Abstract Arguments: How Claims Are Made in the History of Science

• In Event: Making Arguments in the History of Science

English Abstract

The historiography of science usually means doing one or more of three things: talking about the big names of the past, lamenting the state of the field in the present, exhorting to do something different in the future. But what kinds of claims do most contemporary historians of science actually make in their published works? Using article abstracts from Isis, I investigate what arguments have been made about what topics in the discipline over the past 27 years. First appearing in the journal (apparently without fanfare) in 1997, abstracts help reveal patterns of argument, content, and method that are not visible when focusing on a clutch of canonized papers or authors; they also suggest that the history of science is more conservative than usually assumed. I offer some possible causes and implications of these results. Isis may not be representative of the entire field, and abstracts may not always accurately reflect article contents, but studying the journal’s abstracts offers a way to understand the claims actually made in the history of science and how they change — or not.

Author

• Jonny Bunning, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales