Science in History. Volume One by J.D. Bernal Free PDF book

Science in History





one of the troubles of our times is that science produces so few innovators and soaring creative minds, like J. D. Bernal’s, which can at the same time relate their science, and indeed all science, to man’s social and political life and history.The alienation of science in the modern world where average men and women have come to feel that science is a kind of thing apart, a never-never land of infinite complication which somehow controls one’s destiny yet is uncontrollable — this alienation is partial, at least, the result of scientists having become so chained by the tyranny of their specialties and the conformity of their social outlooks that they cannot relate the grand sweep of man’s mastery of nature to man’s social needs. The need for a book like Science In History, which tells the history of science from the viewpoint of a thinker with a scientific view of history itself has been enormous, and never greater than in this explosive age of vast achievement unmatched in the history of man.In 1948 I was asked to deliver the Charles Beard Lectures at Ruskin College, Oxford. The subject I chose was “ Science in Social History.” It was one that had interested me for many years and there seemed no difficulty in presenting it to an intelligent and unspecialized audience.When I came to give the lectures, and still more when I undertook to present them in book form, I began to realize that I had opened a subject that required far more study and hard thinking than I had given it up till then. It was, however, one far too fascinating to put down, and I decided to persevere in it. The first result of that intention is this book, one which I hoped to prepare in three weeks but which has already taken me twice that number of years. It is only now that I am beginning to understand what are the problems of the place of science in history. Scientists in the past were able to neglect all but their immediate predecessors’ work and even to reject the traditions of the past as more likely to block than assist progress. Now, however, the troubles of the times, together with the inescapable connection between them and the advance of science, have focused attention on the historical aspect of science.To find how to overcome the difficulties that face us and to release the new forces of science for welfare rather than destruction, it is necessary to examine anew how the present situation came about. In the last thirty years, largely owing to the impact of Marxist thought, the idea has grown that not only the means used by natural scientists in their researches but also the very guiding ideas of their theoretical approach are conditioned by the events and pressures of society. This idea has been violently opposed and as energetically supported, but in the controversy, the earlier view of the direct impact of science on society has become overshadowed. It was my purpose to emphasize once more to what extent the advance of natural science has helped to determine that of society itself; not only in the economic changes brought about by the application of scientific discoveries, but also by the effect on the general frame of thought of the impact of new scientific theories.Author:J.D. Bernal Publication Date:1954