Making Modern Science

Citation

Bowler, P. J., & Morus, I. R. (2020). Making Modern Science (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Chapter Summary

The book, written by Peter J. Bowler (professor emeritus of the history of science at Queen's University Belfast) and Iwan Rhys Morus (professor of history at Aberystwyth University), has twenty-four numbered chapters in two parts, framed by a preface (with a preface to the second edition), an introductory chapter and an epilogue, and runs to about 600 pages. Part I follows episodes in the development of science, mostly in chronological order; Part II steps back to treat themes that cut across those episodes. The publisher stresses that the aim is a web of relationships between science and society rather than a list of names and dates.

Chapter 1: Introduction: Science, Society, and History

Sets up the approach of the whole book: science is treated as part of society and as something with a history that has to be interpreted, not simply as a record of discoveries. It frames the two-part design that follows.

Part I: Episodes in the Development of Science

Chapters 2–6: The Scientific Revolution; The Chemical Revolution; The Conservation of Energy; The Age of the Earth; The Darwinian Revolution

The opening episodes run from the seventeenth century into the nineteenth. They cover the Scientific Revolution, the reorganisation of chemistry, the formulation of energy conservation, the long argument over the age of the Earth, and the Darwinian revolution.

Chapters 7–10: The New Biology; Genetics; Ecology and Environmentalism; Continental Drift

These chapters move into the life and earth sciences of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: developments in biology after Darwin, genetics, ecology and its link to environmental concern, and the debate over continental drift.

Chapters 11–14: Twentieth-Century Physics; The Calculation Revolution; Revolutionizing Cosmology; The Emergence of the Human Sciences

The last episodes cover modern physics, computing (one of the two chapters added in the second edition, on how computation changed scientific practice), cosmology, and the human sciences as new fields of inquiry.

Part II: Themes in the History of Science

Chapters 15–17: The Organization of Science; Science and Religion; Popular Science

The thematic half begins with how scientific work is institutionally organised, then turns to the relations between science and religion and to the ways science has been communicated to wider publics.

Chapters 18–20: Science and Technology; Biology and Ideology; Science and Medicine

These chapters examine the connections between science and technology, the uses of biological ideas in ideological and social arguments, and the relationship between science and medicine.

Chapters 21–23: Science and War; Science and Empire; Science and Gender

The final thematic chapters deal with science and warfare, science as an instrument of Western expansion (the other new chapter of the second edition, on science and technology as tools of geopolitical expansion), and gender in science.

Chapter 24: Epilogue

A closing chapter that draws the book's themes together.

Key Concepts

Part I: Episodes

• Scientific Revolution: the seventeenth-century reshaping of natural knowledge, treated in the book as an episode to be interpreted rather than a simple breakthrough.
• Chemical Revolution and conservation of energy: two episodes in which a science is reorganised around new organising ideas.
• Darwinian revolution: the changes in thinking about life and its history that followed evolutionary theory, together with the later "new biology" and genetics.
• Continental drift: an earth-science debate used to show how a theory gains or loses acceptance.
• Calculation revolution: the role of computing in changing how science is done.

Part II: Themes

• Organization of science: the institutions and communities through which scientific work is carried out.
• Popular science: science addressed to audiences beyond specialists.
• Science and empire: the use of science and technology in Western geopolitical expansion.
• Science and ideology; science and gender: how scientific claims intersect with social and political commitments.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Two kinds of chapter. Combining episode chapters with thematic chapters lets a reader follow the development of individual sciences and then see the same material re-cut by religion, war, empire, medicine and gender.
• Breadth across the sciences. The episode chapters span physical, chemical, earth, life and human sciences, and the authors are a historian of the life and earth sciences and a historian of the physical sciences. Reviewers noted this balance: Times Higher Education called the combination of two specialists with a contextual approach a landmark for beginning students.
• Accessible explanation. Science praised the book for explaining difficult scientific and philosophical issues briefly and clearly, and Annals of Science described it as comprehensive, clear and accessible while teaching readers how to think about the history of science. The publisher lists 93 halftones and 14 line drawings.
• A revised second edition. The 2020 edition adds chapters on computing and on science and empire, extending the book beyond a traditional Western, laboratory-centred story.

Limitations

• Length. At roughly 600 pages in 24 chapters the book is more than a single course can read in full, and instructors must select among the episodes and themes.
• Selective coverage. The episode chapters are a chosen set of cases, with no chapter on the period before the Scientific Revolution and none given to the history of technology as a subject in its own right, though one thematic chapter covers science and technology.
• Cross-references between parts. The thematic chapters in Part II draw on the cases in Part I, so a reader who goes straight to a theme such as science and war may need to return to the relevant episode chapters for context.

Where It Fits in the Course

Among the course's history-of-science books, Bowler and Morus is a general survey of the period from the Scientific Revolution onward. Lindberg's The Beginnings of Western Science covers the earlier span, from prehistory to 1450, so the two can be read as a sequence. Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History and McClellan and Dorn's Science and Technology in World History are one-volume surveys that begin much earlier and range more widely across civilisations; Bowler and Morus offers more depth for the modern period.

Shapin's The Scientific Revolution is a short interpretive essay on the seventeenth century and pairs with Chapter 2, while Shapin and Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump is a close case study of one controversy, best read after a survey like this one has supplied the setting.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no background in science or in the history of science, so it suits first- and second-year students, non-specialists and general readers. It works both as a course text and as a reference for a single topic.

A practical plan:

• Start with Chapter 1 and the preface, which explain the approach the rest of the book uses.
• Core path: Chapters 2, 6, 11 and 15 give a compact route through the Scientific Revolution, Darwinism, modern physics and the organisation of science.
• Follow your interest: choose episode chapters in the sciences you are studying (for example Chapters 3 and 4 for chemistry and physics, or Chapters 7–9 for biology), and then read the thematic chapter that matches, such as Science and Religion after the Darwin chapters.
• Newer material: Chapters 12 and 22 are the new additions and suit readers interested in computing or in science and empire.
• Finish with the epilogue, then move to a specialised book from the course list on whichever episode or theme held your attention.