Commentators have often complained about specialization in the history of science. This essay discusses recent intellectual trends within our discipline in the light of significant changes in graduate training: both a relatively recent consensus as to the types of sources that are appropriate to analyze in a dissertation and the tremendous growth in the number of new dissertations completed each year in our field. It suggests that this kind of focus on pedagogical concerns provides useful analytic tools for historians investigating (...) other fields in various times and places. (shrink)

In this fascinating study, the author analyzes the conceptual roots of molecular biology and the social matrix in which it was developed.