Conference: The Cultural Alchemy of the Exact Sciences: Revisiting the Forman Thesis, March 2007

Paul Forman’s article “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927” (Forman 1971) permanently changed the disciplinary landscape of the history and philosophy of science. Commonly called the Forman thesis, it profoundly affected the work of a generation of historians and philosophers of physics. As a classic essay in the “externalist” history of science (so the paper is usually read), it contributed just as significantly to the appeal of the new sociology of scientific knowledge. It helped define the cultural history of science that spread through the field in the 1980s and 1990s, and it has been a touchstone for general historians of Germany and continental Europe seeking contact with science. 

To download the article click on the link below:

http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/akojevnikov/FormanAgenda.pdf