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Functions and Uses of Disciplinary Histories Sociology of the Sciences FUNCTIONS AND USES OF DISCIPLINARY HISTORIES SOCIOLOGY OF THE SCIENCES A YEARBOOK Editorial Board: G. B6hme, Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt N. Elias, Universities of Leicester and Bielefeld Y. Elkana, The Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, Jerusalem L. Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology R. Krohn, McGill University, Montreal W. Lepenies, Free University ofBerlin H. Martins, University of Oxford E. Mendelsohn, Harvard University H. Nowotny, European Centre for Social Welfare Training and Research, Vienna H. Rose, University ofBradford Claire Salomon-Bayet, University of Paris P. Weingart, University of Bielefeld R. D. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University ofManchester Managing Editor: R. D. Whitley VOLUME VII - 1983 FUNCTIONS AND USES OF DISCIPLINARY HISTORIES Edited by LOREN GRAHAM Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, U.S.A. WOLF LEPENIES Institut {iir Soziologie, Freie Universitdt Berlin and PETER WEINGART Fakultdt {iir Soziologie und Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschaftsforschung, Universitdt Bielefeld D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER • ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Functions and uses of disciplinary histories. (Sociology of the sciences; v. 7) Includes index. 1. Science-History. 2. Social sciences-History. 3. Classical philosophy-History. I. Graham, Loren R. II. Lepenies, Wolf. III. Weingart, Peter. IV. Series. Q125.F86 1983 907'.2 83-4588 ISBN-13: 978-90-277-1521-0 ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7035-9 001: 10.10071978-94-009-7035-9 Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland All Rights Reserved © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgement vii Introduction ix Biographical Statements of the Contributors xxi PART I The Natural Sciences M. NORTON WISE - On the Relation of Physical Science to History in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany 3 PETER GALISON - Re-Reading the Past from the End of Physics: Maxwell's Equations in Retrospect 35 BERNADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT - A Founder Myth in the History of Sciences? - The Lavoisier Case 53 RACHEL LAUDAN - Redefinitions of a Discipline: Histories of Geology and Geological History 79 ROLF WINAU - The Role of Medical History in the History of Medicine in Germany 105 PART II The Social Sciences ROBERT ALUN JONES - On Merton's "History" and "System- atics" of Sociological Theory 121 MITCHELL G. ASH - The Self-Presentation of a Discipline: His- tory of Psychology in the United States between Pedagogy and Scholarship 143 vi Table of Contents ULFRIED GEUTER - The Uses of History for the Shaping of a Field: Observations on German Psychology 191 BOB SCHOLTE - Cultural Anthropology and the Paradigm-Con- cept: A Brief History of their Recent Convergence 229 PART III The Humanities REINHAR T HERZOG - On the Relation of Disciplinary Develop­ ment and Historical Self-Presentation - the Case of Classical Philology since the End of the Eighteenth Century 281 Epilogue 291 Name Index 297 Subject Index 305 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The editors would like to thank the 'Stiftung Volkswagenwerk' for the generous support of the conference on "Die Selbstthematisierung von Diszi­ plinen. Zur Historiographie von Disziplinen und ihrer Auswirkung auf die Disziplinenentwicklung", which was held September 18-20, 1981, in prepara­ tion of this volume. We also want to thank the Center of Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) of the University of Bielefeld for having been host to this conference, thus supporting once more endeavours in the interdisciplinary study of science. vii INTRODUCTION Edward Gibbon's allegation at the beginning of his Essay on the Study of Literature (1764) that the history of empires is that of the miseries of humankind whereas the history of the sciences is that of their splendour and happiness has for a long time been accepted by professional scientists and by historians of science alike. For its practitioner, the history of a discipline displayed above all the always difficult but fmally rewarding approach to a truth which was incorporated in the discipline in its actual fonn. Looking back, it was only too easy to distinguish those who erred and heretics in the field from the few forerunners of true science. On the one hand, the traditional history of science was told as a story of hero and hero worship, on the other hand it was, paradoxically enough, the constant attempt to remind the scientist whom he should better forget. It is not surprising at all therefore that the traditional history of science was a field of only minor interest for the practitioner of a distinct scientific diSCipline or specialty and at the same time a hardly challenging task for the professional historian. Nietzsche had already described the historian of science as someone who arrives late after harvest-time: it is somebody who is only a tolerated guest at the thanksgiving dinner of the scientific community . The traditional history of science, when noticed at all by the practitioner of the discipline, was in most cases nothing but a "preface history" (Kuhn); whenever the present discipline changed its cognitive content, the disciplinary past took on another shape and was rewritten in an almost automatic way. Today this situation has changed considerably. A growing concern for the disciplinary past can be found in different fields, ranging from physics to the human and social sciences, including the humanities. In many cases, this new interest in the history of scientific disciplines is combined with a critical evaluation of the "traditional" history of science. Historians of science have - as one can well understand - probably been the last to take note of the allegation from critics, notably sociolOgists, that they often reproduce an ideology of science which mainly reflects the interests ix Loren Graham, Wolf Lepenies, and Peter Weingart (eds.), Functions and Uses of Dis­ cipliTlJlry Histories, Volume VII, 1983, ix-xx. Copyright © 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company. x Wolf Lepenies and Peter Weingart in legitimation of the scientific profession. Thus, an 'Ideologiekritik' of the history of science could easily point out that the reconstruction of scientific development which focuses on the "great men" and on the linear and accu­ mulative sequence of discoveries represents a distorted picture of which not only the epistemological implications and assumptions could be drawn into question but which also coincided all too neatly with an idealized picture of the scientific enterprise. To reveal the ideological function of the history of science can hardly come as a total surprise since the ideological functions of general history are widely recognized. To assume however that all historians of science are deliberately serving to legitimate the cause of pure science and its elites would be far-fetched. How, then, can one account for that happy coincidence? Evidently one has to ask what the (possible) relations are between science, i.e. individual disci­ plines or groups of them, and the histories that are being written about them. The stories presented in this volume are varied, complex and sometimes, we think, even amusing. In order for the reader to appreciate some of the generalizations that we have drawn from their messages it is necessary to present these first. The Natural Sciences It is not by accident that we have begun with case studies from the natural, the "hard" sciences where, as the lore of science has it a connection between the development of the discipline and its historiography is only conceivable as a one-sided dependence of the latter on the former. To some extent that point is made in Peter Galison's article on the Re-Reading of the Past from the End of Physics. But Galison identifies all together three functions of the reinterpretation of past accomplishments in physics: pedagogic, heuristic and justificatory ones and the examples he gives lend support to the thesis that at least in the case of the latter the writing of history affects the advance­ ment of the discipline itself. Norton Wise looks at the history of physics from the perspective of . the history of ideas and establishes the case that the physical scientists in Germany participated in the late nineteenth century reaction against materialism. This means in part an attempt to build new bridges between the historical disciplines and the natural sciences. In particular, Ernst Mach Introduction xi and his positivism and the energeticists around Wilhelm Ostwald adopted as an 'ideal of explanation' in the physical sciences several premises traditional in German historicism. The modes of connection between physics, its history and the general political context perhaps remain implicit in this analysis but should not be overlooked. Wise suggests the disciplinary debate between the 'Natur' - and 'Geisteswissenschaften' both on the level of the universities and
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