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On Not Doing the Papers of Great Scientists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Nathan Reingold
Nathan Reingold
Affiliation:
Formerly Editor, The Joseph Henry Papers; President of the Commission on Documentation. Senior Historian, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560, U.S.A.
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Extract

Two analogies are at the foundation of editions of writings of scientists, technologists and physicians. Both are exemplified in the collection of ‘works’, texts of printed finished versions of contributions. The literary analogy is that of authorship, of the creation of a significant assemblage of words and other symbols. Assemblages of monographs and articles of a scientist are functionally no different than comparable arrays of the writings of theologians, philosophers, poets, novelists and historians.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , January 1987 , pp. 29 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1987

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References

1 ‘Babbage and Moll on the State of Science in Great Britain, a note on a document’, British Journal of the History of Science, (1968), 4, pp. 58–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Science in Nineteenth-Century America, A Documentary History, New York, 1964Google Scholar; A Curious Field Book: Science and Society in Canadian History, (ed. Levere, T.H. and Jarrell, R. A.), Toronto, 1974Google Scholar; Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia: A Documentary History, (ed. Moyal, Ann), Melbourne, 1976.Google Scholar

3 Merton, R. K. and Zuckerman, H., ‘Patterns of evaluation in science: institutionalization, structure, and functions of the referee system’, Minerva, (1971), 9, pp. 66–100.Google Scholar

4 Reingold, Nathan and Reingold, Ida H., eds., Science in America, A Documentary History, 1900–1939, Chicago, 1981, p. 133.Google Scholar

5 A mong many examples of Price's interest, see ‘The structure of publication in science and technology’, in (ed. Gruber, W.H. and Marquis, D.G.), Factors in the Transfer of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A., 1969, pp. 91–100Google Scholar; and ‘Citation measures of hard science, soft science, technology and nonscience’, in (ed. Nelson, C. E. and Pollock, D. K.), Communication Among Scientists and Engineers, Lexington, Mass., 1972, pp. 3–22.Google Scholar

6 A convenient source of that story is Stephen C. Brush's introduction to the reprint edition of Herapath's, JohnMathematical Physics and Selected Papers, no. 132 of The Sources of Science, New York, 1972.Google Scholar

7 RR 2.216 in Royal Society Library.

8 Commenting on a draft of this paper, Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University called my attention to the numerous accounts of the refereeing process in the series edited by Garfield, Eugene, Contemporary Classics in Science, 7 vols., in press, 1986.Google Scholar To this one can add the copious paper work created by reviews of grant proposals. A recent study of the slippages in the scientific publication system is Sabine, John R., ‘The error rate in biological publications: a preliminary survey’, Science, Technology, and Human Values, 1985, 10, pp. 62–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 3 August 1933, pp. 408–412. The quotation is from pp. 410–411.

10 Reingold, Nathan, ‘Vannevar Bush's new deal for research: or the triumph of the old order’, to appear in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' study of Knowledge in American Society, 1920–1970.Google Scholar

11 Molella, Arthur P. and Reingold, Nathan, ‘Theorists and ingenious mechanics: Joseph Henry defines science’, Science Studies, 1973, 3, pp. 323–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 These remarks are based on an examination of Urey's extensive correspondence in the Library of the University of California (San Diego).

13 Weaver, Warren, Scene of Change, A Lifetime in Science, New York, 1970.Google Scholar

14 Abir-Am, Pnina, ‘The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930's: a reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation's ‘Policy’ in molecular biology’, Social Studies of Science, 1982, 12, pp. 341–382CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the various replies and responses, ibid., 1984,14, pp. 225–263.