To Teach the History of Science? 51 



The first satisfactory textbook dealing with the history of science as 

 a whole was the German work issued in 4 volumes by the late Friedrich 

 Dannemann.^^ The term satisfactory should be understood in a rela- 

 tive sense; that textbook was sufficiently comprehensive when it ap- 

 peared, and much of it was based on original documents. Indeed, it 

 was composed partly to serve as a kind of framework to the Klassiker der 

 exakten Wissenschaften, edited by the German physico-chemist, Wil- 

 HELM OsTWALD.^^ Brief as it is, even sketchy in many parts and incom- 

 plete, it is, nevertheless, the most elaborate work of its kind in any lan- 

 guage. This statement is less a praise of Dannemann's achievement 

 than a proof of the infancy of our studies and of the immense amount 

 of work which remains to be done. 



Dannemann's main merit lies in the fact that he really tried to ex- 

 plain, as the title put it, "science in its evolution and 'hanging together' 

 (wholeness)." Instead of dividing the subject into large scientific 

 groups ( mechanics, astronomy, physics, etc. ) as Whewell and Hoefer 

 had done, and as Wolf continued to do, he divided it into short chapters 

 each of them dealing with a scientific topic, and as he avoided putting all 

 the mechanical topics together or all the astronomical ones and so on 

 but arranged his chapters in the rough chronological order of their cen- 

 ters of gravity, he managed to give his readers a deep impression of 

 unity. 



That is very important. The history of science is much more than 

 the juxtaposition of all the histories of the special sciences, for its main 

 purpose is to explain the interrelation of all the sciences, their coopera- 

 tive efforts, and their common aims and methods. The division of sci- 

 ence into sciences is to a large extent artificial and apparent only in con- 

 crete cases. It is clear that a collector of butterflies need not study ther- 

 modynamics, and that an observer of meteors can do very well without 

 botany or palaeontology. It is also clear that the great mass of our sci- 

 entists and technicians are so deeply specialized that they can no longer 

 see the wood for the trees, or the tree for the twigs. They are like birds 

 standing upon peripheral twigs who fancy their twig is the thing, and 

 nothing else matters. 



These facts explain the difficulty of making the history of science ac- 

 ceptable to men of science and also the very necessity and urgency of 

 doing so. Can there be a more natural way of opposing excessive spe- 



nology and philosophy in the eighteenth century (814 p., 345 ill., London 1938; Isis, 

 31, 450). 



** Friedrich Dannemann (1859-1936): Die Naturwissenschaften in ihrer En- 

 twicklung und in ihrem Zusammenhange (4 vols., 1910-13; Isis, 2, 218-22; second 

 edition, 4 vols., 1920-23; Isis, 4, 110, 563; 6, 115-16). 



^ The Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften were founded and edited by Wil- 

 HELM OsTvvALD (1853-1932), and their publication was begun by W. Engelmann 

 in Leipzig, 1899 (Isis, 1, 99, 706; 2, 153). It is the largest collection of original 

 scientific texts ever published; the texts are published in German translation with 

 commentaries by speciaHsts. More than 200 volumes have appeared; the latest was, 

 I think, the one devoted to Max von Laue (no. 204, 1923; Isis, 5, 526). As Dan- 

 nemann's history was largely based upon the Klassiker, it tended to ignore or mini- 

 mize the discoveries omitted in that collection, e.g., those of Claude BernardI 



