The Power of Science: Origins of American Scholarly Communication, 1840 – 1900

Abstract

This dissertation proposes to answer several questions that arise from the actions of American scientists between 1840 and 1900. How did the broader organization of science in the late nineteenth century create a system of professional disciplines? Why did the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) form, and why did specialized societies like the American Chemical Society (ACS) later found an organization separate from the AAAS? Why did these professional societies create journals, and how did these journals help to communicate science? Often, scholars of scholarly communication will either use quantitative methods such as bibliometrics and scientometrics on individual academic journals, or, they will employ historical and sociological methods to answer broader questions about social trends in American science. This dissertation will combine these methods within the context of nineteenth-century American science and will utilize both quantitative textual analysis methods and qualitative historical and sociological analysis. It is hoped that by broadening the methods used, and by better understanding the early deliberations of scientists before there was a formal scholarly communication system, it may be possible to contextualize current debates about the need for changes in scholarly communication.