History of Science Society -- Newsletter Article

Professional training in the history of science--as in other academic fields--is a process of acculturation into a relatively small community of scholars. Graduate school entails several years of work with faculty and students who are all, by definition, committed to using similar methods and asking similar questions. Later on, institutions and organizations such as the History of Science Society provide a setting for continuing interaction with similarly trained and oriented scholars. In such contexts, a shared interest in history of science can be taken for granted. But--among the self-selected community of professional scholars is it easy to forget this!--not everyone is intrinsically interested in the history of science. This becomes particularly apparent in settings other than departments or programs specifically devoted to science studies.

Making history of science accessible to an audience that is in part indifferent to or suspicious of the subject has been a part of my teaching work at Portland State University since coming here in 1996. I am the (one) historian of science in a history department of fifteen full-time faculty. Many of my colleaguesÐboth in history and in other departmentsÐare interested in various aspects of the history of science, but I am the only one with a specific brief to teach in that field. Although I do teach surveys and topical courses specifically in the history of science, many of my most enjoyable and effective experiences in teaching the history of science have occurred in courses not officially designated as such.

To put this in a rather mean way, I have been bringing history of science content surreptitiously into places where it doesn't ostensibly belong, and hence failing to meet the expectations of students. More charitably--and more accurately--I have been working to integrate the history of science as seamlessly as possible into our "regular" history and general education offerings. Although some of my teaching is aimed at students who have self-selected to study history of science topics specifically, in other settings I seek to garner the attention of students who would not have avowed an interest in the subject at the outset. There are always individuals who react negatively once they realize that the course they are taking for other reasons has history of science as one of its themes. But most members of these classes at least manage to get through them, and not a few develop a genuine enthusiasm for the subject. An example of this kind of response was this comment received on an (anonymous) course evaluation: "I was hesitant to take the class after learning it was mainly about the history of science, but it ended up being very interesting." In other words, the payoff is being able to change students' expectations.

My experience in bringing history of science into classes not explicitly labeled as such has occurred in two categories of courses: upper-division courses for majors, and lower-division courses in Portland StateÕs general education program, University Studies. The various kinds of classes have presented distinct problems and opportunities, but some commonalities have also become apparent.

The upper-division history courses have included Comparative World History, a senior-level course required for all history majors, and a two-term sequence in European Intellectual History. These courses are taught from term to term by several different faculty each of whom develops a specific theme or themes. It is impossible, in any event, to even attempt a comprehensive survey in quarter terms of ten weeks. My version of the Comparative World History, subtitled Empires of Knowledge, comprises three interrelated units: a comparison of the dominant world pictures in several major world civilizations; an examination of the changes in knowledge occasioned by encounters between cultures; and an examination of several instances of science and technology as tools of empire-building. The first half of European Intellectual History I have taught as a course on the Scientific Revolution and its cultural consequences in the Enlightenment; the second part as, essentially, a history of the social sciences and their interactions with the natural sciences in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The very act of choosing a thematic focus within these generic rubrics is an important point of teaching in itself. I explicitly call attention to the fact that my presentation is merely one among a multitude of possible approaches to understanding, say, "world history"Ðthere is not a single "correct" story which adequately and completely covers the subject. Senior history students should have had this lesson elsewhere, but it bears repeating. Indeed, the idea that science can have a meaningful historyÐcommonplace as it is for members of our professional communityÐcan be a revelation for many undergraduates in the humanities. This thematic focus also reinforces the idea that history need not be told exclusively in terms of conventional national narratives.

These effects on experienced students of "regular" history are connected to one of the main positive effects being "surreptitious." A more descriptive title for the course would, to put it bluntly, scare off many history majors who, taken as a whole, tend to be somewhat phobic of science. Not a few students in our department tend to regard science as a compilation of dry facts without human interest, or as something intimidating and inaccessible to the lay person. For such students, advance assurances to the contrary wouldn't do; many thoughtful, well-prepared students are inclined simply to avoid courses with "science" or "technology" in the title. My aim is to ease them into the realization that science and technology, just like any other aspect of human activity, can have a meaningful history told about them, and that looking at science and technology can be an illuminating approach to understanding a wide range of other historical issues.

For example, the story of the (often tragically violent) encounter between Europeans and Native Americans following 1492 can be told in a myriad of ways. Most students in the Comparative World History course have studied it in one guise or another before. Most, however, have not analyzed the story in terms of the systems of knowledge--ideas and beliefs about human nature, humans' relationships to nature, technology, etc.--in the respective cultures. In the Empires of Knowledge course, we look at how the respective bodies of knowledge had crucial consequences for the Europeans' and Native Americans' mutual understanding (or misunderstanding), and also examine how the encounter produced profound changes in the respective knowledge systems. Likewise, the initial comparison of several major world civilizations concentrates not on the usual discussion of political systems, which many students have heard before, but on the respective cultures' views of world origins and natural processes.

Besides history department courses, part of my teaching load each year has been in University Studies. University Studies was initiated at PSU in 1994 as a major renovation of the general education program. Since then, it has won national recognition through awards such as the Pew Leadership Award for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education and participation in the Kellogg Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation. The programÕs design and implementation has undergone considerable growth and modification, but its basic concept has remained the same. Students start in one of several year-long (three-term) Freshman Inquiry courses, organized around a themes such as "The Columbia Basin," "Knowledge, Art, and Power," or "Faith and Reason." Each Freshman Inquiry theme is taught by a team of three to five faculty from several departments. Each professor is responsible for one section of students throughout the year, but there is extensive collaboration among the team members. In the second academic year, students take three different Sophomore Inquiry courses--again, thematic, inter- or multidisciplinary courses such as Family Studies, The Professions in Society, or Asian Studies. Each of the Sophomore Inquiry classes serves as the gateway to a corresponding "cluster" of upper-division courses. Students choose one of their three Sophomore Inquiry themes and take three associated upper-division cluster classes as the third stage of the University Studies program. The final component of University Studies is a Capstone course, usually taken during the senior year, in which students work collaboratively on a tangible project which often involves engagement in the community; examples among many current Capstones include developing an environmental interpretation program for a state park near our campus, researching the histories of Portland neighborhoods, and surveying the state of public-governmental relations for several regional agencies.

As this brief sketch suggests, University Studies emphasizes learning which crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. The thematic content for any course is intended as a vehicle for four overarching general education goals: effective communication skills, awareness of the diversity of human experience, appreciation of ethics and social responsibility, and capacity for critical thinking. University Studies classes also seek to engage students as actively as possible in the learning process. Towards that end, classes are limited in size. Freshman and Sophomore Inquiry faculty work with a mentor, a graduate or advanced undergraduate student who functions not so much as a teaching assistant in the traditional sense, but rather as a facilitator for discussions and tutor for research and writing techniques, basic computer skills, etc.

I currently teach a Sophomore Inquiry class entitled "The Nineteenth Century: Revolution and Evolution," and in previous years I have helped design and teach two different Freshman Inquiry themes: "Understanding Our Pluralistic Society" and "Human / Nature." (Additionally, some of the history courses I teach also function as upper-division cluster courses.) Including a history of science in the 19th Century class has presented challenges and opportunities similar to those of the history classes mentioned above--if anything more intensely nature. The 19th Century cluster is a gateway is concentrated in the English, foreign languages, and art departments; thus, the students attracted to the 19th Century Sophomore Inquiry are strongly humanities-oriented. The prospect of discussing Darwin and Helmholtz might well seem off-putting if announced too loudly in advance to an audience of litterateurs and artists. My aim is to show how these concepts such as natural selection functioned not only in the realm of scientific theory but also as implicit or explicit themes in literature and art--for example, by juxtaposing selections from The Origin of Species with contemporary poetry by authors such as Tennyson and Swinburne.

In the Freshman Inquiry courses, the challenges have been somewhat different; students' resistance, if anything, has been not against science content but against the interjection of historical interpretation. Many first-year students assume that learning consists of assimilating a series of incontrovertible facts. The challenge and opportunity in this setting was hence to use a historical approach to bring students to think critically about the cultural assumptions behind a number of socially significant issues. (Hence we address the general education goals around diversity, social responsibility, and critical thinking. Incorporate writing, speaking, or graphical assignments and we also address the communication goal.)

In the Pluralistic Society class, for example, one such issue was a confrontation with the concept of race and its social consequences. During the three years I taught this class, I persistently heard the comment from studentsÐparticularly from those who were not members of a minority group--to the effect that "Of course I am not a racist," thus asserting that race was an empty concept for them. (Whether these self-assessments were always accurate is quite another matter!) At the same time, many of these same students had never stopped to consider the bases of the categories of race which, whether acknowledged or not, still shape events in our society. In this context, tracing the history of race as a (putatively) scientific concept was helpful in leading students to realize both the cultural contingency and the powerful effects of racial categorizing, especially when these have had the weight of social authority behind them.

Although the Human / Nature class dealt with quite different subject matter, history of science played an analogous role in the syllabus, as a way to motivate students to think critically about conceptual categories whose fixity they might otherwise take for granted. The first term of this class dealt with various theories of human nature--or debates whether "human nature" exists at all. Readings and discussion juxtaposed philosophical, religious, literary, natural-scientific, and social-scientific perspectives; a historical dimension was useful to show continuities which cut across these disciplinary boundaries. The second term dealt with human representations of nature in art, literature, and science; here, it was a crucial step for students to realize that the connotations and values associated with "nature" have changed dramatically over time and across cultures. The final term focused on human interactions with nature: the functions of technology, political debates concerning the use of land, resources, etc. Once again, the point was that these current debates have long antecedents, in many cases resulting from changes in our scientific understandings of the world around us. Both of these Freshman Inquiry classes, then, readily--and I would argue necessarily--included a history of science perspective.

By not stressing in advance this aspect of these courses, I run the risk of disappointing, perplexing, or frustrating some students. But in the end, I think, this risk is outweighed by the benefit of a richer classroom environment. Through these experiences, I have also learned--or, better, I am learning--to adjust my own approach to the history of science in order to make such "surreptitious" classes more successful. First, one must use caution and patience with technical and especially mathematical terminology. Even seemingly simple scientific terms may be unfamiliar to strongly humanistically inclined students, and unfamiliar in a way that is somehow more intimidating for them than, say, exposure to the life and ideas of a geographically or temporally distant culture. Above all, it's important to avoid the impression (whether justified or not) that the professor is using scientific jargon simply to show off expert authority. Second, particularly in the general education curriculum, it is necessary to supplement the professionally ingrained love of history for its own sake with explanations of relevance to present-day life, since this will be the focus of attention for many if not most of the students in the class.

Finally, and perhaps most crucially for my own understanding of the history of science, teaching in these classes has blurred some of our conventional intramural demarcations. Historians of science like to divide themselves up by discipline (history of physics, biology, geology, etc.), by national focus (U.S., Britain, China, etc.), by historiographical school, and so on. In teaching the courses I have described, most of these categorizations have proven less important than simply pursuing questions generated by the thematic of the class. Although these subdivisions may still be useful in organizing our professional community, I must confess it has been somewhat liberating to move beyond them in the classroom.