Science and history: an interdisciplinary approach

What would scientists and historians working together look like? Perhaps the first thing you might think of, would be something like a historical research programme that relies on scientific techniques and expertise, such as carbon dating or geophysics, or perhaps using contemporary medical knowledge to explain mystery historical illnesses. The second thing you might think of, particularly if you have read work from within the disciplines of Science and Technology Studies (STS) or the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), is an anthropological study of scientists conducted by historians. These sorts of investigations are today relatively common, particularly thanks to the success of Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s Laboratory Life. However, this post is about neither of these sorts of projects. It is instead about historians and scientists collaborating (in a more or less interdisciplinary way) to achieve common intellectual/economic/social goals. The most formal expression of support for, and rationale for, this sort of research, has been given by the historian and philosopher of science Professor Hasok Chang. His views on the matter - and videos of some very attractive chemical experiments that Chang performed as part of his research - are most easily accessed by watching his University of Cambridge inaugural address.

Chang’s suggestion that HPS scholars should be located ‘down the hall’, as it were, from scientists, and the insights of historians all the better integrated into scientific teaching, resonate not only with Cultivating Innovation, but also other recently completed projects here at the University of Leeds. While some might want to hold back from his pluralistic mission - after all, there are many ways in which HPS researchers might wish to collaborate with scientists that would not promote pluralism - it is nevertheless the case that Cultivating Innovation seeks to guard against homogeneity; in crops, agricultural marketing practices, and the ways in which scientific work can be done. In the remainder of this post, we will be reporting on a recent conference that saw historians and plant scientists attempting to work in interdisciplinary mode. However, we are also very pleased to announce that in the near future we will be beginning an online discussion about hist/sci collaboration, with another project - one that has similarly interdisciplinary ambitions - the ‘Constructing Scientific Communities’ project led by Professor Sally Shuttleworth at the University of Oxford. We hope that other researchers working in this mode, not only within the UK but around the world, will take the opportunity to join us in reflecting on what it is to carry out research in this manner, the extent to which it constitutes a distinct type of historical/philosophical research (with distinct problems and rewards), and to share advice on how to maximise our chances of success.

These two (bad!) photographs of Dr Cristiana Oghina-Pavie were taken at ‘History and Plant Sciences: Interdisciplinary Approaches’, a conference that she organised in Angers on the 8th and 9th of December. Two members of the Cultivating Innovation project, Dr. Dominic Berry, historian, and Dr. Bruce Pearce, plant scientist, presented a joint paper at this event, which will form the subject of a future blog post. (You can see a list of all the papers and speakers at the conference online here.) Oghina-Pavie had organised the meeting with the specific intention of bringing together historians and plant scientists in order to promote interdisciplinary work between them, and provide a platform for those researchers who are already taking on this challenge. The photographs above are particularly important, as at this point in her presentation Oghina-Pavie highlighted some of the primary characteristics of this work, and how it ought to be done. We share them here as part of the groundwork for future researchers interested in attempting hist/sci collaboration. 

So, what about some particular examples?

Well, one of the first papers to stand out was the collaboration between Jean Beigbeder, agricultural engineer and Vice President of Pro-Maïs, and Maryse Carrareto, an anthropologist. Pro-Maïs is an organisation dedicated to collecting and maintaining the hundreds of landraces of maize to be found across France. While working with large commercial partners, they are dedicated to releasing these biomaterials to anyone who seeks to use them for breeding and growing. Though there may be aspects of this organisation that we might wish to investigate further (for instance, the effects of relying on material transfer agreements as the mechanism for providing access to varieties) it is nevertheless a very impressive organisation, made all the more so by their recent database efforts. Rather than merely list all varieties, regions of origin, and so on, they have collaborated with Carrereto to collect evidence of traditional farmer knowledge surrounding their growth. This information is to be included as part of the varietal database (containing well over 1000 distinct forms), and Carrereto’s extensive report has been made available online here. In this instance, a historian is collaborating with scientists in order to improve their equipment (electronic database), while scientists and breeders are reminded that there is an underused knowledge resource at the heart of farming; the grower.

There is space enough in this post to include one other example. Anna Svensson, a PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), presented her research into early modern herbaria, focussing in particular on the botanic gardens of Oxford University. Here the expertise between scientists and historians was arranged slightly differently, as she is working with Dr Stephen Harris, Druce Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria, to conduct a detailed investigation of the gardens, their accession catalogues, and the associated herbaria. The latter are of special interest as herbaria in this period were bound in leather volumes like books, rather than being kept on the more familiar loose sheets that we are familiar with today. In tune with principles that guide Cultivating Innovation, Svensson’s project recognises that the meanings of plants are constituted both by biology and history, and that - in her words - “there is not always a clear distinction between a ‘botanical’ and ‘historical’ reading of the herbarium.”  Within biology this perspective can be expanded well beyond plants, vastly increasing the potential scope for interdisciplinary collaboration between scientists and historians. We hope you’ll join us for future discussion of the same.