Abstract
“All new developments in the history of knowledge have been due to those scientists who did more in their social roles than their critics wanted and expected them to do”.1 So Florian Znaniecki concluded his landmark contribution to the sociology of knowledge. Alongside the technologist and the sage, the scholar who systematizes knowledge and the scholar who fights for truth, we see from time to time emerge those whom we call “explorers, those who create new knowledge”, and who stand at the apogée of human achievement. Their achievement, however, lies not only in the domain of ideas. They are above all those who see and understand cultural realities, and who “accept as normal in the domain of knowledge ceaseless and unexpected change”.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Florian Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1940 ), p. 164.
Znaniecki, The Social Role (cit. n. 1), p. 194.
See Michael P. Rogin, McCarthy and the Intellectuals (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1967); Sigmund Diamond, “Veritas at Harvard’, New York Review of Books,28 April 1977, pp. 13–17; David Caute, The Great Fear: Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); Regulating the Intellectuals: Perspectives on Academic Freedom in the 1980s,Craig Caplan and Ellen W. Schrecker, eds. (New York: Praeger, 1983); Ellen W. Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lionel S. Lewis, Cold War on Campus: A Study of the Politics of Organisational Control (New Brunswith: Transaction Books, 1988); Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945–1955 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Anna Marie Cox, “Harvard Acknowledges `Regret’ for Dismissal of Professor in 1954”, Chronicle of Higher Education 42(31) (April 13, 2001): p. A-19.
An influence that Everett has frequently and aptly acknowledged. See Everett Mendelsohn, Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
A Treasury of Scientific Prose: A Nineteenth Century Anthology,Everett Mendelsohn, I. Bernard Cohen and Howard Mumford Jones, eds. (Boston: Little Brown, 1963); and “Science in America: The Twentieth Century”, in The Evolution of American Thought,A.M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Morton White eds. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 432–445.
Everett Mendelsohn, Heat and Life: The Development of the Theory of Animal Heat (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964).
See James Hershberg, James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), and more recently (and controversially) Steve Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), especially Chapter 3, The Politics of the Scientific Image in the Age of Conant“.
Herschberg, Conant (cit. n. 8); Fuler, Thomas Kuhn (cit. n. 8); see also Joy Harvey, “History of Science, History and Science, and Natural Science: Undergraduate Teaching of the History of Science at Harvard, 1938–1970”, Isis 90 (1999), pp. S270—S294.
From his course came material that informed several works, including “Science Has A Social Context: Comments on Papers by Dr. Hanss Bahrdt and Dr. Jacob Schmookler, in Economic and Social Factors in Technological Research and Development (Columbus: Ohio State University Press: 1965): pp. 51–58; and also his influential essay, ”The Emergence of Science as a Profession in Nineteenth-Century Europe“, The Management of Scientists, in Karl Hill ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964), pp. 3–48; and ”Three Scientific Revolutions“, in Science and Policy Issue, Paul J. Piccard, ed. ( Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, 1969 ), pp. 19–35.
Liz Roman Galese, “The Good Life: A Harvard Professor Can Teach, Research and Travel the Globe”, The Wall Street Journal (December 14, 1976), p. 1.
These topics were ones to which he has returned on several occasions. See, for example, Everett Mendelsohn, “The Historian Confronts the Bomb”, Proceedings of the Symposium on the Role of the Academy in Addressing the Issues of Nuclear War (Washington, DC: Hobart and William Smith College, 1982), pp. 44–57; “Knowledge and Power in the Sciences”, in Science under Scrutiny,R.W. Home, ed. (Dordrecht, Reidel, 1983),pp.31–47;“Science, Technology and the Military: Patterns of Interaction”, in Science, War and Peace,Jean-Jacques Salomon, ed. (Paris; Economica, 1990), pp. 49–70; “Science and the Military”, in Science in the Twentieth Century,John Krige and Dominique Pestre, eds. (Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), pp. 175–202.
See, for example, Everett Mendelsohn, “Physical Models and Physiological Concepts: Explanation in Nineteenth-Century Biology”. British Journal fbr the History of Science 2 (1965), pp. 201219; “Cell Theory and the Development of General Physiology”, Archives Internationals d’Histoire des Sciences 65 (1963), pp. 419 429.
Mendelsohn, Heat and Life (cit. n. 7), p. ix.
Mendelsohn, Heat and Life (cit. n. 7), p. 3.
Everett Mendelsohn, “The Emergence of Science as a Profession…” (cit. n. 10). pp. 3–48.
This development was initiated on a European basis by Roy MacLeod, Bernard Lecuyer and Gerard Lemaine, with the support of Clemens Heller, through Project PAREX, forerunner of the European Association for the Social Studies of Science and Technology.
Everett Mendeloshn, “Revolution and Reduction: The Sociology of Methodological and Philosophical Concerns in Nineteenth Century Biology”, in The Interaction between Science and Philosophy,Yehuda Elkana. ed. (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1974), pp. 407–426
The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook,Everett Mendelsohn, Perter Weingart and R. Whitley, eds. (Dordrecht: Reidel, Vol. 1, 1977). For subsequent volumes, see Mendelsohn’s bibliography, at the close of this Volume; see also Everett Mendelsohn, “Thinking Like a Mountain: The Epistemological Puzzle of Environmentalism”, in Grenzbeschreitungen in der Wissenschaft,Peter Weingart, ed. (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1995), pp. 152–167.
Science and Values,Everett Mendelsohn and Arnold Thackray, eds. (New York, Humanities Press, 1974); and Topics in the Philosophy of Biology,Everett Mendelsohn, Arnold Thackray and Marjorie Grene, eds. (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976).
See, for example, Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist’s Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentic-Hall, 1971).
Everett Mendelsohn, “Robert K. Merton: The Celebration and Defense of Science”, Science and Context 3 (1989), pp. 269–289.
Roy MacLeod, “Changing Perspectives in the Social History of Science”, in Science, Technology and Society: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective,Ina Spiegel-Wising and Derek de Solla Price, eds. (London: Sage, 1977), pp. 149–195.
Everett Mendelsohn, James Sorenson and Judith Swayze, “Recombinant DNA: Science as a Social Problem”, Appendix, Special Study (Washington, DC: National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 1976); also, Everett Mendelsohn, “Frankenstein at Harvard: The Public Politics of Recombinant DNA Research”, in Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard Cohen,Everett Mendelsohn, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 317–335.
For an introduction to his thinking in this area, see Everett Mendelsohn, “Grasping the Elusive Peace in the Middle East”, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 1 (1994), pp. 1–16; and A Compassionate Peace: A Future for the Middle East (New York: Hill and Wang; revised edition, London: Penguin, 1989). Everett is also a Faculty Associate in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.
Everett Mendelsohn, “Prophet of Our Discontent: Lewis Mumford Confronts the Bomb”, in Lewis Mumford, Public Intellectual,Thomas and Agatha Hughes, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 343–360.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Allen, G.E., MacLeod, R. (2001). Introduction. In: Allen, G.E., MacLeod, R.M. (eds) Science, History and Social Activism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 228. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2956-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2956-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5968-0
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2956-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive