TY - JOUR
T1 - Spreading the tools of theory
T2 - Feynman diagrams in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union
AU - Kaiser, David
AU - Ito, Kenji
AU - Hall, Karl
PY - 2004/12
Y1 - 2004/12
N2 - Historians and sociologists have highlighted the importance of skills, local practices and material culture in their studies of experimental sciences. This paper argues that the acquisition and transfer of skills in theoretical sciences should be understood in similar terms. Using the example of Feynman diagrams - first introduced by the US theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1948 as an aid for making certain kinds of calculations - we study how physicists in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union learned how to use the new tools and put them to work. Something about the diagrammatic tools could be learned from written instructions alone, at a distance from those physicists already 'in the know', although this type of transfer proved to be very difficult, slow, and rare. The rate at which new physicists began to use the diagrams in various settings, and the types of uses to which the diagrams were put, reveal the interplay between geopolitics, personal communication, and pedagogical infrastructures in shaping how paper tools spread.
AB - Historians and sociologists have highlighted the importance of skills, local practices and material culture in their studies of experimental sciences. This paper argues that the acquisition and transfer of skills in theoretical sciences should be understood in similar terms. Using the example of Feynman diagrams - first introduced by the US theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1948 as an aid for making certain kinds of calculations - we study how physicists in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union learned how to use the new tools and put them to work. Something about the diagrammatic tools could be learned from written instructions alone, at a distance from those physicists already 'in the know', although this type of transfer proved to be very difficult, slow, and rare. The rate at which new physicists began to use the diagrams in various settings, and the types of uses to which the diagrams were put, reveal the interplay between geopolitics, personal communication, and pedagogical infrastructures in shaping how paper tools spread.
KW - Paper tools
KW - Pedagogy
KW - Theoretical physics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=11344267370&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0306312704046628
DO - 10.1177/0306312704046628
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:11344267370
SN - 0306-3127
VL - 34
SP - 879
EP - 922
JO - Social Studies of Science
JF - Social Studies of Science
IS - 6
ER -