2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
writings. This prosoprographical approach will shed light on the kinds of
persons and practices that constituted the “underworld of science” in sixteenth
century Italy.
Mark␣ A. Eddy The University of Oklahoma
Educating the Individual:
Competing Visions of the Self and Calls for Education Reform
American social science witnessed unprecedented institutional growth in the
decades following the Second World War. This expansion of the social sciences
after the war garnered unprecedented public notoriety for individual scientists
and brought some into positions of social authority. In the case of prominent
scientists like the behaviorist psychologist, B. F. Skinner, and the cultural
anthropologist, Margaret Mead, the public role of the ‘scientific social expert’
also allowed for participation in broader political, scientific, and cultural dialogues
concerning contemporary issues in American life. In the 1950s and 60s Skinner
and Mead each developed broad social theories and engaged in ongoing public
debates about the acceleration and expansion of modern life. Rapid change in
postwar America had also engendered cultural and scientific revisions of human
nature and individuality. While Skinner argued for a mechanistic and reductive
approach to human nature, Mead supported a more multidimensional and holistic
interpretation. In my forthcoming paper I will examine some of the ways in
which these contrasting approaches to the ‘self’ were shaped by the expectations
of various public constituencies. Skinner and Mead were particularly outspoken
on the importance of education as a vehicle of social reform. Their respective
views on education reform brought them public notoriety in part because of the
perceived need in the early 1960s for greater military and industrial preparedness
in the era of the Cold War. But the dynamic of popularization in each case was
also influenced by the common realization that the ever-widening gaps between
generations of Americans had rendered traditional techniques of pedagogy,
curriculum structure, and administration in American education obsolete. The
social experience of each new generation had become increasingly different,
and innovative educational methods were needed in order to prepare people for
modern life. In addressing the impact on American education of both Skinner’s
famous technologies of teaching (i.e., teaching machines and programmed
learning) and Mead’s highly publicized critiques of educational methods, I will
also explore the public appropriation of scientific representations of the individual
and their relationship to contemporary trends in American culture during the
1960s and 70s.
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