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Review
| A History of Science in Society: from Philosophy to Utility, by Andrew Ede and Lesley B. Cormack. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2004. 458 pages. $34.95, paper.
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| Those who teach survey courses on the history of science constantly are in search of good secondary sources that draw together the broadest themes of the discipline. Especially for those who teach one- or two-semester surveys to humanities students, finding accessible textbooks can be a serious challenge. Andrew Ede and Lesley B. Cormack's effort addresses a genuine need. Even better, the authors have done an outstanding job with it. Not only do they provide a useful introduction to the subject in clear, nontechnical prose, they manage to do so while not losing sight of their own thesis which is to explore the tension between science as a philosophical pursuit, that is, science in which dirtied and calloused hands would have no place, and science as a means of social improvement. In part this draws attention to the competing outlooks of rationalism and empiricism in constructing knowledge, which leads on to discussing the uses of knowledge and the hazy boundaries between science and technology. More important for Ede and Cormack, as they explore subjects such as imperial science or the atomic age, their approach allows them to discuss the pressures upon scientists to show the utility of their work. This facilitates the second aim of the book, which is to present science not as a set of disembodied ideas, but rather as something that must be understood in its social context. Their thesis is that the tension between philosophy and utility has not been a static one; instead, the increasing number of people interested in and doing science has led scientists to promote science's utility. Ultimately the expectation of social or technological improvement became embedded in Western notions of science. |
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Aside from having a provocative thesis that will provide grist for the mill of student discussions, there is an admirable scope to their work. It would have been impossible to cover everything, of course, and the authors acknowledge this point. Fans of French historian Alexandre Koyré, for example, will be surprised to find no mention of either Giordano Bruno or Nicolas of Cusa. But choices had to be made, and teachers can supplement this book with course readers that focus on other topics. In fact, by the end of the book there is such a hodgepodge of disparate concepts to be discussed that one might expect the reader to drown in a sea of information. That this does not happen is entirely due to the efforts of the authors to pick and choose details that contribute to their thesis about the movement toward utility. |
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The structure of the book will aid teachers who attempt to draw significance from the vast period in history that is covered. The worst pitfall awaiting authors of this sort of book is the tendency to take an encyclopedic view, an approach which would be useless for students who cannot be expected to absorb all the important scientific ideas since the dawn of time. Therefore, what makes this book valuable is the authors' willingness, for example, not simply to recount the development of Einstein's theories of relativity, Planck's quantum theory, or the debates about the nature of matter, but instead to emphasize that these all contributed to a crisis in determinism in physicists' views. The chapter on these subjects is not called "Turn-of-the-century Physics" but rather it is aptly named "The Death of Certainty." Similarly, the rationalist project of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century is here presented as an effort to provide secular explanations, one effect of which was to spark the beginning of science as an enterprise and the creation of the professional scientist. The authors not only explain important concepts but also place them in a broader story, which teacher and student alike will appreciate. |
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One of the pleasant surprises in this book is the amount of attention devoted to the period after the Second World War. Ede and Cormack explain the notion of "Big Science," which helped to change the image of science from one of heroic individuals to one of large, well-funded research teams with complex instruments. The authors use the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, to show the moment the world became a planet, observed (and threatened) from space. There is even a long passage on the International Geophysical Year, the cooperative scientific project of over sixty nations in 1957–58. There are cogent discussion of the origins of continental drift, of computing technology, and of the birth control pill, to mention just a few. In addition, the authors devote a section to the relationship between science policy and national security. The analysis of these developments, and even more contemporary themes, further demonstrates the authors' overall aim to highlight the importance of utility in modern science. |
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| California State University, Long Beach |
Jacob Darwin Hamblin |
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