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

斯诺在1959年的雷德演讲中宣称，人文学科和科学已经变得相去甚远，以至于它们成了“两种文化”。自那以后的几十年里，其他人也提出了这一观点，认为科学的职业化和专业化程度的提高扩大了分歧。但在“两种文化”论点的许多版本中，隐藏着一种隐含的假设，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，美国国内的一些科学形式并不容易被归类为这两种文化中的任何一种，实际上，它们已经成为不同学科的研究人员之间以及科学家和普通公众之间的会议的智力公地。自然历史可能是这种聚会场所中最能引起共鸣的，尽管还有其他地方。这项研究从生物学和社会科学领域挑选了具有代表性的个人，将突出超越或挑战两种文化的科学调查领域。该项目将有助于科学史上的几个领域，特别是那些学者正在研究科学与政治之间的关系、科学变革的性质以及社会科学和生物科学交汇处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.