Introduction: Science,Technology,& Human Values at Fifty

A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost.

(Alfred North Whitehead 1916, 413)

Alfred North Whitehead got this one wrong: a field that forgets its founders risks becoming misguided and lost. By remembering its founders, a field may use them to take bearings, measure progress, and chart the course ahead. The history of science and technology has taught us that founding (and inventing or discovering) is not the act of a solitary founder at a single place and moment but instead is the ongoing communal accomplishment of successive generations of founders, guided by an evolving sense of purpose. A journal is, inter alia, catalyst and convener for a field of scholarship, hosting a decades-long conversation among a community of authors, readers, and reviewers. As part of the vibrant infrastructure that supports scholarship in the STS community, Science, Technology, & Human Values (ST&HV) has hosted such conversations for decades. At the fiftieth anniversary of the journal’s founding, ST&HV, remembers its generations of founders by inviting past editors to reflect on their editorship, its times, and their lives. By remembering our course, our challenges, and our companions along the way, we hope to help those who follow us to navigate the possibilities and perils to come.

Olga Amsterdamska

In the spirit of remembering founders, I wish to remember Olga Amsterdamska, who edited both ST&HV and, later, an STS Handbook (third edition, 2008). Olga was an editor without peer: generous, insightful, meticulous, and devoted equally to improving the fledgling efforts of junior scholars and to honing the provocative ideas of eminent scholars. Her warm, caring heart complemented a perceptive and principled mind that expressed itself with candid declarative sentences. Here, she assesses which among a group of senior scholars would be most likely to help with the review some manuscripts, with names removed to protect…well, me, as much as anyone:

[A is] hard to get reviews on time, he travels lots. I agree with Mike on [B] (great guy, but doesn’t do reviews), but I also have doubts about [C] who is also nice but often seems distracted and has relatively little patience with work that does not resemble her own. [D] will write good reviews, though he’s not all that interested in/committed to STS these days. [E:] I did not find her reviews very helpful…when I could pry them out of her, that is.

As evidence of her critical powers and intellectual courage, consider Olga’s (1990) review essay titled “Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour!” her most influential and cited work (418 citations and counting). Olga was the most capable, demanding, and engaged editor I have known, and STS scholarship continues to benefit from her contributions.

Olga is one of about a dozen persons who have edited ST&HV or one of its tributaries—typically newsletters that matured into more ambitious endeavors (for some of the history, see Hackett 2012). To mark the journal’s golden anniversary, ST&HV has invited former editors of the journal to reflect on their years with ST&HV. Their reflections follow in approximate chronological order.

Edward J. Hackett Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA