Reflections on the introduction to Paul Forman’s article “On the Historical Forms of Knowledge Production and Curation: Modernity Entailed Disciplinarity, Postmodernity Entails Antidisciplinarity,” published in Osiris Volume 27, Number 1, 2012.

Paul Forman (b. 1937) is an historian of science whose research focusses on the history of physics and is best known for two controversial theses regarding the influence of German culture on early interpretations of quantum mechanics and the influence of military funding on the character and course of scientific research.

The abstract states that this article continues and extends Forman’s previous efforts to characterise modernity and to map the change in state of mind constituting the transition to postmodernity. Forman opens the introduction with the claim that “the fate of the disciplines” has been a matter of concern for over a generation with the rise of “discipline-disregarding discourse” in academia and beyond. Referring to the works of Perry Anderson, Forman talks about the fall of modernity and the onset of postmodernity as a cultural transformation that manifests itself through the breakdown of disciplinarity and the dedifferentiation of scholarly discourse. He notes that we find ourselves in an unusual situation as many commentaries on the subject have been made, however there has been no extended historical discussion.

Forman continues, citing David Hollinger, by considering the example of higher education institutions. He claims that the way that universities are structured is outdated, but that those who wish for them to be restructured are those employed in the lowest ranks and that only Professors understand that such drastic restructuring would have catastrophic results. When the subject is broached, according to Forman, it is dealt with only from the perspective of postmodern pragmatism, rather than the more appropriate perspective disciplinarity. At this point, we are given two definitions by Forman:

• Postmodernism is the “self-consciously held ideology and associated literary practices”.
• Postmodernity is an “historical epoch characterised by a set of unreflectively held cultural presuppositions”.

Forman explains that confusion between postmodernism and postmodernity leads to the belief postmodernity is dwindling, when in fact it is postmodernism that was being left behind in the 1990s. This has caused us to continue talking of disciplines as though meaningful instantiations of the ideals and institutions signified by disciplinarity still exist, or even could exist. The consequence, according to Forman, is that disciplinarity is now an ideological and practical impossibility.

• Disciplinarity is a “cultural idea, a set of presuppositions about where the value of knowledge lies and what sorts of knowledge posses highest value, the morally charged behavioural norms that producers and curators must satisfy and the proper embodiments of knowledge in formal institutions”.

Forman continues by giving a brief description of the evolution and use of the word disciplinarity, noting that although the term began to take shape towards the end of the 18th century it wasn’t widely used until after World War II when it was “almost universally regarded as the inevitable, as well as the most estimable, mode of knowledge production”. Its status was supposed to remain until “the end of history”, as Forman puts it, but this of course was not the case. He claims that the abrupt and unforeseen change in modernity’s cultural valuation of disciplinarity gives a sensitive index of the transition from modernity to postmodernity, which should urge us to view modernity “not as the end but as the anomaly in human history”.

The first and only subsection within the introduction is entitled Disciplines versus Professions and begins with two definitions:

• Disciplines are “institutions for production, validation, and transmission of knowledge […] oriented not to the provision of a practical service but to the production and curation of a distinctive body of knowledge”.
• Professions are “institutions oriented primarily to the provision of a practical service on the basis of possession—real, presumed, or pretended—of a distinctive body of knowledge”.

Disciplines were, according to Forman, particular to modernity, but are often confused with professions, which long predated modernity. He admits that professions can border, overlap or draw upon one or more disciplines, but states that professions and disciplines have distinct purposes and practices. Forman discredits the discipline of the history of science for having never made the differentiation between professions and disciplines, a careless act that has resulted in the words becoming synonymous for historians and for the public as a consequence. A by-product of Forman’s article is a better understanding of this confusion. He concludes the introduction by bringing together disciplines, professions, science historians and the public: “however fundamental from the perspective of the history of science the difference between disciplines and professions is, or ought to be, that difference counts little against the broad overlap in cultural presuppositions determining the cultural regard for professions and disciplines alike”.

Bibliography
Forman, Paul. “Weimar culture, causality, and quantum theory: adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a hostile environment.” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3 (1971): 1-115.
Forman, Paul. “Behind quantum electronics: National security as basis for physical research in the United States, 1940-1960.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 18 (1987): 149-229.
Forman, Paul. “On the Historical Forms of Knowledge Production and Curation: Modernity Entailed Disciplinarity, Postmodernity Entails Antidisciplinarity.” Osiris 27 (2012): 56-97.

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