In its application of the scientific methods, aims of comparative philology, and coordination among thousands of contributors spread around the globe, the production of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was a remarkable organizational endeavor and an early model of large-scale collaborative knowledge production. Begun in 1857 and ending in 1928, the story of the dictionary’s making provides not only a glimpse into varied visions of intersubjective science at the time, but also the viable contingencies of their enactment. I argue that in order to smooth coordination among a heterogeneous set of actors, the organization of the dictionary’s production relied on standardized procedure and circuits of corroboration and deliberation. This set of strategies presents an organizational parallel to the procedural techniques and technologies increasingly called upon in the 19th century to mediate scientific observations and negate individual idiosyncrasies. However, the case also shows that appeals to impersonal procedure were rhetorically leveraged to establish legitimacy and attain resources. It can thus provide clues as to why a procedural sense of objectivity became elevated as an epistemic virtue and can also contribute to a more refined understanding of when and why appeals to impersonal procedure trump the trained judgment of expertise.
ArgumentBetween 1838 and 1863 the Grimm brothers led a collaborative research project to create a new kind of dictionary documenting the history of the German language. They imagined the work would present a scientific account of linguistic cohesiveness and strengthen German unity. However, their dictionary volumes (most of which were arranged and written by Jacob Grimm) would be variously criticized for their idiosyncratic character and ultimately seen as a poor, and even prejudicial, piece of scholarship. This paper argues that such criticisms may reflect a misunderstanding of the dictionary. I claim it can be best understood as an artifact of romanticist science and its epistemological privileging of subjective perception coupled with a deeply-held faith in inter-subjective congruence. Thus situated, it is a rare and detailed case of Romantic ideas and ideals applied to the scientific study of social artifacts. Moreover, the dictionary's organization, reception, and legacy provide insights into the changing landscape of scientific practice in Germany, showcasing the difficulties of implementing a romanticist vision of science amidst widening gaps between the public and professionals, generalists and specialists.
This article assesses outcomes among students who pursued faculty-mentored research in those fields and concurrently participated in programs administered through UCLA’s Undergraduate Research Center for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. Compared to a quasi-control group of nonresearch students, the research students reported statistically significant better outcomes on average in attaining several of the skills sought by today’s employers.
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