STS3301 Paper Week 12: Difference between revisions
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Response to readings in [[STS 3301]]. | |||
==The American Bomb== | ==The American Bomb== | ||
From Kevles one gets the sense of scientists as herds of people that come around to a sense of patriotic duty, of organization. When enough scientists get on a certain bandwagon, an issue is raised to a level of importance worthy of history. Compare this to the "Eureka!" view of the history of science, "free-floating monads" as in Galison's critique. Kevles tells of George Ellery Hale as a man who is influenced (by Emile Picard in part) to separate science socially from Germans, but also influenced (by constituencies in America) to keep some sense of internationalism. Kevles depicts Hale as one who could choose a direction for American and Entente scientists: "By the spring of 1918, Hale had glimpsed a way out of the dilemmas..." (p. 143) | From Kevles one gets the sense of scientists as herds of people that come around to a sense of patriotic duty, of organization. When enough scientists get on a certain bandwagon, an issue is raised to a level of importance worthy of history. Compare this to the "Eureka!" view of the history of science, "free-floating monads" as in Galison's critique. Kevles tells of George Ellery Hale as a man who is influenced (by Emile Picard in part) to separate science socially from Germans, but also influenced (by constituencies in America) to keep some sense of internationalism. Kevles depicts Hale as one who could choose a direction for American and Entente scientists: "By the spring of 1918, Hale had glimpsed a way out of the dilemmas..." (p. 143) | ||
Revision as of 10:48, 15 November 2009
Response to readings in STS 3301.
The American Bomb
From Kevles one gets the sense of scientists as herds of people that come around to a sense of patriotic duty, of organization. When enough scientists get on a certain bandwagon, an issue is raised to a level of importance worthy of history. Compare this to the "Eureka!" view of the history of science, "free-floating monads" as in Galison's critique. Kevles tells of George Ellery Hale as a man who is influenced (by Emile Picard in part) to separate science socially from Germans, but also influenced (by constituencies in America) to keep some sense of internationalism. Kevles depicts Hale as one who could choose a direction for American and Entente scientists: "By the spring of 1918, Hale had glimpsed a way out of the dilemmas..." (p. 143)
The creation of the NRC and of some international cooperation among the Entente countries, along with other wartime relations between scientists and the military drove the military to seek to make permanent these new relations in America. (p. 145, also recall <bib>Burgess:1917</bib>) Kevles shows the strength of this drive to be variable, and shows that the military, with more social power than the scientists, chose how to make science a permanent part, restricting involvement largely to secure labs inside the service. (pp. 146-148)
References
<bib>Kevles:1995</bib>
