STS3301 Final essay

December, 2009, for STS 3301.

What style(s) of historiography are best for studying training in science?

What have we learned about training?

In Kevles, Frayn, and Stanley, we see the struggle, between the wars, with the idea that science lacked enough consideration of ethics. As scientists were claiming wartime and or industrial powers, they often, at least in perception, overshot society's bounds of acceptability. The humanists muttered "I told you so" at every sign of hubris from the scientists. Meanwhile, science sometimes was a scapegoat for problems of urbanization, social unrest, the fog of war, and other issues. Was it a gross oversight in the pedagogy of physics in the early 20th century that it did not address ethics sufficiently, if at all?

Boltzmann expresses his sense of introductory physics, as a traditionally decorated entry hall. In my mind he creates a picture of a narrowing of possibilities, a narrow hall, before students are allowed into the widening tabernacle of advanced physics. That widening tabernacle, based more on empiricism and statistics is leaving mechanistic views with the servants at the entrance. But at the same time, Cambridge middle mathematicians are enlarging the doors, giving younger students a taste of the most rigorous, most advanced of the mechanistic views. Who built the bridge between the height of mechanics and advanced physics? Kevles retells Oppenheimer's youth, of his academic self-doubt. Here and there, we hear about Sommerfeld setting students straight, on the road to the most advanced physics. What was his skill?

(move this paragraph to the start?) The narrowing of possibilities echoes in the historical inquiries about why scientists acted the way they did. Start with a person with infinite possibilities; introduce all their knowable background; apply their influences, their forced situations, their geographical limitations, their demanding mentors, the social and regulatory structure of their organizations and governments; limit their funding; prevent cooperation due to wars, nationalism, bigotry, class-distinctions; put clouds above their telescopes and corrode their cables; drown or gas their children; give them a jealous superior or an irrelevant job; pester them about the religion of their grandparents; base their prestige not on their accomplishments but on the priority of them. How much freedom of choice is left? Kistiakowski wrote that he went to Los Alamos "unwillingly," and Heisenberg painted himself cornered. We study the great ones, the ones that overcome our expectations or overshoot their bounds. Surely Kistiakowski and Heisenberg retained some control, and if so, some great responsibility.

So, how may a successful scientist needs to extend their work beyond the sea of limitations? We have seen several qualities:

Foresight, as in John Wheeler's concerns about fission-poisoning isotopes. (Rhodes, p. 560)

Precision, as in Rowland's gratings allowing for discovery of fine structure of spectra.

Interdisciplinary work

What constitutes evidence of a good teacher? a good curriculum?

Much positive outcome seems to be attributed in the historical record to international exchanges of scientists and students. (readings: Kevles, Seth, ... subjects:Sommerfeld, Copenhagen and Bohr, NRC/IRC fellowships, I. I. Rabi)