The History of Scientific Practice

科学理论历来是科学史、哲学和社会学关注的中心。毕竟，正是这些重大的理论突破从根本上改变了我们对世界的理解，并带来了科学的“革命”。事实上，哲学家们认为，从逻辑上讲，即使是意想不到的和相互矛盾的观察和实验结果，也可以与对公认理论的某些改变相适应。话虽如此，然而，每个人都认识到，真正需要研究的是科学实践——科学家们每天在积极试验自然中所做的事情。例如，正是在实践中，人们才能理解传统是如何保存的，民族“风格”是如何发展的。但正是这种“实践”最不为人所知。学生是被教的，但不是在课本上。科学论文展示的是结果，而不是实践。mccormach教授的项目将与Christa Jungnickel博士合作，在科学发展的关键时期（即科学学科发展之前的时期）的背景下，研究科学中最重要但最不为人所知的方面。他的研究将集中在18世纪皇家学会成员的工作上，并将通过该学会自己广泛的档案记录和丰富的会员手稿收藏来实现。由于这项研究使用了广泛定义的科学实践类别作为分析工具，因此这项工作广泛地借鉴了科学家的工作生活，我们可以通过这些手稿和信件了解到这些工作生活。这项研究的目的是将科学实践及其结果置于伦敦、英国知识分子、社会和经济生活的背景下。通过这样做，它揭示了18世纪英国科学与其背景之间的联系和相似之处，这些联系和相似之处对英国科学的发展至关重要。

Scientific theory has traditionally been the center of attention in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. It is, after all, these grand theoretical breakthroughs which have so radically reoriented our understanding of our world and which bring about scientific "revolutions." Indeed, philosophers argue that, logically speaking anyway, even unexpected and contradictory observations and experimental results can be accommodated with certain alterations to the accepted theory. Having said this, however, everyone recognizes that it is the practice of science--what scientists do from day to day in their active testing of nature--which really needs study. It is in practice, for example, that one gain understand how traditions are preserved or national "styles" developed. But it is this "practice" which is most hidden from view. Students are taught it, but not in text books. Scientific papers present results, not practice. Professor McCormmach's project, working with Dr. Christa Jungnickel, will investigate this most important yet least understood aspect of science in the context of a critical period in science's development, the period just before the development of scientific disciplines. His research will center on the work of the members of the Royal Society in the 18th century and will be made possible by the society's own extensive archival records and rich collections of manuscripts of its members. Because the study uses broadly defined categories of scientific practice as its tool of analysis, the work draws extensively on the working lives of scientists, which are accessible to us through these manuscripts and correspondences. This study has the purpose of placing scientific practice and its results within the context of London, of British intellectual, social and economic life. By doing so, it exposes connections and parallels between 18th century British science and its context that were important for the development of British science.