Talk:History of science and technology

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[edit] COTW vote for History of science

The COTW vote was quite specifically and intentionally for History of science, which of course should incorporate material from this article.--Pharos 07:59, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I put this out of order at the top because of the importance of noting this mistake.

Moved from Talk:History of science

I see science and mathematics is being disame together to deserve combination of history articles........ On an ironic noted, the history of science is full of "flights", so I'd hate to fight about the history of science -- it would be too weird. Ed Poor

Well, I am not trying to pick a fight :) but I have NPOV issues with this article. It reads -- at the moment -- like a celebration of scientific progress. I have two problems: first, it moves too easily from science as a generic activity all people engage in, to science as a specifically Western project. Second, although there has been progress in science in that there is some accumulation of knowledge, the history of science is rather more complicated than that.

One way to deal with this (if others find my criticisms valid) is to distinguish in the article between what we know about changes in scientific method and knowledge (from Aristotle to Bacon to Comte to Popper; from Aristotle to Darwin to Mendel to Mayr; from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein and Planck; etc, on the one hand, and various discussions over how to study and conceive of the history of science (i.e. issues in historiography and the sociology of science), on the other. For example, I think everyone agrees that Aristotle, Newton, Einstein and Planck are real people who lived at different periods of time and made different claims about the world -- but I think different people have vastly different ways of telling the story that connects these people and their claims. I'd hope a good article on "the history of science" would inform me of these issues, and provide me with the different ways of understanding the movement from one period in science to another.

I am no expert on this but I really hope someone who feels very confident of their grasp of, say, Thomas Kuhn and Bruno Latours, could reorganize and develop this article in a way that takes their claims about science seriously, as well as the claims of those with opposing views.

I am glad Ed has begun this article, it can be really important and it is a needed contribution. -- SR

The best flattery is imitation, er, continuation! Why not incorporate your own Talk comment above into the article? Or are we veering off into the philosophy of science? -- Ed Poor
Well, Ed, I am flattered. You should feel free to move parts of what I wrote into the article as you see fit. Nevertheless, I think thee needs to be a lot more detailed discussion and I simply am not an expert -- and before I could make a well-informed contribution I would need to go back and reread Kuhn and Latour and others and I just do not have the time now. In short, I know these issues exist, but I also know there must be people out there better equiped to explain them. SR

On second thought, and despite SR's gladness, I feel I have lost the NPOV in the article. I appear in my own eyes to be espousing the particular point of view of Thomas Kuhn rather than describing the history of science objectively. It was only today that I discovered my bias (*blush*), ironically while researching bias regarding global warming.

I think the History of science article as it stands should be deleted.

Ed Poor


Note: Charles Darwin is mentioned below because he played an important role in history, not because he studied the history of science and technology. How can we make this distinction clear.

-- moved from main page.

[more stuff move from main page] As History of X articles are written, please add them above, redirecting away from broader article.

What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics in History of Science and Technology, please see History of Science and Technology basic topics.


Chris Steinbach, Welcome to wikipedia. I think you (inadvertently) deleted the bottom list of topics on which History of Science and Technology articles have been written. Please restore to this page or link to another page where you put them. They should be recoverable from the Page History link. If you plan on rewriting or reorganizing, that's probably needed anyway, but we need the index to those article, and to link to them from here (since HST is linked from the main page). -- dml

Think I got it all back in. --Chris

The acronym HST is mentioned initially and then never again in the article. Is it present only for the purposes of this talk page? -- Hubble --- It would be highly worthwhile, I think, to talk about the developments and uses of the history of science as a discipline, though (as some comments above note), doing so with a NPOV might prove difficult. However I don't think it would be too hard to trace some of the uses and methodologies of the history of science out a little more thoroughly, especially in the United States which is relatively well documented (from Sarton to the present). There is much more complexity and purpose to the discipline that is really gleaned from this page. --Fastfission 00:54, 8 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I don't understand why there are so many links to subjects of science. One link to Science should suffice: it has an exhaustive links of subject itself. Probably it is the same for technology. I would suggest to keep only the links to other articles related to the history of science/technology. Pcarbonn 19:08, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I couldn't find a time line of (major) scientific discoveries in wikipedia (e.g. Relativity, electrodynamics, theory of evolution, ...). Is there one ? Could some one add a link to it from here ? Pcarbonn 19:29, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

See List of themed timelines for a slew of timelines (AFAIK all that wikipedia has). dml 22:54, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I had looked there, but could not find it. Have you ? Pcarbonn 06:29, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The reason you can't find such a timeline is that it's inherently POV. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's not Wikipedia. Somebody would have to decide what's major and what doesn't quite make it. Or there has to be a very thorough consensus on the choice, and that is not going to happen. Look at the various timelines, like Timeline of invention, and I think the message is clear. There are things that Wikipedia cannot do well. A rational being would simply stay away from those and take part in the things it can do very well. (My name apears in enough timelines to make it clear just how rational I am.) Dandrake 21:20, May 9, 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow you on that one. I believe that the decision of "what's major" and "what's not" has to be made in all articles, not just timelines of scientific theories. (give me an article where such question are not applicable). And consensus on such question is an ideal that is never reached. This explains why wikipedia articles tend to grow continuously. Actually, the fact that they grow is an indication of the interest they generate. So a long timeline of inventions tells me that people (including you) are interested in it. Don't you think ? Pcarbonn 20:17, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I do, and I confess to overstating the case; the provocations that led to it are left to the reader's imagination. But I did have major landmarks in mind, and I think my point is valid as far as that goes. That is, I think the problem of unlimited growth in trivialities is greater in timelines, where every passer-by adds a couple of lines of this favorite stuff, than in articles that require the effort of composing some coherent text. But dismiss all this as a quibble if you like. The timeline of great stuff in all the sciences appears not to exist, and it's not a bad idea. Start one and watch it grow <g>. I'll contribute. (But only stuff that in my infallible judgment is important.) Dandrake 22:22, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I have started it already. Have a look at Timeline of scientific discoveries, Timeline of scientific experiments, Timeline of technological discoveries. Feel free to contribute ! Pcarbonn 06:56, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Here's a question: is this entry about the history of science and technology in general, or the history of science and technology as a field of study? Because half of it reads like the former, half of it reads like the latter. I think it should be about the latter, otherwise it would be as nonsensical as having an entry for "rocketry" and "the history of rocketry." The second bit could go easily into the entry of the first bit, unless the second bit is something discrete unto itself, which the study of the history of science and technology (Pais, Sarton, Kuhn, etc.) certainly is. --Fastfission 22:47, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Interesting question, but before that, how about this one: is this an article on history of s & t at all? The only section of text is a POV piece about how unorthodox people keep getting held up by conservative dullards. It might be less worthy of deletion if it lost that text and took on an accurate title like List of subjects in the history of science and technology. Dandrake 05:51, May 11, 2004 (UTC)
I pretty much agree. This entry bears little to no relationship to the actual study of the history of science and technology, which tries as much as possible not to deal with such broad and clunky narratives as "challenge to orthodoxy" anyway (if one were really to have a sensible subheading it ought to be something like "models of theory change" which really would encompass Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Paul Feyerabend, for example). Another worthwhile header could be "the externalist versus internalist debate" -- is scientific knowledge a product of internal change or constructed from the social fabric it exists in (or both)? Perhaps this weekend I'll write up a subheading which traces out the history of the discipline and try to work it in there, maybe it will be able to edge out the silly stuff over time... I mean, what is this nonsense about birth order doing in there? This has nothing to do with the academic study of history of science -- it is honestly not a preoccupation or question that anyone in the mainstream discipline takes seriously. --Fastfission 16:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
I would think that a disambiguation page would be the best solution to your worries. Thanks for the many (unfriendly) POV statements... Many take the birth order stuff seriously, but probably not in your narrow field of study. I'll let you do the disambiguation page to your taste. Pcarbonn 17:09, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
The problem is that my "narrow field of study" is the "the history of science and technology." Serious historians of science, in general, do not take birth order stuff seriously, which is not to say that they reject such work, but that it isn't a preoccupation at all (it's a non-issue). I don't think it deserves to be in part of a page on the history of science, frankly, as it really doesn't have anything to do with the gross majority of work done in the history of science. There is not enough room on these pages to put every single scholar's theories, I think it's best to focus on the big ones. I also don't see how a disambiguation page will really help -- what is it going to say? "The history of science is either the history of science itself or it is the study of the history of science." Again, the latter ought to just be in on a generic "science" page and the latter is what "the history of science" refers to at the present. Again, it's like having a "rocketry" page and then a "history of rocketry" page. I don't think that is the answer, either -- I think it could be shored up into one page which covers the discipline (which is one of the major sub-disciplines of history) and talks a little bit about the content as well. --Fastfission 17:32, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
Fair enough. I believe that your field of study is "the history of science for the purpose of the philosophy of science". This explains that the authors that you cite appear in that page. This is a very worthwhile subject, which interests me much. In my view, the history of 'anything', e.g. science, philosophy, religion, encompasses many views: philosophical, social, technological, political, ... In that sense, the impact of birth order on the adoption of new paradigm gives an insight on how changes happened from a new perspective, although I agree that from a philosophical point of view, it is a non-issue. To quote the "Harvard Magazine": "Sulloway, who was trained in the history of science, may himself revolutionize that field and several others with his bold theories"
Does this makes sense to you ? If yes, we could create different sections in the article: history of science from a philosophical perspective, from a social perspective, from a political perspective, ... Pcarbonn 19:30, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
No, I study "the history of science and technology." The authors I cited are among the historically most important to the field thus far, though of course the decision of what is canon is a subjective one. Within the study of the history of science, birth order simply not important enough to warrant a position on an article with a general page. Sulloway, for whatever he "may" do, has not done so, and is not significant a historian to warrant being on the same page as Kuhn, Heilbron, Sarton, etc. When I get the chance next week I will write up what I think the article should contain and insert it in. Personally I think a better description of the evolution of the discipline would be a better entry alltogether than the one which is currently here -- frankly it looks to me like you are mainly interested in inserting a half-baked notion to somehow place Cold Fusion on the level of Galileo as well as an unwarranted support for a historical theory not at all considered canon (birth order) -- but I'm willing to compromise.
The field of the history of science does not need to be redefined for the purpose of this article. It is a well-established field with full-fledged departments at universities across the country (for an example of programs, http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept/, http://ohst.berkeley.edu/, http://info.med.yale.edu/histmed/), has its own professional organizations (http://www.hssonline.org/), and dozens of its own journals (just to pick a few, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Isis/home.html, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/hsps/, http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0022-5010/contents). While it of course has overlaps with the philosophy of science at times (Kuhn is most notable in this regard), they are distinct areas of study. There is no such thing as "the history of science from a social perspective" and "from a philosophical perspective" and "from a political perspective." In the field itself, an innumerable number of perspectives are looked at (like any field of history) and similarly with applications. While there are a few broad disciplinary divisions (the externalist/internalist debate, for example), they are not along any of the lines you have suggested, and I would venture to say that you really do not have a lot of knowledge about this field in particular.
I apologize if I'm a little annoyed by all of this, it is simply a bit frustrating. The impetus to make changes is, of course, in my court, so I won't complain about it anymore until I provided something a bit more concrete. It is no effort to object, compared with creating. --Fastfission 01:08, 17 May 2004 (UTC)
I cannot agree more with you that it is best to add good things to an article, instead of destroying not-so-good things.
I would also encourage you to post positive comments about people you interact with. Let's keep Wikipedia a friendly place !



Time for a process of working out the Intro?

It is not generally believed that modern mathematical science began just about everywhere other than Greece. It is generally believed in some places, and not in others. Guess which ones. And by the way, what is the relevance of zero and algorithms, which were introduced long after the Greeks were gone? Worthy inventions, without which modern science would be inconceivable, but not a part of the origins of mod. math. sci., unless it originated sometime after, say, 600 AD.

(This will be continued; I have to check in at frequent intervals because the new Mozilla is crap, and the current Wiki software has been made incompatible with the old levels that worked.)Dandrake 00:53, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

On reflection, I don't see that the second intro paragraph has anything to contribute, even if it were rewritten to be accurate. Looks like a simple case of putting a plug for one's favorite ideas into the intro where no one can miss it. Any reason it shouldn't be zapped? (One possible reason: since User:Fastfission is working on a complete replacement for this lousy artice, why bother? But I'm inclined to bother.) Dandrake 19:43, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How can you live without sections?

I've just come across this article through research for Industrial Revolution. I am confused as to why the two topics of science and technology have been run together. Most of the technological innovations generated in the Industrial Revolution were by working class people, who were practically illiterate. In some cases, there is no overlap with science at all. So, why the struggle to push these concepts together? Noisy 21:56, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A good question. In fact, it has been debated a good deal; a reading of the previous discussion here, though tedious, may be informative. One thing to keep in mind is that this page is so bad that it's hardly worth saving (or so some of us think), and it's likely to be replaced with a complete re-write. Note that a major item of contention here is whether the article should (a) be a brief history of science and/or technology or (b) be about the field of history of etc. Wish I knew how this should be resolved. Dandrake 01:06, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] New sections

I have added a few very ill-integrated and wholly inadequate sections on non-European science and technology. These came from History of physics, where the material didn't even belong. Perhaps they will inspire people to contribute more on these subjects.

None of this solves the question whether we need an article that's a broad narrative outline of the history of Science & Technology, or an article on each, or one on the field of history of S & T as a discipline, or any combination of them. But at least these teaser sections are in a place where they can be found and are relevant. Wouldn't it be nice if someone could write articles on these subjects? Dandrake 01:59, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] May I echo the plea of others

If someone with a very high competence level in the fields could extricate the two subjects, and Split this page into a 'History of science' and a 'History of technology', that would be very good. Technology as an endevour predates science as a self conscious endevour by thousands of years. Putting these two together makes no more sense than if we were to decide to merge 'History of Mathematics' and both these topics. The merging of the two does not provide any meaningful generalization, it only confuses two different, although very intimately related, topics.

I suggest leaving the joint page up while copying the respective section of it to two other distinct pages. Put a link to the Hist. of Sci. page and the Hist of tech. page and ask people to continue disentangleing and porting until the joint page becomes totally redundant, and can be reduced to a disambiguation page or sum such. Do I or someone else need to ask permission before a major change like this? I don't think I have the requisite skill to take this on...? SS-A

[edit] A solution?

I haven't had time to work on this lately (I'm moving across the country in a matter of days), but here's what I think might work:

I'm in the process of finishing #1 on the list. The page is currently an amalgamation of #1 and #2 but is pretty poor in its contents (a silly-sounding 'challenge to orthodoxy' as a main thrust in the history of science -- debatable at best -- and a few notes about lesser known contributions to science does not sound much like a general history of science to me anyhow). I'm willing to take on the job of doing a lot of this merging (and probably have enough knowledge of the discipline and contents to at least start it, this being my field of study and all) but I doubt I will have time to do it for awhile.

I also think that rather than turning this into a list of links to other histories, the use of the wikipedia categories could really be helpful here (as in Category:History of science). What thinks the populace? --Fastfission 18:43, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes to all points. I do fear that the two middle articles will get out of hand and never be good. The subjects seem too big, and random stuff will go in whenever someone with a pet item goes by. In principle, interested editors could keep fixing it, whacking it back into coherent shape and keeping its well-planned organization in place. In practice, I don't think it will happen in an environment that doesn't have some very small number of people officially in charge of the articles; that is, it may be a weakness of the Wiki approach, in the category "the efects of its qualitities". That said, it's still the best way to go.
For the stub sections on lesser known contributions I owe this article an apology. At least they're less irrelevant here than in History of physics, and I didn't want to delete them absolutely. Accuse me of Political Correctness if you like; but also one wants stubs somewhere, to give the message, "Stop griping about Eurocentrism and contribute something, dammit!".
I'm not sure how you mean to use the categories. But as to the renaming, I vote for full speed ahead once you're ready with an article that you can live with. And by full speed, I mean that we'd simply split this thing into a bad History of Science and a stub History of Technology, and start improving from there. Dandrake 20:12, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
About the stub sections, I don't have a problem with them of course, only that by themselves they look like footnotes to an article without an substance (before noting Eastern contributions of science, it seems important to first note Western contributions, if only out of the interest of convention and how the history is 'normally' thought of). The stub of history of technology is already there, but I haven't had time to work on the article at all lately. As for the categories, I mean to replace the entire "By major areas/sub-fields" section with a link to Category:History of science, which would include all of the relevant parts, or something. Maybe. Or maybe not. Anyway it will be awhile until I can get to this, others are welcome to take any stabs, I don't think it's possible to really mess anything up here considering the sad shape it is currently it. ;) --Fastfission 21:37, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Needs more history of history of science

What may help to improve this article is to add a section on the history of "history of science" as a discipline, discussing briefly figures such as Herbert Butterfield, Joseph Needham, Robert Merton, George Sarton, J.D. Bernal etc. Also needs a brief mention on historiographical issues (with respect to "The Scientific Revolution") etc.

[edit] how to proceed?

I tried to clean up the Indian section a bit, where incoherent stuff was just piling up. It is still very bad. How will we make the article more flowing and coherent? I suppose it should be organized by "epoch", not by culture. As it is, lumping together stone age India with Gupta medieval science is very confusing. How about "Prehistorical", "Bronze Age" (Mesopotamia, Egypt, IVC), "Iron Age", Ancient China, Roman Empire, Classical India, Islam, Medieval Europe, Renaissance, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century (or something like this). dab (ᛏ) 08:47, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My suggestion

  • Fold the discipline-related text into science studies.
  • Don't try to make this too comprehensive. Point out major events, some themes, generalize. It's foolish to try and have a comprehensive entry on this subject; it's foolish to try and have a comprehensive book on this subject.
  • I wouldn't dwell too much on pre-17th century science, because our modern sense of "science" didn't really start until then. Create separate entries for Ancient Chinese scientific practices and Medieval science and things like that, link to them from here.

Just some suggestions, take or leave them as may be... --Fastfission 17:17, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Breakup, finally

I excised science-only and technology-only material from this article. (It wasn't that hard.) "History of Science and Technology" redirects here, so there's no disambig as proposed above. As long as you can find "History of science" and "History of technology" easily from the top of this page, that should be fine.

This article is then now all about the academic discipline and the interaction between science and technology, unless that should be in its own article. Go crazy. -- Beland 03:31, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I HAVE A QUESTION TO ASK.

(no question posted)

  • If you have a question, you need to ask it, first of all. A better place to ask general questions is the Wikipedia:Reference desk, but you can ask them here too if you want. --Fastfission 19:07, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nature of the article; recommended books

It seems this article is about the field of history of science but does not chronologically narrate the history of science itself. Is there another article that does this?

If there is another one or this is the one, I recommend the books written by: J.L. Heilbron, Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg, Edward Grant, and Thomas Goldstein.

  • There are a number of articles relating to the history of science, but the most general one about the content of the history of science is History of science. --Fastfission 14:10, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

discussion: you are the natural scientist. your curiosity forces you to know much of the world around you. you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. you ask a lot of questions. you want to knw how things work. you want to test whatever gets into your hands or way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.53.139.181 (talk) 11:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Science Society revert

I recently removed a link to the "Science Society" from the list of Professional societies and to its web page from the list of Journals and Periodicals. The link to the "Science Society" has since been reverted. I deleted these links for two reasons:

First, the web page is a project of a first year undergraduate rather than a scholarly journal.

Second, the society gives no sign of being a formal organization with members and even if it were, it is not primarily concerned with the history of science and technology but with science in general. By that criterion, a whole range of scientific societies that occasionally publish materials on historical issues could be added to this list. Since it is inappropriate and not notable I have now removed the "Science Society" once again. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 16:26, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nature of the Article II

This article seems to me to be primarily lists of institutions (and in references, just links to them) and workers in the field. Since Wikipedia is not a list of links, seems to me that it would be better without all of them. Then, the article is barely better than a stub. Just my opinion. Cheers Geologyguy (talk) 14:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)