Presa ice lebrants of a perpetually advancing and improving insight into and control over nature.(.R. Hall has called Whiggism"the writing of history as the story of an ascent to a splendid and virtuous climax ). There is some justice in this criticism although not as much as its proponents are apt to claim. Another dispute, which has erupted recently into the so-called'science wars', is between externalists who perceive science as an approach conditioned largely by social pressures(generally not recognized by the scientific practitioners themselves)and those, like myself, who take a mostly internalist stance and see scientific research as being primarily conditioned by the questions which flow directly from developing knowledge and from technological imperatives. The internalist/externalist dispute will never be finally olved but the reader should at least be aware of its existence. At any rate I have striven to be critical about the history of my own discipline, and to draw general conclusions about scientific practice from what I have discovered about the evolution of materials science One other set of issues runs through the book like a leitmotif: What is a scientific liscipline'? How do disciplines emerge and differentiate? Can a discipline also be interdisciplinary? Is materials science a real discipline? These questions are not just an exercise in lexicography and, looking back, it is perhaps the last of these questions which gave me the impetus to embark on the book a huge range of themes is presented here and I am bound to have got some matters wrong. Any reader who spots an error will be doing me a favor by kindi writing in and telling me about it at: rwcl2@cam. ac uk. Then, if by any chance there is a further edition i can include corrections ROBERT CAHN Cambridge, august 2000 Preface to Second Printing The first printing being disposed of, the time has come to prepare a second printing am taking this opportunity to correct a substantial number of typographic mistakes and other small errors, which had escaped repeated critical read-throughs before the first print- ing. In addition, a small number of more substantial matters, such as inaccurate claims for priority of discovery, need to be put right, and these matters are dealt with in a Corrigenda at the very end of the book m grateful to several reviewers and commentators for uncovering misprints, omis sions and factual errors which I have been able to correct in this printing. My thanks go especially to Masahiro Koiwa in Japan, Jean-Paul Poirier and Jean Philibert in France, ck Westbrook and Arne Hessenbruch in the United States ROBERT CAHN Cambridge, October 2002viii Preface celebrants of a perpetually advancing and improving insight into and control over nature. (A.R. Hall has called Whiggism "the writing of history as the story of an ascent to a splendid and virtuous climax"). There is some justice in this criticism, although not as much as its proponents are apt to claim. Another dispute, which has erupted recently into the so-called 'science wars', is between externalists who perceive science as an approach conditioned largely by social pressures (generally not recognized by the scientific practitioners themselves) and those, like myself, who take a mostly internalist stance and see scientific research as being primarily conditioned by the questions which flow directly from developing knowledge and from technological imperatives. The internalist/externalist dispute will never be finally resolved but the reader should at least be aware of its existence. At any rate, I have striven to be critical about the history of my own discipline, and to draw general conclusions about scientific practice from what I have discovered about the evolution of materials science. One other set of issues runs through the book like a leitmotif: What is a scientific discipline? How do disciplines emerge and differentiate? Can a discipline also be interdisciplinary? Is materials science a real discipline? These questions are not just an exercise in lexicography and, looking back, it is perhaps the last of these questions which gave me the impetus to embark on the book. A huge range of themes is presented here and I am bound to have got some matters wrong. Any reader who spots an error will be doing me a favor by kindly writing in and telling me about it at: rwcl2@cam.ac.uk. Then, if by any chance there is a further edition, I can include corrections. ROBERT CAHN Cambridge, August 2000 Preface to Second Printing The first printing being disposed of, the time has come to prepare a second printing. I am taking this opportunity to correct a substantial number of typographic mistakes and other small errors, which had escaped repeated critical read-throughs before the first print￾ing. In addition, a small number of more substantial matters, such as inaccurate claims for priority of discovery, need to be put right, and these matters are dealt with in a Corrigenda at the very end of the book. I am grateful to several reviewers and commentators for uncovering misprints, omis￾sions and factual errors which I have been able to correct in this printing. My thanks go especially to Masahiro Koiwa in Japan, Jean-Paul Poirier and Jean Philibert in France, Jack Westbrook and Arne Hessenbruch in the United States. ROBERT CAHN Cambridge, October 2002