Thammasat University students interested in the history of science, technology, development studies, intellectual history, and related subjects may find a new book useful.
Oblivionism: Forgetting and Forgetfulness in Modern Science is an Open Access book available for free download at this link.
Its author, Professor Oliver Dimbath, teaches sociology at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany. The Thammasat University Library collection includes several books about different aspects of forgetting.
Researchers have often discussed how through the history of science, inventions were discovered and then forgotten or overlooked by posterity. So, as an article posted online has observed,
Hero of Alexandria, also known as Heron of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician and engineer most known today for his formula to calculate the area of a triangle. But Heron was an amazing inventor, taking credit among others for the first windwheel, the first vending machine, and even the first steam engine. That’s right, the first steam engine was invented in ancient Greece.
The Heron Engine (also called an aeolipile) was a simple bladeless steam turbine, spinning when the central water container is heated. It produced torque from steam jets exiting the turbine, much like a rocket engine does today. Basically, water was heated in a simple boiler which was connected to the rotating chamber through a pair of pipes that also served as pivots for the chamber. Heron was quite generous and explained how one could make his own aeolipile. However, it wasn’t until 1698 that Thomas Savery patented the first steam engine of 1 horsepower (750 W). It had no piston or moving parts, only taps. Heron’s invention went unnoticed for over 1500 years.
As if that wasn’t enough, he also invented a vending machine, as described in his book “Mechanics and Optics”; a coin was introduced via a slot on the top of the machine and a fixed amount of holy water was dispensed. He also invented the first windwheel and consequently the first wind-powered organ, a programmable cart powered by a falling weight and created by himself an entirely mechanical play almost ten minutes in length, powered by a binary-like system of ropes, knots, and simple machines operated by a rotating cylindrical cogwheel. Many of his inventions were praised and immediately adopted but others, like the steam engine, were forgotten for centuries.
Professor Dimbath writes in his book’s Introduction:
In 1759, French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopaedist Jean Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert stated in a critique of the academic eulogy how eulogies on princes were fundamentally different from eulogies on scholars. Princes, he said, were much more praised during their lifetime than after their death, whereas scholars were criticised, sometimes even forgotten, during their lifetime and praised only after having deceased.
Indications that scientific insights and their originators have been forgotten can be found at many places. For example, we may say that a formerly influential scientist has been completely forgotten in our days, perhaps because his work was not really “sustainable”. In such cases, oblivion appears as a process of “cleaning” the sciences, that is, separating the wheat from the chaff. As another reason, we may refer to the coming and going of scientific paradigms: some research perspectives are pursued, others are not. This does not mean that the work was of inferior quality, but it may simply be due to the stream of scientific progress taking a different course and due to formerly promising orientations suddenly turning into backwaters.
One example of such a kind of oblivion, which is rather popular among science historians, is the fate of heredity researcher Gregor Mendel. In the solitude of his monastery, this Augustinian Father and amateur researcher had created perfect conditions for his experiments and is today considered a pioneer of modern genetics. His discoveries were indeed published but hardly acknowledged during his lifetime; after his death, they were forgotten – even among scientists. Only thirty years later, two research teams working independently of each other achieved similar results and discovered Mendel’s works in the course of their research. Since then, Mendel has been considered an example of the Briar Rose phenomenon. His work was a sleeping beauty hidden in the thorn bush, waiting for the prince to kiss her awake. Why such an important pioneer could fall into oblivion has been the subject of different explanations by the history of the sciences. They reach from statements such as “it was a good idea, but the time was not ripe” as far as to conspiracy theories about machinations by the monks of his Augustinian abbey. Considerations on the influence of social and political circumstances, such as power structures and thus attention structures of the scientific discourse of those days, compete with presumptions according to which this must have been due to more or less controlled processes of wanting to forget and making forget.
As demonstrated by the Mendel case, there are kinds of oblivion among the sciences, which are obstacles to progress or the gain of knowledge. On the one hand, such a kind of oblivion seems to be dysfunctional; indeed, several institutional mechanisms are meant to prevent such ways of losing knowledge. On the other hand, oblivion is described as being functional. To maintain the stock of knowledge, revising and discarding redundant or obsolete knowledge or knowledge that is neither original nor unique is necessary. One example of such a kind of oblivion revision is the sociological diagnosis of time. Although publications belonging to this genre have sometimes been very important at the interface of science and the public, their “half-life” is comparably short. This is not only because they discuss the societal present, which is particularly momentary. Sometimes, it is also a result of arguing and presenting a topic based on the scientific spirit of the time, which becomes unfashionable…
The falling into oblivion of Mendel and the historically-oriented diagnosticians of time produces similar results: in both cases, the knowledge produced by them was – at least temporarily – lost because one did not make use of it, because one did not believe to need it. Whereas such a kind of oblivion is obvious, the reasons these works lost their significance must be left to further research. In Mendel’s case, one can presume that he was ignored because of his role as an amateur researcher and outsider. Accordingly, there are presumptions according to which Mendel never developed “professional” publication strategies for his discoveries. Others believe that being an amateur researcher, he was mostly ignored by the scientific community of his time. On the one hand, the fact that the diagnosticians of time fell into oblivion is said to be due to outmoded attitudes (racism); however, this explains their falling into oblivion only from today’s point of view. On the other hand, there are indications of a change of perspective regarding the construction of historical knowledge, which made these texts look outmoded already at their time. The sciences are capable of ignoring false knowledge from a certain point of time onwards and forgetting every trace of it; also, any decision about truth or falsehood is always only possible among – and thus from the point of view of – the sciences’ respective present.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)