IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001561036

Studies of Science before “Science Studies”: Cold War and the Politics of Science in the U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R., 1950s--1970s (2012)

University of California, San Diego
Oreskes, Naomi
Gere, Catherina M.

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Advisors: Oreskes, Naomi; Catherina M. Gere
Physical Details: 330 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Science studies, theoretical works Cold War Science studies, as a discipline Science and politics 20th century, late United States Russia Great Britain

This dissertation investigates the history of Science Studies (or Science and Technology Studies, STS) as it became a distinct area of expertise and academic inquiry during the Cold War. The dissertation pursues five distinct histories, each focused on a confined mode of analysis of science that articulated, evaluated, and rationalized Cold War sensibilities and concerns. The case studies in question are: (1) UNESCO and the framework of "scientific humanism" promoted by its two visionary founders, Julian Huxley and Joseph Needham, and implemented in UNESCO's major history of science project, History of Mankind, in the 1950s and 1960s; (2) the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its quest, in the 1960s and 1970s, to promote "science studies" as part of its broader agenda to offer a renewed, "post-Marxist," framework for liberalism, (3) the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which in the first ten years of its existence, 1962-1972, undertook the bold initiative of launching a sustained inquiry into social studies of modern biology; (4) the short-lived "philosophical phase" in medical ethics, marked by medical ethicists' interest in and appropriations from post-positivist philosophy of science, which I explore by analyzing the series of workshops organized under the auspices of the Hastings Center in the late 1970s and early 1980s; and (5) a particular mode of reflection on science and its intellectual foundations developed by Soviet philosophers in the 1960s-1970s under the name of "naukovedenie." All these modes of analyses of science represent roads not taken. The "vision" of science studies all these groups were promoting is different from science studies as we know it today. Yet these alternative visions, in which the issues of science politics were inseparable from those of science policy, science organization, and science governance, constitute an important "pre-history" of Science Studies. I argue that the promotion of the studies of science as a politically relevant area of expertise, undertaken within existing powerful institutional structures outside academia, helped to legitimize the disciplinary identity of science studies in the age of the Cold War.

...More

Description Cited in ProQuest Diss. & Thes. (2012). ProQuest Doc. ID 1095115807.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561036/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Lynch, Michael; (2006)
From Ruse to Farce (/isis/citation/CBB000780206/)

Article Figaredo Curiel, Francisco Humberto; (2002)
La tradición cienciológica en el estudio de la ciencia (/isis/citation/CBB000410666/)

Book McNeill, John R.; Unger, Corinna R.; (2010)
Environmental Histories of the Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001034124/)

Book Weiner, Sharon K.; (2011)
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (/isis/citation/CBB001221236/)

Thesis Rademacher, Franz L.; (2008)
Dissenting Partners: The NATO Nuclear Planning Group 1965--1976 (/isis/citation/CBB001562874/)

Book Toshihiro Higuchi; (2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)

Book DeJong-Lambert, William; (2012)
The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair (/isis/citation/CBB001213212/)

Chapter Sörlin, Sverker; (2013)
Introduction: Polar Extensions---Nordic States and Their Polar Strategies (/isis/citation/CBB001421147/)

Article Griswold, Robert L.; (2012)
“Russian Blonde in Space”: Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001320683/)

Book Brzezinski, Matthew; (2007)
Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age (/isis/citation/CBB000830132/)

Article Schrader, Astrid; (2010)
Responding to Pfiesteria piscicida (the Fish Killer): Phantomatic Ontologies, Indeterminacy, and Responsibility in Toxic Microbiology (/isis/citation/CBB000953635/)

Article Hamlin, Christopher; (2007)
STS: Where the Marxist Critique of Capitalist Science Goes to Die? (/isis/citation/CBB000831587/)

Book Goodman, Michael S.; (2007)
Spying on the Nuclear Bear: Anglo-American Intelligence and the Soviet Bomb (/isis/citation/CBB001020723/)

Article Fujigaki, Yuko; Tsukahara, Togo; (2011)
STS Implications of Japan's 3/11 Crisis (/isis/citation/CBB001231676/)

Article Marres, Noortje; (2007)
The Issues Deserve More Credit: Pragmatist Contributions to the Study of Public Involvement in Controversy (/isis/citation/CBB000773320/)

Book Lino Camprubí Bueno; Xavier Roqué Rodríguez; Francisco Sáez de Adana; (2018)
De la Guerra Fría al calentamiento global: Estados Unidos, España y el nuevo orden científico mundial (/isis/citation/CBB249387847/)

Chapter Kunkel, Sönke; (2011)
Amerikanischer Wissenstransfer im Nigeria der frühen 1960er Jahre (/isis/citation/CBB001211844/)

Book Hornblum, Allen M.; (2010)
The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb (/isis/citation/CBB001231467/)

Article Thompson, Nicholas; (2011)
Nuclear War and Nuclear Fear in the 1970s and 1980s (/isis/citation/CBB001231373/)

Thesis Barnhart, Megan Kathleen; (2007)
“To Secure the Benefits of Science to the General Welfare”: The Scientists'Movement and the American Public during the Cold War, 1945--1960 (/isis/citation/CBB001560638/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}