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  • We started this show by asking, what is history of science the history of?

  • And we answered that question in short with knowledge-making.

  • We then went on to explore a lot of kinds of knowledge-making at different places and

  • times, from Ancient Greece and Mesoamerica and India, to medieval China and Europe, to

  • outer space during the Cold War, and corporate R&D labs today.

  • But remember that everyone makes knowledge about their worlds all the time.

  • It's what humans do.

  • Dogs eat shoes.

  • Cats turn their butts at you.

  • And humans ask questions about patterns that they see in the world around them, in their

  • societies, and in their own heads.

  • Unfortunately, we haven't been able to tell all of the greatest stories of the history

  • of knowledge-making

  • Because we have limited time.

  • And, more importantly, because there is no one list of the greatest stories.

  • Let's get meta: this is the futureof the historyof science.

  • [Intro Music Plays]

  • Doing history involves making choices about

  • which events could be seen ashistory,” how to tell the stories of the people and

  • nonhumans involved in these events, and from whose perspective to speak.

  • Perhaps at first, this might seem simple: aim for something called objectivity, or a

  • neutrality toward opinions.

  • Stick to the facts.

  • Even though we'd love to adopt a purely objective stance, we can't!

  • We can't speak every language; we don't know every fact; and neither does our audience.

  • We can do our best to stick to the facts, but choosing which facts to highlight in a

  • short show gives away something about us.

  • Oh, hey there, Allison!

  • Hey, Wythe!

  • Allison is the consultant, and Wythe is the writer.

  • They did most of the fact-picking on our show.

  • So how did our team choose which stories within a given chunk of history to highlight?

  • Well, for one thing, we read a lot, and we asked our colleagues.

  • For another, we focused on stories that were fun to read aloud and to bring to life visually.

  • We threw in some stories you may have heard before, like the absolute amazing-ness of

  • Marie Skłodowska Curie.

  • And we did throw in a few stories that we were pretty sure that many of you hadn't

  • heard, like the Miltini.

  • But we also threw in stories to challenge a simplified heroic version of the history

  • of science: we talked about science and empire, science and race, science and war, science

  • and corporate greed, and science and planetary devastation.

  • Science, it turns out, isn't all about lone heroknowledge-makers, but about complex

  • systems of understanding and controlling the worldsystems that aren't always moral

  • or just, by present standards.

  • We've also specifically highlighted women in science throughout this show, and that's

  • not only becauseas you really should know by nowthere are so many rad women in science!

  • It's also because, historically, they've been under-represented, ignored, or ridiculed.

  • Remember Jim Watson calling pioneering crystallographer Rosalind FranklinWilkins's assistant?”

  • And we still left out so manyand we know it!

  • We've had to cut whole fields of science.

  • And we haven't always been able to provide modern updates regarding sciences that we

  • mentioned in earlier centuries.

  • So, before we call this little experiment of ours finished, let's give a last shout-out

  • to a few folks we haven't mentioned who have been making it into history of science

  • narratives more often recently.

  • For starters, we could have covered more chemists, post-phlogiston theory.

  • Like crystallographer Ada Yonath, who won the Nobel in chemistry for the structure of

  • the vital cellular machine called the ribosome.

  • Or Stephanie Kwolek, who invented the first synthetic extra-strong synthetic fiber, Kevlar.

  • And we could have talked more about the earth sciences after the acceptance of fossils.

  • Geographer Marie Tharp's maps of the ocean floor led to the acceptance of the theory

  • of plate tectonicswhich is a crazy story that we feel terrible about having to cut!

  • We talked a good bit about biologistsbut there are so many more!

  • Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, for example, won the Nobel for her work on telomeresthe

  • end bits of chromosomes, that protect the rest of the DNA.

  • Telomeres are seen as vitally important to the study of why humans ageand how we might

  • live longer.

  • There was even an X-Files episode based on her work!

  • That's how you know you've made it in science.

  • Of course, there has been a development or two in astronomy since we figured out the

  • heliocentric nature of our solar system.

  • Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell co-discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, and was the

  • first person to observe thembut was excluded from the Nobel.

  • And we've read the comments and know there is a strong interest in the history of mathematics,

  • so how about acknowledging the contributions of African-American mathematician Katherine

  • Johnson, who calculated critical orbital mechanics for NASA that were used for the first manned

  • space flights.

  • Being female was only half the discrimination she facedand the lesser half at that.

  • Or Karen Sparck Jones, who pioneered the intersection of computer science, statistics, and linguistics,

  • teaching computers how to understand human language and providing the basis for search

  • engines.

  • And we can't leave out non-binary or trans scientists, such as trans evolutionary biologist

  • Joan Roughgarden.

  • She published revolutionary work challenging long-held ideas about sexual selection, one

  • of the mechanisms of evolution, and forwarding a new idea of social selection that better

  • explains many animal behaviors.

  • All of these people could have had whole episodes devoted to their work!

  • But until recently, historians have generally been pretty bad about representing women and

  • many other people who happen to not be white men as awesome at science.

  • And representation matters, a lot: ifscientistalways seems to meanwhite dudein a

  • given culture, then you probably won't see as many women of color going on to become

  • astronauts, heart surgeons, or billionaire app developers.

  • So, in a way, hero narratives can serve an important purpose.

  • They help us meet new kinds of heroes, allowing more people to see themselves as knowledge-heroes-in-the-making.

  • But we need to be careful to recognize the many people involved in creating knowledge.

  • And the flip side of telling clear, heroic storieshowever inclusiveis that the

  • history of science isn't perfect: because all sciences are dynamic tools, not perfect,

  • unchanging wisdoms.

  • And because scientists and historians are people.

  • Remember Newton?

  • His model of the world wasn't quite right beyond a certain scale.

  • The anomalies just kept piling up.

  • And then physics changed.

  • That is, how to do science has changed.

  • And Enlightenment natural philosophers repressed Newton's alchemical work until historians

  • in the twentieth century made it public again.

  • That is, how to do history has changed.

  • So while the history of science as a professional discipline began as a list of Great Dead White

  • Dudes, it's changed a lot over time.

  • Today, we talk a lot more about knowledge systems outside of the tradition of science-that-is-called-science.

  • Whichremember how the word is only two hundred years old, anyway!?

  • And, yes, some people think of history as one of the humanities, or studies of human

  • cultures that are qualitative and non-predictive.

  • . But in some universities, history is a social

  • science.

  • However imperfectly, historians seek to amass data about a particular kind of human behaviorknowledge-makingand

  • then generate theories that explain it.

  • Another way of thinking about doing science and doing its history, as a job, comes from

  • feminist sociologist Sandra Harding.

  • In her work, knowledge is situated.

  • Anyone who makes knowledge has a standpointas does the person writing history about that

  • person.

  • And this standpoint isn't some subjective, personal opinion, it's a way of understanding

  • reality.

  • So the selecting of facts that we've done throughout this show is not just about what

  • stories we think are fun.

  • It's a standpoint that says: “hey, as far as we know, after lots of time doing Ph.D.s

  • and researching these topics, this is the history of science”—even though Allison

  • would comment on just about every script that the stories always much more nuanced and complex!

  • And there are so many stories in this history!

  • We just couldn't get to them all.

  • We've been keeping a running list of everything that hit the cutting room floor.

  • For example, how about birth control technologies?

  • The Pill came from synthesizing a hormone out of a raw material—a yam that grows in

  • Mexico, Dioscorea composita, known locally as barbasco.

  • The person who invented the Pill was a white guy.

  • But the people who could find the yams and work with them were Mexicans.

  • They weren't “scientistsaccording to the standards of the day.

  • But in 2009, historian of science Gabriela Soto Laveaga published a whole book detailing

  • how these yam hunters createdJungle Laboratoriesthat allowed for knowledge about plants to

  • be turned into lucrative and socially transformative pills.

  • Or take biology in the twentieth century.

  • We just gave you the highlights.

  • There was so much more going on!

  • For example, did the characterization of DNA by Franklin and the whole gang in 1953 reveal

  • the capital-T Truth about how organisms pass on characteristics from one generation to

  • the next?

  • Sort of?

  • It did create useful facts and help spawn biotechnology as an industry.

  • But it didn't answer a lot of other questionslike ones about epigenetics.

  • And we've since learned that some of the early ideas about DNA are just plain inaccurate.

  • That process of asking questions again and again, and revising them in the face of failures,

  • mounting anomalies, and outside influencesis the story of science.

  • And the history of science is a similar dynamic assemblage that we have to revisit periodically.

  • So there you have it!

  • Science is awesome, and its history is so fascinating that we could keep doing this

  • show forever.

  • From everyone here at History of Science, thank you so, so much for watching.

  • As Marie Curie said: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

  • Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

  • Crash Course History of Science is filmed in the Dr. Cheryl C. Kinney studio in Missoula,

  • Montana and it's made with the help of all this nice people and our animation team is

  • Thought Cafe.

  • Crash Course is a Complexly production.

  • If you wanna keep imagining the world complexly with us, you can check out some of our other

  • channels like Nature League, Sexplanations, and Scishow.

  • And, if you'd like to keep Crash Course free for everybody, forever, you can support

  • the series at Patreon; a crowdfunding platform that allows you to support the content you

  • love.

  • Thank you to all of our patrons for making Crash Course possible with their continued support.

We started this show by asking, what is history of science the history of?

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歷史的侷限性。科學史速成班 #46 (The Limits of History: Crash Course History of Science #46)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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