Osiris. Vol. 10, Constructing Knowledge in the History of Science ed. by Arnold Thackray, and: Technology and Culture. Vol. 36, no. 2 (suppl.), Snapshots of a Discipline: Selected Proceedings, Conference on Critical Problems and Research Frontiers in the History of Technology, Madison, Wisconsin, October 30–November 3, 1991 ed. by Robert Friedel

Abstract

Book Reviews Osiris. Vol. 10, Constructing Knowledge in the History of Science. Edited by Arnold Thackray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.00 (cloth) $25.00 (paper). Technology and Culture. Vol. 36, no. 2 (suppl.), Snapshots ofaDiscipline: Selected Proceedings, Conference on Critical Problems and Research Fron­ tiers in the History of Technology, Madison, Wisconsin, October 30November 3, 1991. Edited by Robert Friedel. The joint meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the History of Science Society (HSS) in the fall of 1991 marked a transitional moment in the life of both groups. For HSS, it commemorated both the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Wisconsin’s History ofScience department and the thirty-fourth year since the 1957 symposium titled “Critical Problems in the History of Science” was held at Madison. Thus, the 1991 joint meeting car­ ried what Bruce Sinclair calls “a mythic importance” for many histo­ rians of science and seemed to offer an opportunity to take stock of the field’s developments. For SHOT, the object of commemoration is somewhat clouded by memory, but some historians of technology claim that it was also 1957 when Isis banished from its pages articles on the history of technology, which act did in fact lead to the found­ ing of SHOT. Apocryphal or not, this tale and its retelling signal the continuing tensions between the two fields and for some might suggest that, in time, the Madison meeting will be seen to commemo­ rate the final attempts of these groups to recognize a privileged rela­ tionship. Younger scholars are sometimes baffled by this apparent tension. Educated in an atmosphere of inclusion and expansion rather than exclusion and turf-guarding, and increasingly focused on more re­ cent historical periods than their mentors, many find the similarities between science and technology self-evident and the differences in­ triguing. The disputes of an earlier generation are not their own, and they tend to follow their hunches without regard for historical hurts and slights. Occupying an intellectual middle ground, younger scholars explore not only the territory of science and that of technol­ ogy but also that of labor, architecture, political culture, and theory. Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. 744 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 745 This was more apparent in the full meeting program at Madison than in these two edited volumes, yet particularly in the SHOT vol­ ume the shift toward new approaches is clear. There are, of course, cultural differences between the two groups, and these are quite plainly represented in the two volumes. Arnold Thackray’s brief, breezy introduction to Constructing Knowledge in the History ofScience mentions the commemorative nature of the Madi­ son meeting but gives little indication of how the selected essays fit into the carefully orchestrated plenary sessions, or how the resulting essays reflect the sometimes creative tensions between taking stock and charting new directions. For the most part, the articles in this volume are review essays of different sectors within the history of science, mostly written by established scholars. They include Evelyn Fox Keller on gender and science, Sally Kohlstedt on women in sci­ ence, David Lindberg on medieval science and religion, Nakayama Shigeru on East Asian science, Daniel Kevles and Gerald Geison on 20th-century life science, Joan Richards on mathematics, Thomas Nickles on philosophy,John Warner on medicine, Nancy Nersessian on cognitive science, and Stephen Brush on scientists as historians of science. The most provocative article for historians of technology is the first in the volume. Lorraine Daston’s “The Moral Economy of Science” is a powerful and eloquent discussion of what “moral economy” means as a category of scientific thought and behavior, and how it structured “how scientists come to know: quantification, empiricism, and objectivity” (p. 8). Her discussion of quantification is particularly apt vis-à-vis technology, as it considers the shift from local to abstract knowledge, from particular skill to general ability, from personal standards oftruth or workmanship to communal stan­ dards. This echoes nicely with questions posed by historians of tech­ nology regarding shifts from artisanal to factory production, or indi­ vidual versus engineering-based...