CAREER: Nuclear History as History of Science

SES 99-83981 - Cathryn L. Carson（加州大学伯克利分校）“CAREER: Nuclear History as科学史”这个CAREER项目以“Nuclear History as科学史”为标题开展了一个综合的工作计划。在研究和教学中，它探索了核时代特征的技术和社会政治问题的交织。对于研究部分，卡森教授正在为核废料的概念化构建一个技术知识丰富的历史。从20世纪40年代到现在，人们对核废料问题的认识性质发生了巨大的变化：曾经被认为是一个小的技术难题，在容易获得的知识的基础上，只要稍加努力就可以解决，现在已经成为一个主要的国际研究领域，需要极其复杂的建模和实验。卡森教授的研究考察了对这一挑战本质的不断变化的观念——人们究竟把核废料理解为什么样的科学问题——从而把技术问题带回了我们的政策和政治历史中。该书以美国、德国、法国或瑞士为对象，采用了比较的方法，揭示了争议点。结果的说明将对有实际利益的更广泛的社区有价值，因为过去对核废料的态度是目前许多核废料问题的背景。与此同时，该项目旨在解决历史学家思考的理论问题，利用核废料管理的示范场地来调查社会政治和技术之间的界面。然后，教育部分在卡森教授在加州大学伯克利分校设计的一门新的本科课程中追求该项目的主题。作为一门关于核时代的科学史课程，这门课汇集了来自科学、工程、人文和社会科学的学生。在这个复杂的时期，在技术和社会政治问题交织的情况下，学生们将探索历史解释的模型，这些模型将在学期结束后为他们服务。课程名称“核伯克利，核世界”表明了它的双重重点：大学、社区和地区的本地历史，以及构建国内发展的全球背景。除了标准的阅读、讲课和讨论的教学策略外，卡森教授的课程还充分利用了网络基础设施来提供信息和互动。此外，作为课堂体验的高潮，它让学生们参与到实际的历史研究中来，通过亲身实践来教授他们如何创造历史。考虑到该地区无与伦比的资源，许多学生项目的本地焦点将返回到社区，因为他们的报告将在网站上提供，作为大学之外的门户。这个项目的两个组成部分是相互支持的。他们在大小尺度上探索技术乐观主义和历史必然性：因此，核废料在教育框架中占有一席之地，而课程的总体叙述为研究提供了背景。而学生项目，就其本身而言，将与卡森教授的研究联系起来，建立联系，挖掘资源，开辟新的研究领域。

SES 99-83981 - Cathryn L. Carson (University of California, Berkeley)"CAREER: Nuclear History as History of Science"This CAREER project carries out an integrated program of work with the title "Nuclear history as history of science." In research and teaching it explores the interweaving of technical and sociopolitical matters characteristic of the nuclear age. For the research component Professor Carson is framing a technically informed history of the conceptualizations of nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is a problem whose perceived nature has changed dramatically from the 1940s to the present: what was once thought to be a small technical difficulty, soluble with modest effort on the basis of readily obtainable knowledge, has become a major international field of research with intensely complex demands of modeling and experimentation. Professor Carson's study examines the changing conception of the very nature of the challenge -- what sort of scientific problem nuclear waste has been understood to be -- and so brings technical matters back into our histories of policy and politics. Focusing on the U.S., Germany, and either France or Switzerland, it takes a comparative approach as a way of opening up points of controversy. The resulting account will be of value to broader communities with practical interests, since past attitudes towards nuclear waste stand in the background of many of its present problems. At the same time the project addresses itself to historians thinking about theoretical questions, using the exemplary site of nuclear waste management to investigate the interface between the sociopolitical and the technical.The education component then pursues the project's theme in a new undergraduate course that Professor Carson is devising at the University of California, Berkeley. As a history of science course on the nuclear age, the class brings together students from the sciences, engineering, humanities, and social sciences. In their encounters with this complex period, with its interweaving of technical and sociopolitical problems, the students will explore models of historical explanation that will serve them past the semester's end. The course title, "Nuclear Berkeley, Nuclear World," indicates its double focus: the local history of the university, the community, and the region, and the global context framing the developments at home. Along with standard pedagogical strategies of reading, lecture, and discussion, Professor Carson's course makes considered use of a web infrastructure for information and interaction. Moreover, as the culmination of the class experience it engages students in hands-on historical research, teaching them what goes into creating histories through the experience of practicing it themselves. The local focus of many student projects -- given the area's unparalleled resources -- will then return their work to the community, as their reports will be made available on the website as a gateway beyond the university.The two components of the project are mutually supportive. They explore technical optimism and historical inevitability at scales large and small: thus nuclear waste takes its place in the educational framework, while the course's overarching narrative provides the backdrop for the research. And the student projects, for their part, make connections back to Professor Carson's research, establishing contacts, unearthing sources, and opening up new fields to study.