Abstract
A great transformation is under way in how we view the history of science.
A cultural ornament to science? An insignificant sub-speciality within history? Plotting the progress of scientific discovery towards truth? A social activity, a form of culture like any other? The study of man’s changing understanding of the world of nature? What is the history of science?
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Further Reading
Barnes, B., Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London, 1974);
Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (London, 1977);
Barnes, B. and Shapin, S., Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (London and Beverly Hills, 1979);
Bloor, D., Knowledge and Social Imagery (London, 1976);
Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (London, 1983);
Burtt, E. A., The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Political Science (second edition, London, 1932);
Collins, H. M., Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice (London, 1985);
Cooter, R., The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenology and the Organization of Consent in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge, 1984);
Corsi, P. and Weindling, P. (eds), Information Sources in the History of Science and Medicine (London, 1983);
Crosland, M. P., Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (Cambridge, 1978);
Durbin, P. T. (ed.), A Guide to the Culture of Science, Technology and Medicine (New York, 1980);
Fleck, L., Genesis and Development of a Scientific Pact (Basel, 1935, eds Trenn, T. J. and Merton, R. K., Chicago, 1979);
Grim, P. (ed.), Philosophy of Science and the Occult (Albany, 1982);
Hahn, R., The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (California, 1971);
Hanen, M. P. et al (eds), Science and Pseudo-Science and Society (Waterloo, Ontario, 1980);
Knight, D. M., Sources for the History of Science (London, 1975);
Kuhn, T. S., The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago, 1977);
Schaffer, S. and Shapin, S., Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985);
Wallis, R. (ed.), On the Margins of Science: the Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge (Keele, 1979);
Westfall, R. S., Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1978);
Whitehead, A. N., Science and the Modern World (1925, London, 1985);
Young, R. M., Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture (Cambridge, 1984);
History of Science (Journal, London, 1962–).
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© 1988 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Porter, R., Shapin, S., Schaffer, S., Young, R.M., Cooter, R., Crosland, M. (1988). What is the History of Science … ?. In: Gardiner, J. (eds) What is History Today … ?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-42226-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-19161-1
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