Science in the American Vernacular: Improvisations in Natural History Across the 20th Century

1959年，C.P.斯诺（C.P. Snow）在雷德演讲（Rede Lecture）中宣称，人文科学和科学已经发展得如此之远，以至于它们已经成为“两种文化”。几十年来，其他人也接受了这一观点，认为科学的职业化和专业化程度的提高扩大了这种分歧。但是，在“两种文化”争论的许多版本中隐藏着一个隐含的假设，即“科学”意味着“物理科学”，或者至少是那些在方法和概念组织上与物理科学最相似的科学。然而，在整个二十世纪，在美国，有一些科学形式不容易归入这两种文化中的任何一种，事实上，它们已经成为不同学科的研究人员之间的会议以及科学家和普通公众之间的会议的知识共享场所。自然历史也许是最能引起共鸣的聚会点，尽管还有其他的聚会点。从生物学和社会科学领域中选出具有代表性的个体，本研究将突出超越或蔑视两种文化的科学调查领域。该项目将对科学史内的几个领域作出贡献，特别是那些学者正在研究科学与政治之间的关系、科学变化的性质以及社会科学和生物科学交叉领域的理论发展的研究领域。

C.P. Snow's Rede Lecture in 1959 declared that the humanities and sciences had grown so far apart that they had become `two cultures.` In the decades since others have taken up the argument, contending that increased professionalization and specialization in science have widened the rift. But concealed within many versions of the `two cultures` argument is an implicit assumption that `science` means `physical science,` or at least those sciences that most resemble the physical sciences in their methods and conceptual organization. Throughout the twentieth century, however, there have been forms of science within the United States that are not easily categorized into either of the two cultures, and which have, in fact, served as an intellectual commons for meetings among researchers in various disciplines and for meetings among scientists and the lay public. Natural history is perhaps the most powerfully resonant of such meeting grounds, though there are others. Drawing on representative individuals selected from areas of biology and the social sciences, this study will highlight areas of scientific investigation that transcend or defy the two cultures. The project will contribute to several fields within the history of science, particularly those areas of research in which scholars are examining relations between science and the polity, the nature of scientific change, and the development of theories at the intersection of the social and biological sciences.