Special Topics: Historiography

 Research Schools and the Production of Knowledge: The Modern Earth Sciences

 

[Approaches to the History of Earth Sciences and to the Historiography of Science]

 

 

This research seminar [3-cr.] addresses how knowledge is produced within scientific communities.  It does so by examining a particular set of disciplines – the earth sciences – and examines scholarship on earth sciences history as well as studies of research schools in recent science.  We survey major intellectual developments in the earth sciences from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. 

 

In addition to seminar discussions, and short weekly response papers, students will prepare a significant research work, including thesis chapters.  Students will present their research during the final two meetings of this seminar.

 

Books [available at OSU bookstore; both paperback]

 

Bowles, Peter J. Norton History of the Environmental Sciences. 1992.

Geison, Gerald L. and Frederic L. Holmes, eds. Research Schools: Historical Appraisals.

            Osiris 8 [second series], 1993.

 

Books on reserve [Valley Library]:

 

Albritton, C. C., Jr. Catastrophic Episodes in Earth History. NY: Chapman and Hall,

1989.

Burchfield, Joe D. Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth.  New York: Science History

Publications, 1975.

Doel, Ronald E. Solar System Astronomy in America: Communities, Patronage, and

Interdisciplinary Science, 1920-1960. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Friedman, Robert Marc. Appropriating the Weather: Vilhelm Bjerknes and the

            Construction of a Modern Meteorology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989.

Gillispie, Charles C. Genesis and Geology: A Study of the Relations of Scientific Thought,

Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850. Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1951 / 1996.

Greene, Mott T.  Geology in the Nineteenth Century: Changing Views of a Changing

World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.

Oreskes, Naomi.  The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American

Earth Science. NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. 

Oreskes, Naomi, with Homer LeGrand, eds. Plate Tectonics: An Insider’s History of the

Modern Theory of the Earth. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001.

Rozwadowski, Helen.  Fathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Sea.

Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.

Stegner, Wallace E. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the

Second Opening of the West. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1954

Weart, Spencer. The Discovery of Global Warming. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Worster, Donald. A River Running West: the Life of John Wesley Powell. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

 

Films:

 

“Noah’s Flood.” Horizon (BBC 2), ca. 1996.

“Mystery of the Megaflood.” PBS / Nova, September 2005

 

Articles and Chapters

Doel, Ronald E. “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences: The Military's Influence on

the Environmental Sciences in the USA after 1945.” Social Studies of Science, 33, 5 (2003): 635 - 666.

Friedman, Robert Marc, "Constituting the Polar Front, 1919-20," Isis 73 (1982): 343-62.

Geison, Gerald L., "Scientific Change, Emerging Specialties, and Research Schools,"

History of Science 19 (1981): pp. 20-40.

Oreskes, Naomi. “A Context of Motivation: US Navy Oceanographic Research and the

Discovery of Sea-Floor Hydrothermal Vents.” Social Studies of Science 33, 5 (2003): 697-742.

 

Additional readings may be added, or others substituted, to reflect interests of seminar participants.

Brush, Stephen G. "Whole Earth History." http://punsterproductions.com/~sciencehistory/WEH.htm

Doel, Ronald E., 1997.  "The Earth Sciences and Geophysics." In John Krige and

Dominique Pestre, eds, Science in the Twentieth Century (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997): 361-388.

Geschwind, Carl-Henry. California Earthquakes: Science, Risk and the Politics of

Hazard Mitigation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Oldroyd, David. Thinking about the Earth: A History of Ideas in Geology. Cambridge,

            MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Oreskes, Naomi and Ronald E. Doel, 2002. "Physics and Chemistry of the Earth." In

Mary Jo Nye, editor, The Cambridge History of Science Vol. 5: Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 538-552.

Weart, Spencer. The Discovery of Global Warming. [mega-website] 

 

 

Class Schedule:

Week 1 (week of September 26):         Introduction to the Seminar: Two Themes, One Quarter

 

 

Week 2 (week of October 3):               What are Research Schools?

 

Reading:          Geison and Holmes, vii-29 [Holmes, Servos, and Olesko]

                        Geison, “Scientific Change, Emerging Specialties, and Research

 Schools”  [available through Blackboard]

---

 Week 3 (week of October 10]:          Geological Sciences in the mid-19^th Century: Geology to Oceanography

 

Reading:          Bowler, 193-237

Gillispie, Genesis and Geology, vii-xiii, 98-148

Rozwadowski, Fathoming the Ocean, 37-96

 

---

 Week 4 [week of October 17]:          The Earth Sciences at the close of the 19^th Century: Physics and Geophysics of the Earth

 

Reading:          Geison and Holmes, 30-49 [Nye] and 196-223 [Kushner]

                        Greene, 258-294

                        Burchfield, Kelvin and Age of the Earth, ix-xii, 1-19, 90-120            

---

 Week 5 [week of October 24]           Patronage and Professionalism: Shaping the Modern Earth Sciences

 

Reading:          Bowler, 379-392

                        Worster, 203-360; Stegner, 328-350

                        Friedman, Constructing the Weather, xi-xv, 1-8, 11-58, 237-246.

                        Friedman, “Constituting the Polar Front.” [article]

                        Oreskes, “Context of Motivation,” [article]  / or /

                                    Doel, “Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences” [article]

                       

 

---

Week 6 [week of October 31]           From Continental Drift to Plate Tectonics

 

Reading:          Bowler, 392-427 [skim; in places it parallels Oreskes’ arguments]

                        Oreskes, Rejection of Continental Drift, 3-20, 288-318

                        Oreskes and LeGrand, Plate Tectonics, xi-xxiv, 3-27 [seminar

                                    members will each select one subsequent chapter and lead discussions]

           

           

---

Week 7 [week of November 6]          From Uniformitarianism to Catastrophism

 

Reading:          Bowler, 237-245

                        Albritton, 166-181 / or /

                                    Doel, Solar System Astronomy , 151-187

                       

 

Films:               “Noah’s Flood”                        [in-seminar]

                        “Mystery of the Megaflood”   [not yet on DVD; please review website and particularly transcript]

 

---

Week 8 [week of November 13]       Constructing a History of an Earth Sciences Research School: Columbia’s Lamont

 

Reading:          Browse oral history interviews and documents of interest [CD will be provided]

 

---

Week 9 [week of November 20]       Models, Summary Themes, and Presentation of Individual Research

 

Reading:          Geison and Holmes, Geison conclusion

                        Estimating natural resources: models and modeling in the earth

sciences [various; readings packet to be provided]

 

---

Week 10 [week of November 27]     Presentation of Individual Research