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A History of Science in Society:From Philosophy to Utility

Article  in  The History Teacher · August 2005

DOI: 10.2307/30036722

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Jacob Hamblin Andrew Ede

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Society for History Education

Review
Reviewed Work(s): A History of Science in Society:From Philosophy to Utility by Andrew
Ede and Lesley B. Cormack
Review by: Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Source: The History Teacher, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Aug., 2005), pp. 546-547
Published by: Society for History Education
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036722
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 546 The History Teacher

A History of Science by Society:fr

in Andrew
Lesley B. Cormack. Toronto: Broadview Press, 2004.458 pages. $34.95, paper.

Those who teach survey courses on the history of science constantly are in search of good
secondary sources that draw together the broadest themes of the discipline. Especially for
those who teach one- or two-semester surveys to humanities students, finding accessible
textbooks can be a serious challenge. Andrew Ede and Lesley B. Cormack's effort
addresses a genuine need. Even better, the authors have done an outstanding job with it.
Not only do they provide a useful introduction to the subject in clear, nontechnical prose,
they manage to do so while not losing sight of their own thesis which is to explore the
tension between science as a philosophical pursuit, that is, science in which dirtied and
calloused hands would have no place, and science as a means of social improvement. In
part this draws attention to the competing outlooks of rationalism and empiricism in
constructing knowledge, which leads on to discussing the uses of knowledge and the hazy
boundaries between science and technology. More important for Ede and Cormack, as
they explore subjects such as imperial science or the atomic age, their approach allows
them to discuss the pressures upon scientists to show the utility of their work. This
facilitates the second aim of the book, which is to present science not as a set of
disembodied ideas, but rather as something that must be understood in its social context.
Their thesis is that the tension between philosophy and utility has not been a static one;
instead, the increasing number of people interested in and doing science has led scientists
to promote science's utility. Ultimately the expectation of social or technological im-
provement became embedded in Western notions of science.
Aside from having a provocative thesis that will provide grist for the mill of student
discussions, there is an admirable scope to their work. It would have been impossible to
cover everything, of course, and the authors acknowledge this point. Fans of French
historian Alexandre Koyr6, for example, will be surprised to find no mention of either
Giordano Bruno or Nicolas of Cusa. But choices had to be made, and teachers can
supplement this book with course readers that focus on other topics. In fact, by the end of
the book there is such a hodgepodge of disparate concepts to be discussed that one might
expect the reader to drown in a sea of information. That this does not happen is entirely
due to the efforts of the authors to pick and choose details that contribute to their thesis
about the movement toward utility.
The structure of the book will aid teachers who attempt to draw significance from the
vast period in history that is covered. The worst pitfall awaiting authors of this sort of
book is the tendency to take an encyclopedic view, an approach which would be useless
for students who cannot be expected to absorb all the important scientific ideas since the
dawn of time. Therefore, what makes this book valuable is the authors' willingness, for
example, not simply to recount the development of Einstein's theories of relativity,
Planck's quantum theory, or the debates about the nature of matter, but instead to
emphasize that these all contributed to a crisis in determinism in physicists' views. The
chapter on these subjects is not called "Turn-of-the-century Physics" but rather it is aptly
named "The Death of Certainty." Similarly, the rationalist project of the Enlightenment in
the eighteenth century is here presented as an effort to provide secular explanations, one
effect of which was to spark the beginning of science as an enterprise and the creation of
the professional scientist. The authors not only explain important concepts but also place
them in a broader story, which teacher and student alike will appreciate.
One of the pleasant surprises in this book is the amount of attention devoted to the
period after the Second World War. Ede and Cormack explain the notion of "Big
Science," which helped to change the image of science from one of heroic individuals to

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 Reviews 547

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Jacob Darwin Hamblin

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Chicago and London: University of

by Constantin Fasolt.
The Limits of History,
Chicago Press, 2004. 368 pages. $40.00, cloth.

In The Limits of History, Constantin Fasolt engages in traditional history in order to

illustrate its limitations. The main subject of his book is Hermann Conring (1606-1681), a
German historian who is best known for his argument against both the universality of
Roman law and the notion that the Holy Roman Emperor held authority to rule the world.
Conring is of particular interest to the author as a representative of the humanist revolt
that placed history at the service of European royalty looking for freedom from the
universal authority of Emperor and Pope. But Fasolt's purpose is not to increase our
knowledge of an individual figure, but rather to "practice some history" on him (p. 41) for
the purpose of demonstrating "in one instance what separates us in all instances from an
adequate understanding of the past" (p. 45
For example, Fasolt focuses chapter three on trying to reconcile the discrepancy in
Conring's thought as evidenced in The New Discourse on the Roman-German Emperor
(1642) and The Roman Empire of the Germans (1644). But after employing the usual
tools of the historical trade (detailed analysis of the works in the context of their time and
place), Fasolt asserts that "there is no way-no way at all-to fathom Conring's mean-
ing" (p. 150), there is no satisfactory answer to the questiodn of what Conring really
thought. Fasolt identifies the problem not in the historians' method, but in the implausibil-
ity of the goal. Conring's thought was indefinable and unfixed because his mind did not
stand still, he argues. And he concludes that "meaning is not like a thing that can be
grasped or measured; it is like the open space between two things that merely seem to
touch." (150). For Fasolt, an adequate knowledge of the past simply cannot be gathered
from the available evidence.
What are the specific implications of this conclusion for the way historians should
write history? Fasolt does not say. But the biggest limitation the author believes he has
discovered about history is that it is "not as innocent as it pretends to be" (p. 3) rather, it is
inherently political in its nature, particularly, paradoxically, when historians are at their
most dispassionate best. That is because history is more than just a form of knowledge.
According to Fasolt, it is designed to uphold the modern belief that humans are free and
independent agents and their actions determine the course of the past. Alternate explana-
tions that do not assume free agency (such as imitating custom, or allowing for provi-
dence) are inconceivable. Thus, history is a form of self-assertion and is tantamount to
taking: sides by insisting on a certain order and eliminating rival orders.

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