Suffering for Science: Reason and Sacrifice in Modern America (review)

What could Josiah Cook, Harvard professor of chemistry and mineralogy in 1875, have in common with arctic explorers Frederick Cook and Robert Peary? The title of Rebecca Herzig's book provides the answer: Suffering for Science. Through an introduction and six brief chapters, Herzig documents a case for the importance of self-sacrifice among various kinds of scientists and explorers in the late nineteenth century.

In the introduction and the first chapter, Herzig uses the experience of suffering by those scientists who chose that ethos as the lens through which to examine the forces that were shaping the United States from the late 1860s until the 1920s. As the United States carved out a new identity and structure from the ashes of the Civil War and amid the ascendance of capitalism, the sciences became science with a capital "S" and men of science became scientists who pursued objective knowledge rather than transcendent truth. Herzig argues that suffering, in the form of self-sacrifice, became the way in which the practitioners of science claimed a special place in the central discussions of the times and a role in answering questions of ultimate meaning and purpose.

Suffering for Science makes three main claims. First, self-sacrifice for science required a privileged self; in the years immediately after the Civil War nothing proved that better than total control of one's property, the self. The second claim is that the privilege of self-control enacted through self-sacrifice has a "paradoxical quality" whereby power was demonstrated by the vulnerability of the body. The third claim focuses on how suffering becomes self-sacrifice, that is, a relinquishment or gift rather than a contractual exchange—when the relinquishment of the self was done with no anticipation of return. Each of these claims had ties to the conception of the liberal subject in a modern state where relationships were defined mostly in the form of economic exchanges.

Scientific writings of the time indicate the belief that science is a demanding field requiring self-sacrifice and that scientists are "willing captives." The metaphor of captivity—significant in the context of the recent emancipation of slaves—when qualified by "willing" resonates of both the religious vocabulary of the times and the foregrounding of the contract as the basis for exchanges.

Herzig's discussion of the four cases that illustrate her claims starts with a brief overview of the development of research universities, scientific societies, and scientific journals. These mark the end of the conceptualization of science as a kind of mental activity and the recognition of science as an entity in whose name sacrifices could be made. The last four chapters are aptly titled purists, explorers, martyrs, and barbarians, each title denoting the paradigmatic way in which the argument about self-sacrifice is deployed to explain the behavior of the men (and one woman) discussed in each.

Purists, strongly influenced by Puritanism and other religious practices, argued for the distinction of "pure science" from its applications. This distinction aimed at separating the pursuit of science from any economic benefits and highlighting the total dedication of scientists to scientific work. Reflecting the necessary qualities of the worker in a capitalist state, the scientist was willing to forego even his health in pursuit of an ever more distant truth. The development of university laboratories allowed for the training of new practitioners in this mode of scientific endeavor, one that required manual labor as part of its successful performance.

The developing field of roentgenology, or, as it is known today, radiology, provided multiple examples of martyrs. Not all the people who suffered from exposure to X-rays are labeled martyrs in the writings of the time. Only those men (and the one woman) who did so in the pursuit of knowledge were granted that title, pointing to the particular privilege marked by self-sacrifice. This chapter presents the most specific information about the technologies of the times.

Herzig's...