Hyperprofessionalism and the crisis of readership in the history of science

ISIS

Volumn 96, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 238-243

  Shapin, Steven ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HISTORY; HUMAN; PHILOSOPHY; PROFESSIONAL STANDARD; SCIENCE; SOCIOLOGY; UNITED STATES;

HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUMANS; PHILOSOPHY; PROFESSIONAL ROLE; SCIENCE; SOCIOLOGY; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33746212749     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/431535     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. Justin Ewers, "Publish or Perish," U.S. News & World Report: America's Best Graduate Schools, 2005 Edition (Washington, D.C.: U.S. News & World Report, 2004), p. 65 (quotation).
2. See also Andrew Cooper, "Overcoming the Crisis in Academic Publishing," 100-Day Dialogue. Topic 2, 4 Aug. 2000: http://www.honco.net/ 100day/02/2000-0804-cooper.html [accessed 20 Aug. 2004].
3. The figures are from Monica McCormick of the University of California Press. The Princeton University Press speculation about library sales is in John Sutherland, "Diary," London Review of Books, 22 Jan. 2004, 26(2):31.
4. John V. Pickstone, Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 2000).
5. The British Society for the History of Science convened a "Big Picture" meeting in 1991 (see British Journal for the History of Science, 1993, 26[4]), and in 1993 the Fontana History of Science series was launched with another such conference at the Science Museum in London.
6. I am well aware of a couple of praiseworthy examples that come close, though even here the full obligation to give an account of the "field" is declined: e.g., Richard Olson, Science Deified and Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture, 2 vols. (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1982).
7. James E. McClellan III and Harold Dorn's fine Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999) is largely structured around the relations between science and technology.
8. Peter Bowler and Iwan Morus have just published a notable go at Modern Science: A Historical Survey (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2005) from the Scientific Revolution to the present.
9. My reference to "half a century" ago points to Stephen F. Mason, A History of the Sciences (New York: Collier, 1962),
10. originally published as Main Currents of Scientific Thought: A History of the Sciences (New York: Schuman, 1953). This book is still in print and is widely used in teaching the history of science.
11. Walter Bagehot, Physics and Politics; or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "Natural Selection" and "Inheritance" to Political Society (1872; London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1905), p. 91.
12. See esp. Roger Smith, "The Big Picture: Writing Psychology into the History of the Human Sciences," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1998, 34:1-13.
13. For positive aspects of rejecting the traditional big picture of the Scientific Revolution see, e.g., Roy Porter, "The Scientific Revolution: A Spoke in the Wheel?" in Revolution in History, ed. Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 290-316.
14. As originally urged by Barry Barnes in Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974);
15. and Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).