Science in Print: Essays on the History of Science and the Culture of Print

Introduction

3 Introduction ste฀ phen฀l.฀฀ vaughn,฀rima฀d.฀apple,฀and฀ greg฀ ory฀j.฀dow฀ ney As the crucial means of recording, distributing, and consuming knowledge for centuries, the practices and products of print culture—books and journals, pamphlets and posters, newspapers and magazines—have been essential to virtually every human endeavor. This fact is especially striking in the arenas of science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM), four interrelated fields of systematic knowledge production tied together by their dependence on an accurate and accessible cultural record of empirical data, imaginative theory, and political debate. Whether on paper, as grade-school science textbooks and specialist engineering journals, or, as is increasingly the case, online, as databases of medical advice and popular explanations of scientific principles, the artifacts of print culture have always been the primary means for both making scientific claims and bringing those claims to the public. Growing levels of global literacy have allowed scientific ideas to flourish as never before, and increasing connections within the global economy have stimulated demands for scientific ideas at an unprecedented pace. The efficient and ethical creation and circulation of ideas in the STEM fields is central not only to the global economic engine but also to those attempting to address profound global challenges such as the consequences of climate change, the development of sustainable energy systems, the provision of clean water, and improvements in public health. Even beyond these important goals, the STEM fields, and the print culture they continue to foster, represent our noble aspirations to explore and understand our environment, our physical universe, and ourselves. 4 ฀ stephen฀l.฀vaughn,฀rima฀d.฀apple฀&฀gregory฀j.฀downey For all of these reasons, in fall 2008 the Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture (CHPDC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison sponsored an international conference on “The Culture of Print in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine.”1 Organized primarily through the UW–Madison School of Library and Information Studies, under the leadership of CHPDC director Christine Pawley, the meeting was cosponsored by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Wisconsin Libraries, the Department of English, the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. As this list suggests, the historical study of print and digital culture at Wisconsin is, quite intentionally, an interdisciplinary pursuit. But what made this conference cross even more boundaries was the cosponsorship and participation it received from the STEM fields on campus, particularly through the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, the Department of the History of Science, and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics. This combined focus on the tools, techniques, and meanings developed through centuries of print culture in scientific practice drew dozens of conference attendees from all over the world. Coming from engineering programs and medical faculties as well as library schools and humanities departments, participants spent three days together in sessions with such titles as “Homing in on Engineering Education,” “Popularizing Science in Print,” “Hybridity: Science and Literature,” and “New Technologies and Graven Images,” to name a few. Nine essays from the conference were chosen for inclusion in this volume. Because they vary widely in terms of their topics, time periods, and points of attachment between print culture and scientific knowledge-making, they each help to illuminate the broad history of what librarian and print-culture historian Robert Darnton calls “circuits of communication,” incorporating not only different information modes and media technologies, but different types of public events and social milieus as well.2 The three sections of this volume correspond roughly to three key developments in the circuit of communication: production, distribution, and reception. This simple categorization, however, should not imply a simple linear process of development. As the essays here demonstrate, scholars of both print culture and scientific knowledge production must attempt to connect the fundamental social processes of communication— exchanging information, enabling action at a distance, and participating in a shared symbolic culture—to several centuries of changing social norms, politicaleconomic environments, and information infrastructures.3 Our volume is meant to demonstrate the myriad ways the history of print culture enriches the history of science and how the history of science informs the history of print culture. Thus, each essay stands both as a case study and as an indication of further lines of inquiry. Introduction 5 The first section of this volume, “Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in Print,” focuses primarily on the...