A tradition from the ancestors.

IF 0.7 1区 哲学 Q2 HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
James A Secord
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The study of the history of science is widely understood to be undergoing a profound and much-needed transformation, from a subject focused on Europe to one encompassing the entire world. Yet the aims of the field have always been global. During the decades after the Second World War the inevitable progress of Western science was seen as the key to its role in world history. From the 1970s the rise of cultural history and laboratory ethnographies undermined this assumption. Indebted to colonial anthropology, these approaches revealed that the power of science was not inherent, but the result of local and contingent processes. Explanation needed to be symmetrical in analysing practices of all kinds wherever they were found, from economics and divination in West Africa to supernatural healing and particle physics in the American heartland. The geographical and conceptual broadening of the field is thus a long-delayed outcome of developments extending back many decades. It also means that references to the 'global' in history of science - even more than elsewhere in the humanities - continue to resonate with the universalizing aims of the natural and social sciences.

这是祖先的传统。
人们普遍认为,科学史研究正在经历一场深刻而迫切的变革,从一门专注于欧洲的学科转变为一门涵盖整个世界的学科。然而,该领域的目标一直是全球性的。在第二次世界大战后的几十年里,西方科学不可避免的进步被视为其在世界历史上发挥作用的关键。从20世纪70年代开始,文化史和实验室人种学的兴起削弱了这一假设。得益于殖民人类学,这些方法揭示了科学的力量不是固有的,而是局部和偶然过程的结果。从西非的经济学和占卜,到美国心脏地带的超自然治疗和粒子物理学,在分析各种各样的实践时,解释需要是对称的。因此,该领域在地理和概念上的扩大是几十年前发展的一个长期拖延的结果。这也意味着科学史中对“全球”的提及——甚至比其他人文学科中的提及更多——继续与自然科学和社会科学的普遍性目标产生共鸣。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.80
自引率
12.50%
发文量
59
期刊介绍: This leading international journal publishes scholarly papers and review articles on all aspects of the history of science. History of science is interpreted widely to include medicine, technology and social studies of science. BJHS papers make important and lively contributions to scholarship and the journal has been an essential library resource for more than thirty years. It is also used extensively by historians and scholars in related fields. A substantial book review section is a central feature. There are four issues a year, comprising an annual volume of over 600 pages. Published for the British Society for the History of Science
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