Simon Werrett: Areas of Graduate Study

Division: History of Science

History of Science
A general field, designed to begin preparation of graduate students aiming to teach undergraduate courses or pursue research in history of science during their careers, and to introduce the general historiographical framework and development of the field. The field can be modified to meet the student's particular interests. This would normally be the second field for students interested in becoming historians of science.

Science and Technology Studies
"STS" engages in the variety of new approaches to understanding the sciences which have emerged in the wake of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Drawing from diverse academic disciplines, such as philosophy, sociology, and anthropology, scholars in the 1970s and 80s developed powerful and controversial new methods of analyzing science as a social construction or network, and critiqued the role of gender and race in scientific practice, theory, and organization. More recently, cultural and anthropological studies of science have presented new means to interpret science alongside alternative systems of human (and even 'non-human'!) action and belief. Postcolonial studies of science and technology have traced science's interactions with empire, development, and indigenous knowledges. Students taking this field will engage with these diverse approaches of recent STS through reading, writing, and discussions. A knowledge of the tools and concepts of STS has been indispensable for recent history of science, and the field will deepen and broaden participants' perspectives on science.

Early Modern Sciences, 1500-1800
This field takes in a period in the history of science which witnessed dramatic change with the emergence of a new, experimental science in the seventeenth century. European and American figures such as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and Antoine Lavoisier overturned long-held traditions of natural knowledge to offer exciting new ideas about the natural world. Or did they? The so-called 'Scientific Revolution' remains a theme hotly disputed in the history of science. Was modern science really new, or a continuation of earlier developments in the fifteenth century, which included practices like natural magic, alchemy, the collecting of wonders and curiosities, and astrology? Or was modern science a product of the period around 1800, later than we normally think, when professionalization created the first research laboratories, university departments, peer-review journals and other familiar scientific institutions? Given that the 'revolution' only happened in the West, should we see its results as 'universal' or as a peculiar and local form of knowledge? Study in the field explores these and other issues surrounding the history of science in the early modern period, taking in new insights and approaches from many disciplines including history, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. The UW has a fine tradition in teaching this field, and students will have access not only to many works in the Suzallo Library but in addition a valuable collection of early modern scientific instruments. Students may take courses in conjunction with others in the History of Science, and Early Modern European History.

Science in Russia and the Soviet Union
Russian science encompasses many of the achievements of science, including Lobachevskii's Non-Euclidean Geometry, Mendeleev's Periodic Table, and advances in Nuclear and Space Science. Studying Russia also grapples with issues of the relations between science and politics, science and revolution, Marxism and science, and other centrally important issues in current studies of the sciences. The University of Washington is one of the few educational institutions in the USA where it is possible to undertake specialized study in the history of the sciences in Russia and the Soviet Union. Since the early 1990s this field has blossomed with many exciting and novel approaches being applied to the field, which has been greatly enriched by access to many new materials and archives in Russia. Prof. Simon Werrett offers courses in Imperial and Soviet Russian Science which may be taken in conjunction with fields in the history of science and the History of Russia and East Europe. Students will be encouraged to travel to Russia and advised on how to study in Russian archives. The University has a flourishing Department of Slavic Language and Literature in which students may develop their language skills. The Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies (REECAS) program also organizes numerous events and activities on Russian history and politics.

Science and the Arts
Is there a fundamental division between the arts and sciences as C. P. Snow proclaimed inhis essay on the 'Two Cultures'? Or do the arts and sciences share visions, methods, techniques, ideas in their histories? This field explores relations between the arts and sciences from the renaissance to the present and embraces topics such as the changing definitions of arts and sciences, science and theaticality, visual imagery in the sciences, science in literature and drama, science on film, and the history of objectivity and mechanism in science and art. Prof. Werrett takes a particular interest in the role of the spectacular in the history of science.