科学史与现代科学

一、思想方法:科学史与现代科学的交接点 什么是历史?什么是现代?这个界限很难划分.有人认为,今天报纸上登载的事情绝大部分都是历史,因为它发生在昨天或昨天以前,都是过去时态.按照这个说法,除了今天正在研究或正在计划中的科学工作以外,所有科学都属于历史范畴.这种说法当然很难得到多数人的同意,而且也不现实.     

New directions in the history of modern science in China: global science and comparative history

These essays collectively present new perspectives on the history of modem science in China since 1900. Fa-ti Fan describes how science under the Republic of China after 1911 exhibited a complex local and international character that straddled both imperialism and colonialism. Danian Hu focuses on the fate of relativity in the physics community in China after 1917. Zuoyue Wang hopes that a less nationalist political atmosphere in China will stimulate more transnational studies of modern science, which will in turn reveal the underlying commonalities in different national contexts. Sigrid Schmalzer compares the socialist and the capitalist contexts for science in China and reopens the sensitive question of the "mass line" during the Cultural Revolution. Grace Shen describes the tensions early Chinese scientists felt when choosing between foreign models for modem geology and their own professional identities in China. Taken together, these accounts present us with a comparative history of modern science in China that is both globally and locally informed.     

Alchemy and the history of science. Introduction

Alchemy is part of the cultural experience of early modern Europe and yet has had to overcome problems of demarcation to be considered relevant to the history of science. This essay considers historiographical and methodological issues that have affected the gradual demarginalization of alchemy among attempts to explain, and find things out about, nature. As an area of historical study, alchemy relates to the history of science as part of an ensemble of practices that explored the natural world through natural philosophy and speculative traditions and by functioning as a nexus of social and intellectual life.     

History of mathematics and history of science

This essay argues that the diversity of the history of mathematics community in the United Kingdom has influenced the development of the subject and is a significant factor behind the different concerns often evident in work on the history of mathematics when compared with that of historians of science. The heterogeneous nature of the community, which includes many who are not specialist historians, and the limited opportunities for academic careers open to practitioners have had a profound effect on the discipline, leading to a focus on elite mathematics and great mathematicians. More recently, reflecting earlier developments in the history of science, an increased interest in the context and culture of the practice of mathematics has become evident.     

科学史家眼中的全球化与多样性——第二十二届国际科学史大会综述及思考

一会议综述2005年7月24—30日,以“全球化和多样性”为主题的第22届国际科学史大会在北京成功召开。中国科技史学会和自然科学史研究所承担了本次大会的筹备工作。科学史研究是一项综合性强、跨越性大的研究。随着科学对社会影响的加深和扩大,科学史越来越受到关注,拥有科学史研究部门已成为一个优秀和成熟大学的标志之一,哈佛、剑桥等大学的科学史系就是最好的例证。今天,科学史不仅只是关于人类过去成就的记录,更将为创造美好未来提供指导。在经济全球化的时代珍视与维护文化多样性,这是历史发展的逻辑,也是为了确保全人类在新世纪最大地…     

Training and the generalist's vision in the history of science

Commentators have often complained about specialization in the history of science. This essay discusses recent intellectual trends within our discipline in the light of significant changes in graduate training: both a relatively recent consensus as to the types of sources that are appropriate to analyze in a dissertation and the tremendous growth in the number of new dissertations completed each year in our field. It suggests that this kind of focus on pedagogical concerns provides useful analytic tools for historians investigating other fields in various times and places.     

Hyperprofessionalism and the crisis of readership in the history of science

There is a crisis of readership for work in our field, as in many other academic disciplines. One of its causes is a pathological form of the professionalism that we so greatly value. "Hyperprofessionalism" is a disease whose symptoms include self-referentiality, self-absorption, and a narrowing of intellectual focus. This essay describes some features and consequences of hyperprofessionalism in the history of science and offers a modest suggestion for a possible cure.     

从科学史研究立场之变化看全球化

全球化已经成为当今社会发展的重要趋势,关于全球化的讨论更是学术界的热点话题,本文从西方科学史出发,分析了以西方近代科学为某种普适性科学的科学史研究范式及其与全球化之间的某种关联,以及这种研究范式新近被解构的发展趋势,认为作为人文学者,我们应该对科学文化的全球化热潮保持谨慎的态度。     

Taxonomy and why history of science matters for science: a case study

The history of science often has difficulty connecting with science at the lab-bench level, raising questions about the value of history of science for science. This essay offers a case study from taxonomy in which lessons learned about particular failings of numerical taxonomy (phenetics) in the second half of the twentieth century bear on the new movement toward DNA barcoding. In particular, it argues that an unwillingness to deal with messy theoretical questions in both cases leads to important problems in the theory and practice of identifying taxa. This argument makes use of scientific and historical considerations in a way that the authors hope leads to convincing conclusions about the history of taxonomy as well as about its present practice.