Ed's areas of specialization include 'History of American Medicine and Public Health,' and 'History of American Science and Technology,' and he has pursued these specializations within the larger context of 'US History' and not in the context of 'History of Science.' Indeed, the 'History of Science'-community was ill- prepared to accept the very notion of a 'History of American Science': if history of science deals with the history of scientific ideas, then it would seem odd and arbitrary to deal with them in a national context. After all, science appears by its very nature to have a supra-national or cosmopolitan orientation. 'History of American Science' would yield only a social or institutional history and not a history of science proper. Ed detailed this struggle for recognition in his article "The History of American Science and Medicine" (Corsi and Weindling, eds., Information Sources for the History of Science and Medicine, London: Butterworth, 1983).
To the extent that the History of American Science and Medicine was 'condemned' to do a social history of science, it produced rich and interesting results. Ed contributed a book on A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the 20th Century South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), his articles include (one example for many) "Making Separate Equal: Negro Physicians and Medical Segregation in pre-WWII South" (Bulletin of History of Medicine, vol. 57, fall 1983). He has also considered pre-Darwinian evolutionary theorists (and their links to racist ideologies in the South) and the history of the atomic bomb.
Fortunately, the disciplinary divisions have softened considerably. Historians of science are more open than they used to be towards social, even sociological histories, to the so-called 'external' influences on the development of scientific ideas. While we have grown more comfortable accepting that scientists are social beings, deeply enmeshed in their cultures, we discovered in the discussion that it wasn't exactly easy to consider oneself a specifically 'American scientist': sure, funding-opportunities and the college/university-culture shape a specifically 'American' work-place, but would we say that American scientists have a different style of working and thinking (like French mathematicians or German philosophers), and would we say that certain concepts or theories carry the imprint of American culture?
Alfred Nordmann
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