Response Paper 8 I believe that Pickstones attempt to show that knowledge was mixed with production is, at the very least, interesting. His fourfold approach, while certainly embiggening the scope, may prove overly ambitious. I believe that point 3, while interesting, seems somewhat strange. I am not sure how science, technology, and medicine can be separated into three separate areas. Indeed, they are all highly dependent on one another. Without the advances of science, medicine and technology would not have been possible. Without advances in technology, scientific and medical advance would also have been impossible (e.g. the invention of the telescope or the refinement of spectroscopy). I agree with Pickstone that history of science tends to be overly focused on specific areas, however, and therefore loses sight of the bigger picture. Also, I was completely unaware of Whiggism, which I believe is one of the biggest sins in creating a coherent history of science. Indeed, there are many cases where highly important scientific advances (at the time) are ignored because later developments showed them to be incorrect. A good example of this is Descartes strange, but fascinating, physical system. I am not completely sure what Pickstone is getting at when he talks about natural history. He seems to be criticizing Ranke, but it looks like hes trying to have some sort of combination of microhistory and the Annales School. With regard to analysis, I completely agree with Pickstone. Analysis is often forgotten in modern science, or when it is employed, its all too often ignored. This often will lead physicists, biologists, chemists, etc. to make stupid remarks, such as philosophy is dead. Yet, I would not go so far to say that 19th century science was largely analytical. There was a significant experimental component to science before the 19th century. Also, I take some issue with the language that Pickstone is using here. I dont think that history is necessarily a methodologically reductionist discipline, especially history of science. I would argue that history is more of a bottom-up, emergentist discipline. Events are not ontologically reducible to one or two causes. They emerge from a variety of causes, some of which are very deep and very complex in their own right. I think Pickstones discussion of hermeneutics is fascinating, but I cant help but bring up Skinners objections to it. To some extent, Pickstone is reading into the texts what he expects to find, and Skinner rightfully objects that we cannot know the motivations of the people at the time. Additionally, I believe that Pickstones dismissal of what he terms military STM is somewhat hand-waving. Like it or not, the military has, over the last 500 years, been an unbelievably important part of driving scientific and technological advance. Galileo was brought into the public sphere by military needs. The team working on the Manhattan Project not only built a fearsome weapon, the Manhattan Project also brought the world into the Atomic Age, with all its technological advance. Pickstones note to historians is largely pretty tolerable, but I cant stand Foucault. His thought may have been tangentially important, but the fact is that the world does not strictly revolve around sex. He wasnt wrong about certain things (i.e. the Victorian Ages perversions), but he certainly was far from right on many other topics. His recommendation of Collingwood makes sense, based on the fact that he opens himself up to the same criticisms that Collingwood was subject to as well. I would actually dispute the fact that Protestant (or Catholic) cosmologies see God as distant from nature. While Im attempting to avoid theology, I would argue that both cosmologies saw God as intimately involved with nature, in creatio continua. I would definitely agree that a mechanistic world view began to make science the study of machines, which was coupled with attempts to reduce everything to a machine, in one way or another. Indeed, this is still part of modern biology, due to the fact that, as Sir John Polkinghorne, FRS says, the mechanical discoveries are the easiest ones to make. Non-mechanical ones, like quantum mechanics, are deeply unintuitive. The closing of the chapter, with an attempt to look at public understandings of science, is questionable, though not totally in vain. Public understanding of science is regrettably bad in the US, though Pickstone writes primarily for a British audience.