Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > [Platt] > Also enjoyed the emphasis on individuals who scored breakthroughs in > microbiology like Pasteur. > > [Arlo] > Thought I'd share a relevant passages from "A People's History of Science", a > book that in many ways appears to draw heavily from a MOQ-perspective.
Would be interested in why you think the following draws "heavily on the MOQ perspective." Looks to me like a Howard Zinn approach to history. Thanks. Platt > "Historians in general have succeeded in displacing the encomiastic tradition- > the Great Man Theory of History- as the predominant viewpoint of the educated > public, but historians of science- in spite of a great deal of effort and good > scholarship- have been less successful. "Science", Derek de Solla Price > lamented, "seems tied to its heroes more closely than other branch of > learning." Although few people today would agree with Carlyle's famous dictum > that "the history of of the world is but the biography of great men", many > continue to believe that the Scientific Revolution was the creation of a very > few extremely talented geniuses: "from Copernicus to Newton." > > Part of the problem is that although the public understanding of history in > general has been strongly influenced by professional historians, the way most > people conceive of the history of science has been shaped not by historians of > science but by scientists themselves, who often hold and propagate distorted > conceptions of their predecessors' practices. Scientists have a guild interest > in portraying their forerunners as heroes, because it adds to the heroic > stature of their profession and enhances their view of their own place in the > scheme of things. > > More important, most scientists are not professional historians; their primary > concerns are not historical. Their interest in their science's path of > development is secondary to their interest in the science itself. They > therefore often unwittingly adopt a tunnel-vision view of their discipline's > past, focusing only on the narrow lineage of successes and ignoring all the > false starts and dead ends as uninteresting because they did not "lead > anywhere". Tunnel-vision history of science may be of some use as a teaching > tool in elementary science courses, but it does not constitute valid history. > Its projection of present-day concerns onto the past gives a falsified and > misleading picture of the way science has developed in real life." > > "Isaac Newton's ability to 'see further' should not be attributed, as he > claimed, to his sitting 'on the shoulders of giants', but rather to his > standing on the backs of untold thousands of illiterate artisans (among > others)." ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
