Against revolutions

Bibliographic Data

ID21877484
AuthorsJames A Secord (0000-0001-5263-0782, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume9
Pages17-37
Publication date2024-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBJHS Themes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2056-354X • E-ISSN: 2058-850X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/bjt.2024.3
OpenAlexW4393436502
LanguageEN
References cited37

The history of science in public discussion is dominated by large-scale narratives of revolution. These locate epistemic violence within specialist communities, obscuring the role of science in environmental destruction and in silencing other ways of engaging with the world. At the same time, the language of revolution has fostered an unrealistic image of science, giving too much prominence to crisis, heroic challenges to authority and the wholescale abandonment of established theory. Revolutionary narratives in history of science were consolidated in the decades around 1900, as the genealogy for an emerging union of science, industry and imperial power. Even when explicitly rejected, they function as ‘ghost narratives’ within teaching and research. Relocating epistemic violence not only involves changing the geography and chronology of established narratives, a project that is well under way. It also requires understanding that revolution is the wrong category of event for communicating science and its history

Chinese history and philosophy · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Philosophy · Populism, Right-Wing Movements

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access