3_04 Roland Wittje - Relocating Education in the History of Science and Technology

To accompany the 50th Anniversary special edition of the History of Education Journal, we spoke to some of the contributors.  These podcasts focus on two of the themes in the journal:
Geographical historiographies of education and
Thematic intersections with the history of education.
Episode 4 - Intersections: Histories of Science and Technology
In this episode, Roland Wittje, Associate Professor in History of Science and Technology, IIT Madras illuminates his unique perspective on histories of science and technology and science education, developed through his own early training as a scientist and a passion for the value of material cultures in the history of education .  You can find out more in his article, Relocating education in the history of science and technology.
Themes include material cultures, science education, transnational education, textbooks.
Recorded in conversation with Michael Donnay in 2022 and produced by Syeda Ali, May 2023.

Transcript

MD  00:00

Welcome, Roland, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. 

RW  00:04

Yeah. Thanks, Michael.

MD  00:05

 So I think maybe to begin, can you just summarise briefly the sort of main focus of your article, and maybe talk a little bit about the current state of history of science and history of technology historiography?  Okay. The reason why I wrote this paper, this paper actually goes back to a talk that I was invited to in Brazil, actually at the museum for the history of astronomy and sciences in Rio de Janeiro. And I was asked to talk about the history of education and its relationship to the history of science, and also specifically, they were collecting instruments from the history of education from various institutions in Brazil.  And what I felt here was that there was a specific gap between the history of science and the history of education, and even even the people I was talking to that saw kind of the history of education separate from the history of science. And I feel actually very strongly about that I've been throughout my career as a historian of science, being quite interested in education. And I think that education or specifically science, science, and technology, education is an integral part of the history of science and the history of technology.  So this article, one of one of the aims of this article was really to put the History of Science and Technology 
Education in the centre of the history of science. And even though there have been several calls here to do that, right, like, and some people are saying, Oh, this probably hasn't really been done in the past, but now we have we have gotten there, I still think that there is not really a substantial push into looking at specifically formal education in history of science and technology.  So if you see history of science, specifically history of science, in recent years, there has been a call for increasing or let's say broadening the scope of history of science towards the public. So there's been a lot of attention towards science in the ..  so science and the pub, for example, also, amateur societies, for example, amateur botany and all this,  

But still, I mean, the most important part here I really see is if we talk about the scientific community, and the public is really schooling, right, like education. So I really felt the need to put to put education really in the centre right, like if we talk about the intersection of the interplay between science and society, I feel that education is a central aspect of that.  And that has to be in the Centre for, for the History of Science and Technology. And obviously, there is some more some other aspects which we can probably pick up during our conversation.  One of them specifically since I prepared this paper or conference at a museum, I'm I'm very much interested in material culture of science and material culture of science and technology. And that is also very important, and also very central. If you think about education, right? Like, obviously, we can think about textbooks, but specifically science and technology, education is much more than about textbooks. And even if you talk about textbooks, that we really have to look into practices, so practices are obviously very important both in relation to textbooks, but also in relation to the material culture of science education. 

RW  03:46

One very important aspect which I'm which, which I'm also very, very concerned about is there is this traditionally, if historians of science, have been thinking about education, they have mainly been looking at education in terms of the reproduction of the scientific community. So if you read for example, Thomas Kuhn, but also an older older works like Ludwig Fleck education plays an important role in the reproduction of the scientific community. But what we forget if we, if we focus really on the sign, the scientific community is that almost all science teaching in the educational sector is actually not about the reproduction of the scientific community, but it's really about teaching science to people who are not becoming scientists themselves. So why why are we doing this?  The question certainly is why are we doing this and what does this do to society right like that we basically think that everybody needs to be taught science. Everybody needs to know something and science and that science is is a part for everybody in the school curriculum, for example.  Yeah, and finally also me having moved away from from Europe, having moved to India and a teaching history of science and technology in India, you still see how Eurocentric our understanding of history of science and technology education really is. And obviously, there's a large scope of understanding science and technology, education, both in its local context all over the world. But also looking at this in a much more global understanding of history of science and technology and the role that education plays in the history of science.

MD  05:39

Well, I think you've planted a lot of really great seeds there. And I'm sure we're going to pick up a couple of them in the conversation. Before we jump too deeply into the calls for how you'd like to see the historiography shift. I was wondering if there are any examples, sort of, of current works or scholarship that you think does a good job of connecting the history of science with the history of education, if people would sort of be looking for examples of how this is being done? 

RW  06:03

And what actually I don't really see even though Yeah, for example, in James Seacourt's knowledge in transit, you have a call for looking really at the role of education for, you can say, the circulation of science and technology, I still think I wouldn't say that there is anything specific of more recent historiography and science and technology that has focused more on schools, right. Well, at the moment, and what is actually interesting is, we always think, Okay, this is kind of like something that's going to happen, there's actually some old examples, we can go back to the 70s and 1970s and 1980s. Already, when people, when historians of science have picked up on the history of education, I would like to point out, for example, Catherine Alescoe's work on 19th century physics teaching both in Germany both on the school and on the university level, and also some of her history, graphical work and her calls. Then also the Deborah Warner at the at the Smithsonian Institution, for example. She has published some very interesting articles on specifically on scientific instruments and the material culture of science and science, education, and the very important role that education really plays in the history of science, Sally Halstead's work that's work that will be also specifically picking up on school science, because as I said, a lot of a lot of the scholars, they really don't pick up on school science importance, her call, that she already, she already called for this in the 80s. Andrew Warwick's masters of theory certainly, is a very interesting book in that in that context. So I would say the calls have been made already many, many years ago.  Like, I would like to say something about that, as well, as, as I said, there have been a lot of works on on the history of science and the public and on these kinds of new places. But still, schools are not really very sexy, I would say, right, like there is really there's really this, this this problem that school pedagogy and teaching really doesn't have a high status among academics or in in universities. Right. And and historians of pedagogy have also pointed this out, right like that. There's actually even though everybody would say school, obviously, school is very important, right, like, but there is a there's a certain reluctance to engage with right like, and people don't find that kind of very excited, even though I would say it's, it's tremendously important to understand the development, the spirit, the circulation of science and technology.

MD  08:42

I think for this podcast audience, you would not have to convince them too hard that school is really important.

RW  08:49

Yes, yes, yes. But I would say among historians of science and technology and academics in general, there is also they don't, it's still right, like there is there is a reluctance really to engage with it. Because it also affects they think about their careers, for example, the kind of books they're gonna write, like, if they're gonna write about schools, it's probably not going to take them that far, right, like that thinking about, Okay, what, what is my endeavour? What is my research in the history of science and about that, there's still still still a reluctance to engage too much with formal formal education and make history of science and technology, or specifically history of science as a history of research.

MD  09:32

Oh, great. Well, I think that's a really good lead in to the specific calls for change that you're making in your article. And I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't read it. So we won't go through all four of them now, but would love to start with the one that you mentioned a couple of minutes ago, which is this focus on material culture, and was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on that call to place material culture at the centre of the history of science and technology, education, and then also for historians who might not be so familiar working with material culture? What sort of different requirements are there when you're working with material culture as opposed to texts? Like textbooks, for example?

RW  10:10

Yeah, I mean, material culture has been very much at the centre, even though it was not called material culture. But then obviously, it's one of the buzzwords that has really come up in, in, in recent decades. So when I really started out as historian of science, my background is actually in physics. So when I moved to, to the history of science, actually at the University of Oldenburg, in a group that was dealing with teacher education, so it was, it's kind of very interesting, even though I don't really come from Teacher Education myself that the work at the at the University are on board with Paul Gries, who is retired now. And we did replicate what we call replication or redoing historical experiments in the laboratory.  So my engagement with history of science really started very much with an engagement with objects with instruments, right, like using instruments in my, in my own work in with history of science. So when you look at, let's say, museums, right, like and if you look at museum collections, historical collections of the big museums, but also University museums, smaller museums, many of them actually have a background from education from teaching, right? Like and if you walk around in, in schools and in colleges, right, like you find all these, all these collections, and they can be scientific instruments. But obviously, that's not limited to scientific instruments at all right? Like there is if you have bollock biology, for example, right? Like you have stuffed animals, you have herbarium in chemistry, you you do chemical experiments. So even though a lot of the science education actually happens with in engaging with textbooks, a lot of it also happens in laboratories, right? Like a lot of it happens in demonstrations by the teachers, right?  Like, and also, if you go through history, it's right, like a for example, in Science Teaching demonstration. Look, lectures have been very, very essential. And also, if you, if you talk to people, what do you actually remember from your science teaching? A lot of times these things come up, right, like and not the textbook. So there have been there have been some studies, or actually, there have been quite a few studies on history of education through textbooks, right, like, and then people have been looking at historical textbooks and also see why methodologically this is, this is chosen, this path is chosen, right? Like because of a lot of the other questions, you really have a hard time to answer, right? Like, how have things been used? But I'm hopeful I'm, I'm a little bit sceptical to, like rely on too much on textbooks, if you think about a science education, because you really have to understand how have these textbooks actually been used in science education, right? Like, where these actually central to science and technology?  And then you find out a lot of times, you really have to go into the practice, right? Like, how, how has this actually happened? So obviously, a few if you coming back to your question, how have objects been used? Right? It's, it's really a combination of different kinds of sources, right? It's, you can you can look at the, the objects, and you can engage with the objects, but it's also a very useful to engage with objects in connection with textbooks, for example, right, like and with other kinds of sources with interviews, obviously, depends on which time period we are looking at, but I find it I find it specifically fruitful to use different kinds of methodologies and different kinds of sources, complementary, right, by having having either interviewing people or looking at cons of teaching together with textbooks together with the kids.

MD  14:01

Yeah, I mean, having grown up in a house with scientists, the only thing I remember from sort of learning about science, when I'm young was playing with instruments doing experiments for retained almost nothing of the sort of factual knowledge I was supposed to take away from that. Well, then, so moving on to this to the other call you make, which is this call to provincial eyes Europe to expand beyond sort of a North American and European history of science education, and looking at other places in the world. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on that and maybe talk a little bit about how a transnational perspective nuances or enhances our understanding of these histories.

RW  14:40

... this has been broadening our understanding of science and technology or science, technology and society beyond the run Europe and North America is very much been has been very much at the centre of history of science and technology in recent In decades, but I really see that education again, has not really, even though education has been central to that, right like schooling, and changes in schooling and training has been central to that, to that endeavour, it has not been central to our histories or to our historiography, and even though a lot of it has been written about so I can can mainly talk about India, right, like, where you actually have quite a few histories on a specifically on technical education, and also the social context, specifically in India, the caste context, for example, and in binaries and education, because of the cost context, like being like the manual, and the theoretical, right, like the manual and the hand and the brain, for example, these are not historians of science and technology, right?  Like, they usually come from, from general history or from other backgrounds. So like, for example, my own engagement with post colonial history of science and technology, and specifically, I've been looking at the history of my own institution, IIT Madras, which was set up as an indo German collaboration in the post independence period, you'll see that, for example, a lot of these engagements, right, like, we're actually connected to science, teaching, and also to technical training, right, and that there was a lot of engagement and a lot of spread through these kinds of activities. But still, they're not very central. I mean, if you look at the kind of work, of course, postcolonial and science and and technology, a teaching and training is, again, not necessarily Central, even even though if you look into the different kinds of projects, they usually always had components of a teaching and training.  And one of the the issues that I find specifically important is to look at, to overcome a certain certain binaries, which we also have in our historiographies, of what has been called the West and the non West, or the global north and the global South, right, like specifically overcoming binaries between, as I said, the hand and the mind, the quote, unquote, the West and the non West, the traditional and the modern, right, like and rather see, okay, if there are ruptures, we have to talk about the rupture risk, but we also have to talk about the continuity. So what does actually what happens actually, to knowledge when it moves, right, like and how it's getting transformed, becomes into different kinds of contexts, right. So this also this kind of understanding, for example, that quote unquote, western systems of education have been moved to places like India, right, like, but then if you really look at science and technology, education in India, it's not even though there has been obviously these kind of models that have been transferred there. But a place like the Indian Institute of Technology, it's not a German Institute of Technology. It's not a German Technical University. Right. So what has actually happened to these institutions and to the kinds of knowledge and these kinds of regimes that have been that have come to India, right, like they have mixed and mingled with local practices, and obviously also interacted with the social structure in the places where they came, right, like, so? I think there is a lot to be learned there, right? In terms of how, how knowledge really travels, right? Like and how knowledge really transforms both scientific and technological knowledge.

MD  18:37

... sort of leaving the article specifically, but staying a bit with something you mentioned earlier with your background in physics. I'm curious what your thoughts are on this idea of whether historians of science need to have trained as scientists and the reason I'm sort of interested in it is I was once at a conference with a bunch of military historians, and one of them was arguing that to be a good military historian, you need to have served and there's something about those cultures that are otherwise impenetrable. And I was wondering if you sort of thought that argument held for history of science, or do you think it doesn't?

RW  19:10

It's certainly not, um, certainly, you don't have to be a star. You don't have to be a scientist, even though traditionally that was mainly the case, right? Like it would, I would say, at least until the turn of the millennium, right. Most of the historians, specifically the historians of physics, metaphysics, but actually, I would even say the opposite. I mean, what we really need is a lot of different kinds of perspectives on education. So having a background in physics obviously gives you a very certain kind of background to think about science, but what is also the case for all these people who come from science to to be historian of science, you can have to unlearn as well right?  Like you have to de train because it gives you a certain perspective with which you're looking at things but it excludes other perspective. I would say yes or no I would say helps you for certain things, but it makes it more difficult in other person straight because you have a certain training that already gives you a certain perspective on on that discipline. Like I learned this very much in the beginning also how much being a scientist can actually be a hinder, right?  Like, a lot of very, very good historians of science with no backgrounds from science, right, like and bringing in other perspectives, which are which actually great, right? So, absolutely not few, for example, if you want to engage with topics like the history of quantum mechanics, right, like, you might find it very abstract and very difficult. If you don't have if you don't already have a background.

MD  20:43

Well, that is a very nuanced very historian answer to that question. I appreciate that.

RW  20:49

It's not it's not really diplomatic. It's really my it's really my conviction, right?  Let's say, in the old days, in the last millennium, right? Like, we would have this division between what was called an internal list and an external list perspective in history of science, right? Like, even though, everybody would agree that we are beyond these terms, right. And we don't write specific internalist or externalist, at least most people don't write specifically internalist or externalist. But more a combination of both right, and internalist approaches, obviously, usually, usually carried by people who have a background.

MD  21:43

Well, I think the last question, before we talk about your current research is one that I asked all of our guests. And I think, in a way, your article sort of answers it, but I'll ask it anyway, in case there's anything else you want to add? Which is this question about? Have you learned anything from this research, whether it's a lens of analysis, or the way to frame a particular research question that you think would be helpful for other historians of education to know, and I know, in a sense, the entire article is a set of, you know, frames and analysis for other historians of education. But whether there's something not in the article or something that we haven't gotten to talk about, that you'd like to mention for other historians to think about.

RW  22:22

Where I'm coming from, which is really from from the material culture, from the collections. There are a lot of school museums around I guess, and there's a lot of historians of education, who come from the school museums, but I find it very interesting to come through the material culture and practice angle. I don't know whether that is very helpful to historians of education. I think what is very, very important is to move beyond institutions.  And I think it's very interesting to look at education from a level of epistemology, probably, and also looking at educational places ...  I mean, I already said this, right, like a lot of historians of science, look at educational places, as places for reproduction, and not for the production of new knowledge. But again, I think I with a lot of educational communities, I'm talking to the converter to say that schools are not only even though obviously, there are places for reproduction, but they're also places for the creation of what I find. Very interesting. Also, specifically think about technological knowledge, right? Like, that's the kind of knowledge that is taught in school, right? Or is taught in technical education, even though it is scientific knowledge, it kind of has a different kind of epistemology, of from the kind of knowledge that is taught at universities   right, like, and a lot of scientists, even though in a certain way, they might know about that, right? Like, so my example would be, for example, the electrician, right? If you if you have a scientist, a scientist or physicist would always say, Look, you have Maxwell's equations, and they carry everything about what you need to know about electromagnetism. Right? Like obviously, if you train an electrician, you teach a lot of knowledge about electromagnetism, which is its scientific knowledge, right? But you're not teach that electricity, electrician, the the Maxwell equations, right, like you would teach, you would use you would use other forms of representation of electromagnetism, right, which are much more useful if you want to put up electrical circuits. So I think that that is that is actually very, very interesting, right? Like also for me as a as a historian of science, so that it's not like linear. I mean, all these linear models of science and the public have to be deconstructed anyway, but also to see that actually the kind of knowledge that you teach to other communities right like which are not necessarily scientific communities, that also gets transformed right like But when it's kind of mobilised in other communities in other sections of the public, right, like, obviously scientists are also part of the public. Right, like, so when it moves also there, right, like through formal training that, that, that it really gets to us.

MD  25:14

I think that's a, that's a really helpful example for thinking about that. So thank you. And I think our last question to wrap things up, is, can you talk a little bit about your current research? Is there anything you're working on right now that you're really excited about?

RW  25:27

Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm working right now on on the exchanges of technical and scientific knowledge, the trans transnational exchange and circulation of technical and scientific knowledge. After a 1945 for for Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union, that's like the Cold War, right. But for countries like India, or African countries, the decolonization period, so I'm looking into into these kinds of regimes for which my own institution, IIT, Madras is, is a very good example. But you also have a lot of other projects. The projects that I'm involved is the modernization of fisheries in India, it's specifically in southern India. So there was a Norwegian collaboration in modern is modernising fishing and introducing trawlers in introducing freezing technologies. And people have been looking into these but all these kind of transnational projects in in modernization in in taking, specifically knowledge from Europe and North America to countries which are considered to be like the global south. And even though I'm I have to admit, I'm not too comfortable with these terms. They're all they're all contained aspects of education and training, right, or training and education were actually central to moving these bits of knowledge and these practices and they haven't really been studied so far, right? Like in these in these histories of transnational exchange, aspects of teaching and training have actually been underwritten. So that that I find actually very interesting. And as I said, what happens to the knowledge?

MD  27:23

Well, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate you sharing a bit about the article and a bit about your research. And just want to thank you again, for taking the time to share with us.

RW  27:34

Thank you very much for interviewing me