Historiography of science and technology in focus. A discussion with Professor Robert Fox

Fox, Robert; Kokowski, Michał

doi:10.4467/2543702xshs.17.006.7707

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Jones 2016, p. 11. 2 Robert Fox has recently argued that the interwar saw a rapid increase in the cultural importance of scientific achievement for national governments, part of what he calls "a 'national turn' in science. " Fox 2016, p. 75; see also Fox 2017;Fox and Kokowski 2017. imperial legacies, launched mainly by Polish-speaking scholars trained in Habsburg universities operating under German occupation in a space controlled, until recently, by Russia. Steeped as they were in multiple imperial traditions, the intellectuals who formed the Warsaw School of Logic fashioned for themselves a unabashedly Polish identity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The logic of the nation: Nationalism, formal logic, and interwar Poland

Dunning

2018

Stud. Hist. Sci.

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Between the World Wars, a robust research community emerged in the nascent discipline of mathematical logic in Warsaw. Logic in Warsaw grew out of overlapping imperial legacies, launched mainly by Polish-speaking scholars who had trained in Habsburg universities and had come during the First World War to the University of Warsaw, an institution controlled until recently by Russia and reconstructed as Polish under the auspices of German occupation. The intellectuals who formed the Warsaw School of Logic embraced a patriotic Polish identity. Competitive nationalist attitudes were common among interwar scientists – a stance historians have called “Olympic internationalism,” in which nationalism and internationalism interacted as complementary rather than conflicting impulses. One of the School’s leaders, Jan Łukasiewicz, developed a system of notation that he promoted as a universal tool for logical research and communication. A number of his compatriots embraced it, but few logicians outside Poland did; Łukasiewicz’s notation thus inadvertently served as a distinctively national vehicle for his and his colleagues’ output. What he had intended as his most universally applicable invention became instead a respected but provincialized way of writing. Łukasiewicz’s system later spread in an unanticipated form, when postwar computer scientists found aspects of its design practical for working under the specific constraints of machinery; they developed a modified version for programming called “Reverse Polish Notation” (RPN). RPN attained a measure of international currency that Polish notation in logic never had, enjoying a global career in a different discipline outside its namesake country. The ways in which versions of the notation spread, and remained or did not remain “Polish” as they traveled, depended on how readers (whether in mathematical logic or computer science) chose to read it; the production of a nationalized science was inseparable from its international reception.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The logic of the nation: Nationalism, formal logic, and interwar Poland

Dunning

2018

Stud. Hist. Sci.

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Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2020

2020

Isis

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Notes on Usage and Other Resources Usage NotesNaming conventions. Family names are in small caps throughout the bibliography. Articles such as von, de, and della are usually not considered to be part of the last name, but this varies by person, country, and language. Unlike in past issues of the Bibliography, Asian names are given in Western order. Alphabetization is by last name of the individual with primary responsibility for the text.Cross-referencing. Cross-references are indicated with [ref.] throughout. Crossreferences to book reviews are identified by an R before the number, and refer to items in the book review section that follows the classified listing.Indexing of author names. In some instances an item will appear twice, once alone and once as part of an encompassing work (such as a chapter in an edited volume). In those instances, the author index lists only the independent citation.Subject index. The terminology used in the subject index corresponds as closely as possible to terminology already in use either in the old Isis classification system or in one of the companion bibliographies in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine database (see below). New subject index terms are drawn from the Library of Congress where possible. Entirely new terminology is added at the discretion of the bibliographer.Book reviews. In the book review section, reviews are listed alphabetically by author or editor of the book. In the author index, they are listed under the author of the review, but not author of the book.Dissertations. Dissertations have been entered from the information in the electronic database UMI ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, a subscription database. General Note on Classification List of Abbreviations of Journals Cited in this IssueListed here are journals cited in this volume of the bibliography.

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Historiography of science and technology in focus. A discussion with Professor Robert Fox

Abstract: The article is an extended discussion with a laureate of numerous international distinctions, Professor Robert Fox, about his career, intellectual fascinations, as well as changing methods, styles, approaches and themes in the historiography of science and technology.

Cited by 2 publications

References 93 publications

The logic of the nation: Nationalism, formal logic, and interwar Poland

The logic of the nation: Nationalism, formal logic, and interwar Poland

Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2020

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