Allen G. Debus1 The Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of the History of Science and Medicine The University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois 60637
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The Relationship of Science-History to the History of Science
There are t,wo deeply entrenched traditions relating History and the Sciences: the one, the history of science which is becoming ever more closely connected with historical studies in departments of history-and the other, the histories of the special sciences which arose from within the sciences and remain entrenched in scientific departments. It is largely because of thcir differing backgrounds that these disciplines arc not today as closely allied as they might be. In microcosm they seem to reflect the cultural gap of the humanities and the scienccs. To what extent can we say that they arc of value to each other? To answer this question we might first ask whether the history of science can or should contributc to the teaching of t,he sciences. I well recall attending a tea in Cambridge, Mass. some years ago. Most of the faculty and the graduat,e students from the Department of the History of Science at Harvard were present-and t,he guest was a noted English scholar in the field. I n the course of the conversation the guest stated that he knew of no instance in which a scientific discovery had been prompted by the discoverer's knowledge of the history of his field. I recall mentioning at the time that Ramsay and Rayleigh's careful reading of the papers of Henry Cavendish might well be an exception to this general rule, but in this room filled with professional and would-be professional historians of sGence no second example was given. This story might be used to imply that historians have not thought in terms of what they might contribute to the sciences, but such an implication would at best be a partial truth. It would be difficult to accuse historians of science of not trying to contribute to the teaching of the sciences.
804
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Journal of Chemical Education
The hist,ory of science has bccu suggcstcd-and tricdas a substitute for a science requirement at t,imes, while thc case history approach has hem widely employed as a method for presenting scicnt,ific lmowlcdgc and a scnsc of mcthodology to t,hosc ~vhohave no intention of pursuing the sciences further. But the history of science is not really a substitute for a science. I bclicvc that it is important,-pcrhaps essential-for a student to understand t,hc place of sciencc in our world -and I believe that this is best done through history. It is valuable for students to understand the factors affecting thc change in man's view of nature in late antiquity, and it is valuablc for them to be exposed to t,he differences between t,he medieval world view and the seventeenth ccnt,ury Rlcchanical l'hilosophy. One could go on indefinitely, but valuablc as t,his all is, it is not the same a s s basic laborat,ory course in any one of the fundamental sciences. One cannot say then that the history of science is a satisfactory substitute for the scienccs. Nor can one say that the "case history" approach has been proven particularly successful. These courses have surely been 1 Professor of the Histmy of Science, Director of The Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of the History of Science and hledicine. The present paper is a condensod version of one (,itled "The History of Chemistry and the Ilistory of Science" rend at the Symposium on the Teaching of the History of Chemistry held s t the Chicago meeting of the American Chemical Society (September, 1070). The full text of this paper is to be published in Ambiz. % O n ehard-hitting attack on the p~.esentscience programs is "Science, Sockby, and Science Edneat h a t of G l r o s c ~BA~ALLA, tion," Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, 45 (June, 1068).
under heavy attack in rrccnr years, and it is my frcling that t,he prcsrnt t,imc thcy arc decreasing in popularit,^.^ Slightly over tan years ago at Harvard thcrc mas available for nonscicnee majors a wide sprct,rum of grnerd scicmx courscs of this typc. I s c i ~ n dthcrr as an assistant in 3 coursr that xms ccntcrrd on case hist,orics in chemistry; whilc at Chicago I have participated in a similar course rmphssiiring hist,orical problrins in physics. H o w v r r , it sccmcd to me that ncithrr of thrsc programs could be callcd a total success. Evcn though both sought historians of scicncc as instructors, thcrr as r d l y no time. to prcscnt the material as sound history. Fnrthrrmorc, at best,, t,he courses vcrr forced to bc highly sclrctivr in regard to the scient,ifie substance thry pmscntcd. And although it was my impression that at both institutions somc students scemcd to benefit greatly from this approach, the great majorit,y scrmed to br indiffenwt or cvcn hostile to it. Thr rcvision of t,hc scirncr curricula in rccent years was responsible for thr introduction of the history of scicncc into thc teaching of general scicncc on a largc scale. Today, however, src many courscs of this sort being ahandoncd. And what of the cxisting courscs in t,hc history of t,he specific sciences? Crorgc Sarton clearly lookcd with disfavor on the writing of history by sci~ntists.~In spitc of this, and in spitc of the recent and rapid grolvth of what, might br eonsidcrcd to bc possibly compet,ing programs in t,hc history of science, t,herc rcmain in t,hc curricula of thc collcges and universities of this country a large numbcr of courscs on the history of specific sciences. Duanr Rollrr's ccnsus of courses rclated to the history of science lists 932 srparatc courses being taught in 488 institution^.^ The. same census, completed in 1965, lists st!vcnt,y-three of the total of 932 as ',history of chemistry." R'lost of these courses arc being taught through departments of chemistry in the same way that most of the courses in the. history of mathematics are offwrd in dcpartmmts of mat,hcmatics and most of t,hc courses in the history of biology arc offercd through departments of biology. In many cases thcy are taught. not by professional historians of science, but rathcr, in traditional fashion, by intercstcd scicntists. Should this be done? At best,, Sarton mould have had grave doubts. I t,hink that we need havc none. Such courses surely can bc of value in the teaching of science. Although no satisfactory formula for equating the history of science and the sciences has been found, I think, nevertheless, that on a less ambitious scale the history of science may he able to contribute snbst,antially to spccialiaed courses givcn within science departments. Perhaps too much has bccn claimed in the past. In order to just,ify the study of thc history of chemistry or any other science we should not have to argue that this knowledge will enable all students to become better chemists, mathematicians, or
ast,ronomers. This point is at best debatable-and fnrthcr, wc might just as well accept the fact that all scient,ists are not enamored of history-. However, having granted this, I do think it is true that there will bc somc st,udcnt,s who will be stimulat,ed t,o a greater interest and a hctter understanding of their field through an introduction to its history. Such courses, whcn possible, should be taught in conjunction with exist,ing history of science programs even though these may be cent,ered in other academic divisions of the university. The historian of a specific science may well benefit from a closer connection with historians of science. As for thc historian of science, there is no doubt in my mind that at all times he needs a close connection with all of the science departments on his campus. The scientist-historian can make t,his association possible for him. Furthcrmorc, no history of science program that I know of is so well endowed that it can assemble a faculty with specialists in the history of all the scicnccs. For this reason such programs will benefit great,ly from chemists, mathematicians, or scientists of any other sort who are offering historical courses and who arc willing to aid in the guidance of the research of graduat,e students in this interdisciplinary field. The history of chemistry is but one example of the very old tradit,ion of the writing and the teaching of the history of individual sciences by scientists who have had relatively little training in history. I havc tried to point out that this "scientific-history" tradition has different roots than the more recent "history of science." The result of this has oft,cn been a lack of communication between scientist-historians and historians of science. It is a problem that was hardly improved by George Sarton's doubts and reservations about thc value of the older tradition. My own feeling is that closer cooperation is needed to overcome this gap. Traditional courses in the hist,ory of chemistry taught by chemists-and similar courses in the history of other sciences-will surely bencfit from a connection with programs in the history of science which are likely to have a broader outlook toward the sciences as a whole as well as their connection with other intellectual and social currents. Similarly t,he history of science needs t,he interest of t,he scientist-historians. Both parties should actively aid each other to promote t,he field as a whole.
a A good example of George Sarton's mature feeling on this suhjecL will be found in his "A Guide to the History of Science'' Chronica Botanica, Waltham, Mass., 1952, pp. 11-14. R O L L E R DUANE? , H. D., "The Teaching of the History of Science in the United States;" prepared for the U. S. Natl. Comm. on History and Philosophy of Science and the History of Science Society, 1965. Mimeographed and privately cireulated.
Volume 48, Number 7 2, December 7 977
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