Name: 歴史の限界科学のクラッシュコース歴史 #46 (The Limits of History: Crash Course History of Science #46)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T10:28:18.000Z
Duration: 10 min 52 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

We started this show by asking, what is history of science the history of?

And we answered that question in short with knowledge-making.

We then went on to explore a lot of kinds of knowledge-making at different places and

times, from Ancient Greece and Mesoamerica and India, to medieval China and Europe, to

outer space during the Cold War, and corporate R&D labs today.

But remember that everyone makes knowledge about their worlds all the time.

And humans ask questions about patterns that they see in the world around them, in their

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to tell all of the greatest stories of the history

And, more importantly, because there is no one list of the greatest stories.

Let's get meta: this is the future… of the history… of science.

Doing history involves making choices about

which events could be seen as “history,” how to tell the stories of the people and

nonhumans involved in these events, and from whose perspective to speak.

Perhaps at first, this might seem simple: aim for something called objectivity, or a

Even though we'd love to adopt a purely objective stance, we can't!

We can't speak every language; we don't know every fact; and neither does our audience.

We can do our best to stick to the facts, but choosing which facts to highlight in a

short show gives away something about us.

Allison is the consultant, and Wythe is the writer.

They did most of the fact-picking on our show.

So how did our team choose which stories within a given chunk of history to highlight?

Well, for one thing, we read a lot, and we asked our colleagues.

For another, we focused on stories that were fun to read aloud and to bring to life visually.

We threw in some stories you may have heard before, like the absolute amazing-ness of

And we did throw in a few stories that we were pretty sure that many of you hadn't

But we also threw in stories to challenge a simplified heroic version of the history

of science: we talked about science and empire, science and race, science and war, science

and corporate greed, and science and planetary devastation.

Science, it turns out, isn't all about lone hero–knowledge-makers, but about complex

systems of understanding and controlling the world—systems that aren't always moral

We've also specifically highlighted women in science throughout this show, and that's

not only because—as you really should know by now—there are so many rad women in science!

It's also because, historically, they've been under-represented, ignored, or ridiculed.

Remember Jim Watson calling pioneering crystallographer Rosalind Franklin “Wilkins's assistant?”

And we still left out so many—and we know it!

We've had to cut whole fields of science.

And we haven't always been able to provide modern updates regarding sciences that we

So, before we call this little experiment of ours finished, let's give a last shout-out

to a few folks we haven't mentioned who have been making it into history of science

For starters, we could have covered more chemists, post-phlogiston theory.

Like crystallographer Ada Yonath, who won the Nobel in chemistry for the structure of

the vital cellular machine called the ribosome.

Or Stephanie Kwolek, who invented the first synthetic extra-strong synthetic fiber, Kevlar.

And we could have talked more about the earth sciences after the acceptance of fossils.

Geographer Marie Tharp's maps of the ocean floor led to the acceptance of the theory

of plate tectonics—which is a crazy story that we feel terrible about having to cut!

We talked a good bit about biologists—but there are so many more!

Molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, for example, won the Nobel for her work on telomeres—the

end bits of chromosomes, that protect the rest of the DNA.

Telomeres are seen as vitally important to the study of why humans age—and how we might

There was even an X-Files episode based on her work!

That's how you know you've made it in science.

Of course, there has been a development or two in astronomy since we figured out the

Dame Susan Jocelyn Bell Burnell co-discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, and was the

first person to observe them… but was excluded from the Nobel.

And we've read the comments and know there is a strong interest in the history of mathematics,

so how about acknowledging the contributions of African-American mathematician Katherine

Johnson, who calculated critical orbital mechanics for NASA that were used for the first manned

Being female was only half the discrimination she faced—and the lesser half at that.

Or Karen Sparck Jones, who pioneered the intersection of computer science, statistics, and linguistics,

teaching computers how to understand human language and providing the basis for search

And we can't leave out non-binary or trans scientists, such as trans evolutionary biologist

She published revolutionary work challenging long-held ideas about sexual selection, one

of the mechanisms of evolution, and forwarding a new idea of social selection that better

All of these people could have had whole episodes devoted to their work!

But until recently, historians have generally been pretty bad about representing women and

many other people who happen to not be white men as awesome at science.

And representation matters, a lot: if “scientist” always seems to mean “white dude” in a

given culture, then you probably won't see as many women of color going on to become

astronauts, heart surgeons, or billionaire app developers.

So, in a way, hero narratives can serve an important purpose.

They help us meet new kinds of heroes, allowing more people to see themselves as knowledge-heroes-in-the-making.

But we need to be careful to recognize the many people involved in creating knowledge.

And the flip side of telling clear, heroic stories—however inclusive—is that the

history of science isn't perfect: because all sciences are dynamic tools, not perfect,

And because scientists and historians are people.

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歴史の限界科学のクラッシュコース歴史 #46 (The Limits of History: Crash Course History of Science #46)

stick

fear

dynamic

complex