Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey

by Peter J. Bowler, Iwan Rhys Morus

The development of science, according to respected scholars Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus, expands our knowledge and control of the world in ways that affect-but are also affected by-society and culture. In Making Modern Science , a text designed for introductory college courses in the history of science and as a single-volume introduction for the general reader, Bowler and Morus explore both the history of science itself and its influence on modern thought.

Opening with an introduction that explains developments in the history of science over the last three decades and the controversies these initiatives have engendered, the book then proceeds in two parts. The first section considers key episodes in the development of modern science, including the Scientific Revolution and individual accomplishments in geology, physics, and biology. The second section is an analysis of the most important themes stemming from the social relations of science-the discoveries that force society to rethink its religious, moral, or philosophical values. Making Modern Scienc e thus chronicles all major developments in scientific thinking, from the revolutionary ideas of the seventeenth century to the contemporary issues of evolutionism, genetics, nuclear physics, and modern cosmology.

Written by seasoned historians, this book will encourage students to see the history of science not as a series of names and dates but as an interconnected and complex web of relationships between science and modern society. The first survey of its kind, Making Modern Science is a much-needed and accessible introduction to the history of science, engagingly written for undergraduates and curious readers alike.

Genres: History, Science, History Of Science, Nonfiction, Popular Science, Textbooks, Academic

529 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2005

About the author

Peter J. Bowler, FBA, is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics.

Reviews

[Ioannis Savvas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα καταπληκτικό βιβλίο που πραγματεύεται σχεδόν όλες τις εκφάνσεις της επιστημονικής και φιλοσοφικής σκέψης στη σύγχρονη εποχή, ξεκαθαρίζει πολλά ερωτήματα, ξεδιαλύνει συγχύσεις και δείχνει πώς ο άνθρωπος μπορεί να κατευθύνει, αλλά και να κατευθύνεται από τον ίδιο τον τρόπο σκέψης του.

[Xander · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the origin and rise of modern science since the seventeenth century. The first part of the book is superb, describing the main trends and developments in the physical, life and social sciences. Each chapter is focused around one theme and traces two or three of the major debates and processes within the particular scientific domain.

The second part of the book is more a sociological study of science, covering such topics as the relationship between science and religion, the organization of modern science, popular science as the relationship between science and society, the interaction of science with technology and the resulting applications in medicine and war.

After reading 300+ pages on the history of science, another 200+ pages of sociological aspects seemed to me to be a bit too much. This is mostly an issue of personal preference, since the book is aimed at both students and a general audience. I think this book should rather be read in a pick-and-read kind of way, choosing to read only on the subjects one finds interesting.

The authors have done a tremendous job at collecting and presenting all the information and their easy-to-access writing style makes the book a nice read. Decent textbook, although a little bit too long for my taste.

[Kaila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I really liked it. It was a great survey of a large period of time, starting around 1500 and moving on up from there. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much if I wasn't taking a class and having a professor explain things to me. The chapter on evolution I found particularly hard to follow but really interesting - probably because I was never taught a single damned thing about Darwin. Seriously, he was an intriguing guy, THANKS PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

However...

The last chapter.

It's called Science and Gender. Every single woman that is mentioned over the course of the chapter is a "feminist." So all of their what I assume are coworkers or companions in the field of the history of science are "feminist historians." The tone was super dismissive and insulting. Like, oh, those feminists, they have such cute ideas about what women have contributed to science. I'm going to talk about it. BEGRUDGINGLY.

[Anon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wide ranging introductory survey of the history of science covering its theory and practice.

1. Science, Society, and History
Is scientific knowledge objective? Sociological critics (reflects social values: 'Science Wars'). Marxist critics e.g. J.D. Bernal (reflects wants/needs of military-industrial complex).
Karl Popper idealism (scientific theories open to falsification) v. Kuhn's 'normal science' defenders of the paradigm.

2. The Scientific revolution
Copernicus controversial as in his intro to 'De Revolutionibus' (1543) states that his model of the universe is real rather than hypothetical. This contradicted the church and gave astronomy the intellectual authority of natural philosophy, which had previously had a monopoly on explanations, astronomy focussed on observations.
Galileo notable due to effective PR. Won the patronage of Cosimo de'Medici. Got in trouble as he spoke about Copernicus's heliocentric theory as reality rather than hypothesis, contravening church rules.
Decartes and Boyle's mechanical philosophy portrayed as in part a reaction against Dee and Kircher's emphasis on the explantory power of magic.
Francis Bacon effective premonition: Solomon's House where scientists regulate and ratify the production of empirical scientific knowledge. Move away from reliance on anicent 'authorities'.
However, Newton saw himself as rediscovering the work on the ancients, reflecting his Arian beliefs that the Church had corrupted ancient scriptures.

3. The Chemical Revolution
Lavoisier's oxygen theory overturning phlogiston theory (Georg Ernst Stahl). Not neat, as Joseph Priestley (+Cavendish) held onto idea of dephlogisticated air.

4. The Conservation of Energy
Multiple contempoaries 1820s-50s as industrial incentive to maximise efficiency (want for a perpetual motion engine). Biblical assumptions impacting science: to James Joule and William Thomson, force and matter could not be created or destroyed because God had created them.

5. The Age of Earth
Catastrophists v. uniforitarians, but ultimately more complex.
Literal INT of Genesis stem from James Ussher 17thC 4004BC calculation, not earlier.
Combatted by Buffon idea of cooling earth and 70,000yr calcuation (comet connecting with spray of magma from the Sun).
Mining industry -> fossils -> Hutton & Lyell (deists...) uniformitarianism. ARG that cannot speculate on things. Only changes that we can observe now are correct forms of explanation (strict empiricism restrictive).
1896- radioactive dating earth billions of years old (current fig. c.4.5bn).

6. The Darwinian Revolution
Marxist criticism of capitalism and social Darwinism parallels, but 'Origin of Species' not mention humans, only 'Descent of Man' (Darwin did have hierarchy of races, but branching evolution not different species). Anyhow, before development of genetics, Lamarck's 'inheritance of acquired characterists' much more favoured theory (behaviour/habits passed down, not natural selection through radom variation).
Also, Darwin's nat. selection not linear progress, as branching means 'lesser' organisms can come about.

7. The New Biology
Influenced by Lavoisier's chemistry. Materialism overcame vitalism w. Schleiden and Schwann's cell theory & (controversial) developments in experimentation: Magendie's vivisection

8. Genetics
Epigenesis (tissue develops) v. preformation (miniture person grows/evolves)
Medel pulished in 1865 & rediscovered c.1900. Origin myth? Peas not v. typical and nothing actually to do with physical genes.
Genes on chromosomes idea ('classical genetics') developed by Thomas Hugh Morgan 1910-5, then double helix structure Watson&Crick

9. Ecology and Environmentalism
Ecology=science about how ecosystems function, environmentalism=political cause for wilderness/limited human intervention
Environmentalism & Romanticism: US Nat. Parks 19thC
Attenborough-esque balance of nature idea idealistic? (humans part of nature + look what has happened...)
James Lovelock's 1979 Gaia Theory scorned as unscientific

10. Continental Drift
Not accepted 'till 60s (Cold War submarine detection imperative so magnetic survey of ocean floor), but Alfred Wengener idea of continental drift in 1912. Wengener ignored because not a trained geologist, but a meteorologist/geophysicist? 1927 Arthur Holmes convection currents. Affirmed Lyells's uniformitarianism.

11. 20thC Physics
Atomic structure through cathode ray experiments (Rontgen, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr...).
Einstein 1905 paper (relativity & constancy of the velocity of light) & 1915 paper (space & light curved due to gravity) proved by Arthur Eddington in 1919 -> like Newton's 1687, became a celebrity.
Quantum mechanics called causality into question: uncertainty principle (absurdity highlighted in Schrodinger's cat experiment). (Heisenberg, Dirac...)
WW2 BIG. 1960s elementary particles: quarks & hadrons

12. The Calculation Revolution
Babbage difference engine never completed despite gov. funding. Analytical engine would have 'memory & foresight'.
US military funding: Howard Aiken's Harvard Mark I; John Mauchly's ENIAC (used in Manhattan project); John von Neumann's EDVAC
1989 Tim Berners-Lee World Wide Web idea: link computers and share information

13. Revolutionizing Cosmology
Immanuel Kant 1755: Milky Way one of multiple 'island universes' eventually proved by Edwin Hubble in 1920s.
Einstein wrongly believed that the universe was static. Hubble proved that it was expanding.
Expanding implies Big Bang (Christians love it). Ironically, Fred Hoyle, who coined the term, supported steady state theory.
Hawking's 1988 book and Hubble's images popularise cosmology

14. The Emergence of the Human Sciences
Human behaviour more than just biological determinism: impact of culture and the mind
Psychology: Cartesian dualism mind could not be explained mechanistically. Bentham's sensationalism: mind=blank slate at birth. Decartes innate knowledge (Salmon Fishing in the Yemen). Lamarckian Herbert Spencer: inherit habits from ancestors.
Ultimately, behaviouralists: learn about the mind though experiments and observations AND analytical psychologists Freud/Jung: unconcious animal mind and conscious mind.
Anthropology: 'Savages' reveal prior human development
Sociology: Auguste Comte founded. Émile Durkheim prominent.

15. The Organisation of Science
Gentleman's clubs to universities/industry/gov. research by 20thC. Oxbridge reluctant to teach science. Government made them do so in 1850s, w. Cavendish Laboratory established in 1870s.
FRA and GER gov. funding, but GBR and USA, due to free-market ideology, reliance on private indivudals, but all changed w. WW2

16. Science and Religion
Coexistence and clash. Geology-> young earth creationists (amusing skirmishes in Dawkins's documentaries). Evolution-> William Paley's 'Natural Theology' (1803) intelligent design; Robert Chamber's idea of divine plan behind evolution (in face of Darwin's random variation: Lamarck easier to digest from religious point of view as more purposeful).
Religious like quatum mechanics uncertainty, Big Bang, and sociological perspective on scientific knowledge.

17. Popular Science
Galileo wrote in vernacular not Latin.
Royal Institution v. elite, but public lecturers like Desaguliers popular. 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.
Phrenology popular w. masses as implied that size of brain rather than class/family status determined ability.

18. Science and Technology
Theory v. application.
To Marxists, all science based on economic utility v. early historians of science who focussed on theory/thought not practical implications.
How much William Thomson and James Watt influenced by industry?
Inventor v. discoverer distinction one solution: William Cooke (engineer) and Charles Wheatston (prof.) arbitration panel ruling w. respect to 1837 electric telegraph patent.
Similar to Leonard Gale's scientific advice to Samuel Morse.
Lab technicians more credit?
Overall, head wk. perceived as superior to hand wk. for millenia (slavery...)

19. Biology and Ideology
If biological machine, moral responsibility?
'Edinburgh school': 'scientific knowledge is socially constructed'.
Physical Anthropology and Race Theory: Blumenbach, 'Descent of Man' hierarchy, Francis Galton eugenics.
Social Darwinism used to justify capitalism: struggle = good (or promote greed and aggresiveness?)
Actually Herbert Spencer, a devout Lamarckian, who coined the term 'survival of the fittest'

20. Science and Medicine
Not always linked: theory/understanding v. practice/knack/experience
Foucault's clinical revolution: focus on diseases rather than individual bodies (dehumanising?) w. late-18thC hospitals.
Theory clearly important for practice w. Louis Pasteur and Robert Kock laboratory work on diseases (germ theory).
Antibiotic revolution=Alexander Fleming and penicillin.
Technology: Rontgen's X-rays; Marie Curie radium therapy; MRI & CT scanners in 1970s.

21. Science and War
WW1 'the chemists' war' as focus on explosives and poison gas, but 'neither side made effective use of its scientific expertise. Porton Down created to test chemical weapons.
Interwar: Radar developed in 1930s (Cav. Lab. work on Chain Home radar stations)
WW2: Patrick Blackett use scientific methods for military decisions -> 'operations research' (advised larger convoys to minimise losses).
Atomic Bomb: fear that Werner Heisenberg would built one first (but postwar admitted he was nowhere near). 1st controlled chain reaction underneath football field by Enrico Fermi in Dec. 1942. Project led by non-scientist: Brigadier General Leslie Groves)
Cold War: Hydrogen bomb (fuse H atoms together) -> Oppenheimer victim of Macarthyism; led by Edward Teller. Submarines-> plate tectonics

22. Science and Empire
Navigation technology facilitated (but Zheng He in CHN...). Steamships, railways, and mapping used for cultural imperialism: colonists=superior civilisation (promotes exploitation & entrenchment of racist beliefs)
Bilateral: bioprospecting, sugar & quinnine.
JPN copy Western science & technology w. Meiji restoration

23. Science and Gender
Idea that Scientific Revolution was masculine as sidelined view of Mother Earth with world as machine metaphor. Purportedly promoted exploitation of the planet (Carolyn Merchant ARG).
Sexism in science, e.g. Watson's attempts to denigrate Rosalind Franklin.
Women's bodies declared inferior by scientists. Idea that women would lose energy to reproduce if were educated (conservation of energy...) & that inclined to hysteria ('hysteria' derives from the Greek wd. for 'uterus').
Darwinism led some to belive that from an evolutionary perspective, women just had be as sexually attractive as possible.

24. Epilogue
Historical approach to science allows to see the impact of social values/culture on science, showing limits to its objectivity

[VII · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read (half of) it as a text book and the good news is that despite my aversion to these kind of books, I almost enjoyed it. The bad news is that I wasn't compelled enough to read the parts I didn't have to. I think that it's a great book for challenging people who see science as a much more heroic and “pure” enterprise than it is. Most of its chapters end by concluding that this supposed scientific revolution never really happened, both because those -now- celebrated scientific practices were present even before this period but also because it's hard to say when this revolution yielded the practices that we now call modern science. What actually changed was the perception of the people who were involved in science, who started to think that they are part of a new tradition that rebels against authorities like the bible and Aristotle, trusting their senses instead.

A good book overall but its size plus the way it is structured condemn it into remaining a textbook that is unlikely to be widely read, which is a shame. What I mean by the structure is that each chapter examines particular areas of science and are kind of a stand-alone, without an overall narrative to tie them all together. I am not noting as a flaw though, the authors wrote that it was a conscious choice.

[Beenish · Rating 3 out of 5]

good

[Kripa Nath · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome

[Lennart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enriching for a STEM major to gain insight into the natural philosophical and sociological context in which the modern sciences emerged! Many nuances are offered to episodes which are usually portrayed anecdotally. Do note that this is first and foremost a history textbook, containing very little contemporarily accepted science. To benefit from the historical contextualization, I would recommend at least a basic knowledge of the modern view on treated subjects. Recurring themes make it a bit repetitive as a read-through.

[Allie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good user friendly read for background in the History of Science. I had to read it for a class and it was the better of the two general background books we read. (The other was "Before Big Science" by Mary Jo Nye. I do not recommend it.) By the way, if you're reading this review because you're taking HSCI 1815/3815 at the U of M, you made a good choice for a class...it's very interesting. Happy Reading!!

[Rodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well organized, well constructed textbook-style collection of essays and historical pieces on science and its progress and current states-of-affairs. If you're familiar with a lot of philosophical science issues, you may want to skip this in favor of something more indepth in a sub-discipline, however, I found this a helpful refresher/summary.

[Loke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapter 21 needs updating (and less own opinion weaved into it), and generally the theme of discrimination in science history is poorly covered. Otherwise, the book offers a quick survey with a nice balance between breadth and depth. Recommended as an introduction if you are also planning to read something else about the discrimination of women, foreigners, minorities, etc.

[Jeffrey Cavanaugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice survey of the history of modern science from the early-modern era to present. Though massive and broad, the sheer scope of what it covers leaves out much. That given, if you consider yourself an educated layman and want to learn more about the subject then this is a good place to start.

[Jazmine Kelly]

I had to read this book for a science history class and I am so glad I did. It gives a great over view of science history and an insight to how science has developed in the medieval time up though modern times. Great read for anyone who wants to know how science got here.

[Maher El-khalidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is really one comprehensive and encyclopedic book about the history of science . It touches on evolutionary biology , the development of astronomy and cosmology , earth sciences ,genetics and medicine. I enjoyed and learned a lot reading this great book!