Speaker
John L Heilbron
(UC Berkeley)
Description
Physicists and, before their existence, natural philosophers and applied mathematicians, made fundamental contributions to the development of the historical sciences as well as to the history of science. That was not mere coincidence: both the historical and experimental sciences had their origins in the Scientific Revolution. I shall give a few Indicators of the parallel rise of the historical and experimental sciences before giving examples of serious contributions to historiography by early modern natural philosophers; of applications of history to epistemology and religious controversy by physicists around 1900; and of support by physicists and their organizations of the study of the history of physics by historians.
