Why, Where, and How Science was Done

 

Science is the production of reliable knowledge about the natural world. Unlike art, philosophy, religion, or other areas of knowledge that depend on imagination, faith, or intuition, science is based on systematic observation and experimentation that provide empirical evidence and reasoning. Although science brings about consensus and not absolute certainty, research results must undergo rigorous examinations and must meet the two key criteria — validity and reliability — to be granted “scientific”. Validity denotes that the research is relevant to the question or issue raised in the field; reliability guarantees the repeatability and consistency of the research. However, there exists not one standard way, place, or purpose in which science should be done; in fact, why, where, and how science had been done changed substantially over the 19th and 20th centuries: scientists once explored the world based purely on interest, until political, industrial, and social urge altered their course; biologists moved from fields to laboratories while physicists moved from laboratories to observatories, to reactors, to everywhere; individual specialties join forces to give birth to interdisciplinary efforts.

 

Reasons to pursue science vary, but for Charles Darwin, it was out of pure curiosity. Darwin’s affluent family granted him time and freedom to follow his interest. After graduating from Cambridge, he embarked on a five-year voyage to formulate his theory of natural selection. Such intellectual zest also motivated other scientists, such as Marie Curie, who discovered radioactivity on her way to completing her doctor’s thesis. (154, Curie) Having said that, the era of pure intellectual intentions soon ended as the industry called. As early as 1887, physics was summoned to serve the engineering industry at Physikalisch Technische Reichenstalt in Germany (Lecture 8), where they focused on standards and measurements for German industry. The emergence of Big Science during the post-war era in the United States also signified the submission of basic research to opulent patronage of the industry and government who swayed the scientists into developing national defensive weapons and satisfying the electronics and aerospace industry needs. AEC, ONR, NIH, NASA, NSF, USAF, and CIA (Lecture 17) all emerged to confiscate, if not passion and creativity, the scientific freedom of the scientific community with their big money. Arthur Roberts’s previous work in microwave-frequency radar at MIT’s Radiation Laboratory, which relied heavily on the military budget, was exactly what he had worried which may cloud the true purpose of science.

 

The purpose of science, in other times, was steered by social and political urge. During the Eugenics Movement in the 1900s United States, science did not serve to clarify the whole picture of genetics but was used to produce propaganda to justify a social movement. As a research institute, The Eugenics Record Office (Lecture 13), in particular, was purposed to collect information on the American ancestry since 1910 and to provide biased data to substantiate the forced sterilization of thousands. At the same time in the Soviet Union, biologist Trofim Lysenko (Lecture 15), a Leninist, was leading a political campaign in the name of science against genetics and natural selection. Darwinian evolution proposed the idea of random mutation, which implied the possibility of individual liberty that contradicted the idea of collectivism under Marxism. Genetics, therefore, must be banned and Lamarckism must be revived. Lysenko directed his science, which was later degraded to pseudoscience, to serve the communist regime. When put in contrast with Darwin’s intellectual yearning, modern science seemed to be eroded by the crawling selfish desires from within. Why science is done was once responded with high pride, until the answers to the question became unpresentable. 

 

“The modern state is floating on a sea of science,” (5, Shapin) so much science is integrated and embedded into our lives that even a McDonald's can be where science is made. This was not the case in Darwin’s time, namely the 19th century, when natural historians tried to figure out nature by their works in the fields, museums, or scientific gardens, such as the Kew Gardens in London (Lecture 3). Darwin’s HMS Beagle voyage, which took him to Patagonia, the Galapagos, and Brazil (30, Browne), pictured how scientists used to survey the world, collecting evidence and thoughts from encounters along the way. During the late 19th and early 20th century, later-called biologists and natural historians such as physiologist Ivan Pavlov started to work more in laboratories (Lecture 11). They relied more on experiments as opposed to the pure description and classification of organisms as before. Life sciences before this period were less rigorous and mathematical. Contemporary life scientists looked to the success of the physicists at the time and emulated their practices, hoping to test their theories by experiments to advance in reliability and completeness.

 

The physics and chemistry fields experienced similar transformations in where science was done, except in much earlier times. Before Henry Rowland returned to Johns Hopkins (Lecture 3) with one of the finest collections of research instruments in the world, there was no true research institution in the United States. Physicists had ever since worked in major universities or private laboratories: Marie Curie conducted her experiments in a well-funded, operational laboratory, and Ernest Rutherford orchestrated his gold foil experiment at the University of Manchester (Lecture 8). It was not until the establishment of theoretical physics in the mid-20th century that set the physicists free from laboratories. The founding of Niels Bohr’s Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen in 1921 (Lecture 8) signified a shift of pursuit from applied to abstract and relocated physics from cathode ray tubes to the blackboard. Einstein’s work on the theory of relativity at the patent office also indicates that there are no real bounds to where science can be done. It turned out, his working world outside the laboratory, where the standardization of time and the coordination of the railroad system were a troubling problem, was central to his thought experiments that gave rise to relativity (Lecture 7). As opposed to the early and mid-19th century scientific world, where merely a few places provide the necessary resource to carry out reliable scientific research, the current day made science possible to be done anywhere and everywhere: experimentalists working in reactors, climate scientists collecting data at the North Pole, and astronauts probing the universe at the International Space Station.

 

The rapid branching out of science during the mid-20th century allowed interdisciplinary tools to be drawn to cultivate a new field. Physics utilized the capability of engineering in the post-war period to build large accelerators, namely Ernest Lawrence’s cyclotron at UC Berkeley (Lecture 17), to investigate the quantum world. However, tools were not limited to define apparatus, technologies, or know-how; tools can refer to novel mindsets and methods, namely how science is done. In the 1940s, the field of physics was well-developed, with atomic theory and quantum mechanics on track, but research in life science was lagging: classical biology was helpless in explaining how life works. Prominent physicists like Niels Bohr and Erwin Schrodinger were confident that physics can come to the rescue: with reductionist thoughts, tools, and instruments in physics, genetics can be reduced to physics problems (Lecture 18). Physicists applied experimental tools like X-ray diffraction and mathematical and statistical tools to make sense of biological data. By seeking the physical basis of heredity, the principles of molecular biology were discovered. Physicists helped in the identification of DNA as genetic material, the description of the physical organization of the DNA through X-ray crystallography, the deduction of the principles of the replication of the DNA, and the deciphering of the genetic code. Molecular biology ever since became an interdisciplinary intersection between physicists, chemists, and biologists; it became a powerful combination of theoretical and experimental efforts. How science was done in the 19th century was through solo plays; how science was done in the 20th century was through team efforts. 

 

The expansion and diversification of science throughout the past centuries gave rise to new possibilities of why, where, and how science can be done. Different branches had never been so intertwined with and interdependent on one another. While scientists were no longer bound to museums or laboratories, they can be blinded by impure political, social, and economic motives. It is, therefore, essential that scientists adhere to the production of valid and reliable descriptions of the natural world, regardless of why, where, and how science is done. 

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Bibliography

 

Browne, Janet. Darwin’s Origin of Species: Books That Changed the World. London, Atlantic Books, 2008.

 

Curie, Eve. “The Discovery of Radium.” Madame Curie: A Biography By Eve Curie (Illustrated), New York, Doubleday , Doran, 1938, pp. 152–64.

 

Shapin, Steven. Invisible Science. Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, 2016.

 

Professor Patrick McCray. Lecture 3, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18. [PDF file]. Retrieved at 2021, July 31 from HIST 20 Gauchospace