Being Modern The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early ...

The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century

Edited by Robert Bud Paul Greenhalgh Frank James Morag Shiach

Being Modern

Being Modern

The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century

Edited by

Robert Bud Paul Greenhalgh Frank James Morag Shiach

First published in 2018 by UCL Press University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT Available to download free: ucl.ac.uk/ucl-press

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ISBN: 9781787353954 (Hbk.) ISBN: 9781787353947 (Pbk.) ISBN: 9781787353930 (PDF) ISBN: 9781787353961 (epub) ISBN: 9781787353978 (mobi) ISBN: 9781787353985 (html) DOI:

Foreword

History of science lacks organising narratives for the twentieth century. This is especially true when we widen the lens to the discipline's more-inclusive coterie: science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine. Mostly, we've chosen war as a narrative structure. Add imperialism. Add globalisation, though that seems simply to be imperialism by another name. We seek narratives that either describe or explain science's growing presence, resonance and (dare we suggest) hegemony across a plenitude of landscapes. Try as we might, these continue to prove elusive.

One viable choice engages the century's endlessly nuanced encounter with Modernity. Whatever Modernity is, or was, we seem certain science is somehow intimately associated. At once science seems causal for and caused by this thing, this philosophy, this miasma. Our quest to delineate precisely what and how has led us scholars towards ever more refined species of its genus. We seem to be getting somewhere, though the going is slow and the way is sometimes lost.

Being Modern shifts our perspective from observer to participant. The aim is to capture Modernity at work within mentalities, within cultural and biographical aesthetics, within the collisions between scientific and other things occurring in the lived experience of the people we study and from within their perspective. This anthology is a collective study of potency, infection and resistance.

The result is a refreshing alternative to scholastic delineations of movements seen from abstracting distances. This collection of original papers delivers richly researched, critical and thought-filled case studies of Modernity as an actor's category, observed in situ. It ranges across familiar and new settings. It certainly will help us as we build a better conceptualisation of the Modern both as project and product.

Joe Cain Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology Head of Department of Science and Technology Studies

UCL

Fo re wor d

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Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which made possible the 2015 conference also entitled `Being Modern' which underpins this collection, through Grant no. AH/L014815/1. The authors and editors are grateful to participants at this conference for their comments. We are also most appreciative to the Science and Society Picture Library of the Science Museum Group and to the Sainsbury Gallery for their offer of images without charge. The editors wish to express their gratitude to Dr Ellen Catherine Jones whose invaluable editorial assistance helped convert a group of separate papers into a coherent volume.

Acknowl e dgeme nts

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