十九世纪英国科学和历史大图景

Nineteenth-Century British Science and the Big Picture

本文运用《科学史指南》一书中的四个分析范畴来描绘19世纪英国科学的大图景。角色、地方、传播实践和物质材料是目前驱动科学史领域发展的最重要的分析范畴。本文首先回顾1973年新马克思主义科学史家罗伯特·杨提出的19世纪英国科学的大图景,讨论四十多年来的科学史工作对该研究路径的挑战、突破和补充。随后,本文将围绕这四个分析范畴整合19世纪英国科学史研究的新进展。19世纪中叶自然哲学家和博物学家被科学人所替代,笔者将讨论科学角色发生变迁的原因及其影响和意义。接着,笔者考察了科学场所的演变,特别是实验室如何成为发现知识的特权空间。对科学传播中的转变,笔者将着重探讨传播革命带来的廉价科学图书的爆发式增长和新期刊的大量出版。最终,笔者提出一个新的综合的19世纪英国科学的历史大图景。

In this paper I aim to apply to 19 century British science the four analytical categories used in A Companion to the History of Science(ed.B.Lightman,John Wiley Sons,2016)to introduce the entire field of the history of science.The hope is to produce a big picture of the nineteenth century that is based on a number of the most important analytical categories currently driving the field.The categories are:roles,places,communicative practices,and materials.The paper will actually begin with an examination of previous big pictures,especially the one developed in 1973 by the neo-Marxist historian of science,Robert Young,in his substantial essay“The Historiographic and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth-Century Debate on Man's Place in Nature.”Here Young outlines the complicated shift from natural theology to scientific naturalism during the course of the nineteenth century,emphasizing the continuities rather than a Darwinian revolution.I will discuss the limitations of this approach as newer scholarship both challenged,and filled in some of the gaps of Young's analysis.The rest of the paper will try to group together the newer scholarship within the four analytical categories.For scientific roles,I will discuss how these changed during the nineteenth century,as the natural philosopher and natural historian gave way to the“man of science,”as the result of the work of a new generation of men who arrived on the scene in the middle of the century.They defined the scientist in ways that were different from the gentleman of science of the first half of the century,and this had significant implications for the participation of women and others.In dealing with the second analytical category I will discuss the way the places of science changed over time,as the laboratory became the privileged space in which knowledge was discovered.The communications revolution leading to the production of an avalanche of cheap science books and new periodicals will be front and center in my examination of the changing practices in communicating science,the third analytic category.A new synthesis will,I hope,emerge at the end of this overview of the scholarship of the last forty years.