by Douglas Allchin

[Music: Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra]

We have now completed our series of case studies, surveying the history of ideas, methods and institutions that have contributed to the practice of science today. Note that we have spanned several centuries, from Newton, in roughly 1700 (and in some cases, even earlier), to the recent past. We have also considered many disciplines: chemistry (Lavoisier & elements), biology (Darwin & evolution), physics (Einstein & relativity) and geology (Wegener & continental drift), as well as physical anthropology and psychology (Morton's skulls), agriculture and environment (Carson & pesticides), medicine (Eijkman & beriberi, John Snow & cholera), social sciences and mathematics (Edgeworth & statistics), and meteorology (Wilson's cloud chamber).

Given that we may have already understood how controlled experiments, statistics, funding and scientific meetings function today, perhaps we may be impressed by the diverse and sometimes unexpected roots of current scientific practice. Let the unknown Robert Petri (or the accountant's counter-roll, or Spencer's pre-Darwinian social doctrine of "survival of the fittest") epitomize the often hidden history of contemporary practice.

Still, one may feel the lack of a sense of "history" — of the great scope of events. While each case study may its own meaning, they may seem independent and disparate. Does anything thread all our episodes together? Where is the Grand Narrative that give coherence to the whole? —Why, we could ask ourselves, might we imagine that there is or must be some larger scale story? Do we merely assume, for example, that these episodes are part of the gradual, but sure progress of science over the ages, that culminates (of course?) in current science as a triumphant endpoint?

Some clues may be evident in reconsidering the case studies themselves. We have identified numerous factors that contribute simultaneously to the development of science, whether of its ideas, methods or institutions. If we focus on any particular case, we may be impressed by the numerous contingencies, the essential nature of happenstances or of the unexpected convergence of people or events. Often, science is portrayed as a product of the non-contingent: objective, observer-independent observations and other forms of data; an algorithmic"scientific method" — at least as presented in the typical science classroom. According to the widespread cultural image, science proceeds by innate curiosity and brute method alone. Indeed, the coupling of the contingent and non-contingent may seem paradoxical. How does one resolve the tension?

Certainly one can construct lineages of ideas Just as one can construct lineages of instruments, methods or institutions. The timeline is a familiar hallmark of history, what many may have imagined all history — and perhaps this class — were all about. Indeed, I have often given quick glimpses of a series of ideas that preceded each historical case. But if our case studies are any indication, we cannot imagine that any idea unfolded strictly for the purpose of leading to the next idea. The lineages only appear in retrospect. It is not as easy to see where Eijkman's ideas would lead a century ago as it seems now. Retrospective and prospective view differ remarkably. That is the essence of understanding historical perspective.

One way to approach the dangers of a timeline history is to consider a possibly more familiar case: human evolution. In one widespread view, one sees evolution unfold from simple to complex, on a trajectory of increasing sophistication towards humans, as the endpoint of the process. The implicit message in this image is simple: p-r-o-g-r-e-s-s. This contrasts with the image implicit in a broader view: humans are only one branch on an evolutionary tree. Some, like the dinosaurs, are extinct, illustrating that not every lineage leads somewhere. The single thread only appears by tracing the lineage backwards, and is a misleading.

Human cultural history may suffer from the same tendencies. A classic example appeared in Britain in the 1800s. After much controversy over voting rights, traditionally granted only to landowners, the Whig party, who promoted reform, gained power in the House of Commons. The House of Lords still opposed reform and after one vote in 1831, Bristol saw the worst riots in British history. Troops had to quell the violence. Through shrewd negotiations, Earl Grey (of tea fame) persuaded the king to exert pressure on many lords, and the reform passed. With the Whig party in control, however, history started being rewritten. Thomas Macaulay, in particular, wrote histories as though a constitutional government had been inevitable from the outset. Who was a "hero" changed. Macaulay's history was not a minor academic revision. The new history essential justified the power of the Whig party by excluding disputes and any contrary thoughts. The history was political. Historian Herbert Butterfield labeled this Whiggish history. Note that this issue is current [see Star Tribune editorial]: in the rewriting of Minnesota K-12 education standards. State Education Commisioner Cheri Pierson Yecke assembled a committee that drafted standards that essentially rewrote American history and "heroes" along politically conservative lines-- for example, virtually writing out the civil rights movement of the 1960s as an event significantly shaping U.S. history. An overwhelming majority of this University's History Department has signed a protest about the Whiggish abuse of history. The dangers of writing Whiggish history to justify and glorify the present applies equally to the history of science. It is one of the chief flaws in "textbook" or popular histories. The history is sanitized and appears (deliberately) linear and progressive.

Using what we have learned in this course, I invite you to consider the alternative patterns for mapping history. Our exploration of history has been guided, as is much history, initially by retrospect: looking into the past for the roots of current scientific practice. The motive is almost Whiggish. But we have been open to consider all the factors that contributed to science. For the moment, simply consider the pattern of connections that results: delving into the past, branching into other fields and factors that may have seemed irrelevant to science if not for the history itself. From the present, historical lineages branch out into the past.

Consider, then, the reverse perspective: tracing history forwards from some point in history. We began in the first class with Newton, and many of our backwards excursions have encountered his influence. So, by assembling all those together, consider how history may branch as it moves forward. Newton could influence method, instruments and institutions. Some of the pursuits he considered most important, alchemy and theology, had little impact later. His ideas about light as a particle proved wrong. But research on light led, when coupled with further work on mechanics, to Einstein's reformulation of space and time in special relativity. Einstein later reconceived gravity, and with the help of telescopes based on Newton's original design, confirmed his dramatic predictions about the bending of light. Newton had many effects "downstream."

We found this same pattern of distribution through time in many case studies. Most notably, the cloud chamber emerged from the study of weather, but ultimately became important in investigating subatomic physics, as well. One instrument, two lineages. Two fields consider Wilson significant to their own independent histories. Likewise, Darwin and Lavoisier each appear in the backwards-looking histories of many separate fields.

Note again, then, what we have been able to learn by focusing on case studies, rather than following events cascading along a timeline. Each case has been a node, where multiple factors converge in creating an event which has multiple consequences. Again, note the pattern of connections: many branches in, many branches out.

So how do our cases fit together historically? Consider the case of Darwin, first. As just part of the story, we can mention his debt to the ideas of Charles Lyell, whose book he read on his voyage, preparing him to see the gradual transition between two rhea species, or between fossils and their possible descendents. He may have been influenced by racist ideas in seeing some cultures as morally inferior, transitions between humans and other animals. He corresponded with Wallace, whose letter prompted him to publish. He did research on seeds to examine his ideas about plant migration. But how does Darwin relate to the other cases we considered?

Lyell developed his ideas by borrowing from geologist James Hutton (who we met in week 1), who, as it turns out, criticized Lavoisier for his views on phlogiston. Wallace's work on the distribution of animals in Indonesia became an element in Wegener's thinking about continental drift. A major critic of Darwin, Lord Kelvin, suggested on the basis of the temperature of the Earth and its rate of cooling, that the Earth was too young for the evolution he proposed. His cooling, contracting Earth was one of the theories confronting Wegener. Insects, evolving resistance to pesticides through natural selection, was one of Carson's arguments against chemical pesticides. Darwin's work on seed germinatino (reported in the section of the Origin that we read), used the notion of control, akin to Snow's work. Galton, who was Darwin's cousin and adopted a Darwinist outlook, worked (we ntoed) on statistics and corresponded with Edgeworth.

Edgeworth's work, in turn, intersected with that of Morton, whose legacy of craniometry was criticized by Alice Lee and Karl Pearson, by applying new statistical rigor to the measuring of skulls. Morton, of course, had been shaped by the same culture of racism that contributed indirectly to Darwin's thinking.

Meanwhile, Eijkman learned bacteriological techniques from Robert Koch, who helped develop germ theory. Koch, we observed, had isolated the bacterium for cholera that John Snow has studied several decades earlier. Snow's method of finding a controlled experiment in natural circumstances was an implicit model for Eijkman in his study with Vorderman on beriberi in prisions in Java, part of the archipelago where Wallace had recently collected specimens and relfected on biogeography.

Koch's work was a cousin to Newton's in the sense that both relied on instruments developed from lens technology: the microscope, on the one hand, that enabled the discovery of cells, and the telescope, on the other, that enabled the discovery of the moons of Jupiter, contributing further to the Copernican revolution. Newton's telescope was a modification based on optical problems that he solved.

Newton's other work on gravity became a model for thinking about atoms and for the chemical affinities between different elements, as we observed in the 1774 Encyclopedia Britannica. Lavoisier developed an idea of heat that could combine and dissociate, producing gases, that further contributed to his researches on combustion and to the discovery of oxygen, the understanding of water as a compound of two gases and, ultimately, to a new system of elements. That was a foundation for chemistry, which eventually yielded the DDT studied by Muller as a powerful insecticide. Lavoisier's study of heat and its measurement through calorimetry later contributed to the development of thermodynamics, and the ideas that Kelvin used to criticize Darwin.

Finally, as noted earlier, Einstein is linked to Newton through multiple paths: light, mechanics, gravity and the telescope.

The result — which no one should consider exhaustive or complete — is a rich tapestry, with warp and woof, to adopt a weaving metaphor. This is how the case studies relate: through a timeweb, not a timeline.

Consider, again, the same events in a timeline, and I trust you will see how impoverished, and indeed, misleading, the timeline is. A timeline is history to someone not deeply schooled in history, who turns to the past for support, not for understanding. A timeweb, or tapestry, is how someone enriched by historical perspective understands history, and with it, the ongoing process of creating history as it happens.

Tonight's video, an episode of Connections -- a series by James Burke -- is another view of solving the challenge of connecting events through history and interpreting how change happens. How do individual events thread a "timeline" through history, sometimes creating epic moments? The story begins with the use of a touchstone in ancient Alexandria, a mineral that when struck with a metal sample was a test for the purity of gold. Hence, a touchstone has come to denote any test or benchmark for quality. In that sense, I hope this evening's class serves as a touchstone of sorts for the course as a whole. Tonight's retrospective may perhaps make visible the lessons of historical perspective implicit in the case studies we have considered to date.