RIVALS

A short, lucid history of efforts by scientists to work together.

Daston, director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, writes that modern science began about 400 years ago. Before then, scholars believed that everything worth knowing was already known; their goal was to discover it—in writing by such esteemed thinkers as Ptolemy, Pliny, Aristotle, and Confucius—and pass it on. Beginning with the British Royal Society in 1660, individuals organized to investigate the natural world and exchange information. Members corresponded widely and hosted scientists from other countries, but these were largely national groups, patronized by their rulers. Scholars call this collective the Republic of Letters, the first of three periods Daston identifies. She maintains that it was the first scientific community to attempt to balance competition and cooperation in a quest for knowledge. In the end, “the Republic of Letters was more like a state of nature than a state”—peaceful when little was at stake, quarrelsome and disorganized when faced with complex projects. Daston delivers an amusing account of the 1761 and 1769 expeditions to observe the transit of Venus. Astronomers traveled the world, but these efforts lacked coordination, and the results were worthless. Thanks to the telegraph and steamships, matters improved in the 19th century, when innumerable international scientific congresses convened, leading to extensive collaboration and standardization but less material progress because these were mostly independent of governments and short of money. For better or worse, a genuine international scientific community emerged after World War II, when governments took an interest. With maddening unpredictability, they “helped and hindered scientific collaborations ….happy to bankroll them in the name of national glory, but just as happy to wreck them in the name of national security or frugality or simple indifference.”

An entertaining account of the development of scientific collaboration.