Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

"John died last year. He was a very good friend and colleague here at the University of Manchester. When I started thinking about the history of science in the late 1990s, I wanted an anchor to understand the big picture of how science developed. ‘Science’ in fact covers a whole set of disciplines: scientific discoveries bleed into technological discoveries and, vice versa, technology allows us to discover things. We also have a lot of scientific applications in the form of medicine. John’s book looks at all these aspects, largely through the lens of universities, which are the places where a lot of the key discoveries have been made over the last 100 years or so, using Manchester as one of the examples. I found it extremely enlightening. It made me realise that a lot of what I saw as the classic structure of scientific research—you’re funded by the state, you go and get the money, you do the research, you publish your article, and you go onto the next project—is in fact a description of a very particular period, perhaps three decades, in the second half of the 20th century. Before that, the interpenetration of commercial interests and more focussed research were extremely important. We’re at that stage again now: we’re under great pressure to provide impact—preferably financial in terms of patents and new processes. For those of us who don’t work in areas that lend themselves to such immediate exploitation, this can be a difficulty. “Most of the people I write about were much smarter than we’ll ever be. And yet they often believed all kinds of nonsense” What John also does is to focus on science as a form of labour. Many academics might not think of their research in terms of work—after all, it’s a very fantastic and privileged form of labour—but we do work, we work collectively, and we try and engage with the world and understand it. John draws a parallel with developments in industry, where you start with very simple craft techniques that were gradually built up into largescale industry. You can see similar changes in various scientific disciplines: molecular biology is a very good example. It started off with very simple, relatively crude techniques carried out by a handful of individuals. Then there was a wave of ‘industrialisation’ with the creation of larger and larger research groups. Finally, we ended up with machines taking over a large part of what were extremely important human technical skills for much of the second half of the 20th century, many of which are now forgotten. Nobody knows how to do them anymore and it doesn’t really matter—anymore than we know how to repair our washing machine or our car. There are parallels in these different aspects of culture that I found really interesting. The book anchors science as a form of culture—a very unusual form—but a form that has similarities with other things we do. Yes, this book has a very broad view, which is extremely impressive. I write histories about things I understand – I would find it very difficult to embrace the history of technology or physics in any detail. Before John could accomplish this in his book, he had to master a huge range of material and was then able to present it in a very readable way. John was originally a physiologist before he moved into history. He masters these whole areas of science and is able to explain them in a straightforward way. It’s an excellent read."