Australian Science in the Making

By: Home, R. W.

Revised

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521396409
• ISBN13: 9780521396400
• Release Date: September 1990
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 444 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.4" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

A tribute to Australian science

The essays in this collection convey the impression of immense energy and industry. Clearly many people are hard at work in the archives preparing the way for future research programmes in the history of Australian science and technology. The notes average a hundred per paper, making this book an excellent starting point for further reading. The aim of the collection is to "open windows on to various aspects of Australia's scientific past". It contains three chapters on the early days, five on science in a colonial society and seven on the passage to modernity. The papers in the first section treat the cosmology of the Aborigines, the French scientific expedition to Tasmania in 1802 and the difficult circumstances for the life of the mind in the early years of the colony. The "colonial science" papers cover the "long arm of London", the factors contributing to the growth of science up to 1900, the activities of the botanist Baron von Mueller of the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, a colonial echo of the great debate over the gorillas in our family tree, and the early employment of chemists for industrial research in the Colonial Sugar Refining company. The third section has chapters on radiotherapy for cancer, the mobilisation of science during World War Two, medical science, plant introduction, early radio astronomy, recent progress in general astronomy and the modern history of the advisory bodies which contribute to science policy.Two matters cause concern, one of which is external to the book, the other internal. First, will the book find an adequate readership? This question concerns the state of affairs in 'the house of intellect' as Barzun called it, in a book of the same name. He noted that millions are now literate, hundreds of thousands have higher education but it becomes harder to find a few tens of thousands to attend to intellectual matters. This problem is reflected in the meagre circulation of Search (under 4,000) which should be the leading Australian forum for discussion of the issues raised in this book.The internal problem is one of theoretical development, namely the shortage of powerful theories to focus attention on significant details, to reveal unexpected connections and to open up new problems. Similarly there are too few common themes to link disparate studies and provide threads of continuity amidst the wealth of information and interesting stories. One theme which does surface regularly is the dearth of privately funded research in this country. Another is the failure of secondary industry to take advantage of local scientific expertise and mount effective research and development programmes. "Though Australian science has attained a high level of achievement, Australian industry has failed to keep pace...[firms] limit their horizons to import-replacement manufacturing rather than looking to export markets".This may be contrasted with the relatively vigorous science-based industrial activity of the 1880s referred to on p