Edgerton David
Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, Great Britain.
Isis. 2012 Jun;103(2):316-27. doi: 10.1086/666358.
This essay argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend the range of activities studied but also change--often quite radically--our understanding of well-known cases and instances in twentieth-century science. It shows how scientific intellectuals and historians of science have followed the money as a means of critique of particular forms of science and of particular conceptions of science. It suggests the need to go further, to a much broader implicit definition of what constitutes science--one that implies a criticism of much history of twentieth-century science for defining it implicitly and inappropriately in very restrictive ways.
本文认为，在科学史中认真对待经济，不仅可以扩大所研究活动的范围，而且常常会非常彻底地改变我们对20世纪科学中著名案例和事例的理解。它展示了科学知识分子和科学史家如何追踪资金，以此作为批判特定科学形式和特定科学观念的一种手段。它表明有必要更进一步，对构成科学的要素采用一个宽泛得多的隐含定义——这意味着要批评20世纪科学史中很多以非常狭隘的方式对科学进行隐含且不恰当定义的做法。
