Mary Jo Nye

Mary Jo Nye’s Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800 – 1940 “studies the individuals, institutions, and ideas that turned the late eighteenth-century traditions of natural philosophy, natural history, and chemical philosophy into the twentieth-century disciplines of chemistry and physics that are familiar to contemporary students and readers of science” (pg. xiv). Nye argues, “Today’s forms of scientific education and research evolved out of the expansion and reform of universities in the nineteenth century, which created not only the laboratory but also the seminar, the colloquium, the research institute, and schools of applied and engineering science independent from the military and technical schools of the eighteenth-century state” (pg. xvi). In this way, her book “aims to bring under a single compass many of the intellectual themes that are treated in these histories” (pg. xvii).
Nye argues, “During the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as the nation-state became the fundamental unit of political and military organization, nationalism and chauvinism played important roles in fostering scientific rivalries among scientists themselves and among their patrons and clients in government and industry” (pg. 2). Many of the earlier scientists relied on patrons or were well-off and pursued science as a hobby. Turning to education, Nye writes, “British scientists frequently introduced the newest ideas and tools to their students, while continental scientists, especially French physicists and chemists, often believed that students should be shielded from newly speculative theories in favor of established, classical theories. In addition, Continental scientists, who traditionally received much stronger administrative and financial support from government ministries than did their British counterparts, often belittled the ‘amateur’ and ‘engineering’ affiliations of many British scientists” (pg. 59).
Looking at scientific theories, Nye writes, “Thermodynamics, probably more radically than electromagnetism, created the conviction among many scientists that the laws describing natural phenomena did not have a set of consistent and harmonious principles” (pg. 90). She continues, “More perhaps than any other figure in the late nineteenth century, the Dutch-born scientists Jacobus H. van’t Hoff (1852-1911) successfully combined interests and achievements in chemistry and physics” (pg. 101). Examining the crossover between biological science and physical science, Nye writes, “One of the most significant theoretical developments of nineteenth-century chemistry, the chemical valence theory, arose from organic theories of type and structure, not from the mechanical force theory” (pg. 121). As to the electronic theory of matter, Nye writes, “During the period from 1895 to 1904 the most popular models for the structure of the atom changed from highly mathematical representations of vortices in the ether to strongly visual images of charged ions or ‘electrons’ in a state of equilibrium” (pg. 159).
Returning to the role of politics, Nye writes, “As the Great War began, scientists were not initially mobilized to give technical aid to the military, but they soon persuaded officials that their work could make a difference to the military effort” (pg. 191). Further, “In both Allied and Central Power countries, as well as in the United States, scientists were aware before their governments of the role scientific research and applications might play in time of war” (pg. 192). Following the war, “While German scientists tended to avoid political activities and American scientists found themselves, for all their travels abroad, living in a national political climate of isolationism, influential French and British scientists entered into the political fray in the 1920s and 1930s” (pg. 200). Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, “Reaction to the declaration of war among American chemists and physicists, as in the larger scientific and engineering community, was largely one of support. As recently as the winter of 1938, some thirteen hundred American scholars and scientists had signed their names to a manifesto that condemned Nazi racial theories, asserted the legitimacy of theoretical physics in Germany, and defended freedom of thought in all spheres” (pg. 223). This foreshadowed the public role of scientists after World War II.
Nye concludes, “After 1940 science came to be more closely dependent on industry and government, particularly in military-related research, than at any time in its past” (pg. 225). Finally, “The science of the Cold War also demanded many scientists’ acquiescence to a patriotism of military and industrial secrecy that ran counter to the values of open cooperation and competition that scientists traditionally believed should characterize their work” (pg. 225).… (mer)