Current Activities

1. My research focuses on 'knowledge communities,' small groups of multidisciplinary scientists and engineers defined by their common concentration on a particular problem. My ABS book is a first attempt at working with this framework. I have followed it up with a book-length study of the development of engineering practices in 19th century America, highlighting large public works projects. This book looks at the nascent community of pre-professional engineers in antebellum America and finds them playing two important roles: as builders of their own technical community working to mathematize engineering practices, and as important, but overlooked, contributors to political debates about American national identity. Tentatively titled, "Engineering America," I hope to complete the manuscript in 2010.

2. My next project, a collaboration with Johannes Lenhard of the University of Bielefeld, supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Trans-Coop Award, focuses on the role of computers in present-day science and engineering. As part of this work, I've published articles on finite element methods, computer-aided chemical process design, AutoCAD, and computational nanotechnology. We are looking at the roles computer simulations play in the development of new knowledge and asking whether we are moving from a culture of explanation in science to a culture of prediction? If such a shift is occurring, does it mean that scientific investigation is becoming more like engineering, which has long been focused on predictions as a basic for knowing? Or have we (i.e., historians and philosophers) overlooked or underestimated the importance of prediction in science? The project has two threads: one historical, concerning the history of prediction in science and the other philosophical, focusing on the effects of widely accessible computer simulations and simulation packages (i.e., desktop computer based) on today's scientific practices.

3. Lastly, I am working to complete a few articles stemming from research undertaken several years ago at the British National Archives. One article examines the WWI-era creation of government institutions to support wartime scientific research. While the era of Big Science is often dated to WWII and the Manhattan Project, this project shows its European and WWI roots. Perhaps more importantly, another article will argue that British wartime institution-building served as a model for the post-WWII state of Israel under the direction of Chaim Weizmann, director of the British Admiralty Labs from 1916 to 1919 and first president of Israel from 1949-52. Arthur Balfour's role in both is significant, as one of the architects of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and as the author of the Balfour Doctrine, anticipating Jewish control of Palestine.

Professor Johnson's c.v. is located here.