History of Science 

About: History of Science is an academic journal published by SAGE Publishing. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Historiography & Natural philosophy. It has an ISSN identifier of 0073-2753. Over the lifetime, 932 publications have been published receiving 16947 citations. The journal is also known as: HOS.

History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions

Abstract: One can either debate the possibility of the historical sociology of scientific knowledge or one can do it. Ludwik Fleck took the latter course of action. In Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache Fleck’s overriding concern was with the interpretation of a particular episode in the history of science, and his focus never strayed from the empirical materials pertinent to that task. His more general theoretical statements always arose out of and referred to the historical particulars and circumstances of that episode. Thus, one way of characterizing Fleck’s book is to regard it as the work of a practising scientist, intimately familiar with the genesis and career of the Wassermann test: and this would not be an incorrect characterization. Another way of appreciating his accomplishment would be to see it as a piece of empirical history, providing a concrete exemplification of the sociology of scientific knowledge. The only wholly misguided approach to Fleck’s work would be to distill his theorizing out of the empirical concerns in which it was grounded.

Separate Spheres and Public Places: Reflections on the History of Science Popularization and Science in Popular Culture:

Abstract: L'A. demontre qu'il faudrait reconsiderer la negligence des etudes historiques de la science populaire et de la popularisation en fonction de l'hegemonie de la science elle-meme

Discipline and Bounding: The History and Sociology of Science as Seen through the Externalism-Internalism Debate

Abstract: From the beginning of the Second World War to the ending of the Cold War no problematic so deeply shaped the academic history and sociology of science than that inscribed in talk of 'internalism' and 'externalism'. Insofar as empirical work was deemed relevant to developing an overall appreciation of the nature of science, its dynamics and its relations with social and cultural environments, that relevance was locally achieved by gestures at opposed 'internalist' and 'externalist' theories, orientations, domains, and accompanying historiographic baggage. Students were initiated into the history and sociology of science by being told about these genres and the present state of play. Graduates' early orientation to their fields was achieved through affiliation with one or other genre and camp of practitioners. Reviews of the state of the history and sociology of science were seemingly obligated to use 'internalism' and 'externalism' as expository structures. Nowadays, however, historians of science commonly tell each other and their students that their discipline has transcended, outgrown or resolved those debates, and that it is a sign of the maturity of the field that references to the 'internal' and the 'external' have become less common or at least less unselfconscious. When uttered at all, the terms are likely to be surrounded by quotes, air-quotes or tones of voice. If in the 1960s the central problematic of the academic discipline known as the history of science was pointed to by reference to the 'internal' and the 'external', by the late 1980s such usages increasingly betrayed the amateur, the neophyte, the outsider, or the out of touch. Within a generation the discourse of 'internalism' and 'externalism' seems to have passed from the commonplace to the gauche. I want to suggest that this trajectory never transmitted the appropriate intermediate stages. I do not think that the theories indicated by 'externalism' and 'internalism' were ever properly defined or described. I do not think that the virtues of any defensible and coherent construals of these theories were ever properly considered and assessed. I do not think that talk of external and internal (hereafter eli) 'factors' was ever properly associated with the respective theories, nor that such talk was adequately defended in terms of relevant

Quantitative measures of communication in science: a critical review.

Abstract: ed, usually colloquial, frequently incomplete, and often vague. The communicator here is not seeking to report a finished scientific work. He often knows, in fact, that the person with whom he is communicating needs only a minimal communication of an idea to understand fully its meaning and importance for their common subject of research. The recipient embodies integrated knowledge; therefore, the message need not, in itself, be integrated. 49 One is tempted to say that formal communication in science is 'the tip of the iceberg', were it not for two facts: (a) the 'tip' is very large, extensive and important; and (b) there is every indication that the 'tip' is radically dijjerent in kind from what is 'below the waterline'. (Perhaps 'the soft underbelly of science' might be a more appropriate metaphor I) The difference is signalled in Garvey and Griffith's very next sentence: "Such loose communication cannot, of course, be tolerated in the journal literature of science where a more universal audience exists."50 Formal 'communications' in science represent a process of assimilation: of "separating scientific fact from conjecture", 51 and of "the transformation of research findings into scientific knowledge". 53 The object of a formal research paper is to persuade and convince the appropriate audience that the results presented should be accepted as valid knowledge: the form and style of argumentation is determined by that institutionalized goal, and the paper is assembled, and its list of references compiled, with that end in view.P It is an 'after the event' view, re-ordered and re-presented in accordance with established canons of proper practice; referees and editors ensure that certain decencies (including adequate referencing) are observed. It is not at all surprizing that Garvey and Griffith, comparing final published papers with their antecedent technical reports, found that "the corresponding journal articles were typically better written and better related to other work in the same subject areas". 54 'Communication', as it is usually understood, appears to be a relatively minor role of formal 'communications': While 'current' journal reading is relevant to the dissemination of research findings, it seems to be a minor portion of the use to which journals are put. For example, it amounted to only about one-third of the journal reading of one group ofextremely active psychologists.55 ... it was quite clear in 1962 that the journal article in psychology. was no longer the medium for disseminating current scientific findings to researchers active on the research front. 56 . What, then, is its 'use' ? Since most citations are given to research papers, how can these be assumed to reflect an influence? Gaston claims that "The QUANTITATIVE MEASURES OF COMMUNICATION 115 scientific community must wait until every aspect of the research is published before it can use the results to guide new research or correct an earlier perspective".57 Is this true? As we have seen, Cole seems to equate 'use' with 'citation' -that is, with the process of public 'assimilation' in the formal literature. And even Garvey and Griffith seem to define 'science' so that the formal 'tip' characterizes the whole: they note that, on average, some two or three years after publication, an article ... is cited by another author. Here the scientific information in the article is built upon, evaluated in the light of new information, and linked to new information which has been generated since its publication ... analysis, evaluation and synthesis have been proceeding ever since the work first appeared in the journal literature, in a process so central to science as to be virtually indistinguishable from it. 58 It is my contention, as I said earlier, that the tendency to characterize 'science' in terms of this formal process, and to employ methods designed to analyze the formal literature, "obscures key features" of scientific research. I t diverts attention from "the soft underbelly" : worse, it proposes that the informal should be understood in terms of insights gained by the study of the formal. I submit that this is to reverse the priorities of explanatory logic. Explanations of scientists' behaviour in the informal domain should surely be extended so as to include within their scope the formal aspects-including the relatively trivial behaviour of adding citations to papers. But, quite apart from this 'logical' point, it is simply my judgment that illumination is more likely to accrue from this contrary strategy. To claim that co-citation methods can locate actively interacting groups and specialty boundaries is not to claim that such features can only, or most economically, be discovered in this way-nor that these methods uncover (or point to) sufficient, or sufficiently accurate, detailed andrelevant, information on the groups and specialties. To refer back to the 'gas laws' analogy, and the claim that scholars must await the establishment ofnumerical patterns before they can know what 'problems' they have to solve, my response is to suggest that the everyday, detailed behaviour of scientists in the conduct of their research provides an abundance of problems of much more obvious importance than any correlations contained in a computer printout. Whenever a scientist (or a research group) decides to develop a new technique, or to pursue a fresh and unexpected phenomenon, or to adopt a perhaps unfashionable theoretical approach, there is a (sociological or historical) problem: each decision brings together 'cognitive' (intellectual, technical, cultural) and 'social and historical' factors: one task of the historian (or sociologist) of science is to explicate such decisions, and to explore the 'grounding' of their rationality. 59 In relation to this task (or,