Yesterday’s comments still weren’t finished. What I wrote yesterday was that research in the history of scientific instruments can be positioned as “artifact biographies,” in which meaning is formed around the artifact itself. But that does not mean that, beyond this intrinsic meaning, research in the history of instruments has no other benefits.
We can also make an analogy with biographical research. Unlike general academic research, biographical works as the outcome of research on individuals often lie somewhere between scholarship and popularization. Apart from non-academic biographical literature, research-based biographies also tend to have a popularizing dimension, making them easier for general readers to read.
Between intervening in academic issues and satisfying entertainment and leisure, biographies, like general histories, also carry another layer of educational significance.
In the case of biographies of scientists, one significance that readily comes to mind is the dissemination of the “scientific spirit.” “Spirit” is not “principles,” “rules,” “methods,” or “regulations”; it is very difficult to summarize through specific textual content. “Spirit” is a metaphor with a sense of personality and wholeness, and what most easily displays “spirit” is “personality.” Through the presentation of a scientist’s independent personality, what is called the scientific spirit is thereby conveyed. Of course, as I said earlier, “exception” is also a characteristic of personal independence; real people do not necessarily always satisfy our imagination of “spirit,” but such willful deviations can also be seen as enriching “spirit.” Honestly recording these deviations may instead make “spirit” appear vivid and lively, no longer rigid and dogmatic.
The history of instruments can also play a similar educational role. In a certain sense, the history of instruments, combined with the display of instruments, can carry richer educational significance in science.
On the one hand, the history of instruments contains the history of people: around a single instrument, the inventors, improvers, producers, operators, and maintainers behind it can all step onto the stage. Moreover, the way scientific figures are brought into instrument history naturally breaks through the traditional heroic narrative centered on elite scientists, linking scientists with engineers, experimenters, inventors, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people. In the relationship between people and instruments, we can see many precious spirits: free pursuit of knowledge, arduous struggle, courage in innovation, and so on.
On the other hand, the history of instruments also contains the “internal history” of science. Instruments connect different scientific theories with scientific experiments, engineering techniques, and other links, through which we can see the concepts, methods, and practices of scientific research. The way scientific content is brought into instrument history also naturally breaks through the traditional theory-centered, theory-prior narrative, and instead centers practice, often making it especially possible to embody the characteristics of local knowledge.
Of course, the characteristics above mutually construct one another. Last time I already said that the history of instruments should be seen more as an application of existing historiography: anti-Whiggism, anti-heroism, philosophy of practice, local knowledge, and so on are all developments already present in historiography. These historiographical approaches ultimately converge in the instrument. But this “convergence” is not entirely the active behavior of theorists; more importantly, the instrument itself seems to be issuing an “invitation” to such convergence. It is not only that historians actively implement their historiographical programs in the history of instruments; in a certain sense, instruments themselves “actively” attract these historiographical programs.
Starting from a theory-prior historiography, when faced with instruments one often feels a force of repulsion; theorists would rather search for drawings and descriptions of principles than confront the instrument directly. But starting from a historiography that values practice, one is often more likely to feel the attraction of instruments. Instruments do not speak, but through this kind of “invitation” they create their own discursive space.
Thus, as a medium for science communication or science education, instruments can convey a more full-bodied image of science—one that simultaneously contains multiple dimensions such as scientific theory, scientific method, scientific practice, and the scientific spirit.
Instruments are reproducible. Of course, an instrument as a cultural relic, saturated with history, cannot be reproduced; but insofar as it is a scientific instrument, it is reproducible. “Galileo’s telescope” cannot be reproduced, but a “Galilean telescope” can be restored and reproduced. If it were not reproducible, then it would not be a “scientific instrument” at all. Scientific instruments are made to meet the demands of scientific experiments, and the first requirement of scientific experiments is reproducibility.
This reproducibility is precisely more conducive to science education, because it provides more people with the opportunity to reconstruct historical scenes. A replica or restored version of a scientific instrument, on the one hand, still remains connected to its historical setting; but on the other hand, it is not only something to admire and handle—it can also be operated directly.
The possibility of hands-on operation makes up for the gap between a replica and the original, greatly narrowing the distance between the viewer and the historical context. In operational practice, we can personally experience the way scientific activities were carried out in history.
Whether it is the curiosity of free pursuit of knowledge or the fighting spirit forged under arduous conditions, hands-on operation and personal experience can both better facilitate the transmission of “spirit.” At the same time, such hands-on practice is also more conducive for students to grasp research methods and the process of innovation.
Just the other day there happened to be a report saying that a team achievement from a CAS laboratory was taken by one member’s son to participate in a science-and-technology competition for middle school students, where it won “third prize in the 30th National Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition.” This is of course extremely ironic, and things like this have not been rare in recent years. All kinds of science and technology innovation competitions for middle school students, and even elementary school students, have proliferated, degenerating into contests in which students compete in family background and schools compete in financial resources. Middle school laboratories are built at a cost often reaching the tens of millions, while a CAS team’s achievement, when handed to middle school students, only wins third prize. Is this kind of situation really beneficial to innovation education? I think not necessarily.
The mission of middle school students is to study; it is not yet the time to create. What middle school students should learn is the spirit and method of innovation, not directly use the most advanced equipment to carry out cutting-edge scientific research. Even if a very small number of privileged middle school students really can participate in frontier innovation, such activities are not worth promoting or emulating.
In my view, if one truly wants middle school students to cultivate practical hands-on scientific-research ability, then rather than having top scientists guide them in operating the most advanced instruments, it would be better to have historians of science guide them in operating obsolete instruments. Obsolete instruments are not conducive to producing the most cutting-edge research results, but at the level of cultivating research awareness and experimental methods, they are in no way inferior, and may even be more suitable than high-end, state-of-the-art new instruments. While operating obsolete instruments, if one supplements this with education in the history of science and technology, then spiritual cultivation, accumulation of knowledge, and practical ability are naturally fused into a single educational framework.
At a recent group meeting, I also mentioned that promoting this kind of instrument-history integrated education in primary and secondary schools may also help national technological independence (avoiding bottlenecks). The key to a “bottleneck” often does not lie in our inability to obtain the most advanced theoretical knowledge (which is basically open), but in our lack of foundational instruments and equipment for independent research and production. But here there is a paradox: the promotion of basic science instead leads to the backwardness of basic instruments—if we want to ensure that our basic scientific research keeps pace with the times and catches up with the international frontier, then we need to ensure that we are using instruments as advanced as possible. And once instruments produced overseas become more precise than domestically produced ones, we are forced to use their instruments for R&D; otherwise it is tantamount to binding our own hands. But if domestically produced, backward instruments are sold, who will use them? If no one chooses these instruments, then there is no motivation to produce them, and ultimately no motivation to research and improve them, which in the end leads to the gap in instruments continuing to widen.
The gap is hard to make up overnight. To promote the production of independent instruments, one approach is first to ensure that even backward instruments have a market, and then gradually improve them while guaranteeing economic incentives. And this market, apart from frontline researchers, includes a large share in the field of science and technology innovation for primary and secondary schools. Of course, the premise is to kill off the vicious internal competition that currently allows only CAS achievements to win third prize, and to orient not toward competing over the high-end sophistication of research results, but toward the goal of an education integrated with the history of science and technology.
Of course, solving the bottleneck problem is only an extra bonus mentioned in passing. In any case, I believe that science-and-technology-history integrated education centered on instruments is an educational model suitable for promotion in primary and secondary schools.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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