BJHS Volume 59 Issue 3

We’re delighted that the next issue of the BJHS is now available. 

 

This issue is a Special Issue, guest-edited by Matthias Heymann and Dania Achermann, on the epistemology and politics of climate science. Historians of science have demonstrated the many ways in which science and politics are interrelated; how the production of scientific knowledge, the organisation of research, and the application of science and technology are deeply intertwined with structures of power and governance.

The editors’ introduction and six research articles explore the ways in which climate science, as an exemplary case, demonstrates the political qualities of science and the diversity of entanglements of science and politics in a range of different research domains across the globe. Fiona Williamson, for example, examines how meteorology in Malaya and Singapore from 1940 to 1960 was fundamentally shaped by war, occupation and colonial military priorities, serving colonial interests rather than addressing local civilian concerns. Lucie Gerber explores the postwar politics of French scientists who lobbied for and pursued big tech approaches to modernize plant production and agricultural productivity in France and colonial North Africa with a controlled-climate laboratory. Dania Achermann traces the regional political and cultural contexts in the shaping of ice core palaeoclimatology and climate science in a radiocarbon laboratory in Switzerland. Matthias Heymann investigates the origins of the Global Atmospheric Research Program during the 1960s and the different types of politics involved in its establishment and organization. Robert Naylor and Eleanor Shaw show that journal editors played a crucial and under-appreciated role in shaping how early climate change was discussed in public and scientific media in the 1970s. Finally, Carolina Granado examines the role of Bert Bolin, the first chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in shaping the politics of IPCC assessments and communication. These cases show how epistemology and politics of climate science are linked and interact in many diverse, sometimes neglected, sometimes overlooked ways that deserve more attention. 

 

As usual, the issue concludes with our book reviews section, now in the more than capable hands of Emily Webster. Happy reading!

 

Adam and Amanda