Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Ron Doel
Oregon State University
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What's the Place of the Physical Environmental Sciences in the History of Recent Science?
Historians of twentieth century science are beginning to address what might be termed the physical environmental sciences – that is, fields such as seismology, glaciology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, and terrestrial magnetism. But is it possible to relate their histories as part of an all-encompassing narrative? Because the physical environmental sciences were intimately connected with the emerging state and the colonial enterprise, through such activities as surveying and climatic assessments, their histories are rich and complex. Yet in the twentieth century, national security concerns gave these fields new prominence. During the Cold War, military planners viewed the natural environment as a bounded, dynamic space through which new weapons systems—particularly guided missiles and submarines—would pass. Military patronage created a robust form of environmental sciences after World War II. This instauration preceded biologically-based conceptions of the environmental sciences articulated by Rachel Carson, Eugene and Howard Odum, and fellow biologists in 1960s and 1970s. In this talk I explore the historiography of the modern earth sciences with particular regard to the role of patronage in shaping disciplinary research and professional identities—and the ethical issues this relationship raised.
4:00PM
Monday, February 11, 2008
140 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: ohst@berkeley.edu
