New Perspectives on the Historiography of Biology

Abstract

The Handbook of the Historiography of Biology is intended to foster a conversation about the historiographic traditions that have informed the history of biology. Explicit historiographical reflections by leading scholars in the history of biology will highlight important trends and innovations in the continuous stream of original research that has created this field. This will make it easier for new scholars to join the field and make their own original contributions. The German-born American historian Fritz Stern pronounced that "the historian must serve two mastersthe past and the present," and reminded us that "perhaps no one has changed the course of history as much as the historians" (Stern 1973). In his classic book, What Is History? the English historian E.H. Carr was even more blunt: "Study the historian before you study the facts" (Carr 1962), he admonished. Clearly, history never stands on its own. It is always constructed, filtered, placed within the context of what those who came before believed and wrote. With time, history becomes a palimpsest. To understand how successive generations have remembered the past, one must drill down, layer by layer. As a study of the science of history, historiography attempts to understand how historians work, how they frame their questions, how they use sources, and how historical scholarship reflects its different contexts. If history is a sign of its times,

Expanded View of Ultimate Questions in Public Communication of Science: Qualitative Discourse Analysis of Genetics and Neuroscience

“…2018). Differently, as Dietrich, Borrello, and Harman (2021) observe, at least in the English‐speaking world, geneticists are more in dialog with Western traditions. My analysis confirms this connection.…”