The missing conversation, scientists and historians dont engage with one another

I think history (and philosophy) of science is overlooked by most scientists. However, as a scientist and in my limited experience, histories of scientific fields written by intellectually broad scientists are fundamentally more interesting and useful than histories of science written by historians. For example, Gunter Wagner, an evolutionary theorist that focuses on evolution and development, has written some excellent historical perspectives of the field.

My impression is that scientists with a more theoretical focus (versus narrowly experimental) tend to be more interested in the history of their fields, on average. Theorists are a small fraction of the field in biology, but make up much larger proportions of physics, so I suspect that more physics history exists than biology history (other than the occasionally monomaniacal obsession with Darwin). Part of the challenges with histories of biology is that the field is inherently squishier than physics, which is reflected in the precision of the theories and ideas promulgated. Along with the large number of exceptions in biology to general rules, historical interpretations are going to be inherently messy.

Shades of CP Snow's Two Cultures here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures?wprov=sfla1

A trivial example is that university buildings are constructed to keep academic disciplines far apart from one another. Engineering and Physics live in one building, Philosophy and Modern Languages in another. Not too surprising then if they dont learn much from one another.