Zakariya, Nasser Basem (Author)
Harvard University
Galison, Peter
Edition Details: Advisor: Galison, Peter
Physical Details: 335 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation examines the emergence, authorship, distribution and form of "the scientific epic," the contemporary universal history relating the origins of humanity and life to the origins of the material world. In the course of this account, I explicate the notion of a scientific history or narrative, tying it to an interrogation of the meanings of popularization, scientific unity and finality. The analysis begins in the late nineteenth century with Lord Kelvin's history of the world, when different scientific disciplines advocate conflicting universal chronologies, establishing templates for what constitutes a complete scientific history. Thereafter, with the extended efforts of scientists such as Georges Lemaître and George Gamow, resources emerge for different genres of synthesis, different ways of organizing the sciences around different representations of the world. The historical synthesis Gamow privileges does not begin to produce consensus until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when different chronologies are reconciled and popular works of advocacy and exposition begin to emerge. In public lectures and generalist works, Steven Weinberg, E.O. Wilson, Carl Sagan and others increasingly link the sciences to historic and mythic registers in importantly varying ways. The scientific origin myth comes to stand as the ultimate goal of the sciences, capturing different dilemmas of human existence and meaning, marshaled towards different social and political ends. The quest to produce that true myth, a final story, is increasingly represented as that which gives human life meaning. In its different forms, the universal epic is appealed to in congressional funding debates, in various news media, in the organization of broad research efforts. A filmic tradition relating this scientific history finds firmer footing, taking its cue from origins research and the layperson's tradition before it. A prominent example of the concretization of this narrative synthesis is the NASA Origins Project, explicitly looking to produce a comprehensive history of humanity, life and the world. At the same time, public television films and pedagogical outreach programs testify to and promote this vision, through which the contemporary scientific mythos is firmly established, and different strategies for spatializing and humanizing vast expanses of time are articulated.
...MoreDescription Analysis of the “scientific epic” since the late 19th century among popularizing scientists. Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 71/02 (2010). Pub. no. AAT 3396034.
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