Science in the Archives: Pasts, Presents, Futures

by Lorraine Daston (Editor)

Archives bring to mind rooms filled with old papers and dusty artifacts. But for scientists, the detritus of the past can be a treasure trove of material vital to present and future fossils collected by geologists; data banks assembled by geneticists; weather diaries trawled by climate scientists; libraries visited by historians. These are the vital collections, assembled and maintained over decades, centuries, and even millennia, which define the sciences of the archives.
 
With Science in the Archives , Lorraine Daston and her co-authors offer the first study of the important role that these archives play in the natural and human sciences. Reaching across disciplines and centuries, contributors cover episodes in the history of astronomy, geology, genetics, philology, climatology, medicine, and more—as well as fundamental practices such as collecting, retrieval, and data mining. Chapters cover topics ranging from doxology in Greco-Roman Antiquity to NSA surveillance techniques of the twenty-first century. Thoroughly exploring the practices, politics, economics, and potential of the sciences of the archives, this volume reveals the essential historical dimension of the sciences, while also adding a much-needed long­-term perspective to contemporary debates over the uses of Big Data in science. 

Genres: History Of Science, History, Science

392 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2017

About the author

Lorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951, East Lansing, Michigan)[1] is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is considered an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wide-ranging and dense with pointers out to other material I should probably read for dissertation purposes. Thinks broadly about "archivist" as well as "archive/s" albeit without ever explicitly defining either, which can be annoying if you habitually use the Tansey Test to evaluate writing about archives — but maybe temporarily let that go to get the most out of this collection. As a colleague noted in his RBM review, it's equally interesting to look at what each chapter considers "science" as well as what each considers "archive/s," although the authors all take historical approaches. "Futures" in the subtitle refers more to imagined futures of the past than to what today's broadly defined archives and archival practices bode for times to come.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A more appropriate title' would be 'Science as Archives' with a very broad definition of the word 'archive' that a professional archivist would not recognize. Several of the articles connection to even this broad understanding of the word 'archive' are extremely tenuous at best - though they are sometimes the most interesting articles in their own right. They didn't need the word 'archive' sprinkled in for little to no reason. I would say that more than half the articles are very good and thought provoking. I just think the theme they have concocted doesn't really fit.

[Betsy Street · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good tour of archiving in different fields.

[Kai · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a number of very interesting papers.