Working Conference on the History of Big Science, August 25-28, 1988, in Palo Alto, California

几个世纪以来，“大科学”一直是某些科学的一部分，其中最典型的科学研究必须由一大群科学家和技术人员进行，而且通常是围绕着极其昂贵的大型仪器来组织的。18世纪和19世纪的伟大探险--例如达尔文在比格尔号上的航行，或者刘易斯和克拉克探险队，或者在南太平洋发现库克船长的航行--在某种意义上是“大科学”项目。建造于19世纪和20世纪初的大型望远镜代表了另一种“大科学”。然而，当前的大科学范式是由高能物理中的巨型粒子加速器代表的。然而，事实上，大科学正在渗透到整个科学中，而且越来越清楚的是，为了制定更有效的科学政策，我们需要更好地理解“大科学”是如何运作的，以及它是如何影响科学的社会组织的。自第二次世界大战以来，科学史学家对大科学的发展越来越感兴趣，现在有一大批学者致力于这一领域的研究。彼得·加里森博士是科学史上这一研究领域的领导者之一，他组织了一次工作会议，以比较和综合几个不同案例研究的结果。从这些案例研究中，他希望讨论这项工作的方法问题和更广泛的影响，并将科学管理人员、商业和技术历史学家与科学历史学家聚集在一起，以便对这一问题获得更广泛的视角。会议将于8月25日至27日在斯坦福大学举行。结果将会公布。

"Big Science" in which scientific research most typically must be carried out by a large team of scientists and technicians and which frequently is organized around extraordinarily expensive and large instruments has been a part of some sciences for centuries. The great expeditions of exploration of the 18th and 19th centuries -- Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, for example, or the Lewis and Clarke Expedition or the voyages of discovery of Captain Cooke in the South Pacific -- are in a sense "big science" projects. The large telescopes built in the 19th and early 20th centuries represent another kind of "big science." The current paradigm of big science, however, is represented by the giant particle accelerators in high energy physics. In truth, however, big science is becoming pervasive throughout science and it has become increasingly clear that to establish a more effective policy for science, we need a better understanding how "big science" works and how it affects the social organization of science. Historians of science have increasingly become interested in the development of big science since World War II and there is now a substantial group of scholars at work on topics in this area. Dr. Peter Galison, one of the leaders of this area of study in the history of science, has organized a working conference in order to compare and synthesize findings from several different case studies. From these case studies, he hopes to discuss methodological issues and the wider implications of this work, and to bring together science administrators and historians of business and technology with historians of science in order to gain a broader perspective on this problem. The conference will be held August 25 to 27 at Stanford University. The results will be published.