al-mofhariz

Hamilton Cravens, Iowa State University
(An essay in the "What's American About the History of Science in America?" series)

I became an Americanist for practical reasons. I thought that the entire world was interesting, but it seemed to me that if I wanted to do any research and writing in history, it was far easier to specialize in American history than in, say, modern European or classical history (two fields that tugged at me as an undergraduate). Yet I have retained my interest in European history and read widely in that vast terrain, especially in the history of France and of Germany.

America, then, was to be my focus. More was involved, however. I also gravitated toward intellectual history, and the history of science and of religion (by contrast, I found political history as then practiced not to my liking). Among the influences on me at the University of Washington in these areas were the American colonial historian Max Savelle, whose Seeds of Liberty (1948) I foun…

Alan I. Marcus, Mississippi State University
(An essay in the "What's American About the History of Science in America" series.)

Like virtually all historians of science before me, I entered the field from science; I had been a chemist. But unlike most science historians, I was never fully steeped in the scientific method as the only way of knowing or viewing natural phenomenon. I was too much of a sixties kid for that. Everything seemed more complex than what I had learned. Perspective seemed up for grabs. So when I was told that science knows no national borders, that scientific knowledge was an accumulation of data and facts that led to somewhere, I naturally felt dis-ease. I thought it quite cool how various practitioners of science in the past had figured things out, how they did whatever they did, but I never took it as a model for action, a model to be employed in some project to make the world a better place or to manufacture additional or new science. In that sens…