ScienceOnline09: The Web and the History of Science
GG of Skulls in the Stars, Brian Switek of Laelaps, and Scicurious of Neurotopia v2.0 moderated this session discussing why science bloggers should cover the history of science and find ways to work it into their current posts.
I’ve occasionally posted history of science stories, like that of Harry K. Daghlian and Kudryavka. One of the participants mentioned that communicating the history of science was an “Exercise in storytelling,” and I found this observation insightful. History is an attempt to craft, not just stories, but meaningful stories out of the past.
The discussion also delved into the importance of science history for understanding why facts are facts. Like the fact that our current Anthropogenic Climate Change science is founded on science extending back to 1804, giving it 200 years of credibility. Being able to conduct the same basic experiments, same basic proofs that were performed a century ago make the experiments accessible to the average person. The historical approach allows us to take problem back in time, to a context where it was comprehensible to the layman.
My favorite, and most conceptually challenging portion of the discussion dealt with the mythologizing of science history. We tend to talk about science in terms of inevitable forward progress, but it was really a great deal of starts and stops, trackbacks, and endless debates. Scicurious brought up the intriguing example of Bayer inventing heroin and marketing it as the non-addictive morphine originally, but today we pretend as though everyone always knew heroin was addictive. Will future generations learn that “Pluto is a plutoid” without learning about how much ire demoting Pluto from its planetary status caused?
Another problem raised concerning this habit of mythologizing our historical figures is our tendency to turn them into heroic caricatures of themselves. “There’s Darwin the ideal and Darwin the man,” one participant noted, and I realized the obverse of this is true as well. We demonize those we disagree with, for instance William Jennings Bryan is portrayed purely as a religious nut in Science Blogs, but the man was extremely socially progressive, and was fighting Evolution on the moral grounds that Scopes’ textbook argued the inferiority of non-whites and endorsed eugenics.
No one in science today would endorse eugenics or the genetic inferiority of non-whites; however, we do ourselves a disservice, and our rhetorical opponents a disservice, by not acknowledging the complexities of the history. Especially when they can go read the original textbook online and see that we aren’t telling the whole story when we invoke the Scopes Trial.
There is a good chance future generations will learn of Pluto as a planet though one of as many as 200 in our solar system rather than one of nine. The controversial IAU demotion is unlikely to stand; it is vague, makes no linguistic sense, and has been rejected by many astronomers who even now are working to get Pluto reinstated and all dwarf planets categorized as a subclass of planets (which the current IAU definition precludes). The term “plutoids,” which is pretty much universally disliked, will likely fall into obscurity.
Comment by Laurel Kornfeld — January 22, 2009 @ 1:13 am
Hi Ryan. I’m glad you enjoyed the session! It was a lot of fun to participate in.
I like your point about W.J. Bryan, and I have written about him and his motivations on my blog before
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/05/john_scopes_and_textbook_cardb.php
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/12/does_this_look_familiar.php
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2008/11/with_the_election_of_barack.php
I recommend Ed Larson’s “Summer for the Gods” if you’re really interested in the Scopes Trial, a true legal circus. Bryan did find eugenics tasteful, but his anti-evolutionary stance actually goes back a few years to WWI. Bryan became convinced that the Germans were motivated by “Darwinism” and therefore evolution had to be opposed (even though he accepted evolution for non-human life personally). Either way, the story is much more complex than what is currently presented and I hope the session encouraged you to dig deeper into the history of science.
Comment by Laelaps — January 23, 2009 @ 2:28 pm
Laurel,
I have to agree with you in finding the IAU’s decision semantically confusing (The whole “Dwarf Planet” debacle was ridiculous.)
Laelaps,
Thanks for the Summer for the Gods tip. I’ve only read Six Days or Forever, and feel a little left out for all the additional details of the trial that I have learned about since. Your posts on this subject are fantastic, and I recommend anyone following this thread to check them out.
Comment by ideonexus — January 24, 2009 @ 12:25 pm