Abstract
The late 1960s witnessed a key conjunction between political activism and the history of science. Science, whether seen as a touchstone of rationality or of oppression, was fundamental to all sides in the era of the Vietnam War. This essay examines the historian Robert Maxwell Young's turn to Marxism and radical politics during this period, especially his widely cited account of the 'common context' of nineteenth-century biological and social theorizing, which demonstrated the centrality of Thomas Robert Malthus's writings on population for Charles Darwin's formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection. From Young's perspective, this history was bound up with pressing contemporary issues: ideologies of class and race in neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, the revival of Malthusian population control, and the role of science in military conflict. The aim was to provide a basis for political action - the 'head revolution' that would accompany radical social change. The radical force of Young's argument was blunted in subsequent decades by disciplinary developments within history of science, including the emergence of specialist Darwin studies, a focus on practice and the changing political associations of the history of ideas. Young's engaged standpoint, however, has remained influential even as historians moved from understanding science as ideology to science as work.
Highlights
Anyone who thinks history and long arguments are mystifying can stop reading after two sentences from Jerry Rubin: ‘the New Left sprang, a predestined pissed-off child, from Elvis’ gyrating pelvis ... there can be no social revolution without a head revolution and no head revolution without a social revolution.’ Bob Young, ‘The new nation?’, Bath Festival of Blues & Progressive Music (1970), p. 29
The aim was to provide a basis for political action – the ‘head revolution’ that would accompany radical social change
What does historical writing have to do with political action? This essay highlights a moment when the history of science became part of the struggle for radical social transformation
Summary
From the distance of fifty years, we can see Young’s concern with Darwin, Malthus and the Victorian debate about ‘man’s place in nature’ as the product of a specific historical juncture. This monthly seminar, which brought together many future leaders of the field and a remarkable array of approaches, was co-organized with Piyo Rattansi, who had moved from Leeds to Cambridge on a four-year fellowship at King’s which had been brokered by Young Soon after his appointment as assistant lecturer, Young had learned about Rattansi’s work on seventeenth-century English scientific debates from a key mentor, the sinologist Joseph Needham, who was based in Gonville and Caius College.[34] Young maintained good relations with the History Faculty, and opposed combining history of science with philosophy of science in a separate department, as occurred in 1972.35 He was friendly with Raymond Williams in English, and Martin Richards in Social and Political Sciences. While continuing actively to write and publish, he increasingly left the history of science behind
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