updated Feb. 9, 2004

Oregon State University	Professor Ronald E. Doel
HSTS 507 Winter 2004 (3 cr.)	302 C Milam Hall; tel. 737-3469
currently scheduled 3:30 - 6 PM Tuesdays	Office hours: 11AM-noon PM Fridays or by appointment
	Email: doelr@onid.orst.edu

Research Seminar:

History of Science in America

A survey of the social, political, institutional and conceptual development of science in one particular national context, the United States.  In this seminar we examine the emergence and growth of science in America from colonial times to the early twentieth century. Our aim is to explore classic writings on the history of science in America (those often still employed to teach this subject in U.S. universities) as well as more recent scholarship that amplifies and criticizes earlier synthetic interpretations.

All readings are on reserve at Valley Library; a few may be handed out in class. 

Requirements

This is a discussion seminar; all seminar participants should come to seminar fully prepared to discuss assigned readings. Participants will write one-page weekly response papers that address main issues in the readings, and prepare a research paper, circa 15-20 pages in length, on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor.  The main intent of the response papers is to summarize and to illuminate the core concepts in your reading; bring to seminar your critiques of the readings.  For those graduate students primarily working on the history of science in America, the research paper might serve as the draft of a thesis or dissertation chapter. Seminar members will also present the results of their research in the final weeks of seminar.  

Required Texts (all paperback):

  Robert V. Bruce, The Launching of American Science, 1846-1876 (Ithaca: Cornell, 1987). VR 188

A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Politics and Activities to 1940 (1957; Johns Hopkins, 1986). VRbl Q127.U6

Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (1977; Harvard, 1987). VRbl QC9.U5

Dirk Struik, Yankee Science in the Making (1962, Dover 1991). VR 187

 

Optional Text (paperback)

Numbers, Ronald L. and Charles E. Rosenberg, eds. The Scientific Enterprise in America: Readings from Isis. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). [Hereafter Isis]

 

Other readings on reserve -- see below [request VR 361].  (If resources permit, reserve readings will be kept above the graduate student mailboxes within the Department of History, or distributed in-class.)

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Scheduled Seminar Meetings:

 

Week               Topic and Assignment

 

1 (1/6)              Introduction and Overview

 

2 (1/13)            Science in Colonial and Revolutionary America

Struik, 67-91; Dictionary of Scientific Biography (DSB) article on Benjamin Franklin; Kuhn, 105-126; Rosenberg, 356-367 [see seminar bibliography]; Stearns, 3-8 and 675-86.

Bacon to Bartram: Early American Inquiries into the Natural World [conference at Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2002]

 

3 (1/20)            The Age of Jefferson

Struik, 93-133; Dupree, 1-43; Cohen, 61-134 [reserve] and Reingold [reserve], 1-14; also skim Struik, 201-234 and Bruce, 3-63.

 

                        STATEMENT ON RESEARCH PAPER TOPIC DUE

 

4 (1/27)            Civil War Era Science: Nationalism to the Field Sciences

Dupree, 67-114 and 184-231 [skim 44-66, 115-183, and 232-248]; Bruce, 64-108, 271-325; Slotten (in Isis; reserve); Reingold [reserve], 59-62, 108-110.                       

 

5 (2/3)              Darwinism and Social Darwinism in America

Bruce 108-11; Hofstadter, 13-50, Lindberg and Numbers, 1-18, Reingold 162-199 [last items reserve]; carefully review Spencer (reserve).

 

6 (2/10)            Education, Professions, and Disciplines

Rossiter, 1-50 (skim 51-99); Kevles, 3-44 (peruse 45-101); Veysey, 1-18;

Forman et. al., 3-10, 34-35; Ben-David, 139-68; and Hinsley, 83-123 [last items reserve]

 

7 (2/17)            Science at the Turn of the Century: Industrial Research to the Social Sciences

Kevles, 91-101; Bruce, 150-65; Servos (in Isis, reserve); Wise (in Isis); Kohler (in Isis); Ross, 107-138; and Birr, 193-207 [reserve].

 

8 (2/24)            The Geographical and Environmental Sciences

Worster, 190-220; Livingstone, 260- 303 [skim 262-290], Maienschein [all reserve]

                       

9 (3/2)              From World War I to the Great Depression

Kevles, 102-169, 185-221; Rossiter 116-22; Dupree, 302-368; Carson; Larson, 1-17;  browse Fermi, skim Weiner [last items all on reserve].

           

10 (3/9)            Presentation of Research Paper Summaries by Seminar Participants

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Seminar Bibliography

 

Reference Works

Dictionary of Scientific Biography (DSB) (currently 16 volumes).  C. C. Gillispie, ed. and F. L. Holmes, ed., New York, 1970-76, 1980-90.

Dictionary of American Science. C. A. Elliott, ed. Westport, CT, 1979.

 

Books and Photocopies on Reserve:

 

Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist's Role in Society: A Comparative Study (1971).

Kendall Birr, "Industrial Research Laboratories," In Nathan Reingold, ed., The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives (1979), 193-207.

Peter J. Bowler, The Norton History of the Environmental Sciences. (1992).

John Carson, “Army Alpha, Army Brass, and the Search for Army Intelligence." Isis 84 (1993): 278-309.

I. Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995).

A. Hunter Dupree, in Gerald Holton, ed., The Twentieth-century Science: Studies in the Biography of Ideas (1972).

Laura Fermi, Illustrious Immigrants: The Intellectual Migration from Europe, 1930-41 (1968).

Loren R. Graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Paul Forman, John L. Heilbron, and Spencer R. Weart, "Physics Circa 1900," Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 5 (1975): 3-10, 34-35.

John C. Greene, American Science in the Age of Jefferson (1984), pp. 1-36.

Curtis M. Hinsley, Jr., Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1919 (1984).

Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought (1955, 1970).

Thomas S. Kuhn, "The History of Science," in The Essential Tension (1977), 105-26.

Edward J. Larson, Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press (1995).

David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (1986): 1-18.

Jane Maienschein, “Whitman at Chicago: Establishing a Chicago Style of Biology,” in Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson and Jane Maienschein, eds., The American Development of Biology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988): 151-182.

Nathan Reingold, Science in Nineteenth-century America, A Documentary History (1964).

Charles Rosenberg, "Science in American Society: A Generation of Historical Debate, Isis 74 (1983): 356-67.

Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Johns Hopkins, 1984).

Dorothy Ross, in Alexandra Oleson and John Voss, eds., The Organization of Knowledge in Modern America, 1860-1920 (1979).

Herbert Spencer, An Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy (1889) .

Raymond P. Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (1970).

Laurence R. Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (1965, 1970).

Charles Weiner, “A New Site for the Seminar: The refugees and American Physics in the Thirties,” Perspectives in American History II (1968): 190-234.

Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas [second edition].  New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.