions: The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2007). Her forthcoming book, Manufacturing China’s Vernacular Industrialism: Nativist Tinkerer and Toothpowder Magnate, Chen Diexian (1879–1940), employs the figure of Chen Diexian, a professional editor, science enthusiast, and pharmaceutical industrialist, to examine the practices of nativist tinkering, innovative adaptation, and knowledge work in the building of early twentieth-century Chinese industry. Her latest research examines China’s involvement in shaping modern global regimes of intellectual property from the early twentieth to twenty-first centuries.Victoria Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Ohio University, where she teaches and writes about modern science and technology. She is currently writing a book about Japanese society’s engagement with microbes in science, industry, and environmental management. She has published in Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, New Perspectives on the History of Life Sciences and Agriculture (ed. Denise Phillips and Sharon Kingsland), and Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.Paul Lucier is a historian of science, business, and the environment. He is the author of Scientists and Swindlers: Consulting on Coal and Oil in America, 1820–1890 (Baltimore, 2008) and is currently finishing a book on the geology of gold, silver, and copper mining in the American West. The goal of his research is to understand whether and how science-driven capitalism can be ethical, innovative, intellectually creative, and environmentally responsible.Sarah Milov is Assistant Professor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. Her first book, Smoke and Ashes: From Corporatism to Neoliberalism in Tobacco’s Twentieth Century, is forthcoming. Her recent research focuses on whistle-blowing, particularly the relationship among gender, credibility, and bureaucracy.Emily Pawley is Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College, where she teaches environmental history, the history of capitalism, and the history of science. Her research focuses on cultivated landscapes as sources of knowledge; recent publications examine analytic tables and the invention of nutritional value, cattle portraiture and markets in blood, and varietal description and counterfeit fruit. Her book project, the Balance-Sheet of Nature: Agriculture and Speculative Science in the Antebellum North, examines the kinds of speculative and futuristic knowledge that emerged to make sense of the rapidly commercializing landscape of post–Erie Canal New York and is under advance contract at the University of Chicago Press. She is also interested in the transatlantic history of moon farming.Lukas Rieppel is David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University, where he teaches courses on the history of science and the history of capitalism. His forthcoming book, Assembling the Dinosaur, uses the history of paleontology as a means to examine how the ideals, norms, and practices of modern capitalism shaped the way scientific knowledge was made, certified, and distributed during North America’s Long Gilded Age. In addition, Rieppel has written several essays about the material culture of the earth sciences, the history of museums, the valuation of fossils, and the authentication of specimens.David Singerman is Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Virginia. His work has appeared in Radical History Review, the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, and the Journal of British Studies. He has also written on the sugar industry for the New York Times and on U.S.-Canada trade wars for The Atlantic.Hallam Stevens is Associate Professor of History and Biology and the Head of History at the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He is the author of Life Out of Sequence: A Data-Driven History of Bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013), Biotechnology and Society: An Introduction (Chicago, 2016), and the coeditor of Postgenomics: Perspectives on Biology after the Genome (Durham, N.C., 2015).Lee Vinsel is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, where he teaches and writes about government and technology. He is a cofounder of The Maintainers, a global, interdisciplinary research network that studies maintenance, repair, and mundane work with things. His forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press examines the history of automobile regulation in the United States from 1893 to today’s dreams of a driverless future. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Osiris Volume 33, Number 12018Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories Published for the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700195 © 2018 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

christopher r. boyer is associate professor of history and Latin American and Latino studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His scholarship concentrates on the social and environmental history of modern Mexico. He is currently finishing a book on the social history of forest management in Mexico between 1880 and 1991, and he edited a volume of environmental histories of modern Mexico that will be published next year. His articles have appeared in the Latin American Historical Review, Historia Mexicana, the American Historical Review, and other journals. He is coeditor with Lise Sedrez of a University of Arizona Press book series on Latin American environmental history. His first book, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity, and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920 – 1935 (Stanford University Press, 2003) explains how the Mexican land reform influenced rural political culture in the 1920s and 1930s.vera candiani teaches colonial Latin American history at Princeton University. A specialist on the social history of technology and environmental change, Candiani is the author of “The Great Colonial Drainage: Conflict and Collaboration in the Transformation of Mexico City’s Environment” (book manuscript under review), and “Bourbons and Water,” in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, edited by Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (University of Chicago Press, 2011).mark carey is assistant professor of history in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. He specializes in Latin American environmental history and the history of science, with a focus on climate history, natural disasters, water, health, and mountaineering. His book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (Oxford University Press) was published in 2010. An article, “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species,” won the Leopold-Hidy Prize for the best article in the journal Environmental History in 2007. He is currently writing a book on mountaineering history in South America and collaborating with geographers in a three-year research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, on climate, water, and export agriculture in Peru.keely maxwell is an assistant professor of environmental studies at Franklin and Marshall College. She has conducted interdisciplinary ethnographic, ecological, and historical research in Peru for over a decade. Recent publications include articles on Andean energy landscapes and on Inca Trail tourism and local livelihoods. A manuscript on the cultural politics of heritage conservation and tourism in Machu Picchu is in progress. Another of her research projects analyzes historic and contemporary vicuña conservation and commodification.matthew vitz received his PhD in 2010 from New York University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies of the University of California, San Diego, from 2010 to 2011. Currently a visiting assistant professor of Latin American history at Dartmouth College, he is revising his dissertation, “Revolutionary Environments: The Politics of Nature and Space in the Valley of Mexico, 1890 – 1950,” into a book manuscript.emily wakild is assistant professor of history at Wake Forest University. She specializes in the history of Mexico and modern Latin America with a focus on social change, revolution, and the environment. Her book Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Social Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910 – 1940 was published by the University of Arizona Press in 2011. Recent journal articles include “Border Chasm: International Boundary Parks and Mexican Conservation, 1935 – 1945” (Environmental History, 2009) and “Naturalizing Modernity: Urban Parks, Public Gardens, and Drainage Projects in Porfirian Mexico City” (Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, 2007). At present she is working on a comparative history of transnational conservation and scientific research in Amazonia and Patagonia.

Previous articleNext article No AccessEssay ReviewsDarwinism's Tragic Genius: Psychology and Reputation Robert J. Richards. The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. xx + 512 pp., apps., figs., bibl., index. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2008. $39 (cloth).Nick HopwoodNick Hopwood*Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH, United Kingdom. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 100, Number 4December 2009 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/652030 Views: 56Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2010 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:reviewed by Alan C. Love Robert J. Richards: The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought,, Philosophy of Science 78, no.44 (Jul 2015): 696–701.https://doi.org/10.1086/661776

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviews and Brief NoticesSome We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals. By Hal Herzog. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. $25.99. viii + 326 p.; no index. ISBN: 978-0-06-173086-3. 2010.R. Paul ThompsonR. Paul ThompsonInstitute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Search for more articles by this author Institute for the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 87, Number 2June 2012 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/665478 Views: 186Total views on this site Copyright © 2012 by The University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Author's Introduction Whereas Creationism is usually taught in the context of religion and the history/philosophy of science, this guide has been written in the conviction that creationism is not ultimately about science at all, but is rather about the status of the Bible in the modern world. Creationism as a modern ideology exists in order to defend the authority of the Bible as a repository of trans‐historical truth from the challenges of any and all historical sciences. It belongs to and is inseparable from Protestant Fundamentalists’ desire to resubject the modern world to the authority of the inerrant Bible. Intelligent Design Creationism, to the extent that it distinguishes itself from reactionary biblicism, is a program advocating a supernaturalist, providentialist understanding of the world. This guide outlines an approach to teaching about creationism that situates it in relation to the development, from the early modern period onwards, of the historical, critical study of the Bible and the liberal theology that followed from that study, as well as from the more familiar perspectives of the history and philosophy of science. Annotated Reading List Forrest, Barbara and Paul Gross. Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. A thoughtful critique of Intelligent Design Creationism and a well‐documented expose of the wider cultural program of its proponents. Kitcher, Philip. Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design and the Future of Faith . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. A philosopher of science argues that Intelligent Design Creationism is ‘dead science’ rather than non‐science, and then reflects on the religious costs of accepting Darwinism. Larson, Edward. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. The best of the voluminous literature on the Scopes Trial. McCalla, Arthur. The Creationist Debate: The Encounter between the Bible and the Historical Mind . London & New York: Continuum, 2006. A wide‐ranging intellectual history study arguing that the debate between creationists and evolutionists is not only about the content of evolutionary and other historical sciences, but also about historical‐mindedness in relation to the status of the Bible in the modern world. Numbers, Ronald. The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2nd ed. 2006. This new edition of Numbers’ standard work has been expanded to include discussion of Intelligent Design. Pennock, Robert (ed.). Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives . Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001. A valuable compendium of key articles by leading proponents of Intelligent Design Creationism and their critics. Rossi, Paolo. The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico , Lydia Cochrane (trans.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. An intellectual history study of how what came to be called geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology in the early modern period. Ruse, Michael. Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. An accessibly written account of the history and present‐day status of the design argument. Online Materials 1. http://www.ncseweb.org This site of the National Center for Science Education, an organization that defends the teaching of evolution in public schools, monitors anti‐evolution activity in the USA and around the world, provides scientific criticism and historical analysis of creationist claims, and reviews recent publications and videos. 2. http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf This is Judge John E. Jones’ 138‐page Memorandum Opinion in Kitzmiller v Dover (2005), the Pennsylvania test case on the constitutionality of teaching Intelligent Design Creationism in public schools. 3. http://www.talkorigins.org A Usenet newsgroup on the creation/evolution controversy and related topics. The site includes an archive of mainstream scientific responses to frequently asked questions in the group and refutations of creationist claims. 4. http://www.icr.org and http://www.answersingenesis.org These are two influential young‐earth creationist websites, maintained by the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis, respectively. 5. http://www.discovery.org/csc This is the home site of the Discovery Institute, whose Center for Science and Culture spearheads the movement for Intelligent Design. Sample Syllabus This sample syllabus includes readings appropriate to both general‐level courses (indicated by A ) and advanced or seminar courses ( B ). 1. The Earth Acquires A History A Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time: The History of the Earth

Introduction to the Symposium on Synthetic Life Alan N. Schechter, Editor On behalf of the editors of Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, I am pleased to introduce the editors and venue of the Symposium on Synthetic Life: Scientific, Historical, and Ethical Perspectives, which occupies much of the current issue of our journal. We are very pleased that Professors Ute Deichmann, Michel Morange, and Anthony S. Travis planned, organized, and edited the proceedings of the workshop on this topic, held on March 5-6, 2012, at the Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences and the NIBN at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel. Professor Deichmann has been the founding director of the Centre since it was created in 2007. Although she trained in biology in Germany, most of her career has been devoted to the history of fundamental life science research during the last century, especially in Europe and including the dreadful periods before and during the Second World War. The Centre (as described in a bit more detail below) has become one of the few institutions in the world devoted to a systematic study of the transformations during the last century of those aspects of biology that might in their entirety be termed molecular biology. On the most general level, these transformations occurred in the context of the transition from the vague colloid theories at the beginning of the last century to analyses of specific molecules during the last several decades. Indeed, to understand the origins of molecular biology, and thus much of the current excitement in the life sciences and even medicine, one must know the several threads of structural and genetic analyses that came together as molecular biology in the mid-1950s and that have flourished since. It is the thesis of the symposium presented in the papers in this issue of Perspectives that further philosophical syntheses are now underway, including with synthetic chemistry to create the fields of synthetic biology and even synthetic life. This is analogous to the syntheses occurring with physiology that have led to what is generally termed systems biology. Professor Morange is Professor of Biology and Director of the Centre Cavaillès for history and philosophy of science at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in [End Page 467] Paris, and was trained initially in molecular biology. In the last two decades he has published several very well received books on the history of molecular biology, especially of the concept of genes, and on the history of science more generally. Professor Travis is interested in the history of chemistry and technology and has long been associated with the Sidney M. Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Jacques Loeb Centre, and the Leo Baeck Institute in London. Thus the three editors bring very important and complementary perspectives to these issues. The Jacques Loeb Centre (http://in.bgu.ac.il/en/loeb/Pages/default.aspx) honors in its name the German-American physiologist who lived from 1859 to 1924 and from whom Professor Deichmann and her colleagues rightly trace the concepts that were the fundamental basis of the application of physical-chemical ideas and methods to biology during the last century. This work led to the complete replacement of the vitalistic approaches with the mechanistic tradition that we now accept with few second thoughts in fields ranging from evolution to medicine. In her writings, and in the focus of the work of the Centre, Professor Deichmann has traced the specific questions and controversies that constitute this history, including in the work of other pioneers, especially during the first half of the last century. Her paper on the contributions of Leonor Michaelis during this period is published as a special addition to this issue of Perspectives. The workshop proceedings published here are the fifth in a yearly series at the Centre. The titles of the others will give an idea of the scope of their enterprise: Philosophies in Biology (2008); Darwinism and Functional Biology, Other Sciences, and the Humanities (2009); Evolutionary-Developmental Biology: The Evolution of the Fields and Prospects for Future Developments (2010...

Literally speaking, "Philosophy of biology" is a rather old expression. William Whewell coined it in 1840, at the very time he introduced the expression "philosophy of science". Whewell was fond of creating neologisms, like Auguste Comte, his French counterpart in the field of the philosophical reflection about science. Historians of science know that a few years earlier, in 1834, Whewell had generated a small scandal when he proposed the word "scientist" as a general term by which "the students of the knowledge of the material world" could describe themselves, and distinguish themselves from artists. The term "philosopher", Whewell argued, was too wide. A new generic term, more or less equivalent to the French term "savant", was needed in order to prevent the disintegration of science that seemed to flow from its specialization in modern times.1 When Whewell first introduced the terms "philosophy of science" and "philosophy of biology" in his 1840 Philosophy of the inductive sciences, the latter term was merely a special branch of "philosophy of science". The expression "philosophy of science" itself had two justifications: firstly, this phrase expressed the idea that "science" remained cognitively coherent enough to justify a critical enquiry into its methodological unity and its foundation; secondly, the phrase "philosophy of science" was required in order to distinguish a properly "philosophical" enquiry from a "historical" approach to science. Although Whewell's 1840 Philosophy of the inductive sciences 2 had approximately the same chapter structure as his 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences 3 (that is, a series of chapters successively devoted to the concept of science in general, and although there was considerable overlap between the contents of the two books, then to particular sciences), its theoretical purpose was different. Clearly, Whewell was not willing to confuse the genres of history and philosophy as Auguste Comte had done in his 1830 Cours de philosophie positive.4 Note also that the word "biology" was still extremely rare in English when Whewell used it in 1840. In fact, Whewell's 1837 History of the Inductive Sciences does not make use of the word "biology": Whewell successively examines "botany", "zoology", "physiology" and "comparative antomy" as special branches of "analytico-classificatory science", then discusses palaeontology as a special case of the "palaeo-etiological sciences". Three years later, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Whewell does use "biology" as a generic term for all the sciences dealing with life. The various sciences which were separately examined in the previous book are now collectively considered. Furthermore, the main philosophical problem raised by biology is its dual nature: biology is both nomological and a historical science. Modern philosophers of biology are generally unaware of the story of the origins of the expression "philosophy of biology", but Whewell's dual theoretical nature of biology is still a major concern for modern "philosophy of biology".

Previous article No AccessSeventy-Second Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization (To January 1948)George Sarton and Frances SiegelGeorge Sarton Search for more articles by this author and Frances Siegel Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 39, Number 4Nov., 1948 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/348984 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1948 History of Science SocietyPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: George Sarton , and Frances Siegel Seventy-Third Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization (To November 1948), Isis 40, no.22 (Oct 2015): 124–193.https://doi.org/10.1086/349039

Previous articleNext article FreeSecond LookFinal Comment Authors’ ResponseSimon Schaffer and Steven ShapinSimon Schaffer Search for more articles by this author and Steven Shapin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTo have your book looked at once is satisfying; to have it looked at twice—and so long after it was written—is surprising. For the lucky authors, the temptation is to assume that their work has lasted because of its intrinsic merits; but it’s a temptation to be resisted. After all, there might be many other reasons for longevity. When we think of academic works that have now stuck around for a long time, we find some that we admire for their insight, novelty, scholarly flair, or readability; some that persist because they are Examples of Error, offering welcome target practice for Right Thinkers; some sufficiently oracular and allusive that they encourage all-in academic wrestling matches for their correct interpretation; and others whose “survival” is moot because they are more commonly cited than read. We can—just—understand why wholly or mainly programmatic works might be discussed and contended over for many years, but our book was, in substance, an empirical study of passages in and around seventeenth-century experimental practice.True, we meant to exemplify what seemed to us better ways of dealing with the categories of “the social” and “the natural,” of “intellectual and social order,” of what was reckoned to be “internal” and “external” to science. We also tried to unsettle and reframe then-and-now common talk of “factors”—scientific and social. These prompts were indeed therapeutically intended, and we considered them to have some application outside of the historical passages examined. We thought that there were, in the 1980s, some major resistances to such sensibilities. By identifying problems of social-order understood as proper to sociology with those of knowledge-order accounted as the province of philosophers, our aim was certainly not to banish talk of boundaries and distinctions between such enterprises but, rather, to help in the interpretative task of making sense of them.As it turned out, the book had little effect on the historiography of seventeenth-century natural philosophy. That’s one reason why it’s so remarkable that generous space has been made in the pages of Isis for this impressive group of readings and rereadings. And maybe rewarding too: when Hobbes’s Leviathan was cited in Parliament for “blasphemy and profaneness,” Samuel Pepys recorded that its secondhand price tripled.The book was written over thirty years ago, and both authors have gone on to other things. We have, in general, been reluctant to jump into the many controversies that have swirled around it, and we recall responding to criticism on only one occasion—when the book’s factual accuracy was significantly called into question. (All authors, we think, are bound to do that.)Six or seven years ago, when Princeton University Press asked us to provide an introduction to a new edition, we found it easy to view the thing, as it were, from the outside—reminding readers of the specific historical and institutional circumstances from which it emerged and considering the original reviews—critical, approving, mixed, bland, and point-missing—as Signs of the Times. As some second-lookers discover, the book contains instances of out-of-date language and a few concerns that, they judge, no longer greatly animate historians or social scientists. Of course it does. How could it not? We offer neither excuses nor defenses for having written a book in the mid-1980s that reflects some concerns of that period.What puzzled us as the book continued to attract attention and commentary, and especially as the new edition was prepared, continues to puzzle us now: first, why the book has not yet followed the fate of the dinosaurs; second, why, despite the predictions of some first-lookers who admired the thing, it has not spawned generically imitative offspring. About the second puzzle, we have no very good ideas, but we suppose this may have something to do with the book’s blurred genres. These kinds of things aren’t easy to write; they call out for collaboration; and, as we’ve been told from time to time by younger scholars, they’re not professionally prudent—easy to “misunderstand” and not such a good idea if you’re looking to position yourself in the now-brutally-competitive disciplinary job market. The book was a first effort by two scholars—one then young, one even then not so young. But, to paraphrase Christopher Marlowe, all that was another country; and, besides, the academic culture from which it emerged is well dead.So we thank all involved in this exercise, but, in being asked to respond, we find ourselves in a situation that is not so much difficult as impossible. There are two reasons for this—one specific to recent events, the other a matter (for the authors) of principle. The particular reason for difficulty is the extended reflection represented by the Princeton reissue. Responding to our second-lookers here would inevitably repeat much of what we wrote in the introduction to that edition, and we should not do that. (We would inevitably, and rightly, be accused of double-dipping, and that is bad manners.) The second reason is an Old Chestnut in some strands of sociology and in cultural and literary theory: it concerns the extent to which authors can ever dictate, control, or even substantially influence the interpretations subsequently made of their work. We accept that we cannot, and we think that no author can. Of course, if the world was differently arranged we would have liked to influence readers’ opinions—who then wouldn’t? That we consider the interpretative arguments in the book to be already sufficiently clear is also to say we’re like any other authors, having done the best we could, seeing no reasons to withdraw our arguments, and feeling that there is nothing to apologize for—save, possibly, for the use of one or two ironic or allusive expressions that have, surprisingly, been read either literally or in isolation from the contexts invoked in the sentences preceding. (Consider here the book’s last sentence.) That some readings and evaluations have left us bewildered—and we specially mention here the notion that the book is a form of social reductionism, showing the “influence” of “social factors” on science—is, again, to make us type-specimens of the authorial species.A book is like a ship that authors build and launch on the sea, but whose journey they cannot steer. As authors of this book, we tried to be clear, reliable, and, we hoped, interesting, but we were never so foolish as to think we could dictate, or even substantially affect, what readers later made of our efforts. So we are deeply grateful for the second-lookers’ interest, but any material response would look like an attempt to control what cannot be controlled. We want to enact in practice what many scholars embrace only in principle.NotesSimon Schaffer is Professor of History of Science at the University of Cambridge. He has written on the history of physical sciences and the social history of scientific knowledge and technique. In 2015 he was awarded the Caird Medal by the National Maritime Museum. He has recently published La fabrique des sciences modernes (Seuil, 2014) and coedited The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; [email protected].Steven Shapin is Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He has written about early modern science and about entrepreneurial science in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More recent work deals with the history of ideas about food and eating, with taste, and with the place of subjectivity in knowledge making. Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA; [email protected]. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 108, Number 1March 2017 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/691419 © 2017 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Previous articleNext article FreeSynthetic Bibliography, with Special Reference to the History of ScienceGeorge SartonGeorge Sarton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 3, Number 2Autumn, 1920 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/357911 Views: 103Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Marcel Martin George Sarton (1884-1956): the Founder of the History of Science Branch, Historica Olomucensia 53, no.vol. 53vol. 53 (Dec 2017): 273–320.https://doi.org/10.5507/ho.2017.036 Herman H. Henkle Content and the Curriculum in Education for Librarianship, The Library Quarterly 12, no.11 (Sep 2015): 29–48.https://doi.org/10.1086/615103 George Sarton Sixteenth Critical Bibliography of the History and Philosophy of Science and of the History of Civilization, Isis 7, no.22 (Oct 2015): 171–352.https://doi.org/10.1086/358324 George Sarton Ninth Critical Bibliography of the History, Philosophy and Organization of Science and of the History of Civilization, Isis 3, no.33 (Oct 2015): 451–497.https://doi.org/10.1086/357970

The first attempt to bring together the historians of science from the Baltic States took place in Riga in 1958. Prof. Pauls Stradiņš (1896–1958) initiated and organised a joint meeting for historians of science from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania under the supervision of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. A program for future joint activities was developed, and the tradition of joint conferences—the Baltic Conference on History of Science (BCHS)—in each country followed. In 1991, the Baltic Association of the History and Philosophy of Science (BAHPS), uniting historians and philosophers of science of independent Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, took over organising the BCHS. The article aims to present an overview of the published results of the conference, which is partly based on the annotated bibliography (1958–1985) of the conference. The authors analyse the subject, dissemination and tradition of the BCHS, and discuss the role of academic institutions in organising the events. Since the overview was inspired by a decision to gather a complete set of books of conference abstracts, it also resulted in recommendations for conference organisers. Between 1958 and 2019, twenty-nine conferences were organised and 2,880 papers were presented. The next conference will take place in Finland in 2022. The main ideas of the article were presented at the 26th International Congress on History and Philosophy of Science in Prague in 2021.