HSS Session Abstracts for Montreal 2010
Title: Artifacts of Science
Abstract: This session seeks to address the question of what the public display of objects –
instruments, specimens, and photographs – can communicate about science, its history, and its
reflection of cultural values. Four speakers and one commentator will address questions
concerning what we are saying about science and its material heritage by exhibiting its tools, its
bounty, or its symbols. In addition to considering the decisions that go into exhibiting scientific
objects, members of this session will also look at exhibitions as a way to explore how the public
understanding of science is linked to artifact display. Papers in this session will examine how and
why the physical features and presentation of a displayed object contribute to an exhibit’s
reception, whether original artifacts are essential to an exhibit’s success, and if they are, why and
how. A central theme for the session will be the interaction between an exhibit and its wider
cultural, political, social and scientific contexts. Although there will be a number of exhibits
considered in this session, each will examine how the cultural environment of the exhibit
contributed to its reception, and in turn what these exhibits can tell us about the times in which
they were displayed.
Title: Becoming Scientific: How Everyday Things Travel To Science and Back (Joint HSS/PSA
Session)
Abstract: Establishing an evidence base for policy is high on policy-makers’ agendas, and is
quickly attracting the interest of philosophers of science. Using science requires that the
precisely defined concepts and accurately delineated phenomena that science is famous for be
brought to bear on the real questions and messy applications that trouble (taxpaying) users of
scientific research outcomes. But many scientific concepts mean very different things to
scientific specialists, on the one hand, and to the various users of scientific knowledge, on the
other. And yet, contemporary scientific research and teaching emphasizes the importance of
inter-disciplinarity and user-targeted, or ‘applicable’ results. These latter projects require an
understanding of how concepts can traverse the realms of the scientific and the ordinary.
This symposium brings recent thinking in history and philosophy of science to bear on the
problem. Using examples of four nomadic concepts (‘acidity’, ‘heredity’, ‘race’ and ‘wellbeing’) we explore the following questions:
•
How do, as a matter of history, scientists’ concepts and phenomena cross ordinary and
scientific disciplinary boundaries? What gets lost and what gets added?
•
How ought they to do so for the purpose of applying scientific knowledge to policy and
technology?
Title: The Challenges and Opportunities of Interdisciplinary Teaching
Abstract: Interdisciplinarity has become a much-touted hallmark of recent program, curriculum,
and course design at both undergraduate and graduate levels of education. History and
philosophy of science programs have, either enthusiastically or out of necessity, become a
central core of many university’s efforts to “make the interdisciplinary turn.” In one sense, this is
not surprising, since both historians and philosophers of science teach courses that cover a broad
range of disciplines. But is interdisciplinarity indeed a useful context within which to campaign
for HPS programs and courses, and if so, what are the potential pitfalls? This session is focused
on the challenges and opportunities faced by history of science, philosophy of science, and HPS
programs and educators in building interdisciplinary courses and programs. The session will
begin with brief statements from both historians and philosophers of science from a range of
perspectives, as a way of outlining potential issues for discussion. Participants will examine the
challenges and opportunities associated with the interdisciplinary nature of HPS teaching, share
advice for beginning educators concerning the interdisciplinary context of contemporary course,
curriculum and program design, and discuss the dangers and benefits for our fields in joining the
interdisciplinary bandwagon. The session will then emphasize a conversation format.
Title: Clues from Genesis: the Mosaic Account and Early Modern Natural Philosophy
Abstract: The papers in this session explore the relationship between biblical exegesis and the
formulation of new natural philosophies during the early modern era. They discuss the work of
three natural philosophers who, although in different measures, shared the notion that Moses was
the earliest source of the prisca sapientia and that the Book of Genesis contained vestiges of
revealed knowledge about the natural world. This premise led some of these natural philosophers
to develop new hermeneutical tools better suited to uncovering knowledge about the natural
world in the Bible than traditional exegetical approaches. Others came to rely on the biblical text
for epistemological guidance or to face the challenge of reconciling novel natural philosophical
ideas with the biblical text. For Arias Montano the key lay in using Hebrew etymologies to
discover in the creation account a unifying Mosaic metaphysics that could be used to draw out
the essential properties of the intelligible. Meanwhile for Aldrovandi the Hebrew Bible served as
a valuable source for geographical and cultural information. In the case of Newton, recent access
to his theological manuscripts suggests a life-long preoccupation with the relationship between
the creation account in Genesis and the development of his natural philosophy. These papers
juxtapose the different ways in which natural philosophers in the early modern era approached
the question of biblical truth within the context of the rise of empirical science and thus offer a
contribution to the ongoing reevaluation of the role of Mosaic natural philosophies during the
Scientific Revolution.
Title: Community and Isolation in the Ancient Sciences
Abstract: What kinds of communities did the practitioners of the ancient sciences see
themselves as participating in, and what kinds of boundaries did they draw between themselves
and others? This session seeks to triangulate the problem by looking at it along three distinct
axes: those of mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. Questions about the roles of political and
religious communities are central to this project. We explore the relationships that counting and
calculating have with practices of citizenship and government in Greek democracies, and we reopen the sticky question of the foundational interrelationships between the early Greek sciences
and contemporary religion, theology, and mythology. This will necessitate a nod to familiar
problems with the boundary-demarcations deliberately drawn between practitioners themselves
and ‘others’ (so between physicians and ‘quacks’ for example). Less familiar (and at the same
time more fundamental) boundary demarcations then also come into focus, as with the deliberate
conceptual isolation of the ancient physician’s body from that of his patient—here ideas about
immunity dissolve what otherwise might be taken to be embodied community. Finally, using
novel mapping techniques, we look at how ancient practitioners of mathematics, medicine, and
natural philosophy were members of what we might call larger ‘professional’ and ‘interprofessional’ communities, how their geographical co-distributions changed over time, and what
that might mean for how they communicated and debated with each other.
Title: Computers as Scientific Instruments: Technologies, Scientific Practices, and Social
Structures
Abstract: Much of the historical work on the role of computers in scientific practice focuses on
A) the immediate post-WWII period, B) mainframe computers, and C) on the ways scientific
puzzles have been transformed by algorithmic tools like Monte Carlo methods. The papers in
this session look at more recent developments from the late 1960s to the 1990s and focus on
ways that computers change everyday practices in science. The papers by Lenhard and Johnson
look specifically at the effects of changing information technologies on scientific practices and
examine the transition from mainframes and expensive minicomputers to widely accessible
networked, desktop PCs as the dominant computational instruments. Johnson and Tatarchenko’s
papers also both focus on the ways computers make possible seemingly unlikely collaborations
and in part determine the nature of those collaborations. All three papers concentrate on the ways
that technologies and scientific practices develop to create new values for local scientific
communities. This session will offer its audience new ways of considering the history of
contemporary science and the technologies that make its everyday practices possible.
Title: Concepts of Generation
Abstract: Processes of generation have long fascinated natural philosophers, scientists, and
physicians. How does a living entity come into existence? How does it grow? What kinds of
forces govern such processes? While the almost infinitely broad scope of the topic has
encouraged research into past ideas about generation to stay within disciplinary boundaries, this
panel attempts a broader view of generation by bringing together unique inquiries into generative
processes from several disparate contexts—namely the generation of early modern disease, the
regeneration of crayfish limbs, and the development of human embryos. Though centered on
distinctive disciplines and spanning about four hundred years, the papers in this panel cohere
remarkably well to provide diverse perspectives on how scientists have tried to understand
generation. The first paper examines generation from the standpoint of sixteenth-century
physicians who viewed the process of putrefaction of the body as central to the generation of
disease. The second paper explores how several natural philosophical frameworks informed
understandings of regeneration in the early eighteenth-century life sciences. The final paper
investigates how early twentieth-century American physicians and biologists studied miscarried
fetuses to understand human generation and development, especially the notion of
superfoetation. As a whole, the three case studies show both consistency and innovation in how
broader scientific theories were applied to specific inquires into the nature of generation.
Title: Controlling Life in 20th-Century Biology: A session inspired by the work of Philip J.
Pauly
Abstract: In his 1987 monograph, Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in
Biology, the late Philip Pauly argued that Jacques Loeb's pioneering work on artificial
parthenogenesis was emblematic of a new "engineering standpoint" in early-20th-century
American biology. Pauly asserted that Loeb was driven not by a desire to understand
fundamental biological phenomena, but by the ultimate goal of controlling and even creating life
himself. According to Pauly, Loeb's legacy flourishes in the extraordinary success of
biotechnology in the second half of the 20th century, giving humans an unprecedented ability to
manipulate life and fueling perpetual debate concerning our role in nature. This session extends
Pauly's insights, investigating how Loeb's engineering ideal affected later 20th-century biological
theory and practice, leading to the reconstruction of the boundary between what is considered
natural and artificial. The individual papers examine attempts to control life on multiple scales,
from the molecular to the ecological, asking how these acts of manipulation have contributed to
the transformation of life itself into a form of technology.
Title: The Development of Biology in a Model Technocracy: Science and the Soviet Union
Abstract: This panel will explore various aspects of Soviet science, with particular attention to
how the establishment of technocracy ("scientific socialism"), affected the field of biology. The
panel members previously presented their work, or served as panel chairs, at the International
Workshop on Lysenkoism, held December 4-5, 2009, at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York and Columbia University. The first paper, “The Cache Economy:
Science, Capitalism and Socialism," discusses the fate of the seed bank founded by Nikolai
Vavilov. The second paper, “Differing Scientific Visions Approach Climate Change: The
Development of the Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature,” describes the politics
surrounding the most initiative in postwar Soviet agriculture. The third paper, “Youthful
Perceptions, Foreign Illusions: L.C. Dunn, J.B.S. Haldane, Julian Huxley and the Soviet Union,”
explores how early experiences with Soviet science influenced how three leading U.S. and
British geneticists responded to the Lysenko affair after World War II.
Title: Discourse and Discovery: Colonial and Atlantic Encounters and Ideologies of Modern
Science
Abstract: How was nature discovered in the Americas in the sixteenth, seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries? How was the discovery of American nature represented and narrated in this
period? This panel seeks to explore the relationship between discovery in the Americas and the
notions of discovery that have pervaded science and its historical narratives since 1500. While
the colonization of the New World has figured as a transformative event in the history of science
and modernity, the diverse visions of discovery that emerged out of the various encounters in the
Atlantic World have received little attention. This panel will explore how colonial and Atlantic
World encounters not only provided access to many new, natural phenomena – from medicines
to mountains – but also suggested new ways of thinking and writing about the very process of
finding and understanding new things. Bringing together specialists in English and Spanish
colonial literature, science in the Iberian Atlantic, and colonial encounters in French North
America, this panel will provide both an interdisciplinary and a hemispheric perspective on the
characteristics and conceptions of scientific discovery in the colonial Atlantic World.
Individually, each paper looks at the construction of knowledge about American nature in
French, English or Spanish colonial contexts with a particular sensitivity to the evolution of
discourses of discovery and the relationship between narratives of discovery and larger processes
of European imperial expansion in the Americas. Collectively, these papers serve to situate the
history of modern scientific discovery within a broader Atlantic and colonial context.
Title: Embedding the History of Mathematics in the History of Science
Abstract: In the larger perspective of the history of science, an earlier preoccupation with the
“exact sciences” has recently and rightly been followed by growing interest in the social and
biological sciences. This broadened scope may lead to new insights into the ways mathematics is
not a niche apart, but centrally embedded in science, thought, and society. The papers in this
session will explore a richly diverse spectrum of such approaches by considering the relation of
mathematics to theories of matter, to the physics of colliding bodies, to muscular physiology, and
to the metaphysical implications of other possible worlds.
Title: Entanglements of Instruments and Media in Investigating Organic Worlds
Abstract: This session explores the entanglements between instruments and media in the
investigation of organic worlds. Experimental arrangements rely on a range of different kinds of
instruments and media whose identity and relationship to one another is unstable. The session
highlights how in experimental investigations of organic worlds instruments cannot be clearly
separated from the media that they probe. In some experimental settings in the life sciences, the
media being probed is an organism or its parts. In this sense, organic materials are treated as
kinds of excitable media that can manifest responses to inquiry. Alternatively, organisms or their
parts can act as both media and instruments. They can be used as measuring apparatus, their
responses indicating a sensing or reading of phenomena otherwise imperceptible. They can
function as models or exemplars of natural processes, organic or non-organic, aiding the
conceptualization of particular phenomena. In some situations instruments and media become
indistinguishable, as in the digital media through which computer graphic models and
simulations are rendered. In this sense, instruments are media for enacting vital processes,
artifactual iterations of the phenomena of life. The session explores the roles of instruments and
media for investigating organic worlds at various scales and in various settings. The sites of these
experimental investigations will also be examined, to highlight the scenes of inquiries, the actors
engaged in them and their social roles.
Title: Environmental Histories of Science: Knowing Nature, Transforming Nature
Abstract: Is it possible to write an environmental history of science? In recent years, scholarship
at the intersection of environmental history and the history of science has proliferated. Historians
have, of course, long been interested in the histories of particular scientific disciplines related to
the environment, such as ecology. But more recently our ambition has become broader: to
understand the environmental context of the production and use of knowledge. This session
offers four examples of how the history of science might be approached from a broader
environmental history perspective, in order to understand better the connections between
knowing and transforming nature. The papers consider how science has been situated in
changing landscapes and in relation to the other human activities taking place in them. Focusing
primarily on North America, this session explores different ways that such an environmental
perspective might enhance our understanding of how scientific knowledge and science’s
representations of the natural world have intersected with other human institutions such as law,
politics, and the economy. We also analyze historically important keywords at the intersection of
science, environment, and the material economy, such as adaptation, improvement, uncertainty,
development, conservation, resource, and habitat. By addressing larger concepts invoked in the
history of human interactions with the natural world, the session brings together work that is not
only grounded in particular case studies but is also intended to generate debate about how we
should go about writing an environmental history of science.
Title: From Wartime Experience to “Big Science” in Asia (1931- )
Abstract: “Big Science,” a term associated with the anthology edited by Peter Galison and
Bruce Hevly (Stanford University Press, 1992), refers to the scaling up of scientific activity, both
in terms of the size of instrumentation and the cost of the equipment necessary to do high-level
work in the physical and biological sciences. Frequently “Big Science” points to devices such as
the first large-scale equipment dating from the first three decades of the twentieth century,
including the cyclotron developed by Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley, and subsequent versions developed in other national contexts, including Japan (Yukio
Nishina, 1937, Riken) and India (Homi Bhabha, 1940’s, Tata Institute). To address the issue of
“Big Science” in Asia, moreover, is to reframe this question, asking how comparable large
facilities—in diverse forms including new national research programs, large manufacturing and
industrial centers capable of increased production with greater precision, national space and
rocket research facilities, and nuclear power plants—came to appear in a region with few such
facilities prior to the war, with the possible exception of parts of the Japanese Empire. The rapid
transformation of large sections of NE (Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China) and SE Asia
through such facilities represents a phenomenon that offers a much-needed corrective to accounts
of science and technology that overlook the development of the Asian context.
Title: Gendering the Human Brain: Science, Language, and Sex Difference in the 19th and 20th
Centuries
Abstract: Historians of science have demonstrated that gender has shaped the ways scientists
name, organize, and understand the natural world. This panel contributes to this discussion by
analyzing how gender has informed the scientific study of the human brain and nervous system.
Focusing on four areas of research—phrenology, brain size, nervous disorders, and neurons—
this panel suggests that an ongoing dialogue has existed between scientists and women who
resisted attempts to locate female inferiority on the female brain. Carla Bittel’s research on 19thcentury phrenology reveals that women embraced this new science and utilized it to expand their
social and political roles, often to the disadvantage of non-white, non-middle class others.
Perhaps no one better exemplifies women’s enthusiasm for brain science than Helen Hamilton
Gardener. Kimberly Hamlin’s paper analyzes Gardener’s involvement in the “brain size” debates
of the 1880s and her public decision to donate her brain to science. At the same time, neurologist
Silas Weir Mitchell popularized a gendered version of the nervous system, characterized by
female illness and male vigor. However, as Anne Stiles argues, Mitchell’s personal struggle with
“neurasthenia” shaped his pronouncements about the nervous system and led him to develop
separate treatments for male and female sufferers. Just as gender informed ideas about brain
structure, so, too, did it shape how scientists named the elements of the nervous system. Meg
Upchurch’s research on glial cells reveals that, as scientists realized the importance of glial cells,
descriptions of them changed gender, from “nursemaids” to “architects of the brain.”
Title: Genes and Mechanisms in the Case of Cystic Fibrosis: Philosophical, Historical and Social
Perspectives.
Abstract: Poorly understood, linked in complex ways to ideas about race and European identity,
and the focus today of an ethically vexed and rapidly expanding testing industry, Cystic Fibrosis
is the most common serious genetic disorder in the United States, the UK, and the EU. Identified
and named in 1938, the disease has attracted significant scientific interest: By the simple if
imperfect quantitative metric of citations in PubMed, it has been the focus of more scientific
papers than any other genetic disease. In this interdisciplinary session, we consider CF as a
historical, scientific, medical and social entity. Historian Susan Lindee explores the efforts to
develop gene therapy for CF after the elucidation of the gene in 1989; philosopher Lindley
Darden analyzes scientific interpretations of the normal and pathological mechanisms involved
in CF; sociologist Rachel Grob looks at how neonatal testing for CF has shaped family life; and
philosopher Jeremy Howick analyzes the impact of Evidence Based Medicine in the
management of CF. Our chair and commentator is the philosopher of science Miriam Solomon,
whose work on the CF consensus conferences in the 1980s explored how medical experts come
to agreement even when they disagree. We believe this session has the potential to bring together
philosophers and historians—not necessarily a common phenomenon even at the joint
meetings—and we think CF raises particularly rich historical and contemporary analytical issues
about the biomedical sciences.
Title: History of Mathematics: New Perspectives from the Far East: China, Japan, and Vietnam
Abstract: The history of mathematics in the Far East has been transformed in the past several
decades as much by new archaeological discoveries as by new insights brought to the study of
traditional mathematics thanks to the widening perspectives historians generally, and historians
of science in particular, have begun to apply to the treatment of materials with respect to their
discipline. The importance of evaluating strictly technical material in the larger arenas of both
social and political contexts is increasingly appreciated by historians of mathematics, and the
papers proposed for this session are intended to demonstrate the value of new interdisciplinary
approaches to historical studies. The session is also designed to include a diverse spectrum of
those currently contributing to the history of mathematics: fresh PhDs, younger scholars at the
beginnings of their careers, and several well-established historians of mathematics. In covering
historical material from antiquity through the Qing dynasty, this session covers a broad period of
time, and will provide an overview of some of the latest work being done on the history of
mathematics in East Asia from multiple perspectives. It should be of interest not only to
historians of mathematics, but to anyone interested in the ways political and social contexts have
influenced the development of exact sciences.
Title: In the Mind’s Eye: Technical Drawing in France and England, 1800-1850
Abstract: Drawing played a vital role in industrializing France and England. The mechanization
of society demanded mathematics, a necessity for measuring, and workers conversant in the
“visual language” of the machine age: technical drawing. Ferguson and Deforge have shown that
spatial and visual thinking was fundamental to the new industrial order. Scholars have paid an
inordinate attention to the role of the physical sciences and mathematics in French education
(especially as the gateway to elite social circles). This session proposes to shift the emphasis to
technical drawing in France and England during the first half of the nineteenth century. Drawing
touches on the reasons for the supposed lag of French industrial development. It also touches on
the basic differences between the French and English approaches to industrialization, not to
mention commonly accepted cultural distinctions, namely that the British were more “practical,”
while the French tended to be “abstract.” Butrica focuses on the gate-keeping function of
drawing. The Société d’Encouragement selected scholarship awardees based on their drawing
ability, which allowed the recipients to attend schools (and advance socially and economically)
that their family’s financial state otherwise would have precluded. Alexander’s centers on steamengine drawings in France, examining the standards of drawing as practices were becoming
standardized as well as the sticky question of the relationship between actual machines and their
depiction in drawings. Robertson considers the evolution of drafting in England. It considers the
kinds of knowledge acquired and displayed and the cultural and social causes for their seeming
invisibility.
Title: Industrial Food and the Biopolitics of Nutrition Science
Abstract: This panel puts questions about food and science into conversation with a broad range
of themes about the body, public health, industrialization, national security, and the market.
Together, the papers trace these connections from the mid-nineteenth century through the end of
the twentieth, a time period that saw the explosion of industrialized food production and the rise
of modern nutrition science. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, Christopher Otter considers
British milk production as a crucible for debates about purity, disease, and public health. Even as
milk promoters described it as an ideal and nutritionally complete food, others described milk as
an industrial poison and a vector for contagion. Milk’s Janus-faced identity shows that a single
commodity can take on outsized significance when it sits at the intersection of cultural beliefs
and health fears. Helen Veit’s paper examines the rational eating movement in the first third of
the twentieth century, as reformers encouraged Americans to abandon emotional attachments to
food and instead to use nutrition science to eat according to the calls of thrift, national security,
and health, instead of the capricious demands of pleasure or tradition. Spanning the midnineteenth century to the present, Aaron Bobrow-Strain’s paper traces the remarkably robust
history of carbohydrate anxiety in American culture. From the morally charged warnings of
nineteenth-century food reformers to contemporary fears about wheat allergies, Bobrow-Strain
considers those recurring moments when bread has served as the focus for a broad range of fears
about health, environmental safety, and social decay.
Title: Knowledge and Politics of Climate in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Abstract: Before the eighteenth century, climate was a rich and many-layered notion, which
included cosmographic, meteorological, topographic, and medical definitions. From antiquity on,
knowledge of a place – its waters, airs, soils – was a basis for knowing and restoring the physical
and moral health of the inhabitants of that place. Without renouncing the deterministic
implications of this model, by the end of the eighteenth century, climate was re-conceptualized:
not only did it make man, but it was man-made. The management of climate—through
deforestation, desiccation, drainage of marshes, or building of canals, for example—in the name
of public health or of economic improvement, became an important vehicle of intervention in
public life. It also became, as the contributions to this panel reflect, an anxiously fought-over
battleground where different notions of climate, of the correct methods for making climatic facts,
and of the uses and functions of environmental management confronted each other and were
negotiated. Far more than simple knowledge about the weather, climate was a politically and
culturally fraught notion.
Title: Losing Arguments in Early Modern Science
Abstract: Despite near universal denunciations of positivism, historians of science are still more
likely to examine the emergence of winning arguments than the decline of views that eventually
were discarded. This panel explores the dynamics and mechanisms that contribute to the decline
of beliefs or arguments characteristic of early modern science by examining four “losing
arguments” from this period. Natalie Kaoukji contends that some arguments that have been
labeled losing because modern literature has altered the terms of debate. Historians of science
have misinterpreted early modern discussions of artificial flight as being failed theories rather
than discussions of what is possible or feasible. Nicholas Popper argues that the demise of the
belief that salamanders live in fire was not the result of experimental attacks but rather that the
belief disappeared as the result of new ways of interacting with texts. Alisha Rankin shows that
Galenic physicians’ rejections of the possibility of a panacea were targeted against Paracelsian
opponents and did not prevent the proliferation of such products in the medical marketplace.
Craig Martin illustrates that some critics saw Aristotelian natural philosophy as too
metaphysical, while others saw it as not metaphysical enough, suggesting that the multiplicities
of Aristotelianism left it open for attacks from all sides. As a group these papers question the
assumption that losing arguments have failed because they collapsed under the weight of
external evidence or were simply superseded.
Title: Medicine, Science, and the Stomach, 1540-1840
Abstract: As food anxieties mount in contemporary culture, historians have begun intensively to
explore past eating practices as well as medical and scientific discourses of food, the stomach,
and digestion. This session explores a number of themes central to this new historiography of
food and eating. Michael Stolberg analyzes medical accounts of obesity from 1540-1680,
showing how early modern physicians already widely associated excessive fat with poor health,
sudden death, and a range of negative character traits. Anita Guerrini explores the reality behind
Claude Bernard’s metaphor of the “ghastly kitchen” of animal experimentation, demonstrating
that for early modern anatomists the kitchen was not just metaphorical but an actual site for
dissection and the production of scientific knowledge. Elizabeth Williams looks at some late
eighteenth-century investigators who believed self-experiment the best way to solve the
mysteries of the stomach and compares their aberrant eating to that of patients diagnosed with
diseases such as anorexia and bulimia in the same period. Finally, examining medical and
literary texts from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, Anne Vila explores
anxieties over the use of tea and coffee (Balzac’s “excitants modernes”), especially among men
of letters possessing the “nervous temperament.” Together these papers suggest that physicians
and scientists of this period exhibited deep fascination and concern with all questions related to
eating and the stomach, and that greater continuity is to be found between their anxieties and our
own than is often acknowledged.
Title: Mutations
Abstract: In the early twentieth century, the concept of mutation took a powerful hold on the
scientific imagination around the world, largely thanks to the Mutation Theory of Hugo de Vries.
In Japan, the cultivation and study of mutant silkworms gained momentum in response to ideals
projected by national management efforts to produce silk (worms) of consistent qualities and
otherwise improve a creature upon which a highly lucrative industry depended. In the USSR, the
creation of artificial mutations became central to a research program into “experimental
evolution” that, ironically, became one of the factors that prepared the groundwork for the
emergence of Lysenkoism, and thus the end of classical genetic research. And in the USA, the
idea of mutation was seized on by everyone from would-be technocrats to socialist propagandists
and feminist novelists as a tool with which to imagine a radically different, utopian future. The
three papers in this session all demonstrate, in very different ways, that far from being a dead end
or minor footnote to the history of twentieth century biology, the mutation theory exerted
considerable influence and remains in need of considerable further study.
Title: Objects of Science, Objects of Culture: Models and Specimens in 19th-century Natural
History
Abstract: This session will explore how models and specimens of the natural world could be
viewed as objects of science and objects of culture in the nineteenth century. All four papers
present the biography of a natural historical object or collection with the objective of tracing how
these scientific things were created, how they were adopted by various groups and how they
were (re)interpreted by their different owners/users. Lavinia Maddaluno’s work concentrates on
a set of Italian wax pomological models. In reading the models like an historical text, she
explores what comments they made on scientific classification, agricultural practices and the
relationship between art and science. Margaret Olszewski considers the Auzoux botanical
collection and its role in the consumer culture of America’s educational marketplace. She
questions whether the same objects can be used to teach different kinds of botany. Taika
Dahlbom examines the Giant’s Bone of the Royal Kunstkammer in Copenhagen, analyzing its
re-definitions as it passed from one owner to the next to determine how objects might influence
the production of scientific knowledge. Finally, Ruthanna Dyer’s paper examines the taxidermic
model of Jumbo, the Barnum Circus elephant, and its transition from educational object to
cultural icon following its acquisition by Tufts University. Each panelist considers how the same
object could produce different facts in different places in an attempt to posit ways in which
objects affect the way science is done. Through this session, we hope to illustrate distinctive
approaches to producing and consuming science in the nineteenth century.
Title: Once Bitten, Twice Shy? Early Modern Naturalists, Insects, and Animals
Abstract: Experimenters and natural historians began to look closely at insects and animals in
early modern Europe. This session will discuss how these objects of observation were
understood in relation to the period’s cultural, social, and religious concerns. Microscopes,
experimental practices, and graphic representation allowed investigators of the natural world to
re-imagine the meaning of insects and animals, and the role of those who examined them.
Massino Patrozzi will examine how Italian aristocratic attitudes towards touching animals during
hunting affected the Royal Society’s approach to the animal soul and to animal experimentation.
Lisa Sarasohn will discuss Robert Hooke’s depiction of the flea and the louse within the context
of the cultural meaning of insect vermin in the seventeenth century. For Hooke, lice challenged
the benign and divine view of nature he elsewhere endorsed. Brian Ogilvie will examine
Friedrich Christian Lesser’s Insecto-Theologica (1738) and its subsequent history to clarify the
relationship between natural theology and natural history during the Enlightenment. This session
will consider how epistemology and class intersected in the understanding of nature and the
naturalist in the scientific societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Title: Opportunities and Challenges: Plants and Evolution (1920-1950)
Abstract: This session is focused on a range of issues that informed evolution at a critical period
in its history by focusing on one group of organisms, namely plants. Each of the papers
concentrates on an area that drew especially heavily on the plant world: systematics,
paleobotany, and phytosociology and biogeography among other related areas. Taken as a whole,
the papers allow us to understand the complex—and unique—opportunities and challenges
encountered by plant workers during the period that has come to be known as “evolutionary
synthesis.” The complex round of negotiations that led to inclusion or exclusion of some areas,
and even individuals, will be discussed. By focusing on plants as an organismic system whose
biology, and whose traces provided unusual patterns for understanding the general history of
evolution, it provides historians with a far deeper and more nuanced view of the history of
evolution in an important moment of time.
Title: Predicting the Unthinkable: Sciences of Natural and Social Crisis
Abstract: The most unpredictable and costly disasters are those that are the most unthinkable.
The objective of this panel will be to explore what it means to try to predict those grave kinds of
crisis—the eruption of the long-dormant volcano, the typhoon, the financial depression, the
global climate catastrophe—that are in fact difficult to imagine. The act of trying to predict such
crises scientifically can work to control, shape, and even define the natures of those crises
themselves. The stories in this panel will be taken from both social and natural disasters, and will
draw upon a variety of disciplinary perspectives (anthropology, geography, history). In
examining the history of both the natural and social sciences, this panel will elaborate how
mechanisms of prediction can both translate social phenomena into naturalistic ones (as in the
case of economic modeling) and attempt to combat natural uncertainty through social means (as
in modern markets for trading weather risk or networked meteorological observation in the
nineteenth century). The panel will also explore how prediction connects the past, present, and
future of crisis. How do disasters in the distant past (like the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius) shape the
understanding of future ones? How does the retrospective success of a past prediction shape the
experience of a crisis as it happens and in its aftermath (as in the politics of the 1720 South Sea
“Bubble”)? Overall, the panel will explore how deeply embedded prediction has become to the
political, cultural, and scientific meaning of crisis itself.
Title: Progressive Science? Embodiment and Reform in Progressive America
Abstract: Characterizing the relationship of science to Progressive-era reformers in the United
States presents a multifaceted historical challenge. While it is commonly assumed that social
reformers embraced scientific expertise to provide a rational basis for their reform projects, the
easy correspondence between science and reform blurs when it is more closely examined. In
particular, forms of bodily and embodied knowledge developed by scientists and reformers
provide a more complex perspective on the interaction of science and Progressivism. In this era,
the social and philosophical projects of both reformers of science and scientific reformers sought
the foundations of science and society in the study of bodies. Together, the papers in this panel
examine the intellectual, scientific, and social aspects of this effort, revealing not only the
importance of bodily and embodied knowledge in Progressive scientific thought, but also the
conflicting lessons drawn from the sciences by the Progressive movement as a whole.
Additionally, the papers in this panel attend to the fate of these ideas after the Progressive era,
suggesting how the standpoint of bodily knowledge might inform histories of science and reform
later in the twentieth century.
Title: Reexamining the Uneasy Partnership: Economics, the Nation State, and the Public
Welfare, 1920s-1980s
Abstract: Last year marked the 40th anniversary of Gene Lyons's landmark book on the
relationship between social science and the federal government, a relationship aptly
characterized, as his title put it, as an “Uneasy Partnership.” Arguably, of all the social sciences,
economics emerged as the discipline with the most influence when it comes to shaping American
public policy. Despite its extensive influence – or probably more accurately because of that
influence –the relationships among economics as an academic discipline, the nation-state, and
conceptions of the public welfare have been the focus of widespread political and scholarly
debate. This is as clear today as it ever was, as revealed by the spate of recent books, including a
number of best-sellers, about the ways economists contributed to the global economic crisis but
also the ways they might be able to help restore economic health. With these wider historical
issues in mind, the authors of this session examine three episodes that illuminate the changing
and contested relationships among economics, the nation state, and the public welfare from the
1920s to 1980s: Tom Stapleford examines dramatic shifts in the relationship between federal
economists and the U.S. consumer movement; Tiago Mata (with Tom Sheiding) explores the
significance of patronage in shaping public perceptions of the value of economics and its
scholarly research priorities; Mark Solovey and Mike Thicke analyze an initiative to create a
U.S. Council of Social Advisers, designed to counterbalance the influence of economic
indicators and economic reasoning in shaping public policy.
Title: Research at the Frontier: Scientific Practices and the Dynamics of Expansion
Abstract: When Vannevar Bush evoked the “endless frontier” as a metaphorical descriptor for
science, he contributed to the tendency to overlook the extent to which science in the twentieth
century was being shaped by work done in frontier spaces. This session aims to explore some of
the strong connections between frontier science and the frontiers themselves, and restore some
understanding of the geographical sensibility in these pursuits. We draw examples from several
different national contexts: the United States, Germany, Brazil, Portugal and Norway. We
conceive the general problem to be this: historians of science often imagine the idea of discovery
to have functioned unproblematically in the spaces comprising geographical frontiers, yet we
need to teach ourselves to shift to the same type of constructivist or contextualist approaches that
we bring to bear in the study of other histories of science. At the same time, we note that
“spatialist” accounts in science studies have tended to focus on spaces made architecturally – the
construction of laboratories, in particular – rather than on scientific research taking place in
frontier areas distant from metropolitan centers. Here we propose to explore answers to questions
such as: did frontier science rely on a sort of characteristic ad hoc sensibility? Did it lay greater
weight on models rather than abstraction, or on a characteristically different type of abstraction?
To what extent did 20th-century frontiers represent efforts at internal colonization, and how did
this influence scientific practice? How did scientific research mold the frontier experience?
Title: Rethinking Science and Race: Darwin, Boas, and Dobzhansky
Abstract: This session seeks to enrich our understanding of several episodes considered central
to the history of scientific racism and anti-racism: the displacement of 18th- and 19th-century
beliefs in permanent racial types by Darwin’s theories of monogenism and racial differentiation
due to sexual selection; during the early 20th century, Boas’s environmentalist and cultural
relativist challenge to prevailing biological explanations of cultural differences among human
groups; in the aftermath of WWII, Dobzhansky’s efforts to use population genetics as a basis for
incorporating physical anthropology into the evolutionary synthesis; the triumph of scientific
egalitarianism as culmination of a movement launched decades earlier by Boas and like-minded
scientists. Roberta Millstein questions the adequacy of Darwin’s account of the origin of racial
differences given his arguments distinguishing natural and sexual selection. John Jackson argues
that the “received view” that scientific egalitarianism won out for “political” rather than
“scientific” reasons ignores the source of Boas’s success: in the face of inconclusive evidence, he
managed to shift the burden of proof away from the egalitarians and onto the racists. Veronika
Lipphardt shifts our attention from Boas’s well-known contributions to cultural anthropology to
his ongoing work in physical anthropology and human genetics, mostly carried out in association
with German scientists and partly published in German. Lisa Gannett focuses on the impact of
different metaphors associated with “gene pool” on Dobzhansky’s redefinition of races as
genetically distinct Mendelian populations.
Title: Rethinking the Emergence of Islamic Science
Abstract: The rise of science in the Islamic world has always been something of a puzzle, even
to Muslims themselves. A people without a strong scientific or philosophical tradition, with a
religion that asserted an unwavering monotheistic message of an omnipotent God, were to
become the custodians of one of the greatest flourishings of science that the world has known.
Many theories have been put forth about the reasons for the emergence of science in the Islamic
world, and in recent years there have been incisive assessments by A.I. Sabra, D. Gutas and G.
Saliba. But despite the theories that have been advanced, which have tended to focus on single
factors such as particular socio-political commitments, economic or utilitarian factors, religious
needs, or ideological commitments, the sheer magnitude of the emergence of Islamic science
argues for multiple factors. In this panel, we propose to present papers looking at several aspects
of the emergence of science in Islam that will help shed additional light on this historical event.
Topics will include the role of courts in advancing science, the relative importance of textual vs.
oral transmission, the religious context of the emergence of Islamic science, focusing on
reactions to astrology, and narrative accounts in Islam concerning the nature and origins of
science itself.
Title: Rethinking the History of Organicism: New Perspectives on Vital Science
Abstract: Current developments in organismic biology, the growing importance of Evo-Devo,
and the new attention to systems theoretical approaches in the life sciences have revived interest
in the history of “vitalism,” “holism,” and “organicism.” Particularly with the new level of
attention being given to the concept of organism emerging from developmental biology and
epigenetics (Laubichler 2000), a new form of “organismic” biology has claimed to move beyond
the classic metaphysical disputes of mechanism and vitalism of the past and into a new way of
conceptualizing biological theory (Gilbert and Sarkar, 2000). This also part of a challenge to the
gene-centric dimensions of the Modern Synthesis (Müller and Newman, 2003; Gilbert, Optiz and
Raff 1996). Many of these recent analyses have reached back into history to discern continuities
with these recent developments (Laubichler and Maienschein, 2007). Historical studies from a
more historical perspective on the “vital” science of the Enlightenment and its heritage have also
illuminated the need to rethink the meaning of “vitalism” in biology (Reill 2005; Cimino and
Duchesneau, 1997; Wolfe 2008). An international group of scholars, both junior and senior,
representing several historical and philosophical perspectives, will develop these issues through
historical and institutional analyses of the French Enlightenment heritage; 20th century
developments at Cambridge and Chicago; and the interaction of developmental biology and the
Modern Synthesis in recent biology.
Title: Science, Politics, and Agriculture in Vietnam and China During the Long 20th Century
Abstract: During the 20th century in Asia, farmers both looked forward to scientific knowledge
and looked backward to previous practices in order to adapt to quickly shifting political
circumstances. This panel focuses on the reciprocal relationships between political systems and
agricultural practices by looking at various moments in Vietnam and China over the past
century. In other words, this panel asks about the nature of continuities and ruptures in Asian
agricultural knowledge and practices. Because of their linked histories and their shared
experiences with colonialism and socialism, China and Vietnam serve as particularly useful sites
of investigation to help answer this question. From this panel's papers, which range in topic
from veterinary science and cattle breeding in colonial Indochina to entomology and academic
exchanges between China and the U.S. during the socialist era, a few themes emerge. It is clear,
for example, that experts played a key role in Asian agricultural production. Furthermore,
despite its apparently objective veneer, scientific agriculture was a particularly charged site of
political contestation, between states and the people they claimed to represent and between states
themselves. And while important differences existed between these two societies, a comparative
analysis is suggestive of the continuation of the colonial into the post-colonial socialist world.
By examining the transition from colonialism to socialism, this panel attempts to clarify the often
murky relations and shifting dynamics among science, tradition, agriculture, and politics in
Asia.
Title: The Science, Politics, and Publics of Climate Change
Abstract: Despite many decades of scientific research and overwhelming evidence of the reality
of anthropogenic climate change, many people in the United States still claim not to “believe” in
it, and public opinion continues to waver, often changing in response to current events. Whether
drawing from skepticism about science in general, decrying elitist or internationalist expert
perspectives, or attempting to subvert regulation, the shape of climate change denial is complex
and politically loaded. The strategies that climate skeptics use to communicate with the public
can be considered as powerful, or even more so, than those used by mainstream climate
scientists. While many climate scientists are public intellectuals, writing op-ed pieces, appearing
on news and documentary programs, giving open, public lectures, teaching and mentoring
students, and making their research widely available in print and online, counter-discourse is also
pervasive. How can we characterize climate scientists’ engagement with public discourse on
climate change over time? The presenters in this panel will consider how contemporary scientists
talk about their research, make decisions in creating scientific assessments, and attempt to build
bridges between their expert world and those of the interested public. A gap exists between
experts and non-experts, as well as between scientific evidence and the policies that could be
based upon it. By historicizing this gap, and examining it through particular moments and
examples, we attempt to show how climate change interlocutors contribute to public
understandings of science.
Title: Science and American Empire
Abstract: This session focuses on the practice and use of science in the American empire. Our
aim is to apply developments in the broader discipline of history and other disciplines, such as
geography, to the history of science, which has focused for some time on American science yet
not as substantially with imperialism and settler colonialism as analytical frameworks. Megan
Raby’s paper on Harvard’s Cuban botanical station, Scott Kirsch’s paper on American
remapping of the Philippines, Gregg Mitman’s paper on American rubber manufacturing in
Liberia in the 1920s, and Christine Manganaro’s paper on social scientific research on race
relations and assimilation in the settler colony of Hawaii examine a variety of scientific practices
in the context and service of American imperialism. This panel has a wide geographic scope and
covers the history of an array of scientific disciplines as it remains tightly focused on the
necessity of examining histories of science as integral to and deeply informed by U.S. imperial
practices.
Title: “Science and Modernity Redux”
Abstract: Science has long been considered a defining feature of modernity—as the major
component of the historical process of rationalization and the source of modernity’s nefarious
consequences, mainly disenchantment. Recent scholarship—especially on the principal architect
of modernity, Max Weber—has demonstrated, however, that rationalization was less a matter of
ending up in the “iron cage” without freedom and meaning than the complete reorganization of
ethics, religion, and culture and of the self in relation to society. The essays in this session
address three dimensions of the relationship between scientific knowledge and that
“reorganized” modernity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: how expertise transformed
the public and the government; how calculability of the marketplace was neutralized by
international affairs and confessional conflict; and how associational and institutional life in
Berlin was reconfigured to sustain both the culture and the profession of science.
Title: Science and Popular Culture: Making and Communicating Natural Knowledge
Abstract: This is a panel devoted to popular science and science popularization. It engages in
dialogue across the physical and life sciences, and unites the contexts of knowledge production
and consumption. Our goal is to develop a rich account of the people and practices that have
contributed to new natural knowledge in the 19th and 20th centuries that does not privilege the
voices and experiences of elite practitioners over amateurs, or scholarly publications over
museum exhibits, textbooks, and popular films. In so doing we will explore how the social,
cultural, and epistemic statuses of diverse scientific institutions, practices, modes of
communication, and practitioners were negotiated in particular contexts. Our session will thus
address foundational questions about what it meant to be a scientist, do science, and contribute to
scientific knowledge in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Title: Scientific Institutions and Nazism
Abstract: During the last five-to-ten years a great deal of new work has appeared on all aspects
of science and scientists before, during, and after Nazism. Two major large-scale research
programs led the way, from the Max Planck Society on the History of the Kaiser Wilhelm
Society during National Socialism, and from the German Research Foundation on its own history
from the 1920s to the 1970s. Smaller projects focused on individual institutions, including the
history of the German Physical Society, the Deutsches Museum for Science and Technology, and
the Fritz Haber Institute for Physical Chemistry. This session will survey these different types of
research projects on different types of scientific institutions, providing the latest research results
and a rich and enlightening survey of the interaction of scientists and the National Socialist
regime.
Title: Scientific Organizations and Research Practices in Nationalist Times
Abstract: This session will examine the reciprocal relations between the structures of research
organizations and the practices of working scientists, focusing on cases in which nationalist
sentiments inspired the rethinking of one or more elements in these relationships, thereby
throwing the interconnection of the various constituents into sharper relief. Connections between
the structure of research institutes and the daily practices of researchers are rarely as clear as the
historian might like. It is almost axiomatic that scientists desire institutes that allow them to
pursue their research in the manner to which they are accustomed. Somewhat less self-evident,
but nevertheless well-documented, is the tendency of science administrators to develop vocal
stances regarding “proper research practices.” But transitions in institutional structures and
research practices are often asynchronous, making it difficult to identify and assess the
consequences of these intentions. We will employ three different case studies from the
nationalistic heydays of the early 20th century to examine whether and to what extent overlaps
between nationalist sentiments and science reforms might ease this evaluation.
Title: Seeds of Change: Agricultural Production, Commercial Interests, and the Science of
Breeding, 1850-1940
Abstract: The task of producing plant varieties for cultivation underwent a dramatic shift in the
United States between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What had been smallscale, publicly subsidized craftwork transformed into a science-intensive and eventually highly
privatized industry. As this process unfolded, many individuals and groups sought to participate
in and influence the direction of breeding science and practice, generating conflict and, at times,
new patterns of collaboration. The panel moves beyond the development of agricultural
experiment stations and American genetics to incorporate lesser-recognized actors into the
history of American agricultural science and breeding. It explores the competition between
scientists and commercial operations to establish authority over the assessment of new varieties
and over the minds of farmers in the post-bellum period; the cooperation among canning
operations and academic breeders to produce can-ready vegetables in the progressive era; and the
interest of a corporate research lab in promoting sales of the x-ray by developing it as a tool for
breeding in the interwar period. In its exploration of these diverse spaces of agricultural science
this panel shows how a range of commercial interests – seed houses, food processors, industrialtechnology firms – saw rewards in innovating new plants, new breeding techniques, and also
new marketing strategies. Exploring these actors’ participation reveals a larger story not only
about the successful market arrangements and scientific practices of this period but also the
extent of interest in agricultural science in industrializing America.
Title: Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam as a Site of Knowledge
Abstract: Amsterdam was a principal hub of seventeenth-century scientific culture. The city
attracted people of all manners of learning to meet and exchange experiences and artifacts. It
housed knowledge-generating institutions like gardens, cabinets and informal societies, and an
extensive educational system ranging from a well-respected Athenaeum to a dense web of
private schools. It was a prominent publishing house for a wide international market. This fabric
of learning was a manifestation of the cultural, political and economic prosperity of Amsterdam.
The city was the nodal point in a variety of networks. Besides being the main port of
transshipment for the Republic’s ‘mother trade’ to Europe, it was the center of global trade to the
Indies. Amsterdam had a dominant and self-willed say in the Republic’s government, making its
regents far more than town administrators. The wealth and power of Amsterdam was largely
distributed, internally over the governing class of merchants and externally with the other towns
that made up the Dutch Republic. This specificity in comparison to other major European cities
makes Amsterdam illuminating for the study of early modern urban settings of scientific culture.
This session investigates the relationships between the fabric of knowledge production and urban
structures. Amsterdam did not only provide networks for circulation of people and objects, it also
employed learned men to sustain and extend its social, political and economic position, both
locally and internationally. The papers inquire into several circles of learning, inquiring into the
interlacements of these circles with their urban settings.
Title: Spatial Knowledge: Writing and Drawing as Epistemic Practices
Abstract: This session looks at how the use of graphically-shaped space played a significant role
in the pursuit of natural knowledge. Each paper addresses an episode in which writing or
drawing practices were used to create and shape the space and meaning of documents. Each
focuses on a different episode with a view to identifying possible similarities and differences that
appear over time. In the first paper, Matthew C. Hunter explores the space of drawing in the
work of the polymath Robert Hooke (1635-1703) and raises several important issues relevant to
cognitive interactions between chemical and astronomical representation. Next, Matthew D.
Eddy investigates the space of words in the work of the naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778).
Using printed and manuscript texts, he underscores the fundamental role played by the schematic
arrangement of commonplace heads in the paginal spaces of systematic natural history. The third
paper, given by Omar W. Nasim, reconstructs the cartographic spaces used by the astronomer
John Herschel (1792-1871) to represent nebulae. He shows how these ‘working skeletons’
facilitated a kind of spatial knowledge that was then used to interpret nebular photographs.
Finally, Barbara Wittmann concentrates on the epistemology of the spatial practices used to
represent the internal and external morphology of an Australian sole fish. Focusing on images of
the fish produced by the Berlin Museum of Natural History in 2006, she traces out the graphic
connections between the past and the present. The session will conclude with a synthetic
commentary by Seymour Mauskopf.
Title: Taming the Information Beast
Abstract: The goal of this session is to explore technologies which have been invented to deal
with “information overload” and examine their effects on what has counted as knowledge,
information, and data. Early modern naturalists complained about an “information overload”
resulting from the discovery of large numbers of new plants and animal species. Late-twentieth
century molecular biologists complained about an “information overload” resulting from the
automated determination of vast numbers of molecular sequences. But if the theme of an
“information overload” has been universal, the technologies which were developed to deal with
it were far more historically specific. From paper card indexes to electronic databases, from note
taking to digital cross-linking, and from filing cabinets to cryo-repositories, these technologies
have been as varied as they were powerful. Far from reducing the “information overload” they
actually fuelled it by easing the collection of more materials and information. Material and
information items were transformed into collections of some sorts which made visible the
relations between the items they contained and the structural patterns which could unite them. As
information became relegated to data, these relations and patterns became the epistemically
relevant information, displacing what previously counted as natural knowledge. This session
aims to study the transformative aspects of information technologies from the early eighteenth
century to the late twentieth century. Comparison across this period, we hope, will contribute to a
better understanding of the dynamic nature of “information overload”.
Title: The War of Guns and Mathematics: Military-Scientific Collaborations and Methods in
Ballistics from Euler to World War II
Abstract: This session will explore the history of relationship between scientists and military
institutions, focusing on the case of ballistics from the late 18th-century to WWII. It aims at
better understanding the impact scientists made on this military discipline, as well as the
consequences that their involvement with military affairs had on them.
Title: There is Something in the Air: Chemistry, Medicine, and Enlightenment Reform
Abstract: Chemistry’s increasing detachment from its traditional roots in medicine, especially
during the second half of the eighteenth century, is commonly seen as a major factor in the
coming into being of modern chemistry. Similarly, the rise of pneumatic chemistry is most often
discussed in the context of the chemical revolution—the discovery of oxygen or Lavoisier’s
identification of gas as both substance and state of matter. Challenging these historiographical
tendencies, the panel explores the epistemological and social connections between the emergence
of the chemistry of airs, the emphasis of Enlightenment medical discourse on the environmental
causes of ill-health, and the motivations to reform medical practice by associating it with
experimental science. Focusing on the period between the 1740s and the early 1780s, the papers
analyze salient aspects of this interaction and their various manifestations between the laboratory
and the public sphere. The different case studies uncover intellectual, practical, and political
patterns of continuity and coherence, from William Brownrigg’s early speculations about the
nature and medicinal qualities of air(s) to Mme. d’Arconville’s researches on putrefaction and
fermentation, which were informed by John Pringle’s seminal work on ‘putrid diseases’. The
latter raised much interest in ‘aerial’ public health reforms, culminating with the emergence of
eudiometry and the promise for measuring the virtues of airs. The interplay between chemistry,
medicine, and pneumatic research provides crucial insights into key aspects of Enlightenment
science such as the public application of experimental practices, quests for utility, or the
interaction between natural philosophy and social progress.
Title: Thinking with Specimens: Collections-Based Research in the Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology
Abstract: Rather than characterizing museum research in terms of the field or the laboratory, our
session interprets research in terms of the specimen collections. Conceptualizing research as
collections-based shifts the analytical focus from the physical location of the research toward
questions of practice and theory. Established in 1908, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ)
at the University of California, Berkeley serves as a window to collections-based research
throughout the twentieth century. The papers in our session utilize the history of the MVZ to
develop the concept of collections-based research and explore how it enabled certain kinds of
work, including taxon-based research, comparative analysis, and many aspects of ecology,
systematics, and evolution. Collections-based research at the MVZ involved the incorporation of
new techniques, both in the field and the laboratory, and therefore challenges the perception that
these two places of research have been in conflict; in the MVZ they have been interdependent.
Title: WORKSHOP: The Legacy of Antiquity: Books and Practice
Abstract: The purpose of this workshop is to generate a reflection on how ancient science was
handled in the subsequent periods through books and translated into practice. Although much
work has been done on the philological analysis of the textual tradition of ancient scientific
treatises, sometimes also taking into consideration the exercise of science, only rarely did this
work deal with the dynamics of traditions and the possibly reciprocal influences between
books/texts and practice. The workshop aims to explore such an approach on the basis of case
studies to be presented as starting points for methodological discussions.
HSS Paper Abstracts for Montreal 2010
Author: Oscar Joao Abdonour
Title: Mathematical Concepts in the 16th-Century: The Case of Geometry and Ratio Conception
in Theoretical Music
Abstract: The end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century saw a considerable
extension in the spectrum of mathematical techniques used in theoretical music, which began to
include explicitly geometry, subsequently widely used, among the mathematical tools for solving
problems. In this article we shall develop the idea that the use of geometry had gone beyond the
needs of the divison of the tone or the construction of temperament. We believe that this had
meant an important change in the conceptions used by musical theoreticians of this period to deal
with ratios. Consequently, this change had intensified the conflict with the Pythagorean
conception of music according to which only whole numbers and their ratios should participate
on the discourse concerning theoretical music, thereby promoting greater interaction between
arithmetic and geometry in musical contexts.
Author: Catherine Abou-Nemeh
Title: Growing Intelligence: Nicolas Hartsoeker's system (1656-1725) and the Legacy of
Cambridge Platonism in Dutch-French Scientific Thought
Abstract: In 1712 René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur shocked the scientific community when
he reported that crayfish regenerated their amputated limbs. Baffled at the phenomenon,
Réaumur hesitated in providing a mechanical explanation as to why and how this could happen.
Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725) heard of Réaumur's experiments from his patron, Elector
Johann Wilhelm II of the Palatinate. This experimental news, however, proved ground-breaking
in Hartsoeker’s system-building. In this paper, I explore Hartsoeker’s intellectual relationship
with the Cambridge Neo-platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, whose work helped him
see the explanatory pitfalls of Cartesian mechanism. Ralph Cudworth’s idea of plastic natures
inspired the "organizational" first element that imbued matter particles with motion in
Hartsoeker's system of physics. Meanwhile, Henry More’s arguments in his letters to Descartes
convinced Hartsoeker to begin looking outside the Cartesian framework for answers. I argue that
Hartsoeker’s exposure to Cambridge Platonism allowed him to explain Réaumur’s crayfish
experiment with “Intelligent” forces that reside in matter or body (like a crayfish). These
“Intelligences” are an organizational principle of matter and are also able to conserve and
regenerate it. The crayfish episode and the waves it generated helps to illuminate the aftermath of
the various philosophies in the life sciences debates in the early 18th century.
Author: Tara H. Abraham
<taabraha@uoguelph.ca>
Title: New Disciplinary Dynamics in Post World War II Brain Research: The Case of Francis O.
Schmitt's Neurosciences Research Program at MIT
Abstract: Without question, post World War II American science experienced unprecedented
transformations. As new relations emerged between science, the military, and the federal
government, science acquired a new cultural resonance and new patrons: beyond support for
military projects in the name of national security, federal aid to nonmilitary research was also
ascending. This was especially true of the brain sciences. Previously supported by philanthropic
organizations such as the Rockefeller Foundation, brain research was increasingly statesponsored, gaining support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Office of Naval
Research. While historians have focused on the consequences of this shift for the emerging fields
of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence, this paper will address the influence of new
funding patterns on studies of the mind’s wetware: the brain. I will focus on institutional
developments at MIT during the 1960s, specifically those surrounding neurophysiologist Francis
O. Schmitt. Schmitt was a master administrator who had experienced enormous success as head
of MIT’s Department of Biology and was key in developing MIT’s program in electron
microscopy. In 1962, Schmitt founded the Neurosciences Research Program (NRP), with
backing from MIT and the NIH. The NRP was ambitious, meticulously planned, and successful
in bringing together the elite in American brain research from diverse fields. By examining the
institutional context of the emergence of the NRP, and the motivations of the NIH in supporting
it, this paper will demonstrate that in the context of new federal patronage patterns, brain
research became interdisciplinary in new and interesting ways.
Author: Azadeh Achbari
<azadeh.achbari@gmail.com>
Title: Itinerant Savants: Dutch Humboldtians and the Multiple Purposes of Travel
Abstract: From the 1830s onward Dutch scientists eagerly joined the Humboldtian craze for the
measurement of widespread terrestrial phenomena, by participating in international networks.
Typical of these sciences, which involved the study of the atmosphere, winds and ocean currents,
earth magnetism, to mapmaking and land-surveying, were their reliance on accurate
observations, their strong subordination to mathematical theory, and their expansive orientation.
Although their main contributions consisted of local readings rather than global expeditions, the
Dutch Humboldtians did not remain immobile. In the spirit of the Grand Tour these savants
frequently visited foreign centers of Humboldtian science. As I will illustrate in my paper, they
traveled for multiple reasons, serving personal, institutional and national purposes. These
included apprenticeship, especially with respect to the use of standardized instruments and
techniques, personal acquaintance, vital to the prosperity of the undertaking, and prestige,
derived from foreign recognition. In my paper I will discuss these and other factors that may
account for this remarkable wanderlust that was so conspicuously absent among previous and
later generations of Dutch scientists.
Author: Miruna Achim
Title: Hippocratism and Urban Reform: Mexico City and Lima, Late 18th century
Abstract: This talk reflects on a moment of transition, at the end of the 18th century, in the
conceptualization of environment. Some of the more relevant traits of this transition have already
been described by recent scholarship: while Hippocratic notions of how place, air, waters, and
constellations affected physical, intellectual, and moral health, had dominated Western thinking
about cities for centuries, by the end of the 18th century, no less deterministic concepts of
temperament, equilibrium, and hygiene, paired up with quantitative and instrumental methods for
producing natural knowledge, became the basis for describing urban landscape and for justifying
urban reform. Taking as points of departure two cities in the New World, Mexico City and Lima,
I will be analyzing yet another aspect, intricately bound to late 18th century thinking about New
World urban climates: local knowledge about the environment, assiduously collected by Creole
scholars among the indigenous and the rustics, became a distinct mark of American
Enlightenment and the basis for Creole intervention in local politics, particularly in city
planning.
Author: Marcus P. Adams
<mpa9@pitt.edu>
Title: Thomas Hobbes on Simple Conceptions & the Nature of Science
Abstract: Several recent commentators argue that Thomas Hobbes’s account of the nature of
science is conventionalist. Engaging in scientific practice on a conventionalist account is more a
matter of making sure one connects one term to another properly rather than checking or testing
one’s claims, e.g., by experiment. In this paper, I argue that the conventionalist interpretation of
Hobbesian science accords neither with Hobbes’s theoretical account in De Corpore (1655) and
Leviathan (1651) nor with Hobbes’s scientific practice in De Homine (1658) and elsewhere.
Closely tied to the conventionalist interpretation is the deductivist interpretation, on which it is
claimed that Hobbes believed sciences such as optics are deduced from geometry. I argue that
Hobbesian science places simple conceptions as the foundation for geometry and the sciences in
which we use geometry, which provides strong evidence against both the conventionalist and
deductivist interpretations. First, I discuss Hobbes’s untranslated optical work in De Homine,
chapter 2 where he uses geometrical principles from De Corpore to explain optical phenomena.
This untranslated work in De Homine, chapter 2 is important because it is there that Hobbes
provides his account of the visual line and explains how humans perceive motion. Second, I
outline David Gauthier’s (1997) non-conventionalist account of Hobbesian geometry and the
construction of geometrical figures. I then augment Gauthier’s account by arguing that simple
conceptions provide the foundation for geometry and the sciences in which Hobbes uses
geometry, e.g., optics. Third, I criticize two conventionalist interpretations (Martinich 1997,
2005; McNeilly 1968). Finally, I provide evidence against the deductivist interpretation held,
e.g., by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985). Since the deductivist interpretation often
complements the conventionalist interpretation, decreasing the likelihood that the deductivist
interpretation accurately describes Hobbes's view on the nature of science removes any
additional motivation one might have for holding the conventionalist interpretation.
Author: Antony Adler
<antony.adler@gmail.com>
Title: A School for Naturalist Voyagers in the Jardin des Plantes: Field Science During the
“Golden Age” of French Natural History (1796 – 1850)
Abstract: Historians of French natural history have studied the transformation of French
institutional science, which gradually transitioned from being dependent on royal patronage to
state sponsorship. However, a frequently overlooked chapter is the creation of a state-sponsored
school for the purpose of recruiting and training field naturalists, called voyageurs-naturalistes,
in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1819. The historian Richard W. Burkhardt has argued that the
Jardin des Plantes was a site of negotiation between the French state and the professors of the
Museum of Natural History, the elite of French science. I will argue that the school for voyagernaturalists was an important site of cooperation and concession among the state, the scientific
elite, and a third party, the field collectors. State interests regarding mapping, resource
exploitation, and intelligence gathering had to be negotiated with the Museum’s elite, who
sought to increase natural history knowledge while advancing their own careers. In turn, rights of
first discovery and questions of authority in the production of new knowledge had to be
negotiated between the elite and the field collectors. Thus, I will argue that field collectors
played a shaping role in the development of French natural history, one which would have an
increasingly important function as France became an industrial power at the end of the 19th
century. The school for naturalist voyagers was at the center of this complex debate and
transformation.
Author: Peter Alagona
Title: What Is Habitat?
Abstract: What is habitat? This seemingly simple question has two very different answers. If
you are a scientist, then habitat is one of the most basic, straightforward concepts imaginable.
Habitat is where a species lives. Where a species lives is determined by the physical and biotic
resources present, its ability to capture those resources, and its capacity to exploit new resources
as they become available. The idea of habitat is essential for understanding evolution and
conserving the diversity of life. It is one of the most fundamental concepts in all of the biological
and environmental sciences. If you are a historian, then habitat poses a much more complicated
set of issues. Habitat has a history that is as cultural and political as it is biological. This paper
will explore the history of the idea of habitat in ecology and conservation biology. It will argue
that the emergence of habitat as a key concept in science, politics, and the law was one of the
most important developments in twentieth century conservation history. It will explain why ideas
about habitat developed differently in European and American science. And it will show how
traditional notions of habitat have begun to break down for conservation biologists working on
endangered species in the American West and elsewhere. The paper will argue that scientists and
conservationists need a new conception of habitat. But most of all, it will argue that there has
never been a simple answer to the question: “What is habitat?”
Author: Amir Alexander
Title: Mathematical Matter
Abstract: The relationship of mathematics to physical reality has been a mystery at the heart of
the field since antiquity. This paper will explore several models of this relationship that have
been used in the past, and the mathematical practices that grew around them. The classical
geometrical approach is guided by a Platonist view in which the world is ordered by universal
rational principles. Conversely, the atomists of the early 17th century created a mathematics that
was a generalization and abstraction of physical matter. Beginning in the 19th century
mathematics is perceived as a world onto its own, separate from physical reality, but which one
can “apply” to the physical world. In each case the practice of mathematics as well as
investigations of the physical world are shaped by a core understanding of the relationship
between mathematics and matter.
Author: Jennifer K. Alexander
Title: Arguing in Pictures: The Visual Rhetoric of Mechanical Reliability in Restoration France
Abstract: Drawings of steam engines advanced a variety of arguments in the early nineteenth
century, just as mechanical drawing was becoming standardized. This paper examines arguments
made by inventors and professional draftsmen and draftswomen in Restoration France, by
examining different depictions of steam power in both their published and unpublished drawings
and engravings, most taken from the Conservatoire des arts et métiers and the Ecoles d’arts et
métiers. At issue were not only standards of drawing but if, and how, drawings should be related
to the actual building of machines.
Author: Hanne Andersen
Title: Making Better Scientists: HPS in the Science Curriculum
Abstract: In my talk I will discuss what science students can gain from courses in history and
philosophy of science targeted especially for individual science programmes. Drawing on
experiences from a number of programmes, I will particularly focus on the following issues: 1)
Identity formation in new interdisciplinary programmes such as nanotechnology. I shall argue
that historical case studies can be an important component in developing the (inter)disciplinary
identity of the students. 2) Reflections on fundamental issues in professional practice. I shall
argue that a focus on philosophical issues selected for their relevance to later professional
practice can support students’ critical thinking about their own discipline. 3) Graduate training in
scientific practice. I shall argue that history and philosophy of science can play an important role
in science graduate training by providing reflections on scientific practice and research integrity
beyond what is usually found in standard training on scientific conduct.
Author: Michitake Aso
<maso@wisc.edu>
Title: Business as Usual?: Agricultural Research, the Rubber Industry, and Franco-Vietnamese
Relations at the Beginning of Decolonization, 1945-1954
Abstract: Established in 1941, the Lai Khe agricultural research station in southern Vietnam
appeared set to make significant contributions to the rubber industry established during the
colonial period. Yet beginning with World War II and lasting until 1975, this research center
experienced major disruptions due to its placement in a militarily important region of the south.
The period between 1945 and 1954 was a particularly fraught one at the station, as new political
relationships were being worked out between the governments of France, Vietnam, and the U.S.
during the Indochina War. This paper argues that, following broader political trends, French
researchers adopted a language of cooperation but remained unable to act on it, reflecting the
many difficulties of actualizing the decolonization project. Beginning in the late 1940s, a
nominally independent Vietnamese state, headed by former emperor Bao Dai, and growing U.S.
aid began to create new poles of power. The commercial importance of rubber and the relative
insularity of the industry from politics, however, resulted in a different trajectory for scientific
research about rubber. Although documents from Lai Khe reveal a growing rhetoric of
cooperation, and new realities, especially with regard to the ability of plantations to recruit labor,
made persuasion more realistic than force, there remained strong continuities with the colonial
period. These continuities, including assumptions about Vietnamese capabilities, made new
relations in scientific research difficult to establish.
Author: David Aubin
<daubin@math.jussieu.fr>
Title: Doctrine, Virtues and the Scientific Method in a Military Context: The French Gâvre
Commission for Ballistics, 1829-1918
Abstract: Exterior ballistics, that is, the theoretical computation of a projectile’s trajectory out of
the muzzle of a cannon, was one of the main problems with regard to which professional
mathematicians were able, as mathematicians, to play a prominent and decisive role in World
War I. I argue that there was nothing preordained about their involvement in that effort.
Although the problems of exterior ballistics mobilized advanced mathematical techniques, they
had up to 1915, in France especially, been addressed almost exclusively by military specialists.
The circumstances under which civilian mathematicians were drawn to the problem and the
specific contributions they were able to bring to it therefore need to be assessed from the point of
view of the encounter of people coming from various parts. In this paper, I examine the military
technical culture at the main ballistic center in France during the 19th and early 20th centuries
(the so-called Gâvre Commission) and the way in which civilian mathematicians were brought in
the picture after 1915.
Author: Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau
<akb39@cam.ac.uk>
Title: Frozen Bodies: Representations of Catalepsy in French 19th-Century Medical Texts
Abstract: In Psychiatry, wrote Michel Foucault, the nineteenth century could be characterized as
one of convulsions. From the mesmeric crises in its opening years to the spectacular apogee of
Charcot’s fin de siècle circus—-the patient, in nineteenth-century Psychiatry, was all too
agitated. One imagines a parade of hysterics, epileptics and other neurotics dancing alongside
one another, forbidden to speak their ills, demonstrating their excessive irrationality through their
gesticulating bodies. Yet for all this talk of contractures and contortions, little has been said by
contemporary historians of that other, “frozen” state; that which through hypnotism transformed
subjects into statues, and which permeated much of the medical and psychological discourse of
that period. Catalepsy: what to make of this immobile condition—-pathological stigma or
harmless state, mere symptom or full-fledged nosological entity? And how to approach its often
disturbing manifestations in the light of prevalent scientific understanding? In this paper we
examine the representations of catalepsy in some important but understudied French nineteenthcentury medico-psychiatric texts (including those of Jacques Henri Desire Petetin, Antoine
Despine, Paul Richer and Pierre Janet). In so doing we wish to shed light on a medical category
that encompassed all, from hypnotism to the feminine condition, from the unconscious to the
subconscious, and from a fascination with the paranormal to the establishment of a science of the
mind.
Author: Tawrin Baker
<tawbaker@indiana.edu>
Title: Fixed Colors in the Works of Francis Bacon: A Reappraisal
Abstract: Apart from Francis Bacon’s discussion of heat in the Novum organum, the most
detailed and concrete examples of both his idiosyncratic notion of form as well as his method of
induction occur in his writings on fixed colors. However, Bacon’s statements on color have yet
to be investigated sufficiently. According to Mary Hesse, Bacon says that fixed colors (as
opposed to fantastical or prismatic colors) arise from the ratio of the size of the corpuscles that
make up a colored body. Hers is the most detailed treatment of Bacon’s writings on fixed colors
to date, and many subsequent scholars seem to follow her account. However, a close reading of
Bacon’s works reveals several problems with Hesse’s interpretation. Revisiting the Valerius
terminus (c. 1603), where Bacon makes his first definite statements on the nature of fixed colors,
and comparing his statements there with those in his later works, shows that Bacon saw colors as
arising from specific textures of matter, and not, contra Hesse, from the ratio of the sizes of the
corpuscles composing a body. This notion of color as a texture invites comparison both to
Lucretius, whom Bacon read and quotes in his works, and to Boyle, the most prominent selfstyled follower of the Lord Verulam. Although all three present color as a texture, contrasting
their accounts gives a clearer understanding of a host of issues at the heart of Bacon’s
understanding of nature and how “knowledge shall be increased.”
Author: Christopher Baxfield
Title: Electrical Debate: William Watson, Benjamin Franklin, Nature and God, 1745-1763.
Abstract: This paper returns to the 1740s dispute over the nature of electricity between William
Watson and Benjamin Franklin. Whilst prior historians have viewed the debate as a skirmish
between a good and a great natural philosopher, I suggest that here was illuminated fundamental
philosophical differences over the relationship between God and nature. Watson believed that
God had a role in nature and that electricity was evidence of his involvement. Through careful
experimentation Watson showed how electricity was qualitatively distinct from ordinary matter,
achieving effects impossible for ordinary matter and suggestive of divine substance supplied by
God. Franklin, however, used experiment to show that God had no role in nature. Experiment
revealed electricity to be bound to the constituent make-up of matter, illuminating in charged
glass an innate electrical power that could self-equilibrate. In differing over their conceptions of
electricity, Watson and Franklin differed in their conceptions of utility. Whilst Franklin
suggested projects that would manipulate nature, without recourse to God, Watson argued that
use of electricity illuminated God’s activity and his blessing of humanity. This suggests the need
for care when speaking about natural philosophical utility in the eighteenth century.
Author: Jennifer L. Bazar
<jbazar@yorku.ca>
Title: On Display: Examining Contemporary Exhibits of the 19th-Century Asylum
Abstract: Darby Penney and Peter Stastny conducted a multi-project analysis of the contents of
suitcases found in the attic of one of the Willard State Hospital buildings in New York state.
Their results were presented in 2004 as an exhibit at the New York State Museum, which later
became a traveling exhibit, as well as the website SuitcaseExhibit.org, and a book in 2009. The
projects served to present the lives and experiences of the suitcase owners, all patients at Willard
in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, while also raising awareness of the contemporary
concerns of psychiatric service consumers. The Willard suitcase displays, as one example, raise
the question of how the material culture of the early asylum system is displayed. Do the items
featured reflect patient experiences within an institution accurately? Is there consistency in the
exhibits with the most common forms of treatment administered? Which items predominate? In
this paper I will examine the various types of materials featured in displays of the nineteenth
century asylum era. This analysis will consider both temporary and permanent exhibits featured
at archival repositories and mental health museums. The focus will rest primarily on North
America but will also include published accounts of exhibits from parts of Western Europe and
Australia.
Author: Jaime Larry Bechimol
Title: Malaria, Railroads and the Inner Exploration of Brazil
Abstract: The article explores the impact of disease on infrastructure work under the Brazilian
republican drive towards modernization (1890s-1920s). Railways helped tie the territory together
and foster the symbolic and material expansion of the nation. These ventures were compromised
by the diseases that raged among laborers and engineers, especially malaria. The scientists
entrusted with vanquishing such epidemic outbreaks did not just conduct campaigns; they also
undertook painstaking observations of aspects of the disease, including its relations to hosts and
environment, thus contributing to the production of new knowledge of malaria and to the
institutionalization of a new field in Brazil, then taking root in Europe’s colonies: “tropical
medicine.” The article shows the ties between these innovations (especially the theory of
domiciliary infection) and the sanitary campaigns that helped the railways. We show how
railroads, disease, and tropical medicine were intertwined with the growth of the domestic
market and initiatives to explore the country’s vast interior and make it part of the state, then
dominated by coffee growers and other social groups in Southeast Brazil. The railroads that
penetrated the interior and tied the national territory together prompted valuable research that
helped to shape tropical medicine—the medicine that addresses the complex life cycles of
parasites in diverse hosts and the very dynamic synergy between these biological processes and
the economic cycles of human societies.
Author: Arlie R. Belliveau
<arlie@yorku.ca>
Title: Negotiating Scientific and Industrial Management: The Micromotion Films of Frank and
Lillian Gilbreth, 1912-1924
Abstract: Historians do not reflect kindly upon Scientific Management (SM), and perhaps
rightfully so. Labor unions objected to it, some interpret facets like efficiency as Nazism, and the
whole field is often conflated with Taylorism. Traditional histories problematically oversimplify
SM and its relationship to supporting and competing theories. Psychology’s Industrial
Management (IM) and sociology’s Hawthorne Effect are reported to have cleanly replaced the
engineer’s dehumanizing SM. While all three approaches negotiated the study of workers, a
reflexive critical history complicates disciplinary boundaries. Progressive Era engineers,
psychologists, and managers spoke very different languages; and, while previous histories report
successful contributions from each field, important cross talk between disciplines has been
overlooked. The Micromotion films of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth offered these disciplines a
common silent language with which to translate and moderate SM through a psychological lens.
Replacing stopwatch technology with motion picture cameras maneuvered SM away from
Taylorism’s stigmatized timed actions toward efficient motion study that literally brought the
worker’s fatigue, motivation, and expertise back to the forefront. The films addressed the critique
of dehumanization while maintaining the central goals of SM, and reflexively altering the
researchers’ conceptions of workers. This also allowed the Gilbreths to sell their SM/IM hybrid
to psychologists, engineers, managers, and workers, regardless of its actual utility. The untold
story of the film artifacts, which are discussed in this paper, open up a new perspective from
which to consider the role of instrumentation in knowledge production.
Author: Keith R. Benson
Title: The Metaphysical Club, Pragmatism, and the Search for New Methods in American
Biology, 1880-1910
Abstract: Both pragmatism and the “new biology” developed in the United States at the end of
the nineteenth century in the context of reactions to European philosophy and European
morphology. In this paper, I have three goals. First, I will examine the major features of
European morphology, including its theoretical underpinnings and its empirical evidence.
Second, I will evaluate the formation of cytology in the US as a reaction to European
developments and argue the uniqueness of the American position. Finally, I will argue for an
intellectual connection between American pragmatism and the “new biology” in the United
States, especially as its practitioners considered fresh methodological approaches that figured
prominently in the development of cytology.
Author: Andrew Berns
Title: Ulisse Aldrovandi and the Science of Scripture
Abstract: The sixteenth-century Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) studied the
Hebrew Bible and used its language to enrich his philosophical and antiquarian research. Based
on several of Aldrovandi's unpublished writings this paper explores the connections between
biblical studies and natural philosophy in late Renaissance Italy. To underscore the different
ways in which theologians and naturalists approached the Bible in early modern Europe my
presentation compares Aldrovandi's work on subjects such as biblical geography, alimentary
history, and technologies of writing in the Bible to that of the Spanish theologian Benito Arias
Montano, from whom Aldrovandi learned much.
Author: Richard Beyler
Title: The German Physical Society during the Third Reich
Abstract: The German Physical Society (DPG), one of Germany’s oldest professional
associations, has a rich tradition. The research conducted in Germany in the decades straddling
the turn of the 20th century defined global standards in many areas of physics. The year 1933
signified a grave setback for this highly developed physics culture. The racist campaigns and
repressive policies by the National Socialist dictatorship against political opposition and dissent
barred Jewish intellectuals and scientists, consequently forcing many to emigrate. Albert Einstein
is symbolic of this intelligent exodus from Germany. His emigration signaled the decline of
physical research in Germany. The society tried to maximize its autonomy during the Third
Reich, but its success in this regard was achieved only because it supported key Nazi policies,
including purging its last Jewish members in 1938 and helping to mobilize physics for the war
effort. This talk will focus on the history of the DPG during the National Socialist period,
including a comparative perspective. This comparison relates, on one hand, to the temporal
dimension, whereby the years before and after the Nazi dictatorship are taken sufficiently into
account, also touching on the issue of the continuities and discontinuities in the society’s history.
The history of the DPG in the Third Reich will not be treated in isolation but placed within the
general political context as well as within the history of science; and its conduct will be
compared against that of other scientific societies and institutions during the Third Reich.
Author: He Bian
<bian@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: Mastering “the Play of Light and Shadow”: Doctors, Opticians and the Shadow Test in
Late 19th Century America
Abstract: This paper aims to examine the popularization of retinoscopy, or “the shadow test” in
late 19th century America. Derived from ophthalmoscopy, which allowed the physician to
examine the interior of a living eye, retinoscopy was used in turn to measure the refractive state
of the eye with the practical purpose of fitting eyeglasses. By analyzing three technical manuals
in which different authors explained to readers how retinoscopy worked, I seek to delineate their
different understandings of 1) the place of technical expertise in optics in the medical profession
vis-à-vis the non-medical opticians; 2) the eye as an inseparable part of the patient’s body to be
treated as a whole, or as an optical device that could be examined and remedied on its own; 3)
the nature of spectacles, or corrective lens and the way they should be dispensed. I would
tentatively conclude that the competition over mastery of retinoscopy and the dissemination of
the technique, at least in the American context, functioned as a central piece in the birth of
optometry as a legally sanctioned and independent profession, as well as an essential aid in the
standardization of vision in a modernizing society.
Author: Carla J. Bittel
Title: Woman, Know Thyself: Gender, Phrenology, and the Female Brain
Abstract: In nineteenth-century America, phrenology played a critical role in defining sex
differences and framing gender relations. It became a leading method and discourse for
describing both the qualities and shortcomings of the sexes. Men were distinguished by their
firmness, force, self-esteem, courage, combativeness, and destructiveness; women were known
for exquisiteness, emotion, susceptibility, artifice, secrecy and above all, “attachment and
devotion to offspring.” Phrenological readings literally mapped gender differences onto the head,
and located anatomical sex differences in the brain, the “organ of the mind.” While phrenology
could reinforce perceptions about the physical and mental inferiority of women, some middleclass women found a friend in phrenology. Women were active practitioners, followers, and
proselytizers of phrenology, and used it to demonstrate their own “natural” qualities, to guide
personal improvement, and to engage in scientific discourse. But as women used phrenology to
structure the “natural order” to their own advantage, they did so to the disadvantage of others,
reinforcing hierarchies of class and race, ability and disability. This paper examines both the
hierarchical tendencies and feminist potential of phrenology in the mid nineteenth century. It
shows how women used phrenology to better understand the female brain, and how women’s
rights activists turned to phrenology to justify the expansion of their social roles. Women took
advantage of phrenological science because it privileged the brain, rather than reproductive
organs, as the main determinant of sex and health.
Author: Jeremy Blatter
<jblatter@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: Hugo Münsterberg, Psychotechnics, and the Psychologizing of Cinema
Abstract: On December 16, 1916 Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg dropped dead while
delivering a lecture at Radcliffe. Recruited from Freiburg by William James in 1892 to head
Harvard’s first experimental psychological laboratory, Münsterberg would go on to become one
of the most well-known names in American psychology by the turn of the century. However, the
impending outbreak of world war would radically alter Münsterberg’s place in the history of
psychology from limelight to periphery. More specifically, it was the accusation that he was a
spy for the Germans which followed on the heels of the sinking of the Lusitania, which rapidly
brought Münsterberg into public suspicion and disfavor. From penning a non-fiction bestseller
Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913), to the utter alienation from his Harvard peers by the
time of his death, in less than three years Münsterberg’s reputation had so greatly diminished that
E.G. Boring (who became director of the Harvard psychology laboratory in 1924) would confine
his predecessor to mere footnotes in his still standard historical account of experimental
psychology. But perhaps the strangest part of Münsterberg’s legacy is not the historical
bowdlerization at the hands of Boring, but the fact that the recent uptick of interest in his work
has come from cinema studies, not the history of science. In this paper I will explore one of
Münsterberg’s last published works, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916), the
circumstances of its production, and its relationship to his late commitment to psychotechnics
and applied psychology.
Author: Victor Boantza
<boantza@gmail.com>
Title: Measuring Airs and Virtues: Debating Eudiometry between the Medical Environment and
the Experimental Sphere
Abstract: In his 1772 inaugural ‘Observations on Different Kinds of Airs’, Priestley announced
a new method of measuring the “goodness” of airs—the nitrous air test—thus laying the
cornerstone for the pneumatic practice of eudiometry. In 1783 Cavendish still published ‘An
Account of a New Eudiometer’ but concluded that “our sense of smelling can, in many cases,
perceive infinitely smaller alterations in the purity of the air than can be perceived by the nitrous
test.” Throughout the decade separating these two publications, the science and practice of
eudiometry was highly contentious. While giving rise to utopian dreams of social-medical and
environmentalist reforms, pneumatic practitioners found the practice of eudiometry difficult to
standardize and reconcile with their diverging theoretical motivations. An examination of the
two primary eudiometric research programs, the ‘Priestleyean’ and the ‘Fontanist’, inspired by
the works of Priestley and Felice Fontana, respectively, reveals an intricate interplay between
pneumatic chemical reasoning, experimentalism, and instrumentation. A selective-comparative
analysis of contributions by leading pneumatic practitioners like Priestley, Fontana, J.
Ingenhousz, T. Cavallo and J. H. de Magellan, focusing on a methodological debate between the
latter two, offers an evaluation of the role of theory in eighteenth-century pneumatic analysis, the
socio-epistemological status of ‘skill’ in chemical practice, and the interconnectedness between
validity of results, practical standardization and experimental error in the production of
eudiometric knowledge.
Author: Aaron Bobrow-Strain
Title: Killer Carbs? The Biopolitics of Amylophobia from Graham to Gluten-Free
Abstract: While studies of the biopolitics of medicine focus increasingly on the “glamorous”
(Woods et al. 2009) realms of genetics and biotechnology, this paper highlights a more quotidian
arena of struggle over individual and social vitality: the carbohydrate. In 1924, the U.S. trade
journal Baking Technology acknowledged the threat to bakers’ livelihoods posed by widespread
“amylophobia”. Literally, “fear of starch,” the term highlighted an amorphous but growing sense
that there was something wrong with the country’s bread. In the 1920s, amylophobia articulated
with the euthenics movement, dieting craze, and critiques of industrial progress, all played out in
the terrain of nutrition science. More broadly, amlyphobia is a recurring phenomenon with
significant appearances in the 1830s and 40s, 1920s and 30s, and 1990s-2010s. Although they
took different forms, in each of these moments concerns about deadly or unvital carbohydrates
became a touchstone for fears that the nation’s social and physical environment was becoming
increasingly pathogenic. And in each moment, the concerned were glossed by detractors as
hypersensitive nuts. This paper avoids false dichotomies drawn between prophetic “canaries in
the coal mine” and the oversensitive “worried well” by analyzing the way a rigorous discipline
of wheat avoidance enacts particular forms of biological citizenship, reflecting the anxieties and
contradictions of what Nikolas Rose (2005) calls “somatic individuality”. The paper concludes
by applying this framework to analyze the contemporary explosion of self-diagnosed celiac
disease, wheat allergies, and gluten intolerance.
Author: Maria Bohn
<bohn@kth.se>
Title: Carbon, Oceans and the Future, ca 1900-1957
Abstract: The history of how human society has related its future to CO2 has reached its
epitome in the by-now well-documented case of anthropogenic climate change. Common
narratives include Keeling’s measurements of CO2 on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, the early adoption of
climate modeling, and work by Revelle and others on the role of the oceans in regulating levels
of atmospheric CO2. In this paper I will show how in Scandinavia, CO2 studies related to the
ocean were indeed related to the future, but in a different way, well before the return of
Arrhenius’ CO2-hypothesis (1896) to the forefront of climate change theory in the 1950’s. These
studies were important for fishing which related to a future overcrowded planet and its increased
demands of food resources. Danish physiologist, Nobel Laureate August Krogh, who studied
CO2 tension of ocean water in the Arctic in 1902, was interested both in respiratory exchange of
marine organisms and in atmospheric CO2 levels. Later Finnish chemist Kurt Buch studied the
carbonic acid equilibrium system in the Baltic Sea with a view to food production. Despite the
original interest in maritime productivity this research influenced measurements of CO2 in the
1950’s orchestrated by Carl-Gustaf Rossby in the Institute of Meteorology, Stockholm Högskola.
In that international and multi-disciplinary environment Rossby quickly absorbed news on CO2
measurements and advised both Revelle and Keeling while also nurturing the early career of his
successor Bert Bolin who later became the first president of IPCC.
Author: Marv Bolt, Adler Planetarium and Museum
Title: IYA 2009 – 400 Years of Objects and the Construction of their Messages
Abstract: UNESCO’s International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA 2009), marking the 400-year
anniversary of Galileo’s first use of the telescope, was promoted as an opportunity for people
around the world to experience the wonder of the heavens, perhaps for the first time using a
telescope. Based on the exhibitions and programs developed at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and
elsewhere, we will look at how the diverse presentations and associated artifacts promoted under
the IYA 2009 banner reflect current efforts to communicate modern science and various aspects
of its history. In particular, we will note how they convey diverse messages and agendas: “great
man” history and the collaborative nature of modern science, the limitation of human senses and
the triumph of technology, the link between the Copernican revolution and modern geology, and
more.
Author: Cornelius
Title: Surfing on the Sea of Brain Waves: Electroencephalography in Performance Art
Abstract: With the arrival of electric technology, the integration of human beings in networks of
media did not stop at the outside of the human body but invaded its organic interior right to the
nervous system. While Marshall McLuhan famously declared this extension of the central
nervous system to result in “suicidal autoamputation,” others employed this electric technology
for turning the inner workings of the brain into an aesthetic experience. During the 1960s, the
electronic revolution made recording equipment more affordable, and the monitoring of
brainwaves became a fashionable activity, particularly as an advanced form of body feedback. In
addition, brain rhythms could now also be used as a source for sonification or visualization.
From Alvin Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer (1965), David Rosenboom’s Brainwave Music
(1976) to Mariko Mori’s Wave UFO (2003-2005) the availability of electroencephalographic
recording technology inspired artistic interventions transforming brain activity into a dynamic
performance principle in aesthetic practice. Examining some of these examples, the paper
explores how inner states became accessible by means of techno-scientific intervention for
feedback and for aesthetic exploration. How do these practices act on the relationality of
organism, medium and instrument? At first glance, these performances simply exchange the
graphical recording against some different output devices. However, the performances revolve
no longer around the recording of the brain but involve a tuning of the instrument and the
organism, turning both into performance media until they become indistinguishable and coproductive.
Author: Robert Brain (Department of History, University of British Columbia)
Title: A Brief History of Slime: Protoplasm, Ectoplasm and the Instruments of Infra-Visibility
Abstract: Nineteenth-century biologists, faced with the question, “What really lives?,” often
answered simply, “protoplasm.” Yet the problem of investigating life as the sub-cellular level
remained riddled with technical problems before the 1880’s. Microscopy and chemical analysis
remained limited, leaving self-recording instruments as the primary instruments to probe infravisible functions. Yet protoplasm, thought by Huxley and Haeckel to provide a chemical medium
suited to storing physical vibrations, was also characterized as a self-recording instrument.
Instrument and scientific object were not only alike, but in some sense reversible. The
epistemological problem became compounded when, in the 1890s, the physiologist Charles
Richet proposed that phenomena of “materialization” observed in spiritualist séances— slime
oozing from the bodily orifices of the spiritualist medium—should be understood as
“ectoplasm,” extrusions of protoplasm “precisely as a pseudopod from an amoeboid cell.”
Richet’s proposal altered accounts of spirit phenomena, making the séance a site for
investigating infra-visibilities. Ectoplasm images, obtained through experiments with
photographic, cathode-ray, and self-recording instruments, suggested that ectoplasm itself was a
photomatic medium, thereby inviting reflection on the indexical and tactile character of
photography itself. The difficulty of disentangling the identity of medium, ectoplasm, and
experimental recording media formed part of the vexing appeal of research into
“materialization”. Enthusiasms among many European modernist artists (Picabia, Italian
Futurists, etc.) for protoplasm and ectoplasm research made manifest the source of fascination
for an automatic medium: it instantiated the idea of autonomy or self-generation.
Author: Stephen Brain
Title: Differing Scientific Visions Approach Climate Change: The Development of the Stalin
Plan for the Transformation of Nature
Abstract: This paper will discuss the Great Stalin Plan for the Transformation of Nature, and the
differing scientific visions of different factions who aimed to influence its development.
Although the Great Stalin Plan evolved into perhaps the most ambitious example of Soviet
transformationism, at its core lay an exceedingly old and essentially conservative (if not
reactionary) Russian dream: to make the southern steppe more like old Muscovy. Its origins lay
in nineteenth century climatological research and early twentieth century forest conservation
efforts. Only in 1948, under the pressure of a persistent agricultural crisis, did the afforestation
plan change into something greater. What followed was a persistent struggle between scientists
who believed in a socially constructed science (“Prometheans”), versus advocates for the
importance of studying and conforming to nature (technocrats). The Great Stalin Plan for the
Transformation of Nature demonstrates the tension between two contradictory scientific visions
prominent in Soviet science, but it also shows that both impulses are required for the promotion
of sweeping environmental engineering projects. The technocrats needed the inspiration that the
prometheans brought, and yet could not abide their flights of fancy. Ultimately, the influence of
the two approaches cancelled each other out, and the Great Stalin Plan was abolished within a
month of Stalin’s death, but a more successful plan to address climate change would require
more effective cooperation between similarly motivated actors.
Author: Darryl E. Brock
<darrylbrock21@yahoo.com>
Title: “Botanical Monroe Doctrine” in Puerto Rico: Contours of American Imperial Scientific
Expeditions and Research Stations, 1898-1933
Abstract: The American imperial economic and political expansion into Puerto Rico,
subsequent to annexing its new Caribbean colony from Spain in 1898, relied on science and
technology to help establish local control. This paper explores the governmental and private
initiatives of the botanical and agricultural sectors in Puerto Rico. As tropical medicine sought to
discipline strange environments of moisture and heat while strengthening potentially enfeebled
populations, so these imperial plant sciences might rescue an economy exploited and neglected
by Spain, creating vibrant markets for the new metropole. Americans envisioned agricultural
development and research along U.S. models, such as USDA stations; however, local climatic
conditions necessitated new approaches, and local power often influenced outcomes. The young
Puerto Rican agricultural commissioner, Carlos Chardón, in curing sugarcane’s mosaic disease,
secured a powerful platform to press for local visions. In the private botanical sphere, Nathaniel
and Elizabeth Britton found in Puerto Rico the imperial demonstration project for their newly
established New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). Puerto Rico would be to NYBG as British
colonies were to Kew Gardens. Declaring independence from European knowledge centers with
the NYBG, now they would catalogue the plants of Puerto Rico and the broader Caribbean,
exercising a “botanical Monroe Doctrine.” Their “Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin
Islands” would encompass sixteen expeditions to Puerto Rico during 1906-1933. Conducted with
strong political and financial support from Chardón, the survey demonstrated emergence of
metropole-driven knowledge co-produced in concert with and even enabled by local expertise
and power.
Author: Sophie Brockmann
<sbb29@cam.ac.uk>
Title: Tradition and Innovation in the Production of Natural Knowledge in Central America,
c.1780-1800
Abstract: This paper explores the development of genres and networks in the Spanish colonial
state’s studies of the natural world. In the late eighteenth century, the Bourbon state gathered
information about its colonies both through official ‘Scientific Expeditions’ and through
questionnaires and networks of local informants which were derived from an older bureaucratic
tradition, the 'relaciones geográficas'. I illustrate these processes of knowledge production and
their reception by ‘creoles’ (American-born Spaniards) with two case studies from Spain’s
Central American colony, the Kingdom of Guatemala. Firstly, the discovery and study of the
Maya ruins at Palenque and Copán, which were initially described in a format resembling
geographical or military reports more than ‘antiquarianism’ or ‘archaeology’. Secondly, the way
in which the Guatemalan creole elite received reports produced by the state’s natural history
projects, subtly appropriating them to fit local rather than metropolitan needs and interests. I
argue that the way in which the 'relaciones geográficas' tradition, with its emphasis on the
broadest possible range of knowledge, was harnessed for the purposes of eighteenth-century
inquiries led to production and reception of knowledge about the natural environment which
went far beyond its main purpose of identifying natural resources useful for Spain. While these
inquiries were deceptively traditional in their formal framework, they allowed an unprecedented
quantity and variety of knowledge to be compiled, often seamlessly combining topics which we
would now consider belonging to different disciplines, such as archaeology, biology, and
cartography. They also reached new, ‘proto-nationalist’ creole audiences.
Author: Thomas Broman
Title: “The Semblance of Transparency: Expertise and the Ideology of the Public in the
Enlightenment”
Abstract: This essay addresses the Enlightenment’s ideology of the public and a new role for the
expert as a semi-transparent bearer of scientific knowledge that belongs to the public in
principle, but only the expert has in fact. The essay will argue that the legitimacy lent by the
sciences to government deserves deeper examination. Inter alia, it will offer a different
interpretation of the so-called “privatization” and “decline” in the authority of the sciences in the
early twenty-first century
Author: Karen M. Buckle
<kmbuckle@hotmail.com>
Title: Playing with Colour: Variants of Newtonianism in London’s Optical Instrument Making
Community
Abstract: In the first half of the eighteenth century Newtonian science infiltrated many walks of
artisan and entrepreneurial life. Public lectures on the new natural philosophy taught the
principles of everything from hydraulics to optics to an audience of merchants, craftsmen, and
self-improvers in the capital. Small societies, like Spitalfield’s Mathematical Society, sprung up
to engage the intellectual and practical curiosity of its members. Magazines, newspapers,
journals and cheaper textbooks further assisted in the popularisation of natural philosophy for a
wide reading public. Such a description, however, can lead to a number of overly simplistic
assumptions. Firstly, that the information being proliferated was merely a popularized or
“dumbed-down” version of Newton’s original precepts. Secondly, that knowledge at this level
was basically “consumed” rather than actively created. This paper challenges these assumptions
by looking at a body of contested knowledge in the London optical instrument making
community: the properties of colour in different types of glass. Specifically, it looks at the
contemporary question, were certain coloured glass lenses harmful to sight, and how might this
be explained? The answers, it turns out, depended not only on whether one subscribed to a
corpuscular theory of light (although this was important). It also hinged upon issues of status and
competition within the community and the spectacle-makers guild, about the role of master
opticians in conveying ‘informative’ knowledge on their products to the public, and, ultimately,
about how one might extend Newton’s optics to a theory of light’s literal physiological effect
upon the body.
Author: Julia Bursten
<burstenj@gmail.com>
Title: Whence the Banana Bond?
Abstract: I examine Pauling's conception of the double bond and explain how his structural
approach to bonding influenced his arguments in favor of the bent equivalent (banana) bond
structure of double bonds versus the σ-π-bond approach. Many of Pauling’s explanations of the
double bond draw on his strong geometrical intuitions about the properties of electron density
distributions, particularly in his textbooks on the chemical bond. I am interested in pursuing the
question of how Pauling’s geometrical intuitions contributed to his theory of multiple bonds, in
particular of how these intuitions supported his continued interest in valence-bond theories of the
double bond. He acknowledges that both the σ-π model and the bent-equivalent bond model
produce identical descriptions of a double bond based on s-p¬ hybrid orbitals alone, but that
there is a difference in the predictions given by the two models if the higher d and f orbitals are
taken into account in the prediction. It is well known that Pauling advocated the bent-equivalent
model as preferable to the σ-π model not only when the models produced identical predictions
but also when the predictions differed. I explore how he came to this conclusion, concluding that
the answer lies in the strong geometrical intuitions he formed during his revolutionary work on
structural chemistry. I turn to archival materials from Pauling’s research notebooks and
manuscripts to provide insight into the development of his geometrical intuitions. Throughout
the presentation, I highlight an interesting philosophical puzzle in Pauling’s equivocal treatment
of bonds as mere instrumental models on the one hand and as features of the world on the other.
Author: Andrew J. Butrica
<abutrica@earthlink.net>
Title: Technical Drawing and the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale, 18151848
Abstract: The proposed paper discusses technical drawing (dessein technique) as a “gatekeeping” test for scholarships to various technological schools. Between 1815 and 1848, the
Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale offered scholarships to candidates who
passed tests in such subjects as writing, arithmetic, science, and technical drawing, with drawing
favored over the others. Additionally, all candidates had to show financial need. Thus, ability in
drawing allowed scholarship candidates to attend schools that their family’s financial state
otherwise would have precluded and to advance socially and economically. Technical drawing
was not the same as the (eventually) academic discipline of drafting; it was a form of literacy,
like writing and arithmetic, an implicit requirement for France’s growing industrial sector. I
argue that drawing was far more important in selecting scholarship students than science or
mathematics. Scholarship, nonetheless, has focused mainly on mathematics as a gate-keeping
tool. The literature on the Ecole polytechnique is rife with examples. The concentration on
mathematics reflects tacit assumptions about the nature of French society that traditionally have
attracted scholars’ attentions away from the more utilitarian topic of technical drawing. The
emphasis on drawing by the Société d’Encouragement thus sheds light on a France that was
more focused on the concrete than the abstract. The paper also sheds light on what technical
drawing meant in France at this time and where it was taught.
Author: David Cahan
Title: In “the Capital of all Geist”: Helmholtz and the Modernization of Science in Berlin
Abstract: In April 1871, less than three months after the German Reich had been declared in
Versailles, Hermann Helmholtz moved to Berlin as the new professor of physics at the
University of Berlin. This presentation discusses Helmholtz in Berlin in the 1870s, drawing on
several of his activities and events that embodied or were emblematic of the modernization of
science and technology in Germany’s new, emerging national capital. Helmholtz rejuvenated the
university’s physics program, both its facilities and its personnel. He transformed it from a
largely private, rather disparate program of individuals into a well-institutionalized and wellorganized public one that became an intellectual as well as a physical center. He greatly
integrated other physics institutions into it (the Physikalische Gesellschaft and the Annalen der
Physik) and strengthened its relations with still others (the Academy of Sciences). His intense
interest in developing and testing electromagnetic theory made Berlin into a creative intellectual
physics center, while simultaneously placing electrical metrology and electrotechnology in the
foreground. Helmholtz also confronted the task of raising the overall quality of university
faculty, with the aim of making Berlin Germany’s foremost university, and he confronted a
public crisis over the academic standing of an unruly private lecturer who had attacked him
personally, leading him to spell out his understanding of the nature of academic freedom at
German universities. He helped make Berlin, as Karl Pearson called, the “capital of all Geist.”
Author: Elisabeth de Cambiaire
<ecambiaire@hotmail.com>
Title: Botany: Its Key Role in Imperial Expansion
Abstract: Valuable insights into the key role of botany in imperialism are provided by France’s
colonization of the Ile de Bourbon (Reunion Island, Indian Ocean) in the 18th century. This
paper presents evidence of the early involvement of the Royal Garden of Paris in colonial
matters: the royal Compagnie des Indes, granted the monopoly of Asian trade, solicited expert
advice from the botanist Jussieu regarding the development of the Ile de Bourbon as a profitable
colony. This mainly occurred following the discovery of an endemic coffee species in 1715,
allowing France to become producer of the new commodity. The management of the Ile de
Bourbon differed from what was occurring in the French West Indies: the Compagnie des Indes,
owner of the island, had control of colonial production. The Company consulted Jussieu
regarding three stages of colonization: 1) knowledge of local biota, i.e. soil and flora; 2) the
botanical identification and economic appraisal of its endemic coffee; 3) the evaluation of an
experiment in coffee cultivation undertaken in the colony. The participation of Jussieu in the
management of the Ile de Bourbon demonstrates the importance of the science of botany in
imperialism. It testifies to the practice of economic botany in the Royal Garden of Paris,
implemented to ascertain colonial politics of the French Empire. Furthermore, it reveals the
pioneer role of the Company’s garden, run as an experimental station, long before the
establishment of the network of botanical gardens in the French Empire.
Author: Lilia Campana
<liliacampana@yahoo.it>
Title: Ars and Scientia in Venetian Shipbuilding Practice During the Late Middle Ages and the
Renaissance
Abstract: In Medieval aesthetics, the principle formulated by Saint Thomas Aquinas that ars est
recta ratio factibilium is applicable also to the art of shipbuilding. Venetian naval manuscripts
dated from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century document the ratio factibilium of the art of
shipbuilding by expounding the ragioni fabbricatorie, the methods used in ship design. The
technical instructions and the visual apparatus recorded in these texts suggest that the modus
operandi in ship design was an empirical practice that depended on the shipwrights’ experience
and skill. The forma in fieri of the ship’s hull was mastered by means of geometrical methods
that employed molds and gauges in order to achieve a smooth curve that could be replicated.
However, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this empirical procedure, until then merely a
building ratio based on proportional rules, became a cognitive process based on mathematical
calculus thanks to the humanist Vettor Fausto. In building his quinquereme (galleass), whose
technical aspects are recorded in the manuscript Misure di vascelli di…proto dell’Arsenale di
Venetia, Fausto established a new shipbuilding principle (scientia) in ship design. Although his
innovations in the Venetian shipyard remained experimental, they led temporarily to the shift
from the faber navalis to the architectus navalis. By presenting various textual and pictorial
sources, this paper discusses the geometrical methods in ship design. It also presents a
mathematical analysis of Fausto’s quinquereme as recorded in the manuscript Misure di vascelli,
thus demonstrating the passage from ars to scientia in Venetian naval architecture.
Author: Luis Campos
Title: Dialectics Denied: Muller, Lysenko, and The Fate of Chromosomal Mutation
Abstract: For decades following the emergence of de Vries’ mutation theory, geneticists around
the world engaged in attempts to engineer evolution by experimental means. Such widespread
efforts led to a pluralistic understanding of mutations as existing at phenotypic, genic, and
chromosomal levels. The study of “chromosomal mutations” remained a vibrant field of
botanical and cytogenetic study in both the United States and the Soviet Union through the
1920s, but rapidly declined in the 1930s as chromosomal mutations were increasingly referred to
as “chromosomal aberrations” and as the gene increasingly became viewed as the fundamental
unit of hereditary change. I have argued elsewhere that this shift in the West is strongly
correlated with the “myth of Muller”—oft-repeated accounts of the seminal importance of
Muller’s 1927 work into the “artificial transmutation of the gene.” In this paper, I suggest a
further geopolitical explanation for the decline of chromosomal mutations by examining their
parallel fate in the Soviet Union. Prominent Soviet research into allopolyploids, led by
Filipchenko and Karpechenko, was among the most advanced in the world until Lysenko’s rise
to power. While for Lysenkoists the study of such chromosomal mutations involved suspect
techniques and terminology drawn from “Mendel-Morganian” genetics, for the West such study
may have seemed without a firm grounding in genic understandings of mutation and thus
uncomfortably close to Lysenkoist practices. As Lysenkoists focused on phenotypical changes
and Mullerians focused on genic mutations, “chromosomal mutations” became another and
heretofore unremarked casualty of Lysenkoism on both sides of the Atlantic.
Author: Margaret Carlyle
Title: Making Chemistry Matter: D’Arconville and the Problem of Putrefaction in
Enlightenment France
Abstract: This paper examines Mme Thiroux d’Arconville’s (1720-1805) singular contribution
to experimental chemistry, Essai pour servir à l’histoire de la putréfaction (1766). Published
with a view to providing army surgeons and physicians with antiseptic substances that might
cure ailing patients in situ, the Essai suggested links between the quantity of “air fixé” (fixed air)
and a substance’s antiseptic potential. Considered against the background of her translation of
the English itinerant Peter Shaw’s Chemical Lectures (1759), this treatise allows us to situate
d’Arconville and her thought within the context of the rise of pneumatic chemistry.
D’Arconville’s findings not only anticipated future preoccupations in phlogistic chemistry, but
also shed light on the intersection of female ambition and applied medicine in a reform-minded
era. Considering her interaction with John Pringle’s important work on putrid diseases, it is
possible to place d’Arconville’s analysis within a burgeoning field of practitioners, including
some of Lavoisier’s future collaborators, such as Antoine François de Fourcroy. Any
consideration of d’Arconville’s place in the community must reconcile her female status and
self-imposed marginalization on the one hand, and her contact with people and print, through
such collaborator-mentors as Pierre-Joseph Macquer, on the other. While biographical accounts
portray a reclusive savant, the content and form of d’Arconville’s output betray a preoccupation
with securing credibility in the field. This investigation will insist on the socially-embedded
nature of experimentalists and their experiments as they come together in the story of one
Enlightenment woman’s quest to uncover the secrets behind putrefying flesh.
Author: Brian Casey
<brian.casey@nih.gov>
Title: "Murder of the Mind?" The Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s
Abstract: Much has been written about the rise and fall of the prefrontal lobotomy. A less well
known chapter in the history of psychosurgery, and the subject of this talk, is a controversy
which erupted little over a decade after the demise of the lobotomy. In the 1970s brain operations
were explored as a means to curb violent behavior. The suggestion by some neurologists that
violence stems from biology rather than from environmental circumstance and that such behavior
should be “corrected” by surgery was explosive in the era of civil rights, women’s rights, and
anti-psychiatry. Newspaper exposés, civil rights activists, and Congressional investigators
accused the National Institute of Mental Health, the principal government agency responsible for
funding mental health research in America, of sponsoring unethical projects that ‘killed’ the
mind in order to control ‘troublesome’ populations. In response to these charges, the NIH issued
reports on the scientific and clinical realities of contemporary psychosurgery and the director of
NIMH, Bertram S. Brown, testified before a Congressional subcommittee to reassure the
American public that psychosurgeries were not weapons of the establishment. In the end, public
concerns succeeded in curtailing, if not blocking, behavior modification projects and produced
new ethical guidelines. A historical reassessment of this controversy, however, reveals NIMH’s
positive contribution to civil rights. Far from pathologizing civil unrest, the NIMH’s centers on
violence, poverty, and minority health – centers set up in response to public pressure – authored
reports that acknowledged and examined the environmental roots of violent behavior.
Author: Anne-Laurence Caudano
<a.caudano@uwinnipeg.ca>
Title: “You Asked Me, Princess, how Thunder and Lightning Happen”: Byzantine Science and
Learning in the 11th and 12th Centuries
Abstract: While the 11th and 12th centuries are often noted as flourishing times for the literary
branches of the trivium, a direct consequence of a renewed taste for Aristotle in Byzantium, this
period is often disparaged for its lack of scientific productivity and the regular attempts of both
Church and state to control scholarship. Contrary to this belief, there is, in fact, much evidence
for the teaching of the quadrivium of sciences in general, and for an interest in meteorology in
particular. Meteorological problems were discussed, for instance, in the scientific compilations
of authors such as Michael Psellos and Symeon Seth; such scientific issues were also attached to
the moral and spiritual Advices of the provincial aristocrat Katakalon Kekaumenos. Meteorology
was also the theme of a short treatise, entitled “On Thunder and Lightning”, written by the
Aristotelian scholar Eustratios of Nicaea, most famous for his commentaries on the Posterior
Analytics II and the Nicomachean Ethics I and VI. This little-known work was dedicated to the
Byzantine princess Maria of Alania (c. 1050-c. 1103) and discusses, among other themes, the
origin of clouds, thunder, lightning and thunderbolts. This treatise, which is only partly
published, will be analyzed in the context of Byzantine learning in the 11th and 12th centuries in
general, and of the Byzantines’ taste for meteorological questions in particular. Finally, the text
will also be examined as a representative of the literary and scientific interests of aristocratic
women at the Komnenoi court.
Author: LOIC CHARLES
<charles@ined.fr>
Title: From Science to Propaganda: The Americanization of Otto Neurath's Pictorial Statistics
(1929-1945)
Abstract: There is a rapidly growing body of literature on Otto Neurath, looking at either his
contribution to philosophy and his role in the Vienna circle, his achievements in graphic design
and his contribution to the development of pictorial statistics or Isotype, his contribution to
museography or to his work in social sciences. However, these contributions tend to study the
reception of Otto Neurath’s work in the European context only. By contrast, we want to discuss
how Neurath’s experiments in the conceptualization of science museum and the development of
a new technique of visualizing statistics were rapidly imported in the United States in the 1930s.
Our paper will proceed in three time periods. First, we will discuss how Neurath contributed to
the early development of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (1929-1933), through its
first director Waldemar Kaempffert and the Curator of Social sciences, Rudolph Modley,
Neurath’s former Viennese assistant. The second part will be dedicated to the interactions
between Neurath and the New-York intellectual and scientific milieu (1932-1936), leading to the
creation of an American non-profit company which created and sold pictorial statistics à la
Neurath. In a third part, we will investigate the schism that occurred between Neurath and his
former assistant Modley who directed Pictorial Statistics Inc. after the former’s second journey
in the USA and the subsequent hybridization of Neurath’s method that occurred in the American
context (1936-1945). Our research is mainly based on the use of archival materials.
Author: Isabelle Charmantier
<I.Charmantier@exeter.ac.uk>
Title: Natural History and Information Overload: the Case of Linnaeus
Abstract: With overseas discoveries and the invention of print, early modern scientists were
faced with the "first bio-information crisis". The sheer amount of exotic, hitherto unknown
species that reached the shores of Europe forced naturalists to reconsider the ways in which
information about the natural world was processed and organized. A key figure in this was the
Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who has been described as a
"pioneer in information retrieval". His manuscripts, held today at the Linnean Society in London
and in institutions around Sweden, offer a unique opportunity to study problems of paper-based
information processing. Linnaeus had to manage a conflict between the need to bring
information into a fixed order for purposes of later retrieval, and the need to keep that order fluid
enough to allow the permanent integration of new material. Throughout his career Linnaeus
experimented with various methods: from notebooks and interleaved printed editions of his own
works, to loose sheets and finally, towards the end of his career in the mid-1760s, index cards.
While stored in some fixed, conventional order, e.g. alphabetically, index cards could be
retrieved and shuffled around at will to update and compare information at any time. Although a
seemingly mundane and simple innovation, Linnaeus's use of index cards marks a major shift in
how eighteenth-century naturalists thought about the order of nature: away from a fixed, linear
scale of nature, and towards a map-like natural system of multiple affinities.
Author: Jiang-Ping Jeff Chen
Title: Trigonometric Tables in China
Abstract: Prior to the arrival of the Jesuits in late 16th–century China, traditional Chinese
mathematics did not have trigonometric methods, with only a few exceptions: (1) a record of a
table of tangents in the 8th century; and (2) possibly the methods used in the Season-Granting
Calendar promulgated in 1281. One of the powerful computational devices the Jesuits
introduced to China in the 17th century was trigonometric tables. The Jesuits utilized
trigonometric tables to simplify computations in astronomy while Chinese astronomers, before
the arrival of the Jesuits, employed various methods of interpolation to serve the same
computational needs. Therefore interpolation methods along with astronomical tables could be
construed as a Chinese equivalent to trigonometric tables. Although the Jesuits provided the
basic principles of making trigonometric tables, there were technical details left unexplained,
which made reconstruction of a complete trigonometric table impossible. Chinese scholars in the
17th and 18th centuries, motivated by the desire to construct “Chinese” trigonometric tables,
attempted to bridge the gap with various approaches and techniques. As these scholars were not
part of the government Astronomical Bureau, their desire to reconstruct trigonometric tables was
not to help with practical computations in astronomy and calendar-making; instead, it became
their personal intellectual pursuit. In the 19th century, after the publication of several treatises
which utilized an approach not unlike power-series to calculate the values of trigonometric lines
from the length of the arc and vice versa, the use of trigonometric tables was again replaced by
these computational algorithms.
Author: Tobias Cheung
<t.cheung@gmx.net>
Title: The Emergence of Concepts of Inner and Outer Milieus in Anatomy, Pathology and
Physiology (Cuvier, Blainville, Broussais, Bernard) 1800-1860
Abstract: In this paper, I will focus on the emergence of concepts of inner and outer milieus in
the history of the life sciences from 1800 to 1860. For the concrete historical framework, I will
refer to Georges Cuvier, Ducrotay de Blainville, François Broussais and Claude Bernard. The
first concepts of inner and outer milieus characterize the transition from anatomy to physiology.
They are tightly related to the problem of boundaries and surfaces. (1) Cuvier is a comparative
anatomist. His science of organization is based on organizational types that define the inner order
of living beings through the correlation of the structure of organs and their functional interaction.
The structure and function of organs is again related to the outer milieu. However, Cuvier does
not explain how the outer milieu is assimilated into the inner milieu. Rather, he mechanically
applies the inner framework of anatomical structures to outer conditions. Boundaries and
surfaces do not play a crucial role in his work. (2) Bernard, on the contrary, does focus on the
embodiment of the outer milieu. His physiology is a physiology of assimilation, metabolism and
osmotic phenomena. Boundaries and surfaces thus play a crucial role both for the interaction of
‘elementary inner units’ (as the cell) and for the interaction between the individual organism and
its environment. Bernard is mainly interested in the resistance and stability of the inner milieu of
organisms if changes and variations occur in the outer milieu. (3) Blainville’s research on
organisms is situated between Cuvier’s and Bernard’s position. Blainville, who succeeds Cuvier
at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in 1832, criticizes Cuvier’s ‘static anatomy’. In his Cours de
physiologie générale et comparée (1829), Blainville outlines, after Xavier Bichat’s general
anatomy of tissues, a physiology of inner and outer organic ‘envelopes’. (4) In De l’irritation et
de la folie (1828), Broussais defines a doctrine of patho-physiology that is based on stimulireactions-schemes along organic borders. Like Blainville, he relates the ‘irritability’ and the
‘modificability’ of organisms to specific tissue structures. Blainville’s and Broussais’ concepts of
inner and outer milieus finally inform Comte’s sociology.
Author: Matthew Chew
Title: "A Modified Kind of Man and a Modified Kind of Nature": Charles Elton's Vision of
Millennial Conservation
Abstract: Oxford Animal Ecologist Charles S. Elton (1900-1991) is most often recalled as the
retroactively adopted father of Invasion Biology. But Elton intended the litany of woes in his
1958 popularization The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants as the preamble to a simple
but long-incubated proposal for a future, managed ecology: "Keeping or putting in the landscape
of the greatest possible variety—in the world, in every continent of island, and so far as
practicable, in every district." Contemporary reviewers found Elton's arguments for promoting
ecological stability by enhancing variety at all scales far more interesting than his preoccupation
with "invasions." But Elton's "scientific natural history" approach to ecology was obsolescent,
the "diversity-stability" connection proved notoriously difficult to demonstrate, and the
multifarious popular environmentalism Elton helped to inspire rendered simply coherent
conservation politically untenable. By the turn of the Millennium, Elton's science and his
strategy had been largely discarded, and The Ecology of Invasions was acknowledged only as an
alarm call.
Author: John Christopoulos
<john.christopoulos@utoronto.ca>
Title: Between Healers and Jurists: Abortion in Tridentine Italy
Abstract: Abortion was a complex and ambiguous event and process that was acted out within
the secrecy of the female body. Tridentine legislators sought to eradicate the ‘sin and crime of
abortion’ yet the complex pathology of the female body and the ambiguous nature of generation
and pregnancy greatly problematized such initiatives. Healers held abortion to be both a disease
afflicting a pregnant woman and an ‘accident’ caused, at best, by her fragile nature, at worst, by
her social activities, her ignorance or her malice. Furthermore, there were various contexts in
which abortion was legitimate and necessary for the health of the carrying woman. Most
physicians and legislators held abortive intervention in such contexts more desirable than the
death of the afflicted woman. Determining the cause and assigning guilt and punishment was
very difficult and often impossible. This paper will explore conceptions of the unborn, the causes
and the event of abortion as well as the cast of characters surrounding it in a variety of sixteenthcentury Italian medical works and in city and state legislation.
Author: H. Floris Cohen
<h.f.cohen@uu.nl>
Title: The Scientific Revolution: The Master Narrative Replaced
Abstract: Once upon a time ‘The Scientific Revolution of the 17th century’ was an innovative
concept that inspired a stimulating narrative of how modern science came into the world. Half a
century later, what we now know as ‘the master narrative’ serves rather as a strait-jacket — so
often events and contexts just fail to fit in. In the class-room we make the best of the situation; in
our researches most of us prefer just to drop the concept altogether, regarding it as beset by truly
unmanageable complexity. Consequently, no attempt has been made so far to replace the master
narrative from the ground up. In my new book How Modern Science Came Into the World. Four
Civilizations, One 17th Century Breakthrough (Amsterdam UP, 2010) I have sought to replace it.
Key to my analysis-cum-narrative is a vision of the Scientific Revolution as made up of six
distinct yet tightly interconnected, revolutionary transformations, each of some twenty-five to
thirty years’ duration. In my lecture I shall briefly set forth what each of these was about, and
then focus on nos. 4 and 5. Both emerged from a vast, Europe-wide crisis of legitimacy not
conceptualized as such before. In both, the natural philosophy of moving corpuscles is handled,
no longer as dogmatic truth but rather as a broadly reliable source of potentially fruitful
hypotheses. In no. 4 Huygens and young Newton interweave hypothesized mechanisms of
moving particles with mathematics; in the other, Boyle, Hooke, and young Newton interweave
them with fact-finding experimentation.
Author: Kathy Cooke
Title: Female and Fowl: Eugenic and Euthenic Conflicts about the Body and Reproduction in
Early Twentieth Century America
Abstract: In this paper I analyze progressive science and economics through female reform and
the female body in the American eugenics movement. As many scientific and social leaders
came to embrace eugenics they came to see women not only as overly sentimental but also as
particular animal bodies and types best described by rates of fecundity. One comparison—to
chickens—was especially intriguing given egg-laying studies of chickens by biometrician
Raymond Pearl, as well as the association between women and the raising of chickens as a
hobby or a minor way to supplement family income. This seeming conflation of female and fowl
paralleled other efforts to decrease the influence of women in eugenic-style reform. While
eugenicists often focused on improving heredity through breeding efforts, many also embraced
more traditionally female approaches to reform, especially efforts to improve living conditions,
often called “euthenics.” However, over time more extreme eugenicists such as Charles
Davenport and Harry Laughlin began to emphasize heredity as more scientific, and to distance
themselves from euthenics. Furthermore, they interpreted changes in genetic knowledge, in
particular Mendelian inheritance, as evidence that the more humanitarian, or “sentimental”
nature of efforts to improve education, reduce infant mortality, and providing pure food and milk
to children, corrupted the body and worked against eugenics. Together fowl, body, and notions
about sentimental reform versus scientific knowledge formed a foundation for more extreme
eugenic thinking in Progressive era America.
Author: Henry Cowles
Title: Biological Analogies in History: Theodore Roosevelt, Nature, and National Character
Abstract: This paper addresses the relationship between science, reform, and social thought in
the Progressive Era through the writings of one its most famous historical actors: Theodore
Roosevelt. The 26th President has tended to be written into the history of science for his role as a
"wise-use" conservationist in debates over federal natural resource management or for his
activities as a hunter-colonialist and his connections with the American Museum of Natural
History. This paper approaches Roosevelt from a different angle, addressing his early intellectual
development and subsequent historical and social-theoretical writings in order to trace the impact
of prevalent biological analogies and assumptions on Progressive ideology and scientific
optimism. To this end, it treats Roosevelt's political and social thought (as expressed in essays,
speeches, letters, and manuscript sources) as typical, rather than exceptional, for the period, and
argues that his writings on American historical development and the relationship between
individual and national "character" in particular add to our understanding of exactly how Darwin,
Spencer, and other biological theorists were woven into particular strands of Progressive thought
and, significantly, reform.
Author: Nathan Crowe
Title: A Science of Control?: A History of Nuclear Transfer Experiments, 1940s-1970s
Abstract: In recent years, animal cloning has been a utilitarian science, a fact made clear from
Ian Wilmut's and Keith Campbell's famed sheep-cloning experiments in the 1990s. Dolly, the
most famous outcome of these experiments, was a living technology designed to mass-produce
proteins deemed essential to improving human health. The scientific conclusions derived from
Dolly's successful birth — concerning the nature of genomic potential and the ability of fully
differentiated cells to be 'reprogrammed' — were secondary. For historian Philip J. Pauly, Dolly
may represent the epitome of the engineering ideal in biology introduced by Jacques Loeb a
century earlier. Dolly was engineered, through the physical manipulation of nuclei, to benefit
humanity, and the participating scientists could be seen as, essentially, creators of life. However,
was Dolly the inevitable outcome of a science born from a desire to control life? In this paper, I
will explore the first few decades of nuclear transfer experiments, from the late 1940s through
the 1970s. I will argue that, in fact, Loeb's ideals are nearly invisible in the goals of early nuclear
transfer experiments designed to answer basic questions of embryology. Nevertheless, as the
technique became more refined, and as other areas of biology advanced, the utilitarian aspects of
nuclear transfer become more apparent. By the 1970s the importance of nuclear transfer research
lay not in the basic scientific questions it could answer, but in the promises it held for the future.
Author: Alex Csiszar
Title: The Search for Order and the Order of Search: Archiving Species in Print circa 1900
Abstract: During the 1890s, a vast array of services and publications emerged aimed at
reimagining the procedures by which scientific knowledge in print was distributed, accessed, and
recorded. Entrepreneurs adapted innovations originating in the general press -- such as cardcatalogues employing standardized classifications (associated with American libraries) and
press-clipping services (pioneered in France to make newspapers searchable) -- to respond to
what they perceived as the changing informational requirements of science. Among the most
sophisticated was the Concilium Bibliographicum (f. Zürich, 1895), a card-subscription service
for zoological information (both publications and species) directed by the American zoologist
Herbert Haviland Field. Natural history disciplines such as zoology had a unique perspective on
problems of search: since the 1840s zoologists had been grappling with the problem of
nomenclatural standardization and the scourge of synonymy. This was a matter not just of
conventions or epistemology, but also of efficient paperwork: even universal agreement about
naming rules -- especially the Law of Priority -- meant little without technologies of transmission
within which to operate. Taking the Concilium as an example, I argue that, although zoologists
often protested that they were being overwhelmed by print, the specificities of the problems and
solutions they proposed are explained not so much by the sheer quantity of information, but
rather by qualitative factors, such as shifting expectations about the role of print (especially
periodicals), moral imperatives to seek out predecessors, and an emerging vision of zoological
literature as forming a bounded, navigable, and centrally-managed archive of knowledge.
Author: Serafina Cuomo, Birkbeck
Title: Accounts, Democracy, and Numeracy in Classical Athens
Abstract: About one-and-a-half thousand inscriptions survive from fifth-century Athens. Of
these, almost two hundred can be categorized as accounts, including tribute lists, building
inscriptions recording expenditure on, for instance, the Parthenon; records of the treasuries of
temples. All with one feature in common: numbers, sometimes written out in letters, sometimes
in acrophonic mathematical notation. There are many ways in which we can look at these
documents. I will use them as evidence to talk about ancient numeracy. What can these
documents tell us about the ability to count, calculate, and measure? While the study of literacy
in ancient Greece and Rome, and the study of numeracy in other ancient societies are both
thriving fields, very little exists about numeracy in Greece and Rome. The few studies that have
discussed the topic with relation to Athens have emphasized how pervasive operations of
counting and calculating were in the working of the democratic government, from assemblies to
law-courts. The relevance of account inscriptions to issues of numeracy, however, has largely
remained unexplored. My paper will investigate two questions: who wrote the account
inscriptions, and who was meant to read them? I advance two claims. First, that the question of
authorship of account inscriptions is also a question about participation, and second, that the
formatting of account inscriptions deliberately determined the conditions under which they were
meant to be read. Ultimately, public numeracy in classical Athens was a deeply political form of
knowledge.
Author: Helen Anne Curry <helen.curry@yale.edu>
Title: Breeding the Roentgen Regal Lily: Agricultural and Horticultural Research at the General
Electric Laboratory, 1930-1940
Abstract: The much-celebrated demonstration of x-ray induced mutation in 1927 by Hermann
Muller and others is often understood as a success of the laboratory, one resulting in a method
for producing new objects of experimental study. However, mutations are also desirable in
agriculture and horticulture as sources of new traits to breed into established lines, or even as
entirely new varieties. As a result, many agriculturists viewed x-ray induced mutation as a
potential tool of the breeder, a way to “speed up the evolution” of new varieties. In the early
1930s the General Electric Company, developer and manufacturer of x-ray machines, established
an agricultural research program at the company’s laboratories in Schenectady, New York. G.E.
hoped to demonstrate the effectiveness of their x-ray machines in creating new plant varieties,
thereby promoting this potential use. Researchers investigated the effects of x-rays on various
species of economic interest, especially citrus varieties and ornamentals. Through a history of
this research program, its origins, aims, and products, this paper demonstrates the immense
practical interest in x-ray mutation as a technology of improvement. That such interest existed,
enough so to encourage one of country’s leading technology firms to move into agricultural
production, indicates the extent to which technologies of genetic modification were felt to be
both achievable and valuable. It also suggests that a reading of Muller’s 1927 experiment and its
subsequent celebration might be incomplete without acknowledgment of the persistent influence
of agriculture on genetic research well into the twentieth century.
Author: Kent Curtis
Title: Assuring Uncertainty: Metals, Biology, and Knowledge in the Deer Lodge Valley,
Montana, 1880-1920
Abstract: Because of the chemical composition of the ore lodes mined in Butte and smelted in
nearby Anaconda, Montana, the waste products disposed on the land, in the air, and in the water
contained acids and heavy metals which had a range of obvious negative effects on the region's
biological life forms. While the communities in and around these activities responded with
various kinds of objections and lawsuits at the turn of the century, the smelting industry used
scientific and engineering experts to downplay the seriousness of the impacts of their waste
products and to suggest other causes for the various maladies impacting the region. The mining
industry pit national economics against local environments and successfully argued in the courts
for "a right to pollute." This essay explores several key turn-of-the-century conflicts about
pollution in Butte and Anaconda, examining the quality and quantity of material being disposed
into the region's ecosystems and human bodies, exploring the kinds of reactions and effects that
these materials had on the biological systems that were exposed to them, and analyzing the
rhetorical and legal strategies taken by both sides of the conflict during this critical period of
adjustment. The social conflicts that emerged around mining and smelting pollution at the end of
the nineteenth century in Montana reveal a set of circumstances where scientific authority was
used to disrupt certainty, to create a certain uncertainty, dislocating and disabling the knowledge
generated by traditional forms of information about the natural world.
Author: Lucia Dacome
Title: ‘Machina anthropometrica’: Weighing Perspiration in the Long 18th Century
Abstract: This paper reconstructs the historical fortune of an image that throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became a landmark of the medical doctrine of static
medicine advanced by the physician Santorio Santorio (1561-1636). The image depicted a man
sitting on a large steelyard, which weighed bodily discharges and imparted directions on the
ingestion of food. For almost two centuries, this picture accompanied Santorio’s work on the art
of static medicine and, most likely, contributed to its success. It navigated across competing
medical theories and different medical genres, and survived harsh debates on competing models
of the body while remaining largely unscathed. This paper approaches this image as a point of
entry into the attempt to give credibility to a doctrine that sought to turn dietetics into an
experimental pursuit. As experimental culture started to be integrated into the medical world,
dietetics ran the risk of loosing part of its authority and long held pivotal role in medicine. I shall
argue that the image of the weight-watching man contributed to create an imaginary space of
experimental practice that could shelter the claims of dietetics at a time of dramatic changes in
the models of the body it referred to, the audiences that it addressed and the alimentary habits
and daily routines that it promised to affect.
Author: Arthur Daemmrich
<adaemmrich@hbs.edu>
Title: Regulation and Evolution of the Biopharmaceutical Sector: A ‘Begriffsgeschichte’ of
Non-inferiority as a Testing Standard for Antibiotics
Abstract: Firms seeking to develop antibiotics for drug-resistant infections have to manage
clinical trials for rapidly evolving diseases, changing regulatory expectations, and market
uncertainty for their products. Though seemingly independent, these three variables are tightly
interconnected. This paper integrates a historical study of the regulatory term “non-inferiority,”
which holds that a new antibiotic should be proven as efficacious as the current standard of care
within a statistical margin, with a case study of the testing and regulatory review of oritavancin, a
drug invented in the mid-1990s that as of 2010 remains in clinical trials. Disputes over the
testing standard, primarily between statisticians and clinicians, played out not only in medical
journals and conferences since the 1980s, but also in FDA advisory committee hearings and drug
approval decisions. Unsurprisingly, drug approval decisions that hinged on meeting clinical trial
standards had an immediate impact on the survival of individual firms. More subtly,
modifications to testing standards in the 1990s and 2000s shaped the antibiotics sector as large
pharmaceutical firms exited the business. The oritivancin case offers an empirical example of the
product testing and market assumptions made by small biotech companies facing questions of
survival. The paper concludes that changes to testing standards for antibiotics created drug
development risks attractive only to small biotechnology firms, rather than international
pharmaceutical firms with broader product portfolios. In an ironic development, the collective
risk of antibiotic-resistant disease in the United States has become intertwined with the economic
survival of small, venture-backed biotech firms.
Author: Taika Dahlbom
Title: It’s a Giant… It’s an Elephant… It’s a Mammoth!
Abstract: Specimens have been used in the production of scientific knowledge since the
Renaissance and studying the biographies of particular specimens contributes to our
understanding of historical scientific work. The particular specimen studied here came to the
Royal Kunstkammer in Copenhagen in 1718 and has since been subjected under the zoological
eye on several occasions. Upon diligent study in the collection, it was first identified as a Giant’s
bone. However, later on, without ever casting a glimpse on the actual specimen, prominent
European zoologists re-identified it as an elephant bone in the eighteenth century and a
mammoth bone in the nineteenth century. The biography of the Giant’s bone and the
transformations in its species raise interesting questions regarding the relation of material
specimens and the scientific gaze. How did the scientific inquirer decide what the species of a
specimen was, that is, produce the scientific facts by using material objects? Why have different
facts been produced from the selfsame object? Why has the repeated re-identification of this
object been necessary? And lastly, what do the answers to these questions as analyzed in the
biography of this particular specimen tell us about the history of scientific knowledge
production?
Author: Lindley Darden
Title: Mechanisms, Mutations, and Rational Drug Therapy in the Case of Cystic Fibrosis
Abstract: The relations between normal physiological mechanisms and disease mechanisms has
long been a topic of discussion among historians and philosophers of biology and medicine.
Understanding both the normal and the disease mechanism for a disease caused by a single gene
defect would seem to provide the ideal conditions for rationally designing gene therapy to cure
the disease. Cystic fibrosis (CF) provides an excellent case for examining the relations between
the normal, the pathological, and the therapeutic in the new age of genomics, issued in by the
successful completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. There was much hope for
successful gene therapy for CF that has not materialized. This paper discusses the normal
mechanism for the production of the transmembrane protein that transports chloride ions in and
out of the cell and the various mutations in that protein that more or less disrupt protein synthesis
and lead to disease symptoms. The various stages of the mechanism and different kinds of
mutations have provided potential locales for targeted therapies. But the early hope for an easy
gene fix has not panned out. Furthermore, the wide variation in severity of symptoms in those
with the same mutation revealed that the early simplistic presumed understanding of the disease
mechanism has required reevaluation. Thus the history of the CF case is a good one for
examining relations between mechanisms, mutations, rational drug therapy, and failures of
promising simplified approaches to gene therapy.
Author: Deepanwita Dasgupta
<dasgu007@umn.edu>
Title: Scientific Creativity in Peripheral Science: C.V Raman and the Construction of a
Mechanical Violin-Player
Abstract: The term ‘peripheral science’ refers mostly to science practiced outside of Europe and
North America. Why study such science and what mileage can be gained out of such activity? In
most traditional models of scientific knowledge peripheral scientists are represented as either
followers or imitators— thereby reducing the importance of their contributions in science. The
mainstream centers of science, on the other hand, are viewed as important centers of scientific
creativity, deserving careful study and analysis. In this paper however, I shall stress the
importance of peripheral creativity that occurs outside of the Euro-American contexts. Based on
my case study of the Indian scientist C.V. Raman who in 1917 devised a mechanical violin (that
played itself ) for studying the properties of sound waves produced by bowed strings, I claim that
peripheral scientists (such as Raman) often display very high levels of creativity in science. As
peripheral scientists working with a new body of knowledge, scientists like Raman produce a
track record where no track records did exist before. This allows the formation of new scientific
communities that thereafter follow them as exemplars. Secondly, they also contribute novel
solutions and ideas to the mainstream centers of science (as Raman subsequently did) which are,
surprisingly, often very advanced in nature. Thus, not only in peripheral science do we see the
evidence of scientific creativity, we also see how new contributions in science can be put
together under asymmetric conditions.
Author: William deJong-Lambert
Title: Youthful Perceptions, Foreign Illusions: L.C. Dunn, J.B.S. Haldane, Julian Huxley and the
Soviet Union
Abstract: This paper will examine how L.C. Dunn, J.B.S. Haldane and Julian Huxley’s visits to
the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s shaped their views of Soviet biology during the Cold
War. The focus of my discussion will be the Lysenko affair, a controversy in which they were all
actively engaged. Dunn visited the Soviet Union in 1927 as part of a wider European tour funded
by the Rockefeller Foundation. Haldane visited one year later, and Huxley arrived in the summer
of 1931 and recorded his experiences for Nash’s Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the Week-End
Review, and later published a book, Scientist Among the Soviets. Each of them met with Nikolai
Vavilov and returned with overwhelming positive impressions. However their views, around
twenty years later, of the man who emerged as Vavilov’s primary opponent—T.D. Lysenko—
could not have been more different. “Youthful Perceptions, Foreign Illusions,” will explore how
memory and relationships shape scientists’ views of science and one another. Dunn, Haldane and
Huxley were visiting a place where an experiment in organizing and governing a society
scientifically was supposedly underway. The fact that all three were empathetic is unsurprising.
However their youthful inclinations towards technocracy would be challenged by Lysenkoism.
The implications of Stalin’s support for Lysenko forced them to consider whether official
support for science was a desirable alternative, or simply resulted in a system in which scientists
were placed under even greater ideological pressure.
Author: Rachel Mason Dentinger
Title: Recasting "Chemical Warfare" in the 1960s: Coevolutionary Studies and the Evolution of
"Natural Insecticides"
Abstract: In the mid-1960s, a new domain of biological research, coevolutionary studies,
cohered around antagonistic relationships between herbivorous insects and the plants on which
they fed, arguing that these insect-plant pairs had evolved reciprocal offensive and defensive
adaptations, the majority of which were biochemical. For coevolutionary scientists, who saw
insect-plant relationships through the lens of natural selection, plant compounds, long seen as
biologically insignificant metabolic byproducts or wastes, became "chemical weapons" and,
pivotally, "natural insecticides." In this paper, I argue that the notion of "natural insecticides"
developed out of a fruitful exchange between the realms of pest control and evolutionary
biology. Using Pauly's concept of the "engineering ideal" in biology, I examine how the
objectives of manipulation and control, embodied by the methods of insecticide research and the
ideology behind insecticide use, became equally important to emerging evolutionary
explanations of insect-plants relationships. The engineering ideal provides a way to understand
the reciprocal transformation of ideas about nature and ideas about technology: "natural
insecticides" reconstituted plant compounds as a form of adaptive technology; reciprocally, they
also recast human agricultural "chemical warfare" with insect pests, suggesting that our own
intervention in nature could be analogous to a natural process. Thus, I argue that the act of
changing nature through technological intervention with chemical insecticides profoundly
changed the way that biologists understood the natural world and the role of human intervention
in the natural world.
Author: William Deringer
<wderinge@princeton.edu>
Title: Enumerating Mischiefs: The Mathematics and Politics of Financial Prediction During the
1720 South Sea Bubble
Abstract: For every financial disaster, someone claims they saw it coming. Determining
predictability in retrospect has become a critical political strategy for coping with modern
financial crises, facilitating blame and restoring confidence that the financial system as a whole
is comprehensible and secure. Retrospective predictability of asset bubbles, for example, implies
that the quality of financial knowledge claims can be judged absolutely. In the modern context,
this judgment is not only based on the confirmation provided by the crisis itself, but also on
assumed scientific truths about economic phenomena, such as intrinsic asset values or metrics of
risk. This co-production of financial crisis and financial analysis has been a historical process.
This paper will turn to the moment of the 1720 South Sea “Bubble” in England, to explore the
relationship between mathematical analysis and financial failure before prediction became so
embedded in the very meaning of crisis. The paper will focus on Archibald Hutcheson, a cynical
parliamentarian and skilled arithmetician who drafted several polemics in 1719-1720 that used
novel computational models to critique the government refinancing that eventually produced the
Bubble. Financial historians have recently rediscovered Hutcheson as both a voice of financial
responsibility in a time of speculative excess and an inventor of modern financial valuation. I
will attempt to revise such Whiggish celebration of Hutcheson as the one who “saw it coming” to
recover what it meant to use mathematics to predict a type of disaster that had no clear precedent
or meaning in the early eighteenth century.
Author: David DeVorkin
Title: Recontextualizing the V-2
Abstract: Since its opening in 1976, the National Air and Space Museum has displayed a
reconstructed V-2 missile at the entrance of one of its three largest chambers: "Space Hall." By
its placement and its labeling it symbolized mankind's first step into space. The entire hall
display, from its title, was a simple statement that we have become a spacefaring people. A series
of reinterpretations and recontextualizations have taken place since 1976. The V-2 is now
presented as the world's first ballistic missile system, and Space Hall is now presented in a Cold
War context as the "Space Race." Although a few objects were replaced and some were added,
the majority of them, including the V-2, did not budge. This transformation is testimony to the
fact that artifacts do not speak for themselves. Here we explore this fact.
Author: Dawn M. Digrius, PhD
<ddigrius@stevens.edu>
Title: Where are the Plants? Simpson's 'Tempo and Mode,' Evolutionary Studies and
Paleobotany
Abstract: For many historians of biology, the modern evolutionary synthesis represents a
unifying vision. However, narratives about the synthesis period in evolutionary studies need
rethinking. The reason, little discussion of plants! For paleobotany in particular, the relationship
between the synthesis and the synthesizers has been one both neglected and complicated. When
the idea of the evolutionary synthesis is applied unilaterally to all disciplines historically within
the life sciences, a picture develops that is much different from one in which each research prong
is considered independently of the synthesis. Evolutionary studies were and are more than the
synthesis. Yet, the tendencies of most historiographies of biology are to present the synthesis as a
monolithic, unified “event of first rank importance in the history of biology,” (Provine 1980:
399). The goal of this paper is to explore the history of paleobotany in light of the synthesis, in
order to show that despite their lack of inclusion, plants were important. In addition I will tease
out the ways in which we can see new meaning in the species question and the synthesis itself.
Author: Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis
<f.j.dijksterhuis@utwente.nl>
Title: Mobilizing Learning for Urban Affairs in Golden Age Amsterdam
Abstract: In the second half of the seventeenth century the political and economic position of
the Dutch Republic, and thus of its main centre Amsterdam, had become under attack. Ways to
secure its trade routes and find new means of subsistence were developed. Locally its physical
management continued to demand attention and was expanded by the town’s recent extensions.
Patricians like Johannes Hudde and Nicolaes Witsen sought to employ their learning to the
solution of the city’s challenges. This ranged from the determination of a ship’s draught in
negations over tariffs, to the analysis of the waters in the canals, to the chorography of the lands
of new trade partners. Such activities show an intriguing conflation of personal preferences and
public interests, which leads to the broader question of how notables aligned these. Public life in
the Dutch Republic was determined to a large degree by private interests. Besides their personal
reputation Amsterdam administrators also had to look after the interests of their kin as well as
their patronage network, which they in turn mobilized for the interests of the city. They were
instrumental in the creation of public offices like the examination of navigators where learned
protégés could find a position, and figured prominently in the town’s savant circles. In this paper
I will discuss how Amsterdam notables sought to mobilize learning for urban affairs, how they
organized public and private affairs, and what role and place their own scholarly pursuits had in
the broader structures of the town’s knowledge economy.
Author: Arjen Dijkstra
<a.f.b.dijkstra@utwente.nl>
Title: Mathematics at Young Universities
Abstract: In 1598 the German university of Herborn drastically changed its program.
Mathematics became a central element in the preparatory school (paedagogium) of the
university. In the actual Illustrious School disputations in mathematical themes became an
important element of the curriculum. This was perhaps not the biggest change the students
awaited that year. Henceforth they could get some of their instruction in French rather than
Latin. In that same year 1598 a professor of mathematics was added to the university of
Franeker, in the Dutch Republic. This professor immediately set out with an ambitious program,
which included the teaching of some of his classes in Dutch. Both the ‘Hohe Schule’ in Herborn
and the ‘Universiteit’ in Franeker were supported by members of one and the same noble family:
the family of Nassau-Orange. The university of Leiden was yet another academic institution that
had found a patron from that same family and just two years later, similar changes were
proposed there. In my paper I will show how these pedagogical developments were deeply
rooted in the ideas of the French philosopher Pierre de la Ramée (1515-1572). I will also show
what the Nassau-family had to gain with the implementation of these changes. In Franeker,
Herborn and Leiden the professors in mathematics drew from similar sources to obtain key
positions in their institutions. By looking at these mathematicians in that context I will give an
example of how knowledge circulated in the early modern period.
Author: Stephen C. Dilley
<stephend@stedwards.edu>
Title: Darwin's Rhetorical Use of Methodological Naturalism in the Origin of Species
Abstract: A close inspection of the Origin of Species shows that Darwin strategically and
progressively deployed methodological naturalism (MN) in the six editions of the Origin in order
to maximize the effectiveness of his “one long argument.” (MN is the view that only natural, as
opposed to supernatural, explanations are permitted in science.) That is, Darwin used MN in a
way sensitive to the shifting views of his audience between 1859 and the early 1870s in order to
bolster his theory and to marginalize special creation from the scientific discussion. In fact,
Darwin’s explicit use of MN in later editions of the Origin was animated not so much by
epistemic reasons as by rhetorical ones. This same pattern —- the progressive use of MN for a
rhetorical purpose —- also appears in Fertilisation of Orchids, Variation Under Domestication,
and Descent of Man, Darwin’s key works from the early 1860s to early 1870s. Thus, while
Darwin might have arrived at MN for sound epistemic reasons, his gradual deployment of the
method, especially in the Origin, seems to have been mainly for the purpose of winning converts
to his theory and ostracizing special creation, rather than making a strong empirical and
philosophical case (per se) for evolution.
Author: Dr. John DiMoia, NUS
Title: “Going Nuclear?”: From AERI to KAERI, 1955-1978, the South Korean Case of Nuclear
Energy
Abstract: This paper takes scholarship from South Korea as its starting point, and attempts to
address the question of post-colonial states and their interest in atomic energy by bringing
together Korean and American sources to discuss the impact of the Michigan Memorial Phoenix
Project, which served as the advisory body to the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) for much
of the 1950’s and 1960’s in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. In the South Korean case
specifically, this meant a series of site visits (1958-1959) and advice to adopt a gradual approach
(1955-1959) toward research, while also assisting the South Koreans with their electric power
issues (1945-1955) by conventional means (new thermal plants, generators as temporary sources
of power). At the same time, the South Korean team possessed a greater set of ambitions than
their American counterparts, believing that the delivery of atomic energy would be forthcoming
shortly (1955-1961). When they recognized that this was not the case, the scientists based at
AERI (Atomic Energy Research Institute), nonetheless continued to expand their (1961-1965)
numbers and research agenda, transforming the site into a national laboratory, a predecessor to
the GRI’s (government research institute) that would appear in the mid to late 1960’s.
Subsequently, AERI would transform in KAERI (1973), at which point the ROK was pursuing
two separate aims: (1) commercial atomic energy, which would be achieved by 1978, while also
(2) seeking access to uranium enrichment.
Author: Park Doing
<pad9@cornell.edu>
Title: Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Shifting to Biology from Physics in Practice
Abstract: This paper gives give an account of practice at a hybrid particle physics and x-ray
science laboratory, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), during a ten year
period when x-ray science, most prominently x-ray crystallography, rose in prominence and
funding culminating in the awarding of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein
crystallography work done at CHESS. The paper addresses 'epistemic politics' at the laboratory
whereby proper operation of the synchrotron and proper experimental methods were negotiated
among different groups at the lab amid changing dynamics of relations of authority and control.
The relation of social history, ethnography, and the nature of scientific knowledge is addressed
with an emphasis on the historiographical category of 'the laboratory'. The paper advocates a
multi-site approach to history of laboratory science.
Author: Dennis A. Doyle
<dad169@msstate.edu>
Title: Gender Conservatism and Racial Liberalism in US Psychiatry: Dr. Viola W. Bernard and
the Community Service Society of Harlem, 1943-1945
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between racial liberalism and gender
conservatism in US psychiatry as demonstrated in the clinical record of Dr. Viola W. Bernard, a
liberal Jewish-American psychiatrist working with African American patients in Central Harlem
between 1943 and 1945. Bernard was among a growing cadre of young psychiatrists and social
workers in New York City who worked under the liberal assumption that one’s biological race
did not determine psychological development. Evidence in Bernard’s patient case files does
confirm historian Ruth Feldstein’s contention that gender conservatism was essential to racial
liberalism. But the clinical record complicates that argument as well. Not only had Bernard
deviated from racialist psychiatrists by applying psychodynamic psychiatry’s bifurcated gender
analysis equally in the cases of both whites and blacks, but the convergence of this gender
conservatism with racial liberalism led her to make African American racial identity matter in
the cases of men—but not in the cases of women. By comparing Bernard and her Community
Service Society social work team’s handling of two adolescent African American Harlemites,
one male and suspected of being at risk for “delinquency,” one female with a child of her own,
this paper will contend that they perceived and treated the way each patient’s race mattered in a
gender-specific yet liberal fashion, each influenced by available political discourses about racial
differences, African American civil rights, unmarried motherhood, and the public’s perception of
Central Harlem’s black community’s character and future.
Author: François Duchesneau
Title: Blumenbach's Theory of Vital Forces: A Research Program?
Abstract: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) has often been considered as the principal
initiator of biological vitalism in Germany at the turn of the 19th century. This is partly due to
the fact that he managed to graft to a physiology in the style of Haller an epigenetic hypothesis
on the formation of organisms. But his concept of Bildungstrieb, apart from meaning a principle
of vital self-organization, was designed to afford a sufficient reason, a methodological key, for
explaining the regular processes that unfold in an integrative fashion in the various functions of
organic parts. Did the reliance on such a hegemonic principle and on such vital forces as derive
from it mean the impossibility of ‘mechanically’ explaining those operations by which organisms
frame up and are preserved, repaired and reproduced? Or did it entail the obligation of explaining
living organisms and their operations by resorting to teleological concepts? Were vital forces
only substitutes for presumed, yet unknown or unknowable, ‘mechanisms’? Or did they represent
principles of vital organization that it would have been vain to try to reduce to orderly causal
sequences of physical and chemical operations? These questions point to (methodological)
antinomies that were to play a major role in subsequent biological theorizing. I shall try to show
what particular methodology of investigation, explanation and justification was at work in
Blumenbach’s various expositions of the theory of vital forces, especially in view of the fact that
the Bildungstrieb hypothesis was expanded from an account of what happens to individual
organisms to an account of what involves the transformation of species as breeds of organisms
that vary and diversify in time: thus Blumenbach enlarged the domain of application for his type
of vitalism, a type of scientific approach that generated a significant posterity and involved much
remodeling of its variants up to the more recent period.
Author: Ruthanna Dyer
Title: Tusks at Tufts
Abstract: Upon his death, Jumbo, the prize elephant in the Barnum Circus empire was
transported to Ward’s Natural History Establishment where two mounts were created. One was a
skeleton which traveled with the circus for several years prior to being housed at the American
Museum of Natural History. The other was a taxidermy mount of the hide on a constructed
“body”. This Jumbo was donated to the Barnum collection at Tuft’s University where it became
the icon of the University and cultural totem for students. Originally designed as a taxidermic
model to represent the gargantuan character of this animal, the specimen lost its natural history
and value as an educational model. How did this specimen make the transformation to a cultural
object central to an educational community? What are the similarities between objects of science
and objects of culture? How does the setting influence the transition from a specimen to an
object of culture? What intrinsic values of the object are lost or gained in this process? This talk
will examine the historical and cultural factors involved in the transformation using archival
material from Tuft’s Barnum collection and the Ward collection.
Author: Adam Ebert, PhD
<aebert@mtmercy.edu>
Title: Between Love and Science: Apicultural Research and Ethical Beekeeping in the British
Isles, c. 1750-1850
Abstract: I propose a paper that explores the ethical tightrope that scientific beekeepers walked
in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their quest to comprehend honeybee biology represented a rescue
mission. Traditional beekeepers in the British Isles used a straw hive that encouraged them to kill
the bees in order to harvest their honey safely. The structure of the straw hive meant that
preserving the bees’ lives made little sense. Invention of a more humane hive depended on
achieving detailed scientific understanding of bees. The paper will follow three parts. First, I will
address reasons why scientific beekeepers often felt a peculiar emotional attachment to their
bees. Second, I will explain biological aspects of the honeybee that underwent investigation and
debate in the search for a new hive. Third, I will explore the willingness of many scientific
beekeepers to sacrifice bees for the sake of research. Although many explicitly instructed readers
to “Never kill a bee,” their quest for knowledge and innovation pushed them to mutilate and kill
individual bees with little or no remorse. An intriguing aspect of this paper relates to the mixed
social status of apicultural researchers. Well-known affluent naturalists numbered among them,
but the most widely circulated literature often came from the pens of middling class
professionals and grammar-school educated amateurs. The paper therefore depicts a socially
diverse community that rallied around the principle of ethical beekeeping, even as they excused
themselves from absolute adherence to their aim of “humanity to bees.”
Author: Matthew D. Eddy
<m.d.eddy@durham.ac.uk>
Title: Tools for Reordering: Commonplacing and the Space of Words in Linnaeus’ Philosophia
Botanica
Abstract: While much has been written on the cultural and intellectual antecedents that gave rise
to Carolus Linnaeus’ herbarium and his Systema Naturae, the tools that he used to transform his
raw observations into nomenclatural terms and categories have been neglected. This paper
addresses this lacuna by focusing on Philosophia Botanica, the popular classification handbook
that he published in 1751. Using Linnaeus’ personal notes, marginalia and the changes evinced
in the book’s various editions, I suggest that he cleverly ordered and reordered the work by
employing commonplacing techniques that had been part of print culture since the Renaissance.
Throughout the paper I also emphasise that the functional adaptability of commonplace heads
allowed him to split and combine the book’s chapters and tables and played a notable conceptual
role in the way in which he spatialised words and, to a certain extent, specimens.
Author: Philip Ehrlich
<ehrlich@ohio.edu>
Title: The Rise Non-Archimedean Mathematics and the Roots of a Misconception
Abstract: Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, talk of infinitesimal line segments and
numbers to measure them was commonplace in discussions of the calculus. However, as a result
of the conceptual difficulties that arose from the misuse of these conceptions their role became
more subdued in the 19th-century calculus discussions and was eventually “banished” therefrom.
This is well known to historians and philosophers of mathematics alike. What is not so well
known in these communities, however, is that whereas late 19th- and pre-Robinsonian 20thcentury mathematicians banished infinitesimals from the calculus, they by no means banished
them from mathematics. Indeed, contrary to what is widely believed by historians and
philosophers, between the early 1870s and the appearance of Abraham Robinson’s work on nonstandard analysis in 1961 there emerged a large, diverse, technically deep and philosophically
pregnant body of consistent (non-Archimedean) mathematics of the (non-Cantorian) infinitely
large and the infinitely small. Unlike non-standard analysis, which is primarily concerned with
providing a treatment of the calculus making use of infinitesimals, the bulk of the former work is
either concerned with the rate of growth of real-valued functions or with geometry and the
concepts of number and of magnitude, or grew out of the natural evolution of such discussions.
With reference to the above, in [Ehrlich 2006] we wrote: “In this and a companion paper…we
will explore the origins and development of this important body of work in the decades
bracketing the turn of the twentieth century as well as the reaction of the mathematical
community thereto. Besides helping to fill an important gap in the historical record, it is our hope
that these papers will collectively contribute to exposing and correcting the misconceptions
regarding non-Archimedean mathematics alluded to above and to shedding light on the
mathematical, philosophical and historical roots thereof.” In [Ehrlich 2006], we provided a
philosophically sensitive, in-depth historical account of theory of non-Archimedean systems of
magnitudes in the years prior to the development of non-Archimedean geometry (1870-1891),
and in the companion [forthcoming] paper, which covers the period 1891-1914, we provide an
analogous account of the subsequent developments including the development of nonArchimedean geometries and the non-Archimedean systems of finite, infinite and infinitesimal
numbers that were introduced for their analytic representation. It is the author’s hope that by
drawing attention to this remarkable body of work and to the spectrum of theories of the infinite
and the infinitesimal that emerged therefrom, it will become clear that the standard 20th-century
histories and philosophies of the actual infinite and the infinitesimal that are motivated largely by
Cantor’s theory of the infinite and by non-standard analysis (as well as by the more recent work
in smooth infinitesimal analysis) are not only limited in scope but are inspired by an account of
late 19th- and early 20th-century mathematics that is as mathematically myopic as it is
historically flawed. The proposed talk will provide a brief overview of the above work. Ehrlich,
Philip: 2006, “The Rise non-Archimedean Mathematics and the Roots of a Misconception I: the
Emergence of Non-Archimedean Systems of Magnitudes,” Archive for History of Exact
Sciences 60, pp. 1-121. Ehrlich, Philip: forthcoming, “The Rise non-Archimedean Mathematics
and the Roots of a Misconception II: the Emergence of Non-Archimedean Geometry and the
Theory of non-Archimedean Ordered Algebraic Systems,” Archive for History of Exact
Sciences.
Author: Jim Endersby
<j.j.endersby@sussex.ac.uk>
Title: Mutation and Utopia: America’s (Evening) Primrose Path to the Future
Abstract: Although historians tend to dismiss de Vries's mutation theory as little more than a
wrong turn, there was widespread popular interest in the theory and its significance in the early
twentieth century. Much of this centered on the species of evening primrose, Oenothera
lamarckiana, which provided the bulk of the experimental evidence for the theory. This paper
will explore the cultural work that this plant was doing, in for example Charlotte Perkins
Gilman's novel Herland, as it became a focus for imaginative hopes that ranged from socialist or
feminist, to eugenic or technological. These diverse imaginings were all linked by a distinctively
American utopianism, a drive to find a rapid, technological solution for social, political and
economic problems.
Author: Kasper Risbjerg Eskildsen <eskild@ruc.dk>
Title: The Language of Objects: Christian Jürgensen Thomsen’s Science of the Past
Abstract: Historians of archaeology have often described the Danish amateur scholar Christian
Jürgensen Thomsen (1788-1865) as a founder of scientific and comparative prehistoric
archaeology. Thomsen’s innovation, this paper argues, may best be understood in connection
with concurrent developments within neighboring fields, such as philology and history. He
reacted against historians who limited themselves to histories of texts, and therefore abandoned
the earliest human history. Instead he proposed a new history of objects, which included the
entire history of humankind. Thomsen’s work as director of the Museum for Nordic Antiquities
in Copenhagen was especially important for this renewal. The arrangement of artifacts in the
museum not only helped him formulate his theories, but also allowed him to present his
arguments in a language of objects that challenged cultural dominance of the language of texts.
Simultaneously, Thomsen’s definition of archaeology as a museum science placed his branch of
archaeology in a closer relationship with other museum sciences, such as ethnography, natural
history, and comparative anatomy.
Author: Maurizio Esposito
Title: From Organic Morphogenesis to Liberal Socialism: Eugenio Rignano and the “CentroEpigenetic” Hypothesis of Heredity and Development
Abstract: Eugenio Rignano (1870-1930) was a polymath Italian philosopher, trained in physics
and engineering, but with a special interest in the biological sciences and political economy. In
many ways an Italian Herbert Spencer, Rignano aimed for a broad theoretical synthesis of
disparate scientific fields in a unique and bold framework. From 1906, when he published the
French version of his book Upon the Inheritance of Acquired Characters: A Hypothesis of
Heredity, Development, and Assimilation, he developed a speculative synthesis which sought to
combine the apparently irreconcilable hypotheses on heredity and development put forward by
the preformationists and epigenesists. But this “centro-epigenetic” hypothesis was not intended
merely as a middle way between the opposite stances of preformationism and epigenesis. It was
part of a more extended synthesis which comprised psychology, sociology, economics and
politics. In this presentation Rignano’s centro-epigenetic hypothesis and what he understood as
its ramifications beyond biology will be examined. A particular focus will be on the debate
Rignano engaged in 1927 on his centro-epigenetic hypothesis with the physiologist Filippo
Bottazzi (1867-1941), the Italian counterpart of Jacques Loeb.
Author: Maryam Farahmand
<farahmand.mm@gmail.com>
Title: Foundations of an Ancient Optical Textbook, Al-Baṣā’ir Fī ‘Ilm Al-Manāzir, Comparing
with Today’s Textbooks and Major Books of Optics Before it
Abstract: Training, Education and its different methods are nowadays considered as individual
disciplines even with individual degrees. Research in History of Science has examined an optical
manuscript, Al-Baṣā’ir fī ‘Ilm al-Manāzir. This textbook, which has never been translated in
order to be transmitted to the new world of science in Europe, remained so far unstudied in the
West and (erroneously) entitled as a digest of a major detailed book, Tanqīḩ al-Manāzir, of the
same author, Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārsī (1267-1319). By studying the transcript, step by step it was
realized not only that it’s not a summary book, but that it is in fact an individual textbook
employing a different style of writing and headlines; different from all main optical manuscripts
identified before. There are many detailed references to books and manuscripts from ancient
Greece until the Renaissance, consisting of the collected analyzed sources, arguments, and
proofs of a specified discipline and also many summaries of the most applicable transcripts. But
rarely a textbook could be found which was written by the same author of the major reference,
just for teaching new junior students. So the main purpose of this article is to do a study about
the pedagogical aspects of this textbook, in comparison with major optical manuscripts known
until then. Beside History of Optics, this research could also be categorized as history and
foundations of textbooks and their style or methods. Extracting and studying the first constructs
gives the power to the roots that head up the trunk to view further landscapes.
Author: Dr Aude Fauvel
<aude-fauvel@hotmail.fr>
Title: ‘Femmes fatales’: Examining Criminal Women in 19th-Century France
Abstract: Female criminals vanished in the nineteenth century. In France, while women
accounted for over 30% of the population of the prisons in the first half of the century, they were
less than 20% in 1900. As fewer and fewer women were incarcerated, similarly fewer and fewer
of them were prosecuted. In 1830, there were twenty women in a population of one hundred
defendants; this proportion was less than fifteen in 1900. These statistics illustrate the change in
the perception of women that occurred in the period. For the bourgeois society of the Belle
Epoque the very idea that women could be dangerous became unacceptable. According to the
scientific discourse of the time, women mainly lived to be mothers, many physicians disserting
on the inner maternal nature and the tender temperament of the ‘weaker sex’. It was thus not in
the nature of women to commit crimes and those who did had to be insane. But even if they were
not supposed to, there were still women who chose to be cold-blooded criminals during the Belle
Epoque, some of them even writing books in which they explained the rationale for their crimes.
How did scientists conciliate their vision of womanhood with the existence of these ‘femmes
fatales’? I will address this question in my paper by examining how the medical profession
reacted to several criminal cases, such as those of Marie-Fortunée Lafarge (convicted for her
husband’s murder in 1840) and of Marguerite Steinheil (suspected of double homicide in 1908).
Author: Jacqueline Feke
<jfeke@stanford.edu>
Title: Ptolemy: Altering Data to Fit the Model
Abstract: While Ptolemy’s astronomy has garnered the most historical attention, his
psychology, or science of the human soul, gives particular insight into the scientific method he
employs throughout his corpus. Ptolemy presents conflicting models of the human soul in two of
his texts: On the Kritêrion and Hêgemonikon and the Harmonics. In the Harmonics, Ptolemy
outlines three alternative models of the soul, but these three are consistent with one another in
that they each contain the same structure. Applying harmonics—or the study of the arithmetic
ratios describing the relations between musical pitches—to his psychology, Ptolemy enumerates
and labels the parts and species of the soul according to the concords and their species in music.
Ptolemy, however, does not apply harmonics to the study of the soul in On the Kritêrion, which
he most likely wrote before the Harmonics. Indeed, On the Kritêrion is Ptolemy’s only text
devoid of mathematics. Therefore, the model of the human soul in On the Kritêrion is not
mathematical. Rather, it is empirical. This paper will explore why Ptolemy changed his model of
the human soul and argue that the development of his scientific method led Ptolemy, in this case,
to adapt his empirical data to fit his mathematical model.
Author: James Fiorentino
<jdfioren@history.umass.edu>
Title: From ‘Passive Confidence’ to ‘Neo-Romanticism’? The American Socialist Left and
Popular Evolutionary Theory in the International Socialist Review, 1900-1918
Abstract: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Chicago-based monthly
International Socialist Review devoted many pages to popular explanations of evolutionary
theory. Most historians now see this interest in evolution as evidence of the Left’s naively
misguided faith in ‘Progress’. The carnage of the World War occasioned wholesale apostasy on
the Left, as socialist intellectuals “broke from scientific determinism...toward a neo-romanticism
that scorned nineteenth-century evolutionary assumptions.” This paper argues that a critical
reevaluation of this view is both necessary and overdue. Scores of articles on science and
technology, book reviews of major works in disciplines like chemistry and electrical engineering,
and serialized popularizations of the ideas of major evolutionary theorists like Ernst Haeckel
appeared in the Review’s pages between 1900 and 1918. Careful scrutiny of this material reveals
part of the complicated political culture of the early twentieth-century American Left. Socialists
of all stripes expressed themselves using a conceptual vocabulary deeply indebted to the natural
sciences, and evolutionary biology in particular. Building on Robert J. Richards’ recent work on
the ‘moral grammar of narratives’, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that historians
must rethink the current consensus on socialist conceptions of science and its ideological
implications.
Author: Andy Fiss
<afiss@indiana.edu>
Title: Problems of Abstraction: Defining an American Standard for Collegiate Mathematics
Education at the Turn of the 20th Century
Abstract: In the decades after the American Civil War, pure mathematics came to dominate
college-level education, reaching a critical moment in 1893 when seven of the nation’s top
colleges and universities offered no applied math classes at the advanced level. At the same time,
the post-bellum academic and student freedoms included the loosening of mathematical entrance
requirements, even for prospective science majors. Representatives of the physics and
engineering communities particularly complained about this issue around the turn of the century,
arguing that the physical sciences in the U.S. had fallen behind those in Europe precisely because
young scientists lacked proper mathematical training. Meanwhile, pure mathematicians
reasserted their discipline’s autonomy. This paper concerns the epistemological turf-war that
flared up between mathematicians, physicists, and engineers circa 1900. The question of who
determined the appropriate quantitative pre-requisites for entering science majors remained
vexed throughout the first decades of the twentieth century and still has analogues in American
universities today. The College Entrance Examination Board provided a promising compromise,
although its first exam of 1901 ultimately failed to garner large-scale support. This paper
therefore explores the oft-overlooked consequences of the rise of American pure mathematics,
and the problems and questions that followed in its wake.
Author: Evelyn Fox-Keller
Title: Climate Science, Truth, and Democracy
Abstract: Climategate has opened up a new wedge between expertise and democracy: While
public confidence in the claims of the IPCC has clearly eroded, the confidence that experts in the
field have in their findings remains unshaken. Changing public perceptions certainly worry
climate scientists, but they do not give rise to self-doubt. Why is that? One answer can be found
in a well-kept secret clearly understood by all scientists, but largely missing from public
perceptions of science – namely, that scientists are human. Try as they might, the knowledge
they produce inevitably falls short of popular ideals of infallibility, certainty, and valueneutrality. Scientists’ confidence is not shaken because it does not rest on such unattainable
ideals. Perhaps if lay citizens better understood what their confidence is based upon, scandals
like Climategate would have far less bite.
Author: Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
<jb.fressoz@gmail.com>
Title: Climate, Biopolitics and the Environmental Reflexivity of Modernity (18th and 19th
centuries France)
Abstract: During the 17th and 18th Centuries, climate had layers of meanings: cosmographic,
meteorological and medical. It was defined by the position on the globe and also determined by
the local characteristics of the place. 18th century hygiene tended to re-localize climate, to study
its nature and its transformation by looking at the “circumfusa”, (literally, the “things
surrounding us”), which determined the health and shape of populations. Because climate was
manmade and at the same time made man, it played an important role in 18th century biopolitics.
Urban police of Ancien Regime France used climatic discourse to legitimate the extension of its
power over almost everything pertaining to urban life. Political economy treatises explained that
the monarchy could and should produce a better population by improving the climate of the
kingdom by a wise management of cities, forests, marshes and canals. During the Napoleonic
period, programs of population regeneration through climate improvement flourished. I will
argue that this climatic demiurgy is essential to understand the climatic anxieties that emerged in
France at the end of the Ancien Regime.
Author: Courtney Fullilove
Title: “Prolific”: Valuing Proprietary Staple Varieties in 19th Century America
Abstract: In the 1850s, buoyed by advertisements in national agricultural periodicals,
proprietary brands of staple crops crowded the American market. Seed dealers recommended socalled "Prolific" brands of corn and cotton based on claims to heritage, provenance, innovation,
and empiricism: unstable categories of knowledge that remain prominent in debates between
corporations and communities over the ownership of seed. The proprietor of Wyandot Prolific
Corn, for example, alleged to have procured the original product from the Wyandotte Indians of
Illinois and boasted that it required but one grain per hill for a bumper crop. Wyandot sustained
enormous popularity through the succeeding decades, even as prominent agriculturalists publicly
doubted its superiority and state experiment stations declared its yields inferior to varieties
supplied by the Smithsonian Institution. While critics dismissed the corn’s tribal heritage as
folklore, Wyandot’s proprietor considered it his greatest selling point. This paper investigates the
different modes of evaluating seed improvised by breeders, seed firms, purchasing farmers, and
agricultural experiment stations between the 1850s and the 1880s. Experimenters’ empirical
claims to knowledge jostled with cultural and geographic stories of origin supplied by
entrepreneurs and practicing farmers. Each muddied the boundary between innovation and
appropriation with respect to a global stock of biological resources and traditional agricultural
practices. Ultimately their overlapping interpretations of seed values framed late 19th century
considerations of whether products of nature were property -- and if so, who could rightfully
claim them.
Author: Lisa Gannett
<lisa.gannett@smu.ca>
Title: Races as Gene Pools: Reservoirs, Puddles, and Playing Cards
Abstract: The evolutionary synthesis redefined races as genetically distinct breeding
populations—in Dobzhansky’s influential 1950 paper, “Mendelian Populations and Their
Evolution,” as “subordinate gene pools [which] may, like the gene pool of the species, be
uniquely characterized in terms of frequencies of gene alleles and chromosome variants” (405).
The term “gene pool” subsequently came into widespread use, but in association with very
different metaphors. Gene pools have been reservoirs (to breeders seeking to improve stock),
hands held by players exchanging cards in a game, and puddles of water connected by tiny
rivulets. Appreciably different ontological and epistemological connotations attach to these
metaphors, which, interestingly, trace various threads of Dobzhansksy’s own views, some at
tension with others. Puddles are readily conceived as more-or-less discrete entities: this coincides
with Dobzhansky’s defense of Mendelian populations, and hence races, as real spatio-temporal
objects. Card games permit more overlap with players able to be dealt into different games at the
same time: this favors Dobzhansky’s statistical approach and emphasis on race as process.
Reservoirs are crucial stores we try not to deplete: Dobzhansky’s balance view promoted a
similar role for the genetic variation contained in populations. The reservoir and puddle
metaphors serve to reduce organisms to their genes, whereas the metaphor of players exchanging
cards keeps organisms at the forefront: along these lines, Dobzhansky redefined evolution as a
change in gene frequency in a population yet agreed with Mayr’s critique of “bean bag” genetics.
Author: Justin Garson
<justin_garson@yahoo.com>
Title: The Birth of Information in the Brain: Edgar Adrian and the Vacuum Tube
Abstract: The beginning of the information era in neurobiology – that is, when information
became employed in neurobiology as an explicit theoretical and quantitative concept – is usually
traced to the 1950s. Yet one of the first neuroscientists to use the term ‘information' to describe
nerve activity was Edgar Adrian in his The Basis of Sensation (1928). This paper argues that two
main factors motivated Adrian’s use of the term ‘information’ to describe the activity of neurons.
The first involves technological achievements in wireless communications in the first two
decades of the twentieth century, and the use of communications technology, particularly the
vacuum tube, for measuring nerve activity. The second involves scientific achievements in
neurophysiology during the 1920s that were made possible by the vacuum tube, the most
important of which being the recording of the action potential of a single sensory neuron.
Finally, I argue against the view expounded by Otis (2002) and Lenoir (1994) that the
informational analogy of nervous transmission originated in the mid-nineteenth century work of
Helmholtz or DuBois-Reymond.
Author: Teri Gee
<teri.gee@utoronto.ca>
Title: Determinism in Abu Ma‘shar’s Defense of Astrology
Abstract: Abu Ma‘shar’s Great Introduction to Astrology, composed in the ninth century, was
translated into Latin twice during the twelfth century. The work has arguably had the greatest
influence on the practice of astrology not only in medieval Islam, but also in medieval and
Renaissance Europe. The text was used by a number of scholars in discussions on astrology, e.g.
Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. Astrology was a science that faced criticism from both the
religious and the philosophical scholars in Islam, especially because of problems with
determinism, and thus Book I contains Abu Ma‘shar’s defense of the practice. He does this
through use of analogies with other sciences, especially medicine, and demonstrates his
acceptance of both the causative power of planetary movements and his belief that human beings
have free will. Unlike Ptolemy, who tried to soften the causative power of the heavens by
invoking the changeable nature of the terrestrial world, Abu Ma‘shar acknowledges that the
movement of the heavens causes changes on the earth and then states that in some cases human
beings can avoid their fate. This apparent contradiction is an illustration of the concept of
compatibilism which can be seen throughout Book I and, rather than being a demonstration of
self-contradiction within the text, is an indication of Abu Ma‘shar’s perception of how astrology
could fit within the religious milieu of the medieval Islamic world.
Author: Elihu R. Gerson
Title: Collections and Analyses in Lab and Field: Some Problems with a Distinction
Abstract: The distinction between laboratory and field science (or naturalists and experimenters)
stems from confusions around the turn of the twentieth century. These stemmed from
overlapping theoretical, stylistic, conceptual, and methodological debates. They often led
proponents to accuse one another of being old-fashioned or un-scientific. I propose a different
view of these debates and their extensions into current biology and historiography. There were
multiple differences among researchers at the beginning of the 20th century. One was between
research based on collections of many specimens of many species versus controlled observation
of analytically defined phenomena (such as heredity). Another difference was between
comparative analysis and analysis of mechanisms. These two contrasts were often confounded
(collections-and-comparison vs. analytical mechanisms). This confounding was the basis of the
contrast between field science and laboratory science. Many projects are not well described by
the confounded contrast. One example was Joseph Grinnell and the Museum of Vertebrate
Zoology at Berkeley, whose work was comparative and collections-oriented. It also focused on
the analytical problems of niche analysis and geographical distribution of species. Another
example was Morgan and his associates’ work on fruit-fly genetics, often considered the
paradigm case of “lab science”. That work was analytically and mechanism oriented, but it also
produced a “fauna” of mutations on chromosomes, analogous to the faunal studies of
“naturalists”. The distinction between lab and field science then, must be reconsidered in the
light of a more adequate set of conceptual distinctions.
Author: Frederick W Gibbs
Title: Generation from Putrefaction in Early Modern Causes of Disease
Abstract: As Aristotelian natural philosophy permeated medical thinking throughout the later
medieval and early modern periods, many medico-philosophers approached inquiries into causes
of disease from fresh perspectives. One avenue of exploration concerned the relationship
between putrefaction and disease, an association that loosely reaches back to antiquity. However,
putrefaction remained a slippery concept and comprised a range of processes: corrupted humors
might refer to a simple imbalance; a strong drug might corrode the body. Often, putrefaction was
used interchangeably with the more general notion of corruption into the sixteenth century. It
was around then, however, that natural philosophical interests in the notions of poison,
putrefaction and their relationship to disease blossomed (an interest that had taken root in the
fourteenth century). Paracelsus argued that putrefaction was an essential component of the
process of generation generally; Girolamo Fracastoro wrote that “without putrefaction, there can
be no contagion;” Jean Fernel’s “diseases of the total substance” depended on the occult,
putrefactive powers of some substances. I describe in this talk how sixteenth-century medicophilosophers began to sharpen their conception of the process of putrefaction (as distinct from
corruption) as it became more central to understanding the generation of disease. Exactly what
did it generate? How were putrefaction inside and outside the body related? How was
putrefaction related to fermentation (the first step of generation for Descartes)? I also show the
extent to which purely philosophical texts on putrefaction, like that of Girolamo Accoramboni,
influenced medical discussions about the nature of disease.
Author: Susannah Gibson
<scg32@cam.ac.uk>
Title: Newtonian Vegetables and Perceptive Plants
Abstract: In this paper, I will examine how naturalists in the second half of the eighteenth
century developed theories of plant life. The influence of mechanical and vital theories has been
studied extensively in relation to the understanding of animal life, but hardly at all in relation to
the vegetable kingdom. By exploring how three different groups approached the problem of
explaining plant life, I hope to understand not only their theories and practices, but also how they
combined elements of natural philosophy with natural history. Here, I will examine how
eighteenth-century practitioners developed different strategies for combining theoretical and
practical work. I will begin by looking at men such as Stephen Hales (1677-1761) who were
heavily influenced by Newton’s mathematical view of nature and saw plants as hydraulic
machines. I will then discuss the works of Thomas Percival (1740-1804) and James Tupper (fl.
1797-1821) who advocated a more vitalist view and saw plants as sensitive, perceptive beings.
The debate about sensitive plants is particularly useful for elucidating how these men used
experiment and observation to support hypothesis. Finally, I will look at the role the Linnean
Society played in the debate about sensitive plants.
Author: Snait B. Gissis
<gissis@post.tau.ac.il>
Title: Lamarckism and the Constitution of Sociology
Abstract: The decades from the 1850s onwards witnessed the beginning and the achievements
of evolutionism as a meta-narrative. The resulting discourse often had “progress,”
“development,” and/or “the inheritance of acquired characters” as its principal explanatory
terms, rather than natural selection and variations, even though these evolutionary mechanisms
were also often present, as well as some extant models of recapitulation. I analyze the emergence
of sociology as a discipline in Britain and France during the second half of the 19th century and
investigate its conceptual framework by examining the transfer of concepts, models, metaphors
and analogies from contemporaneous evolutionary biology. Sociology emerged in continual
interaction with this evolutionary biology which, both in France and in Great Britain, had a
marked Lamarckian/neo-Lamarckian perspective and emphasis. By analyzing the interactions
and transfers between social thought and Lamarckian evolutionary theories insights into the
relationships between individuals and collectivities are obtained. This transfer could take place
only within a cultural context which allowed for the assumption that there was a fundamental
correspondence/similarity/analogy between organic nature and social life, between mechanisms
of biological and social development, and between types of regularities observed in both fields.
Within this context I discuss certain aspects of the work of two influential social theorists:
Herbert Spencer and Émile Durkheim. In important respects their work was part of a general
framework of Lamarckian modes of thought that became significant around the mid-19th
century, and whose impact lasted until the end of that century.
Author: Alan Gluchoff
Title: Mathematicians and Exterior Ballistics in America, 1880-1940
Abstract: In the late years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century there was
little interest among mathematicians in America in the problems of determining the ballistic
trajectory. What work was done was initiated by interested military officers who largely
borrowed from European sources. This changed with the advent of the first World War, when a
specific appeal to mathematicians was made by Oswald Veblen of Princeton University, who,
together with Forest Ray Moulton of the University of Chicago took the lead in refashioning
ballistic theory and practice. These men and many others left a body of knowledge which was
elaborated upon after the war in mathematical papers, military academy textbooks and military
journal articles. This paper examines the changing role of mathematicians in this process from
the 1880s through the World War up until the years immediately preceding the second World
War.
Author: Melinda Gormley
Title: Applied History of Science
Abstract: ‘Applied history of science,’ a phrase John L. Heilbron used in 1987, suggests three
ways historians of science can reach beyond their discipline: general education, science
education, and science policy. Historians of science interested in applied history of science can
learn from public historians. “Public History,” according to the movement’s founder Robert
Kelley, “refers to the employment of historians and the historical method outside of academia: in
government, private corporations, the media, historical societies and museums, even in private
practice.” My talk will raise the following points. Public history offers a wealth of ideas from
which cross-disciplinary programs can benefit when seeking a model for methodology,
curriculum, or program development. Interdisciplinary programs are ideal settings for teaching
applied history of science to students who will pursue non-academic jobs. Faculty should
maximize local resources by forging relationships with local organizations such as museums,
archives, historical sites, and governmental agencies, so that students can gain hands-on and
technical experience through internships.
Author: Robert Goulding
Title: Visualizing Refraction in the Papers of Thomas Harriot
Abstract: In the opening years of the seventeenth century, the English polymath Thomas Harriot
devoted himself to the study of refraction. A chance enquiry from a correspondent about the
burning properties of a huge, imaginary lens had led him to reopen his stalled investigations from
the late 1590s into the refractive strengths of various media. As before, Harriot assumed that the
refractive behavior of transparent materials was closely related to the internal, atomic structure of
the substance. In the course of his resumed experimental investigations and his geometrical
analysis of the refracted beams, he stumbled upon the sine law of refraction. Scattered through
Harriot's papers are sketches of the imagined reactions between atomic lattices and light rays, in
which he apparently was attempting to discover the physical meaning of the new law.
Author: James R. Griesemer
Title: Taxon-Focused Research in Collections-Based Biology
Abstract: The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (Berkeley) has a 100-year history of successful
research organized around a vertebrate natural history collection initiated by founding director
Joseph Grinnell and founding patron Annie Alexander in 1908. The durability of the museum’s
research traditions is surprising in light of the major changes in biology over the century. I
describe one means of developing and sustaining vigorous biological research traditions in an
environment of dramatically changing research styles, methods, practices, problems, and
theories, in a museum organization anchored in the preservation and cultivation of specimen
collections. Taxon-focused research centers on the study of many species, rather than a single
one as in “model organism” focused research. Taxon-focused research makes comparisons
within a taxon, across its constituent species, to reveal patterns that can illuminate broad research
themes while model-organism-focused research typically aims at analytically-oriented studies,
e.g. of mechanisms or stable generation of phenomena (such as hereditary, physiological,
developmental, or behavioral patterns), while comparative studies are secondary at best. I
describe taxon-focused, collections-based work as it was practiced in the MVZ from 1971 to the
present by David B. Wake, the 4th director of the museum and its curator of herpetology.
Author: Rachel Grob
Title: Is My Sick Child Healthy? Is My Healthy Child Sick?: Changing Parental Experiences of
Cystic Fibrosis in the Age of Expanded Newborn Screening
Abstract: Newborn screening to diagnose Cystic Fibrosis (CF) at birth is now mandatory for
every infant in the U.S. One result of this public health policy decision is yet another shift in the
historically contingent disease category “CF.” Universal screening means that a majority of
families now learn about their infant’s disease status and begin active preventive care regiments
before any manifest signs of illness have emerged. This paper explores what a diagnosis of CF
means for families when it comes at birth, for an asymptomatic child. Drawing on qualitative
interviews conducted with parents of affected children, I will illustrate how the uncertainty of CF
– its maddening variability -- powerfully influences the way parents experience the diagnosis and
how they strive to control the disease’s impact. I will also examine how parental identities are
formed in a context that invites constant assessment of whether a healthy-seeming child is really
sick, and of whether a disease-diagnosed baby is really healthy. The unpredictability of CF
mediates experiences parents have with health care professionals as well, creating specific new
roles delimiting both medical and parental authority in relation to emerging definitions of
disease, of illness, of care-giving, and of what it means to “parent up to code.” This case study of
how newborn screening for CF constructs disease identity provides useful insights at a historical
moment when continued rapid expansion of newborn screening programs – and associated
continued changes in the nature of early parenting and early childhood – appears all but
inevitable.
Author: Jean De Groot
<degroot@cua.edu>
Title: Mechanics in the Aristotelian Physical Problems
Abstract: Physical Problems is a collection of post-Aristotelian ancient writings on physics and
natural history. Only a few parts of the collection have been dated to an earlier Physical
Problems belonging to Aristotle’s own circle. Book XVI (undated) collects topics in
mechanics—e.g., the rotational forward movement of unbalanced bodies, the contrasting motions
of cylinder and cone, the phenomenon of a person struck from behind and falling backward. This
paper offers analysis of the mechanical ideas in Book XVI and also seeks clues to the dating of
these fragments. The topics in Book XVI are treated in terms of an underlying principle which is
similar to the moving radius principle of Mechanical Problems but which is not mathematicized
to the same extent as the principle in MP. Also, PP XVI explains curved motion by composition
of movements while at the same time treating circular motion as a kind of default state for
natural motion. That is, the circle is a shape in which a body can move consistently with the
same motion though subject to more than one force. Book XVI is remarkable in its treatment of
weight as force of motion and in the manner of its recourse to experience, especially kinesthetic
awareness. The analysis provides a vantage point from which to consider if Book XVI is part of
the thinking on mechanics of Aristotle’s own circle, possibly pre-dating Mechanical Problems.
Author: Annick Guénel
Title: Veterinary Science and Cattle Breeding in Colonial Indochina
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the relations between research developed by French
veterinary medicine and practices of cattle breeding in Indochina during the first half of the 20th
century. The colonizers attempted to “modernize” agriculture and to produce cattle for
exportation to other East Asian countries. Two kinds of challenges faced colonial veterinarians:
developing industrial cattle breeding and controlling epizootic diseases. In this process, the
veterinarians interacted with three categories of actors: the colonial administration, the French
settlers, and even the colonized peasants. Although each category of actor had its own interests
and views, veterinarian policy proved to be an important element in the construction of French
domination: cattle surveillance, border control, vaccination certificates, and so on. The material
upon which the study is based is constituted mainly of scientific papers published in veterinarian
journals.
Author: Anita Guerrini
Title: The Ghastly Kitchen
Abstract: This paper focuses on the interrelationship of dissection, experimenting, and food in
the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The dissection of dead and live animals played a
central role in the development of experimental natural philosophy. Although some of this
activity was pursued in public, much more of it occurred behind closed doors, often in private
homes or rooms. The Paris anatomist Duverney, for example, did most of his dissecting in his
apartments at the Jardin du roi, while his compatriot Jean Pecquet spent the 1650s dissecting in a
room at his patron Fouquet’s estate at Vaux le Vicomte. Claude Bernard spoke of passing
through the “ghastly kitchen” of animal experiments in order to reach the open hall of scientific
knowledge. I wish to suggest that the kitchen in this era was more than a metaphor, but an actual
place where knowledge was generated. I will look at anatomists, butchers, and cooks to
determine whether the proximity of dissection to the kitchen was mere coincidence.
Author: Rosaura Ruiz Gutierrez
Title: Darwin and Wallace on Morals and Ethics: Two Different Views from Natural Selection
Abstract: Morals and ethics are the way in which people conducts their lives and they are the
basis of social relations, and due to this importance, numerous people from different fields have
attempted to explain morals’ origins; traditionally Western civilization has had its morals’ and
ethics’ origins in a Judeo-Christian interpretation, but there have been attempts to construct it
from secular positions. In the last years a number of scholars like Robert J. Richards (1987), Paul
Farber (1994) and Thomas Dixon (2008) have examined the origins, extents and contents of
Charles Darwin’s views on human morality. By contrast, the visions on morality of Alfred
Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, have been little examined. In this paper
we aim to begin the project of a critical, contrasted analysis of Wallace on morality.
Furthermore, we seek to show that a fuller understanding of Wallace’s views can lead us to
revise our understanding of important elements of Darwin’s views. Using primary sources in
which both authors established their different versions through natural selection application, we
shall explore the possibility that these views of Darwin and Wallace on morals can contribute to
the development of an evolutionist / Darwinian ethics.
Author: Dae-Cheong HA
<daecheong.ha@gmail.com>
Title: Two Controversies, One Narrative: A Strange Discursive Overlap of Scientific Fraud and
Risk Politics in South Korea
Abstract: This paper explores a strange superimposition of two successive scientific
controversies in South Korea. The first dealt with the publicly well-known scientific fraud, the
so-called “Hwang Scandal”, where a celebrity scientist‘s claim to have established the first
human embryonic stem cell proved to be fraudulent. The other, which took place 3 years later,
revolved around a public dispute over the risk of U.S. beef supposedly tainted with BSE (bovine
spongiform encephalopathy), which was triggered by the Korean government’s decision to
resume U.S. beef imports. Although these two scientific controversies may seem to be different
in almost every aspect, there are claims that they share common denominators of nationalism and
professionalism, which were predominant ideologies in Korean scientific policy at the time. In
this paper, however, I argue a more direct relationship between these two controversies. In
reality, the major actors involved did overlap in both cases. The traumatic experiences that took
place in the “Hwang Scandal” framed their understanding and shaped the later debate of the risk
of U.S. beef. Within this discursive framework, some scientists and journalists misinterpreted
intricate and complicated risk politics as relatively simple scientific misconduct and so they all
tried to rescue ‘pure’ science from ‘impure’ politics but to no avail. Based on in-depth interviews
and archival research, this paper investigates the historical trajectories of discourses surrounding
the risk of BSE in South Korea and shows that the unexpected superimposition of different
historical discourses might have channeled a scientific controversy into quite a new evolution.
Author: Marta Halina
<mhalina@ucsd.edu>
Title: When Apes Speak
Abstract: In the final chapter of his 1889 publication, "On the senses, instincts, and intelligence
of animals," John Lubbock observes that, "hitherto we have tried to teach animals, rather than
learn from them-to convey our ideas to them, rather than to devise any language or code of
signals by means of which they might communicate theirs to us." Lubbock attempts to
ameliorate this problem by showing how one might instruct a dog to communicate using
lexigrams. This suggestion-that animals could learn a nonverbal "language" intelligible to
humans-is striking because though many attempts to communicate with animals followed,
particularly with apes, it was not until the late 1960s that researchers turned from verbal to
nonverbal forms of communication. Why the focus on verbal communication? This paper
addresses this question by examining attempts to communicate with great apes in the late 19th
and early 20th century, beginning with Richard L. Garner in the 1890s, and including Lightner
Witmer, William H. Furness, and Robert M. Yerkes. It shows how the decision to focus on
verbal communication depended on drawing an analogy between apes and deaf human children
at a time when oralism-a movement aimed at replacing signed with spoken languages-was
rapidly on the rise. Viewing apes as "almost human" motivated researchers to share with them a
communicative system, but it also set the bounds for what that communicative system could be.
Author: Andrew Hamilton
Title: HPS in the Science Curriculum: History and Philosophy at the Lab Bench
Abstract: Arizona State University is organized differently than most research institutions: the
administrative structure reflects a commitment to asking and answering interesting, relevant, and
transformative questions, rather than to disciplines as centers of knowledge. Nowhere at ASU is
this commitment more visible than in the School of Life Sciences, where faculty with training in
many disciplines deliver instruction in a wide range of courses in biology, history, and
philosophy. This session will discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of making HPS
an integral part of science education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with special
attention to a large Biology- and HPS-based lab course that serves as an introduction to biology
for non-majors and to BIO-HPS cross-listed graduate courses that are intended for students with
primary interests in both fields. The importance of supporting extra-curricular activities will also
be discussed.
Author: Emily T. Hamilton <ehamilton@berkeley.edu>
Title: Calculating Empire: How Mathematics Education Standards Define Nationalism in 20th
Century U.S.
Abstract: This paper revisits the traditional narrative of post-Sputnik education reform in the
United States, expanding the boundaries of this narrative and exploring how changing standards
infiltrated public opinion and policy and defined nationhood. Mathematics education contributed
to defining the United States throughout much of the 20th century. In the first half of the century,
elementary and secondary school reforms mirrored cultural considerations of the changing ideal
of the American citizen. Mathematics education standards were aimed to prepare students for
particular roles in society, and educators, parents, policymakers, psychologists, and
mathematicians worked to effect reforms in classrooms and textbooks. As the century
progressed, mathematics testing became important in building and ranking manpower for
growing military needs. By applying mathematical testing to soldiers, the role of mathematics as
defining the strength of the American body became overt. As Sputnik’s 1957 launch accelerated
fears of decline and funding opportunities for math education, standards both became the
benchmark for the country’s strength and fueled nationalism. Charts and graphs were published
widely with dire messages of American intellectual weakness. Television commercials
dramatically portrayed the American classroom in a race with those of other nations. Test scores
were touted as demonstrating objective national worth. This cultural understanding of the role of
mathematics proficiency developed in distinct ways throughout the 20th century. By examining
its role as defining the strengths of the nation we can better understand how politics intersected
with the classroom and fostered a unique sense of nationalism built upon evolving standards of
mathematics education.
Author: Kimberly A. Hamlin
<hamlinka@muohio.edu>
Title: Helen Hamilton Gardener’s Brain: Contested Understandings of Brain Science and
Feminist Applications of the Scientific Method
Abstract: In 1925 U.S. women’s rights activist Helen Hamilton Gardener died and included an
unusual provision in her will: she asked that her brain be removed and transported to Cornell
University for scientific study. She hoped her brain would substantiate her lifelong contention
that women’s brains were not structurally inferior to men’s. This paper analyzes Gardener’s
involvement in brain science as well as what the resulting study of her brain revealed about the
gendered (and racial) understandings of the human brain. In the 1880s, Gardener read Dr.
William Hammond’s popular theory that women’s brains were inferior to men’s in 19 distinct
ways. Having already taken science classes at Columbia University, Gardener doubted that
Hammond’s experiments adhered to the rigors of the scientific method. Unable to conduct her
own experiments on brains, she interviewed the nation’s leading brain scientists and published
her critique of Hammond in Popular Science Monthly. She and Hammond enjoyed a lengthy
debate in the magazine, and then Gardener published an extended essay entitled “Sex in Brain”
(1888). In her challenge to Hammond, Gardener popularized the importance of an impartial
scientific method and stressed that science could be a feminist ally. Gardener encouraged her
female colleagues to donate their brains to science, leading with her own example. This paper
concludes with an analysis of the 30-page study of Gardener’s brain, published in the American
Journal of Physical Anthropology, and the tremendous attention it received. The New York
Times headline, for example, declared “Woman’s Brain Not Inferior to Men’s.”
Author: Laura Harkewicz
Title: "We can't relocate the world": Activism and the Bravo Medical Program
Abstract: In 1985, members of the international environmental organization Greenpeace placed
the epigram noted above on a banner outside the main satellite facility of the Kwajalein Missile
Range in the Marshall Islands. Greenpeace was in the process of relocating the people of
Rongelap who had been exposed to radioactive fallout from the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test
- the largest nuclear device ever tested by the U.S. The Bravo Medical Program (BMP) was
developed in response to the exposure of over 200 Marshall Islanders. The Program continued
for over 40 years. The BMP had two, often conflicting goals: medical care for the exposed and
research into the human biological effects of radiation exposure. By the 1970’s, lingering
scientific uncertainty about radiation effects, and general societal lack of trust in the objectivity
of scientists affiliated with the government, provided an audience for activists who supported –
some say created – Marshallese claims of human experimentation at the hands of BMP doctors.
In the Marshall Islands, exposed Marshallese joined forces with other anti-colonial, anti-nuclear,
and health activists who created media attention that focused on the scientific knowledge
generated by the BMP. Activists stressed the need for independent (objective) scientific review
of data rather than additional data collection. They argued it was not the data that was unreliable,
but rather the people involved in its interpretation lacked credibility because the work was done
within the national laboratory system. Activists drove publicity about the Marshall Islands,
linking events - like the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the fallout exposure of the crew of the
Japanese fishing boat, The Lucky Dragon, and the experiences of atomic veterans and Nevada
Test Site “downwinders” - to the nuclear histories of the Islands making them part of the
international atomic history, a history that often focused on victimization, uncertainty, and fear.
In this way, they attempted to create a global “radioactively-exposed” identity based on the
collective experience (and potential threat) of radiation exposure. The Marshallese assumed this
identity to guarantee access to medical care and compensation. Publicity served as the basis for
claims to biological citizenship. Through an emphasis on articles published in the popular press,
I show that activists produced a drama of the Marshallese experience to stand as an exemplar of
the state’s inability adequately to protect the health of its citizens. This paper documents how
activists’ stress on scientific knowledge destabilized the influence of scientists while confirming
the authority of science. In addition, it demonstra `tes how activists’ engagement with science
undermined Marshallese claims to biological citizenship. By stressing the conflict of interest
inherent in the BMP, activists got the independent review they desired but, because the causal
link between exposure and effect could never be conclusively demonstrated, Marshallese
biological citizenship remained contested as did their claims for compensation. Meanwhile,
activism effectively caused the medical care goal of the BMP to become invisible to the public,
leaving only the research goal and claims of human experimentation.
Author: Roger Hart
Title: Chinese Roots of Linear Algebra
Abstract: Beginning in about the first century CE in China, anonymous and likely illiterate
adepts practiced an arcane art termed fangcheng (sometimes translated into English as “matrices”
or “rectangular arrays”). This art provided procedures for manipulating counting rods on a
counting board, which enabled practitioners to produce answers to seemingly insoluble riddles.
While we know virtually nothing about these adepts, their practices were occasionally recorded
by aspiring literati and incorporated in texts they compiled on mathematical arts, which were
then presented to the imperial court, together with prefaces promoting the mathematical arts as
the semi-divine invention of sage kings, fundamental to understanding cosmogeny, and essential
to ordering the empire. Yet at times these literati compilers also denounced fangcheng adepts for
overly arcane techniques, apparently in an attempt to reassert their own higher status and
authority. Fangcheng is remarkable because it is essentially equivalent to the solution of systems
of n equations in n unknowns in modern linear algebra. The essential feature of fangcheng is, I
argue, visualization of problems in two dimensions as an array of numbers on a counting board
and the “cross-multiplication” of entries, which led to general solutions of systems of linear
equations not found in Greek or early European mathematics. This paper examines the earliest
extant record of these fangcheng practices, chapter 8 of the Art of Mathematics in Nine Chapters
(ca. first century CE), in the context of court patronage.
Author: Gary Hatfield
<hatfield@phil.upenn.edu>
Title: The Reception of Descartes' Machine Psychology in Medical Writers and Natural
Philosophy
Abstract: In his Treatise on Man, Descartes offered mechanistic explanations of the offices of
the vegetative and sensitive souls in animals. The offices of the sensitive soul include the
external senses, imagination, and memory, and the production of situationally appropriate
behavior. Descartes would explain the relevant phenomena without cognitive notions such as
representation, cognition of "intentions" (such as the enmity of the wolf), or perception of
benefits and harms. He would offer purely mechanistic explanations (appealing only to matter in
motion) of how mindless animal bodies can pursue benefits, avoid harms, and adjust their
behavior to new instances of such items. Recently, several scholars have rejected this
interpretation of Descartes' explanatory intentions. Previously, I have addressed textual and
historiographical aspects of this debate. In this talk, I examine the reception of Descartes' animal
physiology by seventeenth-century medical writers and natural philosophers. In the 1640s,
professors of medicine and of natural philosophy at Utrecht and Leiden appropriated Descartes'
work (he met or corresponded with several). Subsequently, physicians in the Dutch and Spanish
Netherlands and in France and Germany took up Descartes' animal physiology. Comprehensive
textbooks of Cartesian philosophy appeared, covering the topics from Aristotelian textbooks,
including the offices of the vegetative and sensitive souls. In detailing how his mechanization of
the sensitive soul was understood, I examine the reception of Descartes' thought, focusing on the
denial of cognitive states to nonhuman animals and on comparisons of Descartes to actual or
perceived followers. I conclude with remarks on the historiography of reception.
Author: Vanessa Heggie
<vheggie@yahoo.com>
Title: Respiratory Physiology and the Climbing of Mount Everest, Both In and Out of the
Laboratory
Abstract: In 1878 the work of French physiologist Paul Bert seemed to suggest that, with
appropriate supplementary oxygen, a human being could climb to the summit of Everest. Over
the century that followed physiologists (and mountaineers) disagreed over the necessity of
oxygen, until a practical demonstration by Messner and Habeler proved that a non-fatal
oxygenless climb was possible. As a field site Everest remains dangerous to use, expensive to
reach, and accessible only after careful political negotiations with local governments. Everest as
a laboratory model, on the other hand, can be more tractable, even if the data produced in this
way are regularly challenged and overturned by anecdote and work ‘in the field’. (Aspects of
Everest have been represented by objects as diverse as mathematical models, barometric
chambers, other mountains, and computer programmes). This paper follows the debates about
human respiration at the highest point of the earth’s surface, and shows how the relationship
between laboratory model and field site was crucially dependant on the social and cultural
meanings of Everest itself.
Author: Gabriel Henderson <hende270@msu.edu>
Title: Helmut E. Landsberg: “Foremost Climatologist” within Early Debates of Global Climate
Change Science, 1950-1985
Abstract: My research seeks to place Helmut Landsberg, a German-American climatologist,
within early debates over anthropogenic global climate change. Amidst a growing awareness of
the global implications of urbanization, technology-based pollution, and radioactive fallout,
Helmut Landsberg sought to moderate convictions of impending anthropogenic global climate
change beginning in the 1960s. On the one hand, he cautioned against catastrophe-based
prognostications, believing that many scientists were arguing with “more zeal than insight.” On
the other hand, Landsberg believed that man was quite capable of altering local or regional
climates through pollution and urban development. In general, while he believed natural forces
still prevailed on a global scale, “the potential for anthropogenic changes of climate on a larger
and even a global scale is real.” For his administrative involvement as director or president for a
myriad of institutions dedicated to the atmospheric sciences, and his versatile interests in the
relationship between man and the environment, he was named the “Foremost Climatologist of
the World” by the World Meteorological Organization in 1978 and awarded the prestigious
National Medal of Science by President Reagan in 1985. Given his prominence within the
scientific community, it remains to be seen how he responded to ever-changing evidence in
support of global climate change.
Author: Matthew H. Hersch, J.D., PhD
<mhersch@sas.upenn.edu>
Title: SPACE MADNESS: The Dreaded Disease That Never Was
Abstract: Researchers of the 1950s who considered the problems of human spaceflight often
speculated that merely participating in such a voyage might overwhelm the human psyche.
Psychiatrists working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1959 expected
the worst of the men they examined to be America’s first astronauts: that they would be
impulsive, suicidal, sexually aberrant thrill-seekers. The examiners, though, were surprised—and
a little disappointed—when tests revealed the would-be astronauts to be sane, poised
professionals able to absorb extraordinary stresses. Flying jet airplanes in Cold War America had
conditioned the men to control their fear, and even the most spirited among them were effective
in orbit. A Space Age malady with no incidence among human populations, “space madness” is
the stuff of Hollywood: a cultural manifestation of popular fears of a lonely, dehumanizing, and
claustrophobic future among the stars. Drawing from an array of archival and popular culture
sources, this poster contrasts NASA’s own investigations of the sanity of its early spacemen with
contemporary accounts of fictional astronauts driven to madness. The poster will include text,
images, and an accompanying video presentation (with sound), displayed on the presenter’s
notebook computer.
Author: Keren Abbou Hershkovits
Title: Narratives of Science
Abstract: Modern historiography is much interested in the way Islamic civilization acquired
scientific texts. The view regarding this process has dramatically changed in the past few years.
Current studies emphasize the transformation that took place once ideas and texts were
transmitted from one culture and place to another. However, little attention is given to the way
Islamic scholars discussed the process, how they perceived the transmission of scientific
knowledge throughout time and space and where this knowledge came from. This final question
will stand at the heart of this talk. I suggest reading science narratives. Narratives of science are
texts describing how scientific knowledge (by science I mean medicine, arithmetic, geometry,
physics, astronomy, astrology, alchemy, philosophy, logic and engineering), was transmitted to
Muslim scholars. Written between the tenth and fourteenth centuries throughout the Muslim
world, these narratives appear in various genres: historical, ādāb (belles lettres), scientific and
biographical literature. Each of these genres focuses on particular aspects of science and its
cultivation. An analysis of the way authors discussed the origins of science will bring clarity to
several fundamental aspects pertaining to how Muslim scholars approached science. What is
scientific knowledge? What can be considered as a legitimate source and finally what is the
position of scientific knowledge vis-à-vis other kinds of knowledge? In this talk I wish to focus
on a single theme common to all narratives, the question of origin; how science first appeared in
the world, and who the first person to practice or teach science was.
Author: Bruce Hevly
Title: Terrestrial Physics as Investment in Frontier Building
Abstract: This paper presents a comparative study of the development of two frontier
institutions in the interwar period: geophysical research stations that served as the foundations
for the University of Tromso in Norway and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Here I argue
that this case suggests the importance of construing ‘frontier’ in one of its senses: the politicalmilitary one. Both the United States and Norway engaged in scientific institution-building in the
north as part of efforts to establish and defend border lines defining the limits of national
sovereignty. The action of the League of Nations, awarding conditional sovereignty to Norway
over the Spitzbergen archipelago based in part on a record of scientific research programs
undertaken in the region, underscores the senses in which science could be significant as a tool
for a nationalist program. At both Fairbanks and Tromso, universities built in the far north
underscored the establishment of cultural sovereignty; at both universities, the research program
in terrestrial physics, emphasizing auroral studies and, particularly, radio propagation studies,
responded to the demand to shape scientific resources into forms that would support the
commercial and military enterprises allowing the U.S. and Norway, respectively, call frontiers
into being as well as defend them.
Author: Eric S. Hintz
<ehintz@sas.upenn.edu>
Title: “Selling the Research Idea”: The National Research Council’s Promotion of Industrial
Research, 1916-1945
Abstract: This paper examines the National Research Council (NRC) and its promotion of
industrial research from 1916-1945. The NRC was founded during World War I to mobilize
scientists for national defense, but one of its primary peacetime goals was the promotion of
scientific research within American industries. The NRC’s promotional efforts took off in 1923
when Frank Jewett, the director of Bell Labs, was named chairman of the NRC’s Division of
Engineering and Industrial Research. Soon Jewett and the division’s Executive Director, Maurice
Holland, embarked on a thoroughgoing campaign to “sell the research idea” to industrial
executives, trade associations, and the public-at-large. The campaign employed magazines
articles, radio talks, and popular lectures to demonstrate the benefits of industrial research to the
general public, while specifically targeting executives and bankers through its divisional
meetings, how-to books, and highly publicized tours of the nation’s R&D labs. Lacking funds
following the Great Depression and convinced that it had fully achieved its goals, the NRC spun
out its promotional activities in 1945 by forming the Industrial Research Institute, an
independent trade organization that still exists today. Overall, the campaign was a spectacular
success, as the number of American industrial laboratories increased nearly eight-fold from 297
labs in 1920 to 2,264 labs in 1940. Based on research conducted at the National Academy of
Sciences, this paper will demonstrate how the NRC provoked “a gradual change in the minds of
our captains of industry towards research” and made the corporate R&D lab a staple of industrial
capitalism.
Author: Hiro Hirai
<hhirai2@gmail.com>
Title: Astrology, Talismans and Medicine in Jacques Gaffarel's Curiositez Inouyes (1629)
Abstract: Jacques Gaffarel's (1601-81) main work, Curiositez Inouyes (Paris, 1629), was a
veritable encyclopedia for talismans, horoscopes and astrology popular among the "Orientals."
This society, mainly consisted of Hebrews, was conceived in Gaffarel according to the tradition
of Renaissance Christian cabbalism. This vision was also reinforced by the belief in the "ancient
theology" (prisca theologia), reactivated at the end of the fifteenth century in the circle of
Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) and developed in the current of Renaissance Platonism. Reprinted
several times and translated into English (1650) and Latin (1676), Gaffarel's Curiositez Inouyes
achieved the considerable success that lasted until the early eighteenth century, the dawn of the
Age of Enlightenment. Gaffarel was not viewed as a charlatan but as a learned orientalist, much
respected by leading minds of the time, including the French atomist Pierre Gassendi (1592-
1655). Although his fame was widespread and his work extremely popular, Gaffarel has been
unduly neglected by historians. The present paper focuses on the medical dimension of his work
and its natural philosophical foundations in relation to his perception of talismans, horoscopes
and astrology. Gaffarel's work is a good case for investigating how a mind deeply anchored in
the heritage of Renaissance magical philosophy discussed those themes on the threshold of
seventeenth-century "new philosophy" and for evaluating the reactions of the protagonists of
early modern science.
Author: Peter Hodgins
<peter_hodgins@carleton.ca>
Title: Drawing Canada Together: the Geological Survey of Canada and the Formation of the
Canadian Visual Imagination
Abstract: In recent cultural historical writings, the domination of Canada’s visual imagination
by sublime images of rocky shorelines carved out of the Canadian Shield and/or melancholic
images of the vanishing ways of life of indigenous peoples has been explained in reference to a
nascent cultural nationalist movement in 1920s Canada. More specifically, the canvasses of the
Group of Seven painters and their display in the National Gallery are given pride of place as the
locus classicus of this “imagineering” of the Canadian landscape. In my paper, I challenge this
received narrative by investigating the centrality of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) to
the formation of the Canadian visual imagination. While many contemporary historians of art
and anthropology recognize that many of the artists, archaeologists and anthropologists creating
these images of the Canadian landscape as “rocks, trees and water” and of vanishing indigenous
peoples were either directly employed or indirectly supported by the GSC (primarily through its
control of the National Museum), they treat the relationship between their activities and that of
the GSC merely as one of institutional fiat. However, I will argue that beyond the obvious
institutional linkages, a deeper connection exists between geology, the artistic representation of
space and changing understandings of history in 19th and early 20th century Canada. In so
doing, I hope to make the case for the fruitfulness of reading Canadian cultural history through
the lens of the history of science.
Author: Veronika Hofer
<veronika.hofer@meduniwien.ac.at>
Title: Mendelism and Eugenics in Vienna: Mendel’s Rediscoverer Erich Tschermak-Seysenegg
and his Active Involvement with Eugenics
Abstract: Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg and his work is almost a non-entity in recent
historiography of the rediscovery of Mendel’s papers and the beginnings of Mendelism since
Robert Olby’s and Curt Sterns verdict apart from Jonathan Harwood’s paper in 2000, where he
paid attention to Tschermaks’s agricultural context as a plant-breeder. Following Barbara
Kimmelman’s old but seminal paper on the close ties between the national eugenics movement
and the agricultural reform, where she shows how Davenports and others ambitions for eugenics
initially flourished within the agricultural context of the American Breeders Association, my
paper addresses similar questions. Focusing on Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg I answer the
question if there was a parallel of some kind to the constellation in Vienna. I provide an
overview of the organization’s background in the eugenics movements in Vienna, of the
interplay between the local intellectual figures of the main ideological opponents, e.g. the
catholic version of eugenics, the racist and proto-racist version and the socialists’ version of
eugenics concerning the impact of genetics to social problems in the first half of the 20th
century. And I will situate Tschermak’s agendas for eugenics within this context. So as to
uncover the relationships between agriculture, genetics and eugenics in Vienna, I examine the
precise nature of his role, his contributions and the impact of his genetic expertise to the eugenics
movement in Vienna.
Author: Michelle D. Hoffman
<michelle.hoffman@utoronto.ca>
Title: “Just a Theory”: The Atomic Theory Debate and Ontario's High School Chemistry
Textbook, 1905-1909
Abstract: In 1905, University of Toronto chemist William Lash Miller initiated a campaign to
write the atomic theory out of Ontario’s authorized high school chemistry textbook. According to
Lash Miller (as well as two colleagues at the University of Toronto), the high school course’s
emphasis on the atomic theory trained students “to accept obscure, equivocal and dogmatic
statements in place of clear and exact thought.” Lash Miller was a student of Wilhelm Ostwald,
who famously opposed the atomic theory until convinced by Jean Perrin’s decisive 1908
experiments on Brownian motion. Lash Miller, for his part, persisted in his refusal to teach the
atomic theory until his retirement in 1937. The controversy in Ontario came to a head in 1906,
when Lash Miller and his colleagues produced a revised high school chemistry textbook that
eliminated all reference to the atomic theory save a critical two-page appendix. Despite their
professional stature and strong voice within the Ontario Educational Association, however, the
chemistry professors were stymied in their reform effort by the vehement protests of high school
teachers and the bureaucratic stranglehold of Ontario’s one-textbook policy. By consulting and
quoting an array of prominent chemists from abroad, one teacher compellingly portrayed Lash
Miller and his colleagues as an isolated and reactionary faction. Although short-lived, Lash
Miller’s textbook campaign stimulated debate about the role of speculative theories in pedagogy,
the extent to which the Province was obliged to teach a majority view, and the status of Ontario’s
high school curriculum in light of educational developments abroad.
Author: Dieter Hoffmann
Title: The Haber-Institute - No Place for Science During National Socialism?
Abstract: The era of Fritz Haber at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Physical Chemistry in
Berlin-Dahlem ended in 1933 because of the racist legislation of the new National Socialist
government. The leading scientists left the institute, and a group supervised by the new
provisional director Gerhart Jander tried to re-organize the facility as a military research center,
despite the resistance of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. This attempt failed and from 1935 on, the
new director Peter Adolf Thiessen succeeded in re-implementing a more scientifically oriented
structure, although war-related research was also going on to a large extent. With the end of
World War II the institute experienced another considerable change, when most of the scientific
staff left Berlin and all the equipment was transferred to the Soviet Union. This well-known and
traditionally told institutional history shows many discontinuities, but this impression changes
when one looks at the almost-neglected development of research programs and scientific
methods at the institute. Researchers adapted to different external demands in order to procure
themselves excellent resources. But they also continued their own professional traditions, and in
the case of younger scientists and PhD students, existing projects and the outstanding equipment
available determined their agendas. The talk will build these aspects to the existing picture so
that, along with the discontinuities, some long-term continuities become visible.
Author: Andrew J. Hogan
<ahog@sas.upenn.edu>
Title: Regenerative Medicine in Context: Co-evolving Conceptions of the Fetus and its Worth
Abstract: Over the past decade, as the human embryonic stem cell (hES) debate raged in
newspapers and Congress, there has been little reflection on the historical battle, stretching back
to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, about the use of prenatal tissue in clinical research. Beginning
in the mid-1970s, and continuing into the early 1990s, there existed real concern that fetal tissue,
obtained immediately before or after elective abortions, would be utilized for the purposes of
regenerative medicine, paralleling more recent fears about hES procurement. These concerns led
multiple states to outlaw non-therapeutic fetal experimentation and to a federal blockade on
funding such research, effective from 1980 until 1993. This research project addresses
embryonic and fetal tissue research from a historical perspective, exploring how technological
innovations in this area have co-evolved with an understanding of the moral and legal status of
prenatal human entities. In the course of this study, I utilize the published literature, popular and
medical, to reveal how the human fetus is conceptualized both as a potential person deserving of
respect and protection, and an assemblage of uniquely valuable tissue not to be overlooked in the
development of regenerative therapeutics. Also wrapped-up in these disputes about the use of
fetal tissue in medicine, was research toward advancing technologies of reproduction itself,
including in vitro fertilization and prenatal diagnosis. This study aims to unveil the various actors
involved in this complex network of regulatory, moral, and therapeutic considerations with the
hope of offering a new perspective on the hES debate.
Author: Jan P. Hogendijk
Title: Dead Texts Versus Living Teachers: Remarks on the Transmission of Greek Mathematics
into Arabic
Abstract: The transmission of Greek mathematics into Arabic was by no means a smooth
process. The main vehicles were Arabic translations of Greek mathematical works. In this paper
we will investigate the possible role of oral traditions in the transmission of mathematical
sciences from Greek into Arabic. One may be tempted to interpret the quality of an (Arabic)
translation of a (Greek) mathematical text as evidence of the mathematical competence on the
part of the translator(s) or the reviser(s) of the translation. Such competence does not prove that
the person in question had received any form of advanced mathematical training in the Greek
tradition. Thus, the Banū Mūsā (9th c.) produced an excellent translation of the Conics of
Apollonius, which is at times clearer than the original. The Banū Mūsā tell us that their
understanding of the theory of Apollonius was the result of their own work, and thus it seems
that they had not learned the mathematics of Apollonius from living teachers. In the paper we
will discuss some further relevant examples, and we will then reflect on the role of oral traditions
in the transmission of Greek mathematics into Arabic.
Author: Karen Holmberg
Title: The Taming of the Volcano and the Conquering of Climate
Abstract: In The Taming of Chance, Ian Hacking explicitly utilizes a geological metaphor to
note that the erosion of Enlightenment determinism took place at different rates on different
terrains. Unpredictable or irregular events became central to the natural and social sciences in the
twentieth century. The ‘wildness’ of unpredictability, according to Hacking, invoked something
ancient and vestigial as well as a future that was potentially threatening; both could be controlled
or understood via the collection of data and statistical laws of probability. In this paper, I
consider the role of chance and predictability in the overlapping contexts of the social sciences
and earth sciences. I focus particularly upon archaeology and volcanology – two modern
sciences that trace their genealogy to the AD 79 eruption of Pompeii and its Enlightenment
rediscovery – and examine the role that the understanding of past events plays in interpretations
of the predictability of future events. Such questions play to larger concepts of catastrophe,
terror, and disaster linked to contemporary anxieties regarding climate change.
Author: Brooke Holmes, Princeton
Title: Authorial Immunity: Rethinking Disembodied Knowledge in Early Greek Medical
Writing
Abstract: There was a time when it was not uncommon to hear texts from the Hippocratic
Corpus (fifth-fourth centuries BCE)—or, rather, certain texts, primarily the Epidemics—praised
as early exemplars of clinical objectivity. In the past few decades, such a view has been largely
eroded by the demonstration, on the one hand, that the texts in question conceal a host of
theoretical assumptions; and by the interest, on the other hand, in the emergent generic
conventions of early medical writing. Whatever appears positivist or objective about these texts
is thus now seen largely as an effect of rhetoric. In this paper, I revisit the question of the
“objective” stance of such texts by inquiring into the epistemic position of the physician and,
more specifically, his invulnerability to the forces that assail his patients. Rather than simply
invoking the notion of “disembodied knowledge” to describe this position, I examine, how, by
creating a space of immunity, these authors are contributing to the conceptualization of the
physical body and, hence, a notion of, if not disembodiment, then “exemption” from the body. I
suggest that such a stance sets these authors off from writers of early philosophical ethics who
implicate the philosopher in the care of the self they advocate. I then consider briefly how such a
notion of authorial immunity might figure into an expansive history of objectivity, a history, that
is, that spans the “premodern”-“modern” divide.
Author: Jeremy Howick
Title: Examining Problems with Using ‘Mechanistic’ Evidence for Managing Cystic Fibrosis
Abstract: Philosophers have devoted much attention to biological mechanisms in the last decade
and to date, all the work on mechanisms has been positive, suggesting that the search for
understanding of mechanisms is a fruitful scientific activity. Gillies, Russo, and Williamson even
suggest that ‘mechanistic reasoning’ is on a par with comparative clinical studies. But the
Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) movement takes a dire view of mechanisms. The paper that
introduced EBM to the wider medical community stated: Evidence-based medicine deemphasizes intuition… and pathophysiological rationale [mechanistic reasoning] as sufficient
grounds for clinical decision-making and stresses the examination of evidence from clinical
research [i.e. randomized trials] (Guyatt, Cairns et al. 1992, p. 2420). In this paper I explore
management strategies for cystic fibrosis to argue that both camps are mistaken. The EBM
movement is correct that high-quality comparative clinical studies provide the strongest
evidential support, but they go too far when disregarding all mechanistic evidence. On the other
hand, philosophers of science are incorrect when they assert that mechanisms are more ‘stable’
than the relationships uncovered by comparative clinical studies. My mitigating position involves
distinguishing between high- and low-quality mechanistic reasoning. Contrary to what most
EBM ‘hierarchies of evidence’ imply, high-quality mechanistic reasoning should be admissible
as evidence, while proponents of mechanistic reasoning must acknowledge the inherent relative
limitations to mechanistic reasoning. Indeed without mechanistic reasoning many effective
management strategies for cystic fibrosis would neither have been proposed nor established.
Author: Nils Randlev Hundebølq
<nils.randlev.hundeboel@ivs.au.dk>
Title: Caught Between Absolutist Capitalism and Blind Environmentalism?
Abstract: In 1990 the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), funded by American electric
utilities, launched a substantial research program in climate science. Environment had become a
matter of international politics during the 1980s, IPCC had been founded in 1988, and regulation
of carbon dioxide emissions had been proposed. As representative of major fossil fuel emitters
EPRI had many reasons to respond and become active in climate science. The paper investigates
developments that affected the rise and decline of the EPRI climate change program. Many
studies have been made on industry involvement in science on issues of high importance to the
industry’s activities and often industry campaigns distorted the public image of the issue. The
Climate Change Plan developed by EPRI Environment Division, however, cannot simply be
categorized as such a case. The plan calls the electric industry to acknowledge not only the
technical demands of society but also cultural directions and its health and welfare: the industry
should show public leadership and take a proactive stance on climate change. EPRI began
projects in climate modeling, effect analysis, macroeconomics and carbon cycle mitigation, but
could not attract strong partners from industry and government on most projects, and many
scientists were reluctant to the EPRI efforts. Instead the broad scope of the Climate Change Plan
fell apart when all research areas but macroeconomics more or less were abandoned in the mid90s. I will argue that the case raises a new set of questions on developments in science, policy
and debate about climate change.
Author: Matthew C. Hunter
Title: The Space of Drawing, the Time of Modeling: Representing Comets in the Later 17th
Century
Abstract: Historians of science and art alike love to laud the draftsmanship of British
experimental philosopher Robert Hooke (1635-1703). As etched and engraved from Hooke’s
own drawings of optically-magnified entities, the magnificent plates Micrographia (1665) are, it
is claimed, hallmarks in the history of scientific illustration. Equally, we read, it is because he
had trained by a courtly painter that Hooke’s draftsmanship became so effective for exploring,
archiving and disseminating research in the early Royal Society of London. This paper
reconsiders these interweaving stories by examining the tensions between Hooke’s dynamic
graphic practices and his strategies of material modeling. Specifically, I focus upon the theory of
comets that Hooke developed in the late 1670s and an ingenious model ostensibly exemplifying
those principles that he devised with slowly-evolving chemical reactions of ferrous particles in
sulfuric acid. Yet, not only did Hooke then abandon key parts of his comet theory in the early
1680s, but his chemical model ceded place to devilishly complicated methods of graphic
representation—drawings of comets that seem to undermine the very harmonious interplay of art
and science celebrated by recent historiography. By elaborating what was gained by these
competing, evolving forms of comet-visualization, I conclude by examining the broader
problems that their discontinuous forms and conflicting cognitive functions pose to
understandings of experimental-philosophical representation.
Author: Scott J. Hyslop
Title: Algebraic Collisions: Challenging Descartes with Cartesian Methods
Abstract: Algebraic equations in the tradition of Frans Van Schooten and Descartes accompany
Christiaan Huygens' early work on collision, which later would be reorganized and presented as
De motu corporum ex percussione. Huygens produced the equations at the same time that he
announced his rejection of Descartes' rules of collision. Never intended for publication, the
equations appear to have been used as preliminary scaffolding on which to build his critiques of
Descartes' physics. Additionally, algebraic equations of this form were used by Huygens to
accurately predict the speeds of bodies after collision in experiments carried out at the Royal
Society. Despite their deceptive simplicity, Huygens' algebraic equations pose significant
conceptual problems both mathematically and for their physical interpretation; they may very
well have been the source of a new principle, the conservation of quantity of motion with
direction.
Author: John P. Jackson, Jr.
Title: Racial Science and the Burden of Proof in the Work of Franz Boas
Abstract: The “received” historical view on science and race is that scientific egalitarianism
replaced scientific racism for "political" not "scientific" reasons. The general argument is that
geneticists, anthropologists, and psychologists became racial egalitarians in the interwar period
although there was no direct evidence for egalitarianism. While the evidence for scientific racism
might have been lacking, there was no evidence in favor of scientific egalitarianism. The primary
reason the scientific community changed its mind about racism owed to the rise of political
liberalism and, after 1933, concerns about the Nazis. In this paper I will focus on the pioneering
work of Franz Boas, primarily his research that led to his influential book, The Mind of Primitive
Man (1911). What Boas did was not offer new evidence for racial egalitarianism but rather
successfully shift the burden of proof to his opponents. The question was not: what does the
evidence prove about race, but rather how should we act in the face of inconclusive evidence?
The answer to that question rested, in large part, on which side of the controversy shouldered the
burden of proof. Using this argumentative lens, Boas’s claims for racial equality and the
subsequent retreat of scientific racism were not merely a triumph of political wishes but driven
by the scientific evidence, or, more precisely, the context in which that scientific evidence was
evaluated.
Author: Jeremiah James
Title: Research Divisions in Imperial Germany, an Organizational Scheme for War and Peace
Abstract: In the extensive literature on the reform of scientific institutions in the opening
decades of the twentieth century, historians of science generally give short shrift to the ways in
which the organization of the laboratory and its typical patterns of cooperation and
administration may have adapted to broader institutional changes. We have careful case studies
of new research centers in western Europe and the US, such as the Rockefeller Institute, the
Pasteur Institute, and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. We also have both detailed and overarching
studies of the new ties between scientists and the government established through metrology,
hygiene, and war. But in both cases, authors focus more upon the social changes these new
organizational structures implied, than their possible effects on the working habits of scientists.
Taking the example of Fritz Haber, founding director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physical and Electrochemistry, I argue that, at least in the German case, the opportunities
presented by research institutes free from university traditions, combined with the new
expectations scientists experienced in connection with their burgeoning bureaucratic and military
roles, allowed for and even encouraged the development of new patterns of collaboration and
research administration, e.g. the growth of independent research groups under the aegis of
scientist-administrators.
Author: Ann Johnson
Title: A Not-so-Short History of Computational Science: Building a Scientific Discipline in the
Digital Age
Abstract: In 2009, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article highlighting
Computational Science as an Up-and-Coming discipline. The Chronicle's article defines
Computational Science in a way that is fundamentally different from either computer science or
computer engineering, and as a discipline of "mathematical modeling and computer simulation to
solve complex problems in business, technical, and academic research." Yet mathematical
modeling cannot be considered a new or up-and-coming discipline from the perspective of the
history of science, nor can computer simulation! The rhetoric of distinguishing a new discipline
nearly requires that sharp historical discontinuities be manufactured; historically sensitive claims
are not to be expected. However, the emergence of a new discipline does warrant historical
attention. This paper looks at the development of Computational Science as a new discipline, at
its values and how those values differentiate this discipline from both computer science and
engineering (which can be one: all-encompassing or two: a discrete discipline itself) and from
the disciplines that provide its applications, such as chemistry, physics, and economics. The
thesis of the paper is that changes in information technology in the 1990s are central to
understanding the basis of discipline-formation in this case and that that technology was also
what carried the values of utility, distributedness, and applicability around which Computational
Science's identity has been forming. In terms of framing the discussion, the paper uses both older
literature about discipline formation on this contemporary situation and recent philosophical
work on the way knowledge is produced in computer simulations.
Author: Kristin Johnson
<johnskri2@yahoo.com>
Title: Why Do I Have to Take This STS Class?
Abstract: My comments in this session will focus on the influence university-wide mission
statements toward interdisciplinary education has had on HPS/STS teaching at small liberal arts
colleges. Given the nature of our courses, they often are fit into the “interdisciplinary capstone
course” box by default. One way to deal with the resulting challenges is to simply begin by
making a study of “disciplines” explicit. As academics we are immersed in the world of
disciplines, but undergraduates often are not aware of the process through which the majors they
are forced to choose were formed. In an STS class, the differences and boundaries between
disciplines can be historicized, improving students’ understanding of the nature of disciplines.
This can then provide historical context for the turn to interdisciplinarity (why were disciplines
formed; why have they been challenged? Why, in other words, do you have to take this capstone
course?) Once these questions are posed and examined, the instructor can be in an ideal place
from which to “sell” not just STS, but the importance of life-long learning (for all majors) in
fields that study the relationship between science and society.
Author: Eric Jorink
Title: Cultures of Collecting and Communities of Discourse in 17th-Century Amsterdam
Abstract: Cabinets of curiosity were spectacular manifestations of the flourishing scientific
culture in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. Wealthy citizens collected objects brought in by
Dutch ships from the corners of the known world. Birds of paradise, Chinese calendars,
armadillos and horns of unicorns formed the focus of communities of discourse. They
established new facts and illustrated new ideas, but also had a function in the social fabric of the
city’s elite. Many collectors were regents and honoured each other with gifts and visits. In this
paper I will focus on the famous Amsterdam cabinets of the apothecary Jan Swammerdam and of
his son, the well-known microscopist Johannes Swammerdam. The apothecary’s cabinet, housed
near the storehouses of the global trading companies, was exemplary of scientific discourse,
discussing the existence of the unicorn and whether birds of paradise had feet or not. In my
contribution, I will demonstrate that Swammerdam was not the solitary figure he is usually
depicted, but highly successful in establishing a new community of discourse, focused on the
problems of procreation. Inspired by the powerful regent Johannes Hudde and armed with the
newly invented microscope, Swammerdam and friends like the painter Otto Marseus started to
observe, collect, dissect and depict a new domain of nature: the world of insects. Typical of its
Amsterdam setting, this group was closely connected to two researchers working under the
patronage of the Medicicourt: Fransesco Redi and Nicolaus Steno.
Author: Jaume Sastre Juan
Title: Science in Action: the New York Museum of Science and Industry and the Politics of
Interactivity
Abstract: In the 1930s science and technology were at the very core of the political conflicts in
the United States. Capitalism was at stake and the role science and technology had played in the
Depression and could play to get out of it was intensely and widely debated. In this context, the
popularization of science and technology gained a renewed importance, and the industrial
corporations sponsored a new kind of showmanship that found its most complete expression in
World’s Fairs and the new hands-on museums that were created in this period. This paper looks
closely at one of this new museums, The New York Museum of Science and Industry, and
explores the way its political agenda was embedded in the displays. The recent scholarship on
museums from the point of view of the history of science has shown that the materiality of place,
displays and visiting practices matters in order to fully understand the production of the cultural
images of science and technology. This paper, by reconstructing the experience of visiting the
New York Museum of Science and Industry, tries to understand how these new performative
practices of interactivity shaped in a politically significant manner the way science and
technology were perceived.
Author: Edward Jurkowitz
Title: From Canon Shell Trajectories to Atoms: Douglas Hartree and Ralph Fowler’s WWI
Ballistics and the Calculation of Atomic Properties
Abstract: This paper studies the relationships between Douglas Hartree and Ralph Fowler’s
work during World War I computing ballistics tables for the British military and their later
respective investigations, using first the old quantum theory and later wave mechanics, into the
properties of atoms. The paper argues that these wrangler physicists took computational
techniques developed and honed in the calculation of ballistic trajectories over into their later
physics, and suggests that their approaches to atomic problems, as well as their outlooks on
physics more generally, reveal subtle but important traces of their early computational efforts.
Author: Elise Juzda <ej243@cam.ac.uk>
Title: The Rise and Fall of British Craniometry, 1860-1900
Abstract: In the nineteenth century, craniometry, the measurement of skulls, was one of the
most widely used methods of assessing racial differences. Although commonly recognised as a
concern of Victorian anthropologists, little attention has actually been accorded to the science of
skull measuring, its practitioners, methodologies, and aims. This paper seeks to redress this
imbalance by discussing the rise of craniometric studies in Britain during the mid-nineteenthcentury, and its fall from favour by 1900. In so doing, it concentrates on the practices of
scientific racism rather than its better-known theories. Craniometry was arguably the most
commonly employed tools of anatomists, anthropologists, biologists and statisticians as they
attempted to chart racial variation throughout the British Empire and the wider world. By
comparing skulls, scientists sought to classify racial types, evaluate them hierarchically
according to their perceived cognitive abilities, and situate them evolutionarily in relation to the
newly discovered remains of prehistoric man. Yet craniometry, with its emphasis on quantitative
data, also provided an avenue by which anthropologists could construe their discipline as an
objective ‘science of man’. Yet even as craniological collections were being amassed to meet the
demands of researchers, the value of the study began to be questioned as increasingly
sophisticated statistical techniques revealed the difficulties of reducing races to set skull types.
This paper will chart these developments and show how the mania for skull-measuring rose and
fell in Britain according to its standing as a legitimate science and ability to withstand scientific
criticism.
Author: David Kaiser
Title: Zen and the Art of Textbook Writing
Abstract: Physics departments in the United States ballooned after World War II, their student
enrollments growing at a faster pace than all other fields combined. The unprecedented
enrollment pressures left their mark on pedagogical materials. Textbooks on quantum mechanics,
for example -- physicists' description of matter and forces at the atomic scale -- solidified into an
identifiable pattern. They emphasized skills, such as practical calculation, that could be scaled to
huge classrooms, while leaving aside more open-ended philosophical engagement, even for a
field like quantum theory that had famously inspired deep philosophical debates. But the student
numbers plummeted in the early 1970s, falling as quickly as they had risen after the war. The
sudden change in classroom conditions facilitated a speculative idiom again. The material that
helped to fill the void was often inflected by the growing New Age and counterculture
movements, then gathering steam on North American university campuses. I will examine one of
these quasi-textbooks closely: Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics (1975). Capra's book, originally
rejected by a dozen publishers, quickly emerged as a runaway bestseller. At latest count, the
book has appeared in 43 editions in 23 languages, selling millions of copies worldwide. The Tao
of Physics—written by a PhD physicist who was desperately searching for an academic position
amid the job crunch—was conceived as a textbook, published as a popular book, and picked up
by eager physicists across the continent for classroom use.
Author: Natalie Kaoukji
Title: 'Trials about the Art of Flying in the Air': The Possibility of Flight in the 17th Century
Abstract: This paper will look at seventeenth-century discussions urging the possibility of
human flight. This literature has been read retrospectively as a pre-history of modern aviation,
and authors from John Wilkins to Francesco Lana Terzi have been credited with successfully
anticipating later achievements in engineering. This paper will raise questions about whether this
reading correctly identifies the grounds of the debate, and the basis for the success or failure of
the arguments within it. It will propose that early-modern discussions of flight debated not so
much whether it was possible to fly, as the grounds on which one might make such a claim, and
what could count as an argument or demonstration of a feasible flight. These discussions were
predicated to some extent on the apparent impossibility of flight: whilst there was an abundance
of accounts of flight, there was very little evidence of its feasibility. This wasn't so much a failed
argument as the disappearance of a body of work which was about what arguments could fail or
succeed--a feature which became invisible once the possibility of flying was established.
Author: R.A. Kashanipour
<rykash@hotmail.com>
Title: Superstitious Doctors and Benevolent Remedies: Healers and the Inquisition in LateColonial Yucatan
Abstract: This paper examines the prominence of inter-ethnic and multi-social networks of
healers in the Yucatan. Although frequently brought before religious officials on superticioso
and hechiceria charges, unofficial healers tied into broad networks that linked rural natives with
suburban Afro-Yucatecans, and urban Spaniards. By blending epistemological systems, these
networks leveled the social and racial boundaries that, in other areas, served to uphold the
colonial institutions of dominance. Examining on a series of Inquisition cases against European,
mulatto and indigenous healers from the Yucatan from the eighteenth century, I argue that the
discourse and distribution of unofficial medical practices served to supersede colonial divisions
of race and prestige on the peninsula.
Author: Deborah A. Kent
Title: Trajectories After Aberdeen: Exploring Effects of the WWI Experience on American
Mathematicians
Abstract: Historians have suggested that the impact of the United States' involvement in WWI
on the mathematical community was minimal. Although it did not result in the blossoming of
applied mathematics that followed the second World War, we argue the brief wartime experience
nonetheless did contribute to shaping the future of mathematics in the United States. New
collaborations emerged that required cooperation between academic mathematicians, armed
forces, governmental agencies, and private industry. Additionally, mathematicians such as
Oswald Veblen and F.R. Moulton emerged from their wartime activities as research group
leaders.
Author: Dr. Tae-ho Kim
Title: Dependent on the Enemy’s Path: Japanese Fertilizer Factories and Synthetic Fiber
Industry in North Korea
Abstract: This paper shows how post-colonial North Korea appropriated industrial resources
accumulated during Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), how it redefined them as parts of the
narrative of its post-colonial industrialization, and how those adopted elements again affected the
path of further development. In 1961, North Korean government proudly began the massproduction of “Vinalon,” a polyvinyl alcohol synthetic fiber developed by North Korean
scientists. As it was made in North Korea, from local resources, and by domestic technology,
Vinalon was praised as the symbol of the self-sufficient industrialization of North Korea, well
ahead of its rival in the south. However, this official narrative deliberately de-emphasized the
roles of colonial elements: the Vinalon factory was built adjacent to the former Japanese nitrogen
fertilizer complex, and key members of the Vinalon research team had been educated and trained
in Japanese institutions. In addition, although the continuities of facilities and technology
contributed to rapid and successful industrialization of Vinalon, they also hindered North Korea
in the transition into newly emerging petrochemical industry.
Author: Scott Kirsch
Title: Baseline Archipelago: U.S. Insular Science and the Re-mapping of the Philippines
Abstract: How does the colonial state bind itself to space, resources, and territory? Through a
lens of state theory, this paper will explore the role of science in the American re-mapping of the
Philippines after 1898. Mapping the Philippines was of course a remapping, a complex interplay
of representation, sovereignty, and colonial (or “Insular”) state formation in the Philippines.
Scientists contributed in a range of ways. The paper will examine science’s institutionalization in
the insular state, which lead to the establishment in Manila of a Bureau of Science, a longforgotten nineteenth century dream of American scientists. Turning to the production of
scientific maps in the Philippines (and US), it will also explore the manner in which Spanish
cartographic and scientific knowledges were appropriated (or rejected) in the remapping project.
The emergence of U.S. “baseline” mappings of the archipelago – geodetic, geological,
ethnological, forestry, agriculture – drew from a clamor of sources, allowing for a rich vision of
both the production of science and the remaking of territory.
Author: Tomoko Kitagawa
Title: Samurai Culture and the Fashioning of Mathematics in Japan
Abstract: Like the Jesuits in China, the samurai in Japan used mathematics for their own
purposes, fashioning it to suit their needs and aims. Contrary to conventional views of the
development of Japanese mathematics, a close reading of samurai texts serves to historicize the
production, circulation, and dissemination of Japanese mathematical treatises in the 17th century
within the context of samurai culture. Here the texts and illustrations in two important treatises,
割算書/Warizansho (Book of Division, 1924) by 毛利重能 Mori Shigeyoshi, and
塵劫記/Jinkoki (Unalterable Treatise, published in 1627) by 吉田光由Yoshida Mitsuyoshi
(1598-1672), a disciple of Mori Shigeyoshi, will serve to make clear how mathematics related to
samurai culture. What these texts represent is not so much an evolution of Japanese mathematics,
but rather a transformation of manuals used by the samurai to present themselves as masters of
the mathematical arts, a progression in the representation of mathematics from an art focused on
“thinking in the head,” to “working,” to an art characterized by writing and diagrams, as in the
work of Seki Takakazu. This can also be seen in the transition of samurai to the court, adding a
civil layer to the martial context, as may also be seen throughout representations in novels of the
period.
Author: Peter C. Kjaergaard
Title: ‘The Missing Link Expeditions’, 1921-28: or, How Peking Man Wasn’t Found
Abstract: To the majority of anthropologists in the 1920s Asia seemed the most likely place for
“the cradle of mankind”. Fame, prestige and money were intimately connected in the hunt for
humankind’s earliest ancestors and, thus, a lot was at stake. Several countries were competing
for access to China as ‘the paleontological Garden of Eden’. The United States made their bid
through a large-scale operation popularly known as ‘The Missing Link Expeditions’. The aim
was to use all modern technologies available. Hopes were high and the leader of the expedition,
Roy Chapman Andrews, estimated that they could ‘do approximately ten years’ work in one
season’. However, as the Americans had been assigned the wastes of Mongolia geologically far
too old to contain any traces of early man, no human remains were found, and as such the search
for ‘the missing link’ was a failure. It did not help that a dinosaur egg was auctioned and sold for
$5,000 as the first ever to go on the market in a publicity campaign to raise more money. The
Chinese subsequently thought the fossil market was more attractive than they had been led to
believe. A diplomatic crisis followed making unexpected room for the Swedes in the hunt for
early man in China. Using ‘the Missing Link Expeditions’ I will analyse the interconnections
between science, technology, chance, trust, national pride, personal ambitions, politics and
money, and how all of this influenced the everyday practices of palaeoanthropologists in the
field.
Author: Kim Kleinman, PhD
Title: Systematics and the Origin of Species from Edgar Anderson's Viewpoint
Abstract: Despite sharing the 1941 Jesup Lectureship with Ernst Mayr, Edgar Anderson
famously did not publish a 'Systematics and the Origin of Species: From the Viewpoint of a
Botanist' as a complement to Mayr's influential book. By reviewing the biosystematic (or
experimental taxonomy) tradition he represented, his correspondence with Mayr before the
lectures, his discussions with W.H. Camp as he worked on a draft after them, and his 1949 book
Introgressive Hybridization, I identify several likely elements of the book Anderson might have
written. Including this perspective illuminates and broadens our appreciation of the Evolutionary
Synthesis.
Author: Saskia Klerk
Title: Explaining How Drugs Work in the Late 17th Century
Abstract: In the early seventeenth century traditional physicians used Aristotelian philosophy,
and Galen’s additions to it, to explain how drugs affected the body. In medical practice,
explaining how drugs worked involved the supposition of all kinds of secondary qualities and
different types of fluids. These qualities and fluids were considered to behave according to the
principles of Aristotelian philosophy. Therefore, when philosophers started to rethink
Aristotelian philosophy, this had implications for the medical explanation of how drugs work. In
this talk I will ask why Thomas Willis (1621-1675) and the Dutch physician Steven Blankaart
(1650-1704) thought it was important to explain how drugs worked and what kind of alternative
explanations they came up with. Willis and Blankaart took their inspiration from new chemical,
anatomical and philosophical investigations. These investigations allowed them to think in terms
of particles, mechanisms, salts, acids and subtle matter instead of secondary qualities and fluids.
Willis and Blankaart did encounter some difficulties in their attempt to conceive of explanations
that were sufficient and coherent. A closer look at these explanations will show us how the new
philosophies affected the concept of explanation as physicians used it in their practice and how
these philosophies produced more problems for physicians to solve.
Author: Kevin Lambert
<Klambert@fullerton.edu>
Title: Imperialism and Mathematics
Abstract: In my paper, I will argue that early 19th century British imperialism was
constitutively significant to its mathematical culture and practice. It is now well established that
the exact sciences participated in the project of imperialism. But the question of whether a 19th
century culture of imperialism could have had any effect on the practice of English mathematics
has hardly been examined. I will show how, George Peacock, Cambridge mathematical reformer
and co-founder of the Analytical Society, used accounts of numbers systems from a huge
geographical area that included Central Europe, Tibet, China, Malaysia, Africa, Siberia, and the
Americas in order to build a sophisticated historical narrative that would legitimize the practice
of British symbolic algebra. Yet, like many late Georgian and early Victorian ethnographers,
Peacock did not travel. Instead, he remained at Cambridge and drew his conclusions from
accounts by missionaries, learned travelers such as Alexander von Humboldt, and Orientalists
such as Silvestre de Sacy. Located at an imperial center where the ethnographic information
about a broad range of cultures extending across the globe was now becoming available,
Peacock’s historical narrative would allow him to make British symbolical algebra into a
technology of distance.
Author: Matthew Laubacher
<Matthew.Laubacher@asu.edu>
Title: The Growth of Collaborative Collecting: Spencer F. Baird, Robert Kennicott, and the
Hudson Bay Company
Abstract: In the 1850s, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution, created a network of young interested naturalists that would form the backbone of his
collection efforts through the 1860s. One such collector was Robert Kennicott, an idealistic
young naturalist and correspondent of Baird from Chicago, who would work with Baird until his
death in the field in 1866. The collaboration of Kennicott and Baird was typical of collection
efforts of smaller and less well funded institutions of natural history in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, in which established institutional naturalists employed small numbers
of collectors to not only collect specimens, but to communicate and encourage other enthusiasts
to collect via proxy. Collectors such as Kennicott can therefore be seen as scientific
“missionaries;” their goal was to broaden the correspondence and collection networks of allied
naturalists and institutions. Those targeted by “missionaries” already had an interest in natural
history, whether through conceptions of natural theology, transcendentalism/idealism, or were
just extremely curious about the subject; in short, those that would be interested in further
correspondence and collection efforts with naturalists. In this paper, based on the correspondence
in Smithsonian Institution Archives between Baird, Kennicott and Hudson’s Bay Company
collections, Kennicott’s role as a collector and scientific “missionary” to the officers of the
Hudson Bay Territory will be used to shed light on this collection strategy, which would also be
used by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and other smaller institutions in order to maximize
data and specimen collection.
Author: Peter Lavelle
Title: Imperial Texts in Socialist China: Republishing Agricultural Treatises in the Early Maoist
Era
Abstract: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinese scholars of agricultural history republished
annotated editions of many agricultural treatises from the imperial era, and particularly from the
Qing dynasty. Originally printed and circulated centuries earlier, these treatises recorded a wide
range of information about pre-modern agrarian society. They contained everything from
explications of agricultural tools, manuring practices, and planting techniques to lists of farming
aphorisms, descriptions of divination practices, and ruminations on agricultural society. What
use did these 'feudal' texts have for academics, agronomists, and farmers in early socialist China?
Why were these imperial and sometimes even ancient texts republished in such great numbers in
the few years before and after the Great Leap Forward? This paper seeks to understand how
agricultural historians and specialists like Wang Yuhu reinterpreted and framed these treatises as
sources of indigenous technological knowledge for the new socialist and scientific agriculture in
the early People's Republic of China. It also interrogates how the publications of these specialists
may have shed critical light on social history—a history to be transcended with scientific
socialism—while also transmitting readily available agricultural technologies to a society
looking for ways to increase national production.
Author: Adam Lawrence
Title: The Sociology of Plants and Neo-Darwinism in the Twentieth Century
Abstract: Until well after World War II, most European (and some American) biologists made a
distinction between ecology, the study of an organism's physiological relationship to its total
environment, and "phytosociology," the study of community interrelationships between
individuals and species. Although European phytosociology was no more explicitly concerned
with evolutionary questions than Anglo-American ecology before the War, some post-War
American ecologists and evolutionary theorists found the phytosociological emphasis on
taxonomy and the particular species composition of plant communities to be useful in their
studies of geographic speciation. At the same time, an "ecosystem ecology" focused on nutrient
and energy flows and often detached from (or even irreconcilable with) neo-Darwinism took
over much of American ecology. Among the ecologists who distanced themselves from this
trend was Jack Major, who did much to lay the groundwork for Californian community ecology,
and who also took part in the neo-Darwinian synthesis via cooperative work with G. Ledyard
Stebbins while simultaneously communicating with the leading German phytosociologists and
advocating for the adoption of some of their ideas and methods by American ecologists. Through
an analysis of Major's involvement in the synthesis, I will discuss the complex relationship of the
sociology of plants to the emergence of modern neo-Darwinism.
Author: Dr. Seung-Joon Lee, NUS
Title: Patriots’ Pancake: War and Nutrition Science in Wartime China, 1931–1945
Abstract: Nothing offers a better laboratory for science and technology than a war. Despite
lacking a laboratory that fits into “Big Science," this paper argues that China’s total war
experience, if not intentionally, provided an experimental environment equivalent to the Western
“Big Science.” This paper explores how nutrition science was understood and taken into practice
as a significant component of wartime experience in China. In the 1930s, many Guomindang
members believed that China’s food problem was caused not only by the unsecured and
unpredictable food supplies in the devastated rural areas, but also by unhealthy eating habits that
demanded more and more the imports of foreign foodstuffs, most conspicuously, highly-polished
white rice in costal cities. What if Japan blockaded China’s coasts and cut off the food trade
routes? Having realized the significance of wartime provision during the Great War in Europe, a
number of experts asserted that China needed to develop a new scientific way of food
consumption in order to both maximize nutritional value and minimize waste. Given the nature
of total war, nutrition science had to meet two demands: to create an optimal military ration for
the soldiers in the frontline, at the same time, to rationalize the food consumption in the home
front where wasteful eating habits were prevalent. Therefore, a new dietary suggestion proven by
nutrition science had to be more than a scientific regimen for individual health. It also was a new
moral language calling for the change of individual eating habits for the nation.
Author: Daryn Lehoux, Queen's University
Title: How is Praying to Statues like Talking to Houses?
Abstract: Early Greek science is often characterized as a deliberate and self-conscious move
away from some pre-scientific or pre-philosophical way of understanding the world. Recently,
though, there is increasing momentum in a number of modern scholarly fields that should cause
serious worries about this picture. This paper seeks to look very closely at the lines drawn
between Greek medicine and natural philosophy on the one hand, and Greek religious practice
and theology on the other. A fundamental point of issue centres on what various claims that
nature is ‘divine’ might mean in these ancient contexts.
Author: Johannes Lenhard
Title: Recipes For Any Occasion. Computational Chemistry and the Desktop Computer
Abstract: Mathematization has been a central issue in the sciences that, due to the computer as a
new instrument, acquires increasing relevance in the form of computational modeling. In this
respect, a telling perspective is to contrast computational modeling on the desktop computer with
its historical forerunner (and contemporary) version on the mainframe architecture. In this talk, I
shall concentrate on so-called ‘density functional theory’ (dft) which is a most widely used
method in recent computational chemistry and physics. Walter Kohn and others derived its
theoretical basis in the mid-1960s - showing little or no relation to the computer. An essential
step was taken by Alexander Pople, who wrote the software ‘GAUSSIAN’, turning dft from a
somewhat exotic quantum theory into a computational method. Both scientists shared the 1998
Nobel Prize in chemistry. The rapid propagation of dft methods over the last two decades,
however, hinges on an additional reason, the advent of the desktop computer. The point is not
merely that computational methods naturally disseminate with computing instruments. Rather,
easily accessible computational power allows for a new mode of modeling, a particularly
iterative, explorative and combinatorial mode. The recent tableau of dft software exemplifies, I
will argue, this mode of computational modeling.
Author: Susan Lindee
Title: A Disease About to Disappear
Abstract: In the late 1980s, CF was supposed to be a disease that was about to disappear. It was
widely expected to become the first genetic disease to be successfully treated with gene therapy,
and claims for gene therapy and its future efficacy in the early years were extravagant. More than
$50 million was allocated to CF gene therapy research between 1993 and 1997 by the National
Institutes of Health and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Even more funding came from the
biotech industry, though precise numbers are difficult to track. By 1996, however, the
community engaged with CF had grown more skeptical. While the death of Jesse Gelsinger in an
unrelated gene therapy trial in the fall of 1999 at the University of Pennsylvania had a
devastating impact on all gene therapy across the board, the CF community by that time had
already begun to deemphasize gene therapy and its potential to produce a cure. Even as they
abandoned hopes for rapid, successful gene therapy, however, CF researchers continued to have
faith that the scientific idea, of using gene therapy to treat the disease was sound and worthwhile.
It had a compelling logic that persisted despite many emerging problems. Indeed, “logic” was the
precise word used repeatedly, by researchers, clinicians, patients and their families, industry
promoters, and leaders at the foundation. In this paper I consider the rise and fall of gene therapy
for CF, exploring how different stakeholders interpreted both its potential and its failure.
Author: Debra Lindsay
<dlindsay@unbsj.ca>
Title: Lester Frank Ward v. Othniel C. Marsh: Defining the Mesozoic
Abstract: The last two decades of the 19th century were exciting times in American
paleontology. The high-profile dispute between Edward Cope and O.C. Marsh even made the
news. Less well known is the dispute between Marsh and Lester Frank Ward, the American
authority on fossil plants (SIAR 1885), over the boundary between the Jurassic and lower
Cretaceous. The dispute centred on the Potomac Formation, where Ward found dicotyledonous
plant fossils which led him to disparage Marsh’s classification of the formation as Jurassic.
These men did not hesitate to put their positions forward in the scientific literature, and in
debating Marsh, Ward spared no effort. In addition to drawing on the knowledge he had as a
result of original research on many thousands of specimens deposited with the USNM, as well as
through bibliographical study of some 12,000 publications, he drew colleagues such as Arthur
Hollick, curator at the New York Botanical Garden, into the debate. In large measure, this debate
was territorial: Marsh and Ward disagreed over the Potomac formation because of their training
and areas of specialization. It was also, to some degree, a reflection of Ward’s insecurity within
the world of science. Despite a successful career, he was of the view that his contributions had
been ignored, misunderstood, and even stolen by those who followed in his footsteps.
Author: Veronika Lipphardt
Title: Franz Boas’s Interest in Human Genetics, Evolutionary Biology and Physical
Anthropology
Abstract: Franz Boas is well known as the founder of cultural anthropology and as a
famous opponent of US-American evolutionary theories of society. It is less well known
that throughout his life, he continued to take body measurements, supervise physical
anthropologists, and maintain interest in human biological variation and human genetics.
This paper aims to bring back these aspects into our understanding of Boas’s work. The
reason for this neglect might have to do with language barriers: most of the 1911-1940
sources that show Boas’s continuing preoccupation with human biology are
correspondence and publications in German. During the 1920s, Boas published a number
of papers in German journals that deal explicitly with these subjects. From the late 1920s
on, in order to enhance cooperation, he corresponded with German-Jewish physical
anthropologists and geneticists, some of whom worked with prominent German-non
Jewish protagonists of these fields like Eugen Fischer and Ernst Rüdin. After 1933, Boas
actively helped a number of these scientists to emigrate to the US and continue their work
under his tutelage. I argue that Boas’s intention was to use the scientific methods of “the
enemy”—physical anthropologists and geneticists supporting Nazism—to disprove their
scientific claims on “race” and eugenics.
Author: Yan Liu
Title: Healing by Incantation in Medieval China
Abstract: Incantatory healing has a long history in China. Rooted in ancient Chinese
shamanistic practice, it flourished during the period of the Six Dynasties (220-589CE) under the
influence of Buddhism and Daoism. The prestige of incantation reached its apex during the SuiTang period (589-907CE), when it became one of the four major specialties in the Imperial
Bureau of Medicine (the other three were drug, acupuncture and massage). Nevertheless,
incantation began to lose its esteem during the Song (960-1279CE), when it ceased to be an
independent department in the government. How do we explain this change of attitude towards
incantation from the Sui-Tang to the Song? What are the social, cultural and psychological
factors that triggered such a change? This paper attempts to address these questions from two
perspectives. First, in the medical realm, the conception of etiology as concrete pathological
agencies during the Sui-Tang receded to the thinking of illnesses as the aberrance of body
functions during the Song. As incantations targeted for concrete agents, the change made the
practice ineffective, if not irrelevant, for therapy. Second, in the larger social context, the rise of
print and the resulting flourish of book culture during the Song dominated over the oral culture,
leading to the declined popularity of incantation among the literate. An expanded reading
experience facilitated by printing culture diminished the power of sound manifested by
incantation. Overall, this study of incantatory healing intends to offer some insights on the
intricate relation between orality, therapy and literacy in medieval China.
Author: Fabien Locher
Title: Deforestation, Climate Changes and the Environmental Heritage of the French Revolution
Abstract: In the second half of the eighteenth century, anxieties about deforestation-caused
climate changes rose in the French and English colonial worlds. As Richard Grove (95) showed,
these anxieties were based on classical desiccation theories and gave rise to conservation policies
in the insular settlements of the East Indies. The existence and extent of deforestation-caused
climate changes were also widely debated in metropolitan France, during the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. These debates involved political and administrative elites and a huge variety
of scientific groups (agronomists, physicists, observatory sciences practitioners), taking part in a
controversy concerning the environmental effects of the French Revolution and the definition of
state prerogatives in land-use regulation. This talk aims to analyse this controversy and its
dynamics in scientific, political and mediatic arenas, in order to reassess the importance of
climatic (and more generally, environmental) questions in political economy debates of postrevolutionary France.
Author: Christine Y. L. Luk
Title: Laboratory Studies in China: Mapping The History of Modern Science in Contemporary
China
Abstract: The history of modern science in China is a relatively unexplored territory for most
historians of Chinese science. Preeminent scholarly efforts have been devoted to understanding
the achievement of science and technology in premodern China partly as a collective response to
the “Needham Question”––why did the “Scientific Revolution” take place in Europe and not in
China? The ramifications and limitations of the “Needham Question” were examined too.
Recently more historians of science and technology in East Asia began to turn to modern
science––science in the twentieth century––to look at the role of expert knowledge in enforcing
the state authority and the intertwining of the discourses of scientific rationality and socialist
modernization; the transnational character of the development of the scientific community and
enterprise in the post-Mao era; the cultural encounter between colonial naturalists and their local
counterparts, etc. Along with this tide of efforts, this paper proposes that laboratory studies could
be a useful channel to tell implicative stories of the practice of science in contemporary China.
Paying close attention to the mechanical configurations, the enactment of human-objectual
relations is going to generate materials that will enable a more solid comparison between the
development of modern science in the West and China.
Author: Sherrie Lyons
Title: Taking Fringe Science Seriously: Examining the Connection Between Phrenology and
Evolutionary Theory
Abstract: This paper examines the connection between phrenology and Darwin’s evidence that
humans were no exception to evolution. Today, religious fundamentalists have been highly
successful in promulgating Intelligent Design as a legitimate alternative to evolution. A primary
reason for their success is because people are woefully ignorant of how to distinguish science
from other kinds of knowledge. Comparing phrenology to evolution provides an opportunity not
only to examine particular ideas critically, but in doing so it teaches people about the process of
science. The boundary between science and fringe science, particularly at the cutting edge of
new knowledge, is not clear-cut. The importance of Vestiges in acclimatizing Victorians to the
idea of evolution has been well documented. Yet Chambers specifically credited phrenological
concepts of Gall in the chapter on the Mental Constitution of Animals. Striking parallels exist
between it and chapter 3 of Descent of Man. Chambers and Darwin argued that the difference
between humans and animals was only of degree, not of essence. Both men undoubtedly culled
specific examples of animal behavior from the natural theology literature. But ultimately
Darwin’s account had far more in common with that of Gall's ideas than with that of the natural
theologians. Not only were there similarities in the types of evidence that Gall and Darwin used,
but also in the logical structure of their arguments in support of their respective ideas. The
reasons why Darwin would want to distance himself from Gall as well as why unlike evolution,
phrenology became discredited, are discussed.
Author: Marta Macedo
Title: The Scientific Landscape of the Portuguese Far-East: Port Wine, Phylloxera and Railways
Abstract: The making of scientific landscapes at the frontier is not an uncharted theme for
historians of the Americas. However few have recognized the existence of similar frontiers in old
European countries. But, in fact, during the nineteenth century, the wish for civilizing “savage”
territories took place both in colonial and metropolitan spaces. This paper will examine how
scientific agriculture, in conjunction with the new railway lines, played a crucial role in the
colonization of the remote region of the Upper River Douro Valley, in the north-east of Portugal.
By the mid 1870s, Portuguese government was determined to extinguish common lands and
pastures in favour of the creation of large private estates. Using the railroad as the backbone for
material supply and distribution, new vineyard estates for Port Wine production were to colonize
indigenous lands. These estates were designed and planed following the scientific knowledge
developed to fight phylloxera – the most destructive vine parasite of the nineteenth century. The
narrative thus follows in detail the research practices of agriculture scientists illuminating how
their experimental plots related to the drastic changes in the landscape. A combination of
resistant crops – mostly grafted vines, but also olive trees and almond trees – would diminish
economic and biological risks and enhance productivity. Within time, this trilogy crop, with Port
Wine as its major product, would transform the Portuguese Far East into a space of economic
plenty, and was thus presented as one of the most successful landscapes of the modern nationstate.
Author: Lavinia Maddaluno
Title: Fashioning Fruit Out of Wax and the Improvement of Italian Agriculture: The Case of the
Whipple Museum’s Pomological Models
Abstract: By examining the Whipple Museum’s set of pomological models, I attempt to discern
the remarkable role of wax modeling of fruit in nineteenth-century Turin agriculture. The models
of fruit were used in agricultural fairs and expositions as tools to identify and distinguish species
and varieties. Furthermore, they offered three-dimensional models which were an alternative to
the large number of botanical illustrations needed to represent single aspects and details of fruit.
The models can thus be viewed as a technology to improve agriculture, similar to the advanced
agrarian machines intended to enhance the management of nurseries. Furthermore, pomological
models can also be comprehended in light of the relation between art and science, making and
knowing. We can interpret the models of apples as the outcome of a handicraft activity at the
service of pomological classification. The scientist benefited from the work of the artist, who
fashioned fruit models from inorganic materials, creating physical as well as philosophical
bodies of pomological knowledge. I argue that the apple models should be regarded as byproducts of social knowledge. In fact, they not only illustrate specific traits of species and
varieties of fruit, but they also portray agricultural practices, technological improvements and
craft skills developed in nineteenth-century Turin. As talking objects, to use Lorraine Daston’s
words, the models and their exploration can tell us a great deal about scientific classificatory
issues and agricultural practices as well as about the complex interactions between art and
science.
Author: Kenneth Manders
Title: Descartes' Early Algebra
Abstract: Based on revision of Enestrom's reading of Descartes' Cogitationes Privatae, we give
a new assessment of Descartes' algebra in 1619.
Author: Christine L. Manganaro
Title: The Social Science of Assimilation in the Settler Colony of Hawai‘i
Abstract: Taking cues from recent scholarship in Native American studies and studies of Asian
settler colonialism in Hawai‘i, this paper examines social scientists’ use of racialized categories
of citizenship in the then-territory, especially their arguments about how assimilation occurred,
and how their work helped create settler-identified people out of mixed race people with
Hawaiian ancestry (which would make them Hawaiian, not Asian or otherwise settler-identified,
using Hawaiian epistemology). This paper also argues that to do the history of American science,
particularly human science, is to do the history of science in a settler society. The settler colonial
framework offers a way to understand the political and cultural implications of social scientific
research on racial identity and race relations in Hawai‘i and reveals that the research and political
situation in interwar Hawai’i was far from exceptional in U.S. history or the history of EuroAmerican imperialism. Indeed, practices in Hawai‘i were consistent with both scientific research
projects and Native American assimilation projects on the North American continent during the
nineteenth century as well as in other settler societies.
Author: Craig Martin
Title: Too Metaphysical or Too Naturalistic?: Critiques of 17th-c. Aristotelianism
Abstract: The decline of Aristotelianism is marked by the rejection of specific tenets, such as
the impossibility of voids, the geocentric cosmos, and sublunary comets. Yet many of the
criticisms of Peripatetic thought addressed the relation between metaphysics and natural
philosophy. Criticisms of Aristotelians during the seventeenth century often invoked the claim
that traditional natural philosophy was too metaphysical and as a result speculative and the cause
of discord rather than consensus. Pierre Gassendi, for example, in his Exercitationes paradoxicae
adversus Aristoteleos contended that Aristotelians were overly metaphysical because they were
often theologians rather than philosophers. Others, however, contended that Aristotelians were
not metaphysical enough and as a result irreligious. Marin Mersenne was concerned that Italian
Aristotelians overlooked the role of the supernatural. A similar view is found in the polemical
writings of Nicolaus Taurellus, a Lutheran professor of medicine and philosophy who was active
in the 1590s. He also attacked the natural philosophy of contemporary Italian Aristotelians,
whom he saw as producing a naturalistic version of natural philosophy that overlooked key
questions of faith. For Taurellus, the dangers of naturalism should be remedied by the
consideration of metaphysics that corresponded to Lutheran theology. That Aristotelianism was
attacked as both too metaphysical and not metaphysical enough suggests that its multiple guises
rendered it susceptible to attacks from all sides.
Author: Joseph Martin
Title: "Balkanizing Physics": Division vs. Unity and the Establishment of American Solid State
Physics in the 1940s
Abstract: In the fall of 1943, the General Electric physicist Roman Smoluchowski distributed a
letter to some 40 of his colleagues nationwide whose research focused on the physical properties
of metals. The letter, intended to gauge their interest in forming a metals division of the
American Physical Society (APS), elicited mixed responses. The most vocal opposition came
from John Van Vleck, who objected to what he called the “Balkanization of physics.” This
conflict marks a critical juncture in the development of American physics. Smoluchowski’s
efforts would eventually lead to the formation of the Division of Solid State Physics within the
APS, but the controversy his proposal sparked indicated the presence of conflicting visions
within the American physics community. Smoluchowski’s interest in sub-disciplinary cohesion
and Van Vleck’s opposing plea for the unity of physics exemplify this rift. The disagreement
between Smoluchowski and Van Vleck reveals a broader debate. Through examining the
exchange between them and among their colleagues, I will describe how the debate contributed
to the development of American solid state physics. By charting its consequences for the physics
community, and placing it in the context of the transition from wartime to peacetime physics, I
will argue that the trajectory solid state physics took through the later part of the century was in
part predicated upon physicists’ 1940s debates over the unity of physics and disagreements about
what form the field should take after World War II.
Author: Tiago Mata
Title: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger: Patrons, Public Image, and Research in
Economics, 1970-1985
Abstract: Although scholars and scholarly societies claim that they organize, represent and
unify the interests of scholarship, patrons play just as important a role in molding, influencing,
and unifying the activities of research. Over the course of the twentieth century the funding of
research has become more diversified. As the number of actors has increased, the negotiations
among scholars, scholarly societies and patrons have intensified. These negotiations concern the
public perceptions of the value of economics, the identity of the economist as a researcher or as a
bureaucrat, and whether the discipline of economics should have explicit and unifying research
priorities. Starting in the 1970s and continuing through the 1980s there began a dramatic change
in the patronage provided to scholars in the social sciences. In this paper we explore the battles
waged by economists, research patrons, and the public over the structure, trajectory, and
motivation of the research activities of economists. We find that economists, unlike other social
scientists, were relatively successful in portraying themselves to research patrons and the public
in such a way that they were able to secure more funding for their research and were able to
garner increased respect and authority.
Author: Massimo Mazzotti
Title: Mathematics as Culture, or Getting Out of the Ghetto
Abstract: In 1990 Ivor Grattan-Guinness described -- effectively -- the history of mathematics
as a ‘classical example of a ghetto discipline’. He argued that this discipline had substantially
failed to attract serious recognition not just from within mathematics, but also from relevant
areas within the humanities and the social sciences. In this paper I reconstruct the reasons for this
failure, and explore the relations of the history of mathematics to its neighboring academic
disciplines. I then focus on how recent historical scholarship is transforming the field by
approaching mathematics as practice and culture, and consider some of the implications of this
move for the map of contemporary history of science.
Author: Danielle Mihram
Title: Darwinian Evolution: An Implication Regarding Science Itself
Abstract: We review historically progressive advances in science subsequent to Darwinian
evolution [Origin of Species, 1859]: (I) First, the recognition that, after the revelation/discovery
of genes as a biological mechanism to account for successions of species, this very mechanism is
conducted (though non-cognitively) as a model-building activity for ensuring biological survival.
(II) Then, advances in the behavioural sciences since Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals (1872), as particularly revealed by advances in neurophysiology, underscore
the realization that this model-building ‘activity’ of the Gene Pool can be isomorphically
described, stage-by-stage, as just that employed via neuro-chemical modeling by any member of
the species of ‘higher’ animals (those with a memory-and-recall capability) so as to enhance the
survival of the individual to his/her age of puberty. (The conclusions of Inhelder and Piaget
[1958] regarding personality and human adolescence, we will show, remarkably illustrate this
six-stage process.) (III) Subsequently, neurologist JZ Young (1966) speculated that the unique
characteristic of Mankind is that we are the only species which, using tools and [written]
language, constructs models for survival outside the brain (II) and outside the genetic system (I).
We show indeed that this (human) extracorporeal capability itself can be described by (i.e., it
mimes, rather astonishingly so) the very same six-stage model-building process which accounts
for the survival (I: chemico-genetic; then, II: chemico-neural) to date of all life on Earth. We
conclude therefore, that Darwinian evolution tends to provide a quite concrete biological
foundation for the ‘scientific method’ itself.
Author: G. Arthur Mihram, PhD
Title: Darwinian Evolution: An Implication Regarding the Scientific Method Itself
Abstract: We review historically progressive advances in science subsequent to Darwinian
evolution [Origin of Species, 1859]: (I) First, the recognition that, after the revelation/discovery
of genes as a biological mechanism to account for successions of species, this very mechanism is
conducted (though non-cognitively) as a model-building activity for ensuring biological survival.
(II) Then, advances in the behavioural sciences since Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions
in Man and Animals (1872), as particularly revealed by advances in neurophysiology, underscore
the realization that this model-building ‘activity’ of the Gene Pool can be isomorphically
described, stage-by-stage, as just that employed via neuro-chemical modeling by any member of
the species of ‘higher’ animals (those with a memory-and-recall capability) so as to enhance the
survival of the individual to his/her age of puberty. (The conclusions of Inhelder and Piaget
[1958] regarding personality and human adolescence, we will show, remarkably illustrate this
six-stage process.) (III) Subsequently, neurologist JZ Young (1966) speculated that the unique
characteristic of Mankind is that we are the only species which, using tools and [written]
language, constructs models for survival outside the brain (II) and outside the genetic system (I).
We show indeed that this (human) extracorporeal capability itself can be described by (i.e., it
mimes, rather astonishingly so) the very same six-stage model-building process which accounts
for the survival (I: chemico-genetic; then, II: chemico-neural) to date of all life on Earth. We
conclude therefore, that Darwinian evolution tends to provide a quite concrete biological
foundation for the ‘scientific method’ itself.
Author: Jason Richard Miller
Title: Narratives of the Unconscious: Henry Murray, Literary Interpretation, and the Thematic
Apperception Test
Abstract: The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) was a projective psychological test created by
Harvard psychologist, Henry A. Murray and his mistress Christina Morgan in the 1930’s. The
test soon entered the nascent intelligence service of the United States (the O. S. S.) during the
Second World War due to its celebrated capacity for revealing the deepest aspects of an
individual’s unconscious. It subsequently spread as a scientifically objective research tool
capable not only of dredging up the unconscious depths, but also determining the psychological
complexes of human nature, the unique characteristics of an entire culture, and the best candidate
for a management position. Two suppositions underlie the utility of the test. One is the power of
narrative. The test entails a calculated abuse of the subject tested, based on their inability to
interpret their own narrative. The form of the test requires that a subject fail to decipher the
coded, unconscious meaning their narrative reveals. Murray believed the interpretation of a
subject’s narrative and the projection contained therein depended exclusively on the
psychologist. This view of interpretation stems from the seemingly more reasonable belief of
nineteenth century Romantic thinkers that a literary text serves as a proxy for an author’s deepest
self. The TAT also supposes that there is something beyond consciousness closely resembling a
psychoanalytic unconscious, which also has clear precedents in 19th century German thought.
The hermeneutic qualities of Freud’s psychoanalysis, amplified in Jung, drew on literary
conceptions of the unconscious wider than those of nineteenth century psychology.
Author: Roberta Millstein
Title: Darwin’s Explanation of Races by Means of Sexual Selection
Abstract: In Darwin's Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond and James Moore contend that "Darwin
would put his utmost into sexual selection because the subject intrigued him, no doubt, but also
for a deeper reason: the theory vindicated his lifelong commitment to human brotherhood"
(2009: p. 360). Without questioning the evidence that Desmond and Moore have brought to bear,
I will raise some puzzles for their view. I will show that attention to the structure of Darwin's
arguments in the Descent of Man shows that they are far from straightforward. As Desmond and
Moore note, Darwin seems to have intended sexual selection in non-human animals to serve as
evidence for sexual selection in humans. However, Darwin's account of sexual selection in
humans was different from the canonical cases that Darwin described at great length. Darwin
discussed some non-human cases that deviated from the canonical cases in the same ways, but in
those cases Darwin offered reasons for thinking the deviations were justified. However, Darwin
did not present those reasons for humans. If explaining the origin of human races was the main
reason for introducing sexual selection, and if sexual selection was a key piece of Darwin's antislavery arguments, as Desmond and Moore contend, then it is puzzling why Darwin would have
spent so much time discussing cases that did not really support his argument for the origin of
human races, and it is also puzzling that his argument for the origin of human races would be so
(atypically) poor.
Author: Taro Mimura
Title: Why Greek Rational Sciences Were Needed in the •Abbāsid Court
Abstract: Today we recognize that in the early •Abbāsid period (ca. 750-850), much of Greek
rational scientific (i.e. mathematical and philosophical) works were translated into Arabic, and
many scholars were engaged in studies of such works. However, there is as yet no scholarly
consensus of why studies of the Greek rational sciences flourished in this period. To find this, we
must take into account the demand in the early •Abbāsid court for the Greek rational sciences,
since most of the scholars engaged in the Greek rational sciences were recruited to the court. In
this paper, I will examine the reasons why the •Abbāsid dynasty needed these scholars in the
court in order to clarify the factors that stimulated the study of the Greek rational sciences in the
•Abbāsid dynasty. To be more precise, I will focus on al-Kindī (801-866), one of the most wellknown scholars engaged in the studies of the Greek rational sciences in this period. As a courtscholar, he wrote epistles that answered questions posed by high officials of the •Abbāsid
dynasty concerning the Greek rational sciences. Thus, a close analysis of his epistles should
reveal what problems these high officials wanted scholars to solve, and how these scholars
answered their demands using their appropriated knowledge to achieve this. From such an
analysis of the relationship between the dynasty and scholars, I will describe why these scholars
were needed in the court, which provides us with plausible reasons why the Greek rational
sciences flourished in the •Abbāsid dynasty.
Author: Gregg Mitman
Title: America's Rubber Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Firestone
Plantations Company
Abstract: During the twentieth century the United States developed a unique kind of empire,
one bound together less by military conquest and direct political administration than by the
expansion of markets, corporate influence, and cultural exchange. The political and economic
ties between the United States and the Republic of Liberia, cemented in the 1920s when the
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company successfully established a major rubber plantation in the
country, exemplify this new imperial relationship. Yet the transformation of Liberia into the
United States’ rubber empire depended on new tools of seeing and new forms of scientific and
medical expertise. Through a focus on the Harvard African Expedition to Liberia in 1926, the
motion-picture record it gathered, and the place of rubber as a precious commodity in the global
economy, this talk explores the relationships among science, business, and the state in the
economic transformation of nature and a nation. How the practices of seeing and valuation in the
sciences of ecology, medicine, anthropology, and economics were instrumental in that
transformation are questions at the center of this talk.
Author: Deirdre Moore
Title: Herophilus’ Pulsating Medicine
Abstract: In the second century AD, Galen, who often heaped scorn on his predecessors, wrote
of “a man who is known by everybody to have surpassed the great majority of the ancients, not
only in width of knowledge but in intellect, and to have advanced the art of medicine in many
ways”. The man who received Galen’s praise was the anatomist and physician Herophilus of
Chalcedon. Herophilus lived and practiced medicine in Alexandria, sometime between 330 and
250. Herophilus wrote a substantial work on pulses incorporating a constellation of
contemporary Alexandrian influences including medicine, mechanics, philosophy and music.
Alexandrian understandings of time and timing in these fields figure centrally in Herophilus’
work on pulses. Herophilus’ development of pulse theory in relation to musical rhythms was
highly influential in the ancient world. Nor were his discoveries restricted to exploratory
ventures. Keenly interested in the diagnostic applications of his findings, he allegedly
constructed a pulse timing clepsydra (water-clock) derived from Alexandrian innovations of this
instrument. Herophilus was responsible for developing sphygmology (study of the pulse) to a
greater degree than any other figure in the Hellenistic or classical period. In his work on pulses
Herophilus adapts and integrates the diverse worlds of knowledge around him. Herophilus
applied contemporary Alexandrian methods of time reckoning and measurement in their
practical mechanical and musical forms to the movement of the pulses in the different seasons of
human life. Under Herophilus’ scheme the external technology of measured time becomes
internal to the human body.
Author: Florin Stefan Morar
Title: What History of Discoveries/Inventions? The Case of Leibniz's Calculating Machine.
Abstract: If stories of discovery and invention are always anachronistic and retrospective, then
writing their history as part of the history of science is a highly questionable enterprise. There is
however a methodologically acceptable way for writing the history of discoveries and inventions
without committing a “second degree reification” (Schaffer) or “satisfying logocentric desire”
(Rheinberger). This history should not be one that tries to identify the circumstances in which an
invention was made or a discovery took place, but a history of the process of attribution. The
way the past is rewritten can be the object of historical investigation. Starting from this
methodological premise, I will focus in this paper on a complex case about the constitution of a
story of discovery and invention. Leibniz never managed to complete his calculating machine on
which he worked for most of his life, between 1672 and 1716, although he repeatedly described
in his correspondence a perfectly functioning device. After being forgotten, a model was found
in 1879 at the University of Göttingen. It was given to the industrialist Arthur Burkhardt for
repairs. He believed Leibniz’s description of a wonderfully functional device, in a context where
from a nationalistic impulse the need was felt to secure Leibniz’s priority over Thomas de
Colmar as the first inventor of the stepped drum calculating machine and tried his best to
reconstruct Leibniz’s calculator as an early version of Thomas’s arithmometer to support the
narrative that Thomas’s machine was an improvement of Leibniz’s.
Author: Robert Morrison
Title: Early Islam’s Reactions to Astrology
Abstract: This presentation will examine the earliest reactions to astrology from the
mutakallimūn, the practitioners of kalām, Islam’s closest parallel to philosophical theology.
Reactions to astrology were an important part of Muslims’ appropriation of the scientific
heritage of earlier civilizations. Though such reactions came from many sides, including from
philosophers and scientists, the criticisms leveled at astrology were neither identical nor
unanimous. For example, discussions of astrology in early Qur’ān commentaries were more
nuanced. These commentaries accepted the claims of astrologers when those claims enhanced
the qur’ānic narratives that were being commented upon. But when astrology challenged the
Qur’ān’s message, the treatment of astrology was, of course, less favorable. Earlier research has
found two varieties of direct reactions to astrology in early kalām. The first (and perhaps earlier)
variety of reaction was exemplified by Faḍl ibn Marwān and Jāḥiẓ, both of whom wrote in the
early to mid-ninth century C.E. They focused on the astrologers’ inability to make correct
statements about the future, in contrast to prophecy, as well as about the structure of the cosmos.
The second variety of reaction, appearing for certain around 900, attacked the astrologers along
with others who held heretical materialist views; astrology, according to al-Māturīdī (d. 944),
presumed that the heavenly motions were eternal and uncreated. Because there is scholarly
consensus that astrological texts were among the first to be translated into Arabic, further
attention to religious reactions to astrology will tell us more about the religious context of the
emergence of Islamic science.
Author: Teasel Muir-Harmony, MIT
Title: The Moon on Display: The Exhibition of a Moon Rock at the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair
Abstract: My paper asks why a moon rock was the most popular display at the most popular
World’s Fair in history. Thousands upon thousands of people waited in five-hour-long lines, at
the 1970 Osaka World’s Fair, to get a glimpse of the rock, which was roughly the shape and size
of an eggplant. Why was the moon rock so popular? What is the significance of this popularity
within the context of the history of World’s Fairs, the US space program, and international
relations in 1970? My paper seeks to answer these questions. Although its appearance was
apparently quite unspectacular—many attendees remarked that it looked like something they
could find in their own backyards—enthusiasm to view it was widespread. This moon rock,
along with a number of others collected from six Apollo missions, helped scientists better
understand the evolution of the moon. My paper considers whether the potential geological
information harbored within the rock interested the fair attendees, or if other reasons—the size,
cost, or public image of the Apollo program, for instance—influenced why and how visitors saw
the rock. In my paper I examine the motivation, expectation and cultural and political
significance of the United States’ exhibition of a moon rock, rather unexceptional in appearance
but remarkable in popularity, at the 1970 Japan World Exposition.
Author: Omar W. Nasim
Title: John Herschel’s ‘Working Skeletons’: A Look at the Procedures of Drawing Nebulae
Abstract: Over his nearly forty-year engagement with the nebulae, John Herschel produced
some of the most astonishing drawings of the nebulae. His Cape Results of 1847 contain many
prints of nebulae and clusters, but these were methodically different from those he had engraved
for his earlier catalogues of the nebulae (of 1826 and 1833). In this paper I will describe and
examine his systematic use of cartographical methods of triangulation, a network of triangles,
and series of working skeletons used in order to combine pictorial detail with numerical and
geometric precision. This harmony was rarely attained in other hand drawings of the nebulae in
the 19th century. In fact, it was nebular photography in the late 80s that seemed to have achieved
this harmony, but this was distinctly because it was governed by the kinds of things Herschel
attempted to realize with his procedures forty years earlier. Herschel’s Humboltian and Imperial
procedures of observation, production and representation will then be related to what Herschel
thought to be connected to issues of objectivity, fixity, permanence, and existence.
Author: Reviewl Netz, Stanford
Title: Mapping Ancient Science
Abstract: In the talk I present several maps and discuss their consequences. Plotting the spatial
distribution of mathematicians, medical authors and philosophers in antiquity allows us to clarify
the convergences and divergences of the different intellectual fields at various times. Different
fields could be characterized not just by different locations, but also by different topologies of
distribution. The talks highlights three main comparisons: between medicine and mathematics;
between science and philosophy; and among the various philosophical schools. The two key
moments are the formation in the third century BC of what I will call the 'Hellenistic system,'
and its transformation into a Roman system in the first century BC.
Author: Daniel A. Newman
Title: The Rhetoric of Probability: How Darwin Overcame the Argument from Design
Abstract: Darwin was not the first evolutionist, but his theory succeeded where earlier ones
failed: he was able to propose a convincing alternative to the Argument from Design, which had
hitherto guaranteed the authority of natural theology on questions of biological adaptation. The
argument from design was—and still is—persuasive because it fits with our intuitive notions of
what is conceivable; indeed, it depends on the inconceivability of alternative hypotheses. How,
then, did Darwin convince his readers to consider the inconceivable? I propose that Darwin
prevailed by setting aside what seemed conceivable, and stressing instead what was probable.
Never letting the argument from design far from his mind, Darwin builds a case where empirical
evidence, analogy, and parsimony render the inconceivable plausible. This approach is
fundamental to his theory, and places him squarely among the pioneers of modern science.
Author: Tim Nicolaije
Title: Maths and the City. Positioning the Teaching of Elementary Mathematics in 17th-Century
Amsterdam
Abstract: Seventeenth-century Amsterdam housed many varied scientific cultures. Stimulated
by the city’s flourishing position in global trade, many educators found their way to Amsterdam.
Private teachers of mathematics had opened up schools in their houses, following up on the great
demand for properly trained navigators and merchants for the VOC and the WIC, and for
surveyors for the rapidly expanding city itself. In the urban environment of Amsterdam these
rekenmeesters found a great demand for their educational services, an infrastructure of
publishers and instrument makers, and a network of liefhebbers of the mathematical arts. In turn,
they contributed to Amsterdam’s urban culture by being a part of the production of the city’s
riches, by creating a site of knowledge away from the traditional institutions, and by publicly
propagating mathematics through the publication of books and pamphlets. These private teachers
of the mathematical sciences functioned as middlemen, operating in the circles of scholars and
connaisseurs as well as those of practitioners, both culturally and intellectually, and thus became
an integral part of seventeenth-century urban society. In this paper I shall discuss this
interconnectedness between the city of Amsterdam and the teaching of elementary mathematics.
I shall argue that the relationship between the positioning of mathematics masters and the urban
environment in which they were situating themselves was a two-way street, i.e. that the
processes of establishing mathematics schools and of the mathematisation of the urban society
were not self-evident but rather the result of an active interplay between mathematicians and
their city.
Author: Ilja Nieuwland
Title: The only real skeleton in Europe. Diplodocus, Andrew Carnegie, and German rivalry
Abstract: On October 13, 1907, a partial skeleton of the North American dinosaur Diplodocus
was unveiled in the central courtyard of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt.
What made the occasion noteworthy was that this Diplodocus was not part of Andrew Carnegie’s
concurrent donation campaign, which distributed plaster casts of these animals to natural history
museums throughout Europe and South America. Rather, it was a gift from the American
Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Thus, the Frankfurt museum beat the prestigious Berlin
Museum für Naturkunde in displaying the first dinosaur skeleton in Germany. Carnegie’s
Diplodocus donations to ‘crowned heads of Europe’ should be seen as part of his effort to singlehandedly secure world peace. The AMNH’s donation to the Frankfurt Senckenberg Museum
must therefore be understood in that context. Another important factor in this history was the
Senckenberg’s competition with the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde; acquiring such a
spectacular specimen not only seemed like a good way to re-establish Frankfurt’s credentials as a
leading scientific institute, but also to assert its reputation in the public eye. This paper looks at
the way in which American rivalries in paleontology were played out on an international stage.
The fact that these institutions vied for public as well as scientific attention shows us something
about the public role of ‘big science’.
Author: Erik P. Norquest
Title: Data-Gathering, Professionalization, and Specialization: Constructing a Paradigm in
Astrophysics During the First Half of the 20th Century
Abstract: In 1890 Edward Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, released the
Draper Memorial Catalogue, an inventory of 10,351 stellar spectra that laid out the beginnings of
the Harvard system of stellar classification. The catalog represented the culmination of decades
of work by astronomers spent classifying stars by spectral type. However, even though stars
could now be categorized by color, this information gave little account of why they varied in
color, neither did it explain how stars aged, nor what elements they were composed of. As Otto
Struve, director of Yerkes Observatory, commented “Where and how do the stars generate their
stupendous energies of light and heat, and what is the ultimate fate of their radiation?” These
questions were the primary concern of astrophysicists during the first half of the twentieth
century. Struve and the other Yerkes astronomers were in a unique position to answer them due
to their acquisition of a second large telescope: the 82-inch reflector at the McDonald
Observatory which roughly doubled their data. Examining the Yerkes and McDonald records
from this period provides a unique look at scientists’ production of new knowledge. This paper
argues that these astronomers were working in astrophysics as a pre-paradigm field, attempting
to turn raw observational data into some sort of coherent model, with particular attention to the
increasing division of labor between data-gatherers such as Struve and pure theorists such as
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. These methods of knowledge production led to increased
specialization and professionalization in the field of astrophysics.
Author: Joseph November
Title: Staying Afloat in the ‘Flood of New Information:’ Computers in America’s Cold War
Scientific Data Crisis
Abstract: For all the thorough discussions of the impact of the Cold War on American science,
one highly consequential late 1950s preoccupation remains neglected by historians: the notion
that the US was endangered by a surfeit of data. Among others, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey
articulated this way of thinking in 1959, when, after pointing to the “flood of new information”
pouring out of government agencies, universities, and businesses, he warned that America’s
“stockpile of knowledge has become an embarrassment of riches.” Humphrey hoped that if the
federal government invested massively in a technology developed to manage information, the
digital electronic computer, it could help scientists harness the superabundance of data rather
than be inundated by it. Capitol Hill’s enthusiastic embrace of computers would over the
following decade provide crucial support for Robert Ledley and Lee Lusted’s burgeoning efforts
to introduce computers to the life sciences. By examining the motivations for and early methods
of Ledley and Lusted’s attempts to develop tools and institutions to control scientific data, this
paper aims to elucidate the origins and priorities of many of the resources today’s scientists use
to stay afloat in an ever-rising sea of information. Specific outgrowths of Ledley and Lusted’s
efforts that will be discussed are: the establishment of Eugene Garfield’s Institute for Scientific
Information for the purpose of managing scientific citations; Joshua Lederberg’s scheme to
provide a logical basis for representing the structure of organic molecules; and Ledley and
Lusted’s own attempt to reorient biomedical research towards quantitative analysis.
Author: Jessica O'Reilly
Title: The History of a Typo: Himalayan Glacier Predictions and the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change
Abstract: Each of the four published Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) have been increasingly scrutinized by climate skeptics for error and
fraud. In late 2009, IPCC watchdogs found an error on the melt rate for the mountain glaciers of
the Himalayas. In the report, the authors suggested that the glaciers would disappear by 2035.
This number—which suggests an alarmingly fast melt rate, and equally alarming changes for
local residents—was accompanied by an appropriate-looking citation. However, when tracking
the citation along with earlier drafts of the IPCC chapter, a story unravels about accuracy,
expertise, and peer review. This paper describes the citiational chain that each reference—there
are thousands in an IPCC report—must travel through, and the ways in which “trust in numbers”
(Porter 1996) and trust in other scientists’ citational practices is upheld, though problematic. This
paper also looks at the ways in which a seemingly small error is amplified in an intense political
climate.
Author: Brian Ogilvie
Title: Insect Theology: Friedrich Christian Lesser, Pierre Lyonet, and the Intersection of
Enlightenment Natural History and Natural Theology
Abstract: The Nordhausen minister Friedrich Christian Lesser’s Insecto-Theologia (1738) is an
impassioned defense of physico-theology: Lesser argued that by considering the “otherwise little
regarded insects,” the reader could come to “living knowledge of and amazement at God’s
omnipotence, wisdom, goodness, and justice.” The sentiment was hardly original—but unlike
earlier natural theologians, Lesser devoted five hundred octavo pages to his Insect Theology. The
work was translated into French (1742), with illustrations and critical annotations by the Dutch
engraver and insect anatomist Pierre Lyonet; an English version of Lyonet’s edition appeared in
Edinburgh in 1799. This paper will explore Lesser’s sources, his arguments, and Lyonet’s
corrections, in order to come to a deeper understanding of the connection between natural
theology and natural history in the European Enlightenments. Did clerical naturalists merely nod
to natural theology as an acceptable pretext for studying insects, or did they truly believe that
God had an inordinate fondness for beetles? Did Lyonet provide critical annotations to Lesser’s
work because he thought that it belonged to the genre of natural history and therefore needed
empirical correction, or was he motivated by the Protestant notion that symbolic truth needed to
rest on the firm bedrock of literal truth? And do the sources and fortuna of Lesser’s text suggest
any resolution to the perennial question of whether the Enlightenment was one or many
movements? This paper will attempt to resolve some of these questions and at least suggest
avenues for resolving others.
Author: Kathryn M Olesko
Title: “Modernizing Easter: Astronomy, Foreign Affairs, and Confessional Conflict”
Abstract: The German Protestant adoption of the Gregorian Easter in 1776 by no means ended
debate on the date of Easter. The specter of Rome haunted Prussian Evangelical theologians well
into the nineteenth century: once Protestants adopted the Gregorian Easter, it became
increasingly difficult to deny that the Evangelical calendar was indeed the Catholic one unless a
thoroughgoing reform of Evangelical feast days could be enacted. Prussian astronomers, wedded
to precision in measurement, added to the fray by pointing out on repeated occasions that the
Gregorian algorithm sometimes went awry: it simply did not preserve the proper sequence of
astronomical symbols leading up to Easter. Moreover, as international trade and travel grew in
the nineteenth century, many saw the need for a greater degree of temporal coordination in
economic and social matters. Not only did the movable feast of Easter disrupt regularity in
transactions, but also the persistence of the Julian Easter in Eastern Europe made coordination
with those regions difficult. Prussia’s premier ambassador of precision measurement in all
things, the Berlin astronomer William Foerster, took up the issue of Easter, and more generally
of calendar reform, during a period of international crisis and interdenominational conflict at the
end of the nineteenth century. His diplomatic efforts with the Catholic Church failed, but the
incident demonstrates the willingness of the Church to adapt to the calculability of the market
and the powerful role of international affairs in compromising economic rationalization in the
face of ethnic and religious conflict.
Author: Margaret Olszewski
Title: Displays of Distinction and Decorum: Dr. Auzoux’s Botanical Models in the Growing
Educational Marketplace of Late 19th-Century America
Abstract: In the nineteenth century, Dr. Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux’s papier-mâché teaching
models were internationally acclaimed commodities in the scientific marketplace. Shortly after
their introduction in the 1820s the anatomical body parts and organs, designed to replace human
cadavers in anatomical instruction, became key items in medical curricula around the world. The
success of these models was soon matched by botanical equivalents of papier-mâché flowers,
fruits and seeds produced by Auzoux in the 1860s. These botanical models quickly made their
way into the educational curricula of institutions around the world. Within these institutions,
Auzoux’s models were principally used to fulfill educational goals, but their incorporation into
diverse curricula also suggests they were used to implement agendas beyond botanical
instruction. The consumer choice to invest in the Auzoux brand elicits interesting questions
about the evolution of nineteenth-century botanical studies, scientific pedagogy and consumer
culture. Why did institutions choose to buy Dr. Auzoux’s botanical collection? Were professors
primarily responsible for outfitting departments of botany or were University Committees
involved? How did these models complement botanical practices? Or were botanical practices
changed to gel with models? In this talk, I complete case studies of the Auzoux collection at
Cornell University and Mount Holyoke College to determine exactly what various meanings
scientific objects could assume in different settings and the commentaries they made on
nineteenth-century botany, science and society.
Author: Lisa Onaga
Title: The Promise of Mutation under Japan’s Sericultural Empire
Abstract: The establishment of mutant silkworm stocks in Japan during the 1910s coincided
with a movement to nationally manage silkworm production for commercial purposes to make
larger quantities of silk with uniform qualities. Improvement of silk cocoons was critical for the
success of one of Japan’s major cash industries and necessitated the identification, production,
and maintenance of silkworm varieties. This “scientization” of silkworms broadened the scope of
academic study of these organisms, allowing for varieties with otherwise questionable
commercial merit to survive generation after generation. Silkworm scientist Tanaka Yoshimaro
(1884-1972) helped formalize the study of mutant silkworms and eventually became a venerated
geneticist. Tanaka was less concerned with the matter of what a commercially robust variety was
rather than the question of what counted as a mutation (henyi or totsuzen henyi) and what those
mutations’ significances were in furnishing meaning to the understanding of genetics. Attention
to Tanaka articulates how researchers’ views about the contribution of mutation to the enterprise
of sericulture changed over time and how silkworm larvae gained greater attention in addition to
their inanimate cocoons. Finally, by shedding light on how the institutionalization of mutant
silkworm husbandry formed underneath the practical expectations to help produce novel
silkworms with greater economic value, this analysis shows the important ways in which genetic
knowledge was pursued in the late developing empire of Japan.
Author: Michael Oppenheimer
Title: The Public Role of Climate Scientists
Abstract: Recent events in the climate science arena underscore the fraught relationship between
science and scientists on the one hand, and the general public on the other. While the notion of a
gap between these two groups dates at least 50 years to CP Snow, there appears to have been
little improvement in the situation. Many commentators focus on the deficiencies on the side of
the general public. Regardless of the truth of these assertions, it may be more fruitful to explore
the ways in which reforms in the scientific community can reduce this gap, because there is no
reason to believe that the current trend of skepticism toward expertise which is apparent in some
arenas will be reversed soon. Nor is such a reversal necessarily desirable for the advancement of
effective governance and management of technical problems. Among the approaches that should
be explored are adding study of ethical and policy implications of research as well as
fundamentals of public communication to graduate education in the physical sciences.
Furthermore, scientific institutions like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the
science academies should press further in the direction of transparency and stakeholder
engagement.
Author: Naomi Oreskes
Title: Neo-liberalism, Resistance to Climate Science, and the Legacy of the Cold War
Abstract: Historians of science have focused on the role of the Atomic Bomb in precipitating
the Cold War, but equally important to President Truman’s desire to contain the Soviet Union
was the fear that with or without the spread of communism, the European economy would sink
back into depression, destroying demand for American goods and pulling the American economy
back into depression as well. Meanwhile, American conservatives feared the continued
expansion of the New Deal welfare state at home, which they saw as a fifth column. American
anti-communism thus became intertwined with the rise of post-war neo-liberalism, and many
American scientists involved in Cold War weapons programs saw free market principles as a
crucial component of what their work was intended to defend. Scientific leaders like Vannvear
Bush invoked the “marketplace of ideas” as a model for how science worked, as well. Several of
the most prominent scientists who questioned the scientific evidence of global warming in the
1980s, ‘90s and ‘00s, were physicists who had come to prominence during the Cold War, and
shared a hatred of the Soviet Union, hostility to the welfare state, and a neo-liberal commitment
to free markets. In this paper, we argue that views forged in World War II and the Cold War
informed their decisions to challenge the scientific evidence of global warming. While most of
this generation has now passed, their positions have influenced younger physicists, who remain
an important source of the ‘scientific’ opposition to the evidence of climate change.
Author: Karin Orth
Title: The Research Program “The History of the German Research Foundation, 1920-1970”
Abstract: The German Research Foundation (DFG) is the largest and most important institution
for funding research and the most significant autonomous organization of science in Germany. It
was founded in 1920 with the name “Emergency Foundation for German Science” and still exists
today. The research program was founded on three main themes: first of all, that special
emphasis should be given to the Nazi period, without, however, isolating the dictatorship. Rather
the science policy of the DFG during the Nazi period should be integrated in the longer-term
trends of general politics and science policy. The time period investigated therefore reached from
the 1920s into the 1970s. Second, the individual research projects supported by the DFG were
not investigated first and foremost in an organizational or administrative sense. The main focus
instead lay on the research activities themselves, their scientific and political context, as well as
their significance with regard to international research trends and standards. Third, this was not
merely a matter of disciplinary history. Instead interdisciplinary developments were found and
exemplary scientific projects, approaches, discourses, as well as biographies investigated.
Essentially it is a matter of re-determining the role and actions of scientists in the Nazi period
between the extremes of recruitment by the regime on the one hand and “self-mobilization” of
scientists (Herbert Mehrtens) on the other, as well as placing German science during the Nazi
regime in the context of international trends and long-term developments from the turn of the
century to the 1970s.
Author: Jessica Otis
Title: Tutors and Textbooks: Vernacular Arithmetic Education in Early Modern England
Abstract: This paper examines the connections between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
arithmetic tutoring and textbooks in order to delineate the structure, content and effectiveness of
vernacular arithmetic education in early modern England. From the first arithmetic textbooks
printed in English, in the middle of the sixteenth century, tutors and textbook authors were
inextricably linked both by individual tutor-authors and by their common consensus on the
substance of arithmetic education. These connections can be found in the content and
organization of arithmetic textbooks, as well as in advertisements, preface materials, and author
biographies. In addition to establishing the existence of a consensus among tutors and textbook
authors, this paper maps seventeenth-century changes in the arithmetical canon, when it was
expanded to include new subjects such as logarithms, decimals and elementary algebra. These
changes in arithmetic education - along with contemporary commentary printed by authors and
scribbled by readers in the margins of their texts - ultimately enable us to analyze the
effectiveness of arithmetic education in early modern England.
Author: Christopher Otter
Title: Electric Dairyland: Science, Technology and Milk Production in Britain, 1850-1940
Abstract: During the later nineteenth century, milk was routinely promoted in Britain (as in
America) as a “perfect” food, containing every requisite nutrient, particularly for children, the
sick, and the aging. Yet milk was also regularly identified as a highly problematic foodstuff.
These problems were manifold: milk was an effective vector for numerous bacterial diseases
(notably tuberculosis); it was easily adulterated; it was highly perishable; it might be laced with
preservatives; and it was regularly produced in highly insanitary surroundings. Meanwhile,
infant mortality rates remained stubbornly high, while breastfeeding was declining in popularity.
Provision of a safe, plentiful supply of milk was thus promoted as a vital aspect of national
security. Such provision mobilized multiple techniques, including dairy chemistry, bacteriology,
disease notification, inspection, certification, tuberculin testing, refrigeration, bottling and the
creation of infant milk depots. The capitalization necessary for such developments favoured the
development of industrial dairying, while its organization involved the formation of dairy
research institutes and national schemes like the Milk Marketing Board. The history of milk
during this period can thus be told as a history of three competing and sometimes conflicting
logics: a “social” logic committed to national security, a “scientific” logic urging standardization,
analysis and measurement, and a “market” logic characterized by resistance to perceived
excesses of regulation. The tensions between these logics failed to be resolved during the period
under analysis.
Author: David Pantalony, Canada Science and Technology Museum
Title: Re-examining icons on display
Abstract: Icons on display at science museums can exert a large influence on popular,
educational and scholarly narratives science and technology. This is the case at national
museums where people often use information found at the museum, in publications and on-line.
Our curatorial choices, interpretations, and silences matter. Our failure to revisit and probe these
icons also matters. In this talk I shall critically examine some iconic artifacts on display at the
Canada Science and Technology Museum – Canada’s first nuclear reactor (1945), Canada’s first
satellite (1962), and a Sputnik replica in our main space exhibit (1977). In more detail, I shall
discuss the Theratron Junior, a sleek green radiotherapy machine from 1956, displayed in a
permanent exhibit on innovation milestones in Canada. In stark contrast to its limited display
context, the Junior brims with features and history that demand more attention. The striking “sea
foam” green paint, for example, has inspired an independent exhibition at the museum about the
colour green in medicine. In addition, research into the former life of the specific model on
display (serial no. 15), including company, government and museum records, and oral histories
with people who made it, sold it, serviced it and used it, has produced a reinvigorated artifact
biography that enriches and challenges conventional histories from Canada’s early atomic era.
The lessons from these intensive re-examinations of artifacts/icons are readily clear — we are
missing opportunities by taking for granted the most familiar items on our museum floors.
Author: Hyung Wook Park
Title: Development and Senescence: Growing Up and Old and the Making of Biogerontology,
1900-1950
Abstract: The process of growth was long thought to be separate from the course of aging in
terms of both temporal order and biological nature. During the first half of the twentieth century,
however, several scientists--including Alexis Carrel, Peter Medawar, Nathan Shock, and Alex
Comfort--explored how the two phenomena were intertwined. Their physiological and
embryological investigation, tissue culture, and evolutionary research indicated that senescence
at the microscopic level not only occurred during development but also made a substantial
contribution to it through cells' selective degeneration and decreasing rates of proliferation. It
was also claimed that both processes were controlled by genes whose time and mode of
expression were closely interlaced under the force of natural selection. The current presentation
reveals how these investigations helped the making of biogerontology as the biomedical field
studying senescence. I show that biogerontology's birth was indebted to the novel
characterization of its subject, aging, which ceased to be a cosmic mysterious process but, like
growth, a more manipulable phenomenon amenable to new experimental techniques in
mainstream biomedicine such as tissue culture. Furthermore, the field's scope was considerably
expanded by studying organisms' whole lifespan including both growth and senescence. I argue
that research on relationships between aging and development made biogerontology a broad and
legitimate field within biomedicine. My poster thus examines the connection between the
creation of scientific fields and their research topics by analyzing gerontology's early history,
following previous works by scholars such as Andy Achenbaum, Stephen Katz, Tiago Moreira,
and Paolo Palladino.
Author: Christopher M. Parsons
Title: Botanical Discovery in a Not So New World: French North American Folk Taxonomies in
the 17th and 18th Century
Abstract: Historians have traced the emergence of botany as a distinctive field of study in the
seventeenth century to the problem that the novelty of American flora posed for existing methods
for understanding the natural world. Inundated with new species of plants whose novelty was
often undeniable, European naturalists created new taxonomic systems to embrace new methods
of observation that adequately captured the new botanical realities. The problem that exotic flora
posed for European observers has often been assumed to have been even more intense in colonial
settings. Yet, in colonial French North America, colonists, administrators, missionaries and
explorers actively sought to minimize botanical and ecological difference. This paper analyzes
colonial texts such as travel and missionary narratives, administrative reports on the potential of
American environments, and colonial dictionaries to understand what it meant to discover
American flora in an American setting. I argue that these documents demonstrate that French
authors extended French botanical folk taxonomies to American ecosystems, and erased
ecological, cultural and morphological differences between New and Old World flora in the
process. While the focus of these texts on the visual observation of American flora shared many
traits with French scientific texts, in this context discovery meant looking for hidden similarities
and not novelty. The common perception that American flora was a degraded version of French
ideals ultimately encouraged the introduction of French ecological practice, undermined the
legitimacy of indigenous ecological knowledge and challenged the participation of colonial
naturalists in the Atlantic networks of French scientific institutions.
Author: Thomas Pashby
Title: Projective Geometry and the Origins of the Dirac Equation
Abstract: Existing accounts of the origins of the electron equation rely almost exclusively on
Dirac's later testimony and the published paper of 1928. However, there exists a document
containing rough calculations that reveals the first stages of his recognition of the explicit form
of the equation he sought. This manuscript was found among the archival material held by the
FSU at Tallahassee, where Dirac spent his final years. The first page contains a statement of the
general form of the relativistic linear wave equation, and twenty-two pages later Dirac finds an
explicit representation of what would be known as the Dirac matrices. This document provides
an unprecedented opportunity to give a comprehensive account of part of the train of thought that
led to arguably his most significant discovery. I propose to present the preliminary results of a
detailed analysis of this manuscript, adding to and challenging the existing accounts. One
remarkable aspect is the appearance of what is obviously projective geometry on a number of
pages. Several authors have attempted to make a connection between Dirac's q-number theory
and his knowledge of projective geometry, but in the AHQP interviews conducted by Kuhn,
where this connection is first made, Dirac denied any connection to his early work in noncommutative algebra. Instead Dirac consistently emphasized the value of projective geometry as
a means for visualizing quantities in Minkowski space-time, which suggests that he may have
found these techniques useful in his derivation of the electron equation and first encounters with
Dirac spinors.
Author: Debasmita Patra
Title: Historical Trajectory of the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Research
in the ‘Other World’: Case of India
Abstract: Nanoscience and nanotechnology research area is an umbrella term constitutive of
various kinds of research areas such as nanochemistry, nanophysics, and nanobiology. Hence,
there may not be a single history existing for the emergence of nanoscience and nanotechnology
research and the history might vary country-wise. It is believed that nanoscience and
nanotechnology have been existing since time immemorial. Scientists found the presence of gold
and silver nanoparticles in the Roman church glasses, in the Indian Ayurveda (traditional Indian
medicine), and even in the Samurai swords of Japan. However, the foundation of modern
nanoscience and nanotechnology as a specialty research area grounds itself in the most often
quoted talk delivered by the physicist Richard Feynman in 1959 in his lecture ‘there is plenty of
room at the bottom’. In this paper I focus on the historical trajectory of the development of
modern Indian nanoscience and nanotechnology research deriving from an empirical study
conducted among fifty eight scientists and engineers, that is, practitioners located in 21 different
laboratories in India. In this paper I also argue that, even if India is a developing country,
nanoscience and nanotechnology developed in India around the same time as elsewhere in the
world. The study reveals that during late 1980s and early 1990s, practitioners in about 6 Indian
institutions started working in this area. The activities and volume of research in this area
increased with the Indian government establishing Nano Science and Technology Initiative
(NSTI) in October, 2001 and it increased even further with the establishment of Nanomission in
2007. The practitioners also predicted that this research area is going to grow in the future too.
Author: Andrea Patterson
Title: Personalized Medicine or Scientific Racism? The Persistence of the Genetic Theory of
Race and its Modern Day Tuskegee
Abstract: A legacy of neglect and exploitation has shaped the long-term relationship of African
Americans with the medical profession and public health service. Whereas a century ago, the
belief of physiological, pathological difference and racial inferiority justified the lack of medical
care and led to medical experimentation in the Tuskegee Study, today, a persistent genetic theory
of race continues to justify inadequate medical care, with the result that blacks still constitute the
leading group in both infant and adult mortality. In this paper, I will argue that these statistics do
not support racially-based biological differences, but instead are the result of a failure to
adequately evaluate socio-economic factors. Using examples from genomic medicine and
pharmacogenetics, I will show that medical research increasingly uses gene therapy or
“personalized medicine” to locate a “race drug” for heart disease or a “preterm birth gene” for
increased infant mortality in blacks, rather than evaluate socio-economic factors and minority
status as contributors to disease. This pervasive confusion over racial difference within the
scientific, medical and social discourse complicates the already strained relationship between
African Americans and health care professionals and perpetuates ongoing distrust towards public
healthcare services.
Author: Sarah-Jane Patterson
Title: Negotiated Landscapes: Land Grants and Surveying in Upper Canada, 1826-1841
Abstract: At the National Archives in Ottawa, Canada, there is an 1826 folio map of Upper
Canada produced by the Surveyor-General Thomas Ridout. Its purpose is to delineate the lands
sold to the Canada Company (hereafter “the Company”) by the Crown. The Crown incorporated
the Company in order to enable it to purchase large tracts of land from the Crown, which the
Company would then be responsible for selling to third parties. This effectively privatized the
acquisition of land grants in Upper Canada. Using maps as evidence, this paper analyzes the role
of the surveyor in this changing mode of land granting. On the surface, the surveyor would not
change his process: the instruments would not necessarily change, nor would the maths for
representing the three-dimensional in two dimensions. These technical elements of surveying,
however, do not encompass the surveyor. The creation of any map is at minimum a negotiation
between the commissioning body, the surveyor, the draughtsman, and the engraver. In Upper
Canada there was also the office of the Surveyor-General, the government of Upper Canada, the
concerns of the Crown and, after 1826, the Canada Company to consider. The change in methods
of land grants in Upper Canada would have been impossible without the established body of
trained surveyors in Upper Canada. I argue that this dependence resulted in a re-negotiation of
the organizational structure of surveying in Upper Canada that led to the professionalization of
the trade in the new Dominion of Canada.
Author: Emily Pawley
Title: Adaptation, Divinity, and the Agricultural Landscape in New York, 1825-1850
Abstract: In 1845, the wealthy New York tanner Zadock Pratt commissioned a series of
carvings in the cliffs near Prattsville, New York. Among them a hemlock tree, symbolizing
tanning, stood above a proud inscription: “On the farm opposite, 224 pounds of butter were made
from each cow—from eighty cows in a season.” These two signs were linked—having
deforested the surrounding hills, Pratt argued publicly that the vanished hemlocks signified that
the land beneath was perfectly adapted to dairy farming. To provide evidence of his claim, Pratt
commissioned a small geological survey, established a model dairy farm, sent fine cattle to the
agricultural fairs, and circulated statements of remarkable butter production in the agricultural
press. As the New York landscape shifted following the opening of the Erie Canal, such claims
had become commonplace. “Agricultural improvers,” convinced of their state’s divinelyordained economic future, and often heavily invested in land, scrutinized the existing landscape
of stumpy fields and forests, not for existing resources, but for adaptations to future functions—
for signs of the landscapes to come. Like Pratt they drew on geological knowledge as well as
older settlers’ tree lore, and made their cases in print and in public display. This paper focuses on
Zadock Pratt to illuminate his contemporaries’ concept of adaptation as economic function, and
to show the interplay between geological and economic speculation.
Author: Erik Peterson
Title: “The Organicist Moment at Cambridge and Why It Was Nearly Lost”
Abstract: Over the last two decades, historians have regularly denoted the absence of
embryology from the mid-twentieth century Modern Synthesis. Less frequently have they delved
into the attempts to integrate embryology and evolutionary biology that took place concomitantly
with their balkanization. In this essay I examine one such episode that has some significance for
our understanding of present attempts at a so-called evo-devo synthesis. Joseph and Dorothy
Needham, J. H. Woodger, C. H. Waddington, J. D. Bernal, and others met in the 1930s to discuss
abstract issues ranging from organismal development to process philosophy and leftist politics to
the application of mathematics in biology. They saw as their inspiration the “organicism” of E. S.
Russell and J. S. Haldane and the “emergentism” of C. Lloyd Morgan. But they hoped to
transcend the “obscurantism” of these sources by incorporating the philosophy of Alfred North
Whitehead, among others. Their Theoretical Biology Club particularly influenced the
“organizer” project at Cambridge during the 1930s and led to Waddington’s important epigenetic
work--itself a robust predecessor of current evo- devo biology. Here I both trace the interaction
network of thinkers and attempt to account for their relative lack of historiographical impact.
Author: Massino Petrozzi
Title: The Body of the Animal: `Hunting Epistemology' and the Study of Animals in Early
Modern Europe
Abstract: My paper investigates different ways in which natural philosophers manipulated
animals in order to produce reliable knowledge. I discuss the nature of the touch that this activity
implied against the social context in which natural philosophers pursued their observations.
Paying attention to natural philosophers’ being courtiers and gentlemen I argue that hunting
represented in the seventeenth century an important source of epistemological tools for the
production of knowledge about animals. By analyzing different hunting manuals, I elucidate a
group of skills that defines what I call ‘hunting epistemology’ and shapes the way in which
natural philosophers interpret the results of their observations. I will support this argument with
two examples. I analyze the text of a letter that Lorenzo Magalotti, secretary of the Accademia
del Cimento, dedicated to the discussion of the existence of the animal soul. The learned
Florentine challenges the Cartesian definition of the animal-machine by resorting to his
experience as an expert hunter. Secondly, I show how the ‘hunting epistemology’ convinced
Robert Boyle and other members of the Royal Society to use dogs in a series of experiments to
test the effects of the blood transfusion between animals. While I am aware that different
contexts can make it difficult to compare the experimental practices of natural philosophers of
different countries, I do so in order to illustrate the fertility of a concept such as ‘hunting
epistemology’ when we study how natural philosophers attempted to give their research an
international profile.
Author: Roberto A. Pimentel
Title: The Role of Interferometry in the Aether Debate Throughout the 19th Century
Abstract: The undulatory theory of light as proposed by Thomas Young (1773-1829) and
Augustin Fresnel (1788-1827) in the beginning of the XIXth century gained gradual and general
acceptance during roughly the first two or three decades of the century until it became the
indisputable paradigm in the field of Optics, until at least Einstein's work on photoelectricity in
1905. The theory was based in the idea that light propagated within a specific medium, whose
physical properties were a matter of debate throughout the century. This work focuses on the role
played by interferometry in this debate. Although the first experimental setups were devised
mostly to demonstrate the phenomenon of interference, soon the new technique was put to more
auspicious endeavours by François Arago (1786-1853), Fresnel and others. Through
interferometric setups were discovered the laws of interference of polarized light, which
eventually converged to the idea of light being a transverse wave, and new measurements with
unprecedented accuracy. With the following generations of undulatorists the technique was
developed and experimental verification of properties of the optics of moving bodies and other
correlated applications was made possible. Finally by the final quarter of the century there was
Albert Michelson's (1852-1931) contribution, introducing an interferometric device capable of
detecting the theoretically predicted second-order effect generated by the motion of the Earth
through the aether, and its consequences and applications. Interferometry was then instrumental
for the acceptance of an aether, for the discovery of its properties, and even for its dismissal from
orthodox Physics.
Author: Nicholas Popper
Title: The Sudden Death of the Burning Salamander
Abstract: Salamanders fascinated early modern European scholars of the natural world. Their
curiosity stemmed from the beast’s alleged ability live in fire. This claim was received from
ancient authorities, but while humanists such as Conrad Gesner cited Pliny and Aristotle as
evidence, others, such as the experimentalists of the Royal Society, publicized eyewitness
observations of fire-dwelling salamanders. Throughout Europe between 1500 and 1700, the
salamander haunted all sorts of learned environments. In emblem books, cosmologies,
encyclopedias, and dissertations, scholars compiled others’ encounters with the creature
alongside accounts of their own experiences, devising explanations for their ability to withstand
flames or dismissing the belief as credulity or demonic superstition. After 1700, however,
European naturalists ceased to report or assess the belief that salamanders lived in fire. My paper
takes this disappearance as a case study revealing how the early modern regime of natural
inquiry—so focused on the causation and significance of nature’s bounteous wonders—
unraveled in the late seventeenth century. That the claim that salamanders lived in fire vanished
rather than was debunked, I will suggest, reveals that natural ideas inherited from the ancients
and sustained by wondrous models of nature did not collapse under the weight of
experimentalism, the mechanical philosophy, or the regularization of nature. Rather, I will argue
that a new set of textual practices emerged that reoriented the relationship between text and
experience, emphasizing intense communion with a limited array of sources rather than the
extensive compilation of authorities.
Author: Maria Portuondo
Title: The Biblical Cosmology of Benito Arias Montano
Abstract: This paper explores the metaphysical formulations and the resulting cosmological
consequences of these in the work of Spanish biblical exegete and humanist Benito Arias
Montano (1527-1598). Late in life Arias Montano fashioned a biblically-based natural
philosophical system that he articulated in his Liber generationis et regenerationis Adam, 1599
and in the Naturae historia, 1601. This was the culmination of work he first rehearsed in the
apparatus of the Antwerp Polyglot Bible, and in particular in the essay De arcano sermone. This
study draws out key aspects of the new metaphysical principles Arias Montano identified as
“encoded” in the Book of Genesis and situates them as part of the broader early modern program
of Mosaical natural philosophical reform. His cosmological ideas, although carefully couched
within the parameters of Counterreformation theology, challenged Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
frameworks, and set forth a syncretic epistemology to the study of nature that sought to reconcile
Biblical literalism with empirical observation.
Author: Neil Prendergast
Title: Knowing Nature, Knowing Gender, and Eating Turkey: Agriculture and Natural History in
19th-Century America
Abstract: Americans have always known that turkeys are native to North America, that the
Spanish brought them from New Spain to Europe in the sixteenth century, and that the English,
among others, brought turkeys back to North America. In the nineteenth century, however,
Americans disagreed on the geographical origins of their Thanksgiving turkey. Was it only from
Mexico, as naturalists declared? Or was it from the American woods, as farmwomen insisted?
They even disagreed on the species of turkey that consumers could purchase in November
markets. The naturalist Daniel Giraud Elliot, for example, claimed that these domesticated
turkeys, which he argued derived solely from Mexican turkeys, were Meleagris gallopavo, while
the wild turkey was a separate species, Meleagris sylvestris. Farmwomen, however, knew
otherwise. They had been taming wild birds throughout the nineteenth century, watching them
acquire the colors of domestic breeds over successive generations, and then crossing wild blood
back into their farm flocks for strength and vigor. They had no species division, nor any need for
one. This paper examines the epistemological split between naturalists and farmwomen as the
result of gendered ways of knowing nature. It shows that each group privileged different types of
knowledge, one written and historical, the other experiential and firsthand. Using the natural
history writings of Elliot, John James Audubon, and John Dean Caton, among others, and the
nineteenth-century American poultry guides of Micajah Cock, D.J. Browne, and C.N. Bement, as
well as agricultural periodicals, the paper argues that gendered labor produced unnecessarily
partial knowledges.
Author: Heather Munro Prescott
Title: A Feminist Reproductive Health Coalition: Feminist Health Activists and Emergency
Contraception in the United States, 1970-2000
Abstract: This paper will explore the multiple constituencies involved in the development and
marketing of emergency contraceptives in the United States since the 1970s. Building on Adele
Clarke and Theresa Montini’s work on RU-486 (mifepristone), this paper will trace the
“heterogeneous constructions” of this technology by various historical actors. It will also show
how the attitudes of key participants involved in this story have evolved over time. Nowhere is
this historical shift more apparent than in the changing position of the National Women’s Health
Network (NWHN), a non-governmental feminist organization founded during the 1970s to
combat the exploitation of women by the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry.
Initially this group was a vehement opponent of the “morning-after pill” and other forms of
hormonal contraception. By the early 1990s the organization had joined broader efforts to
develop a dedicated emergency contraceptive product. This paper will show that the story of
emergency contraception represented a major rapprochement between mainstream population
control groups, representatives from the pharmaceutical industry, and members of feminist
health advocacy groups. It will also explain how these diverse groups created a “middle ground”
between an older liberal feminist position that tended to support technological innovations such
as hormonal contraception; and a more radical feminist position that criticized the use of
hormones but was otherwise in favor of reproductive rights.
Author: Megan Raby
Title: Sixty-one Years of Soledad: University and Corporate Science at Harvard’s Research
Station in Soledad, Cuba, 1898-1959
Abstract: Harvard University’s little-known tenure as proprietor of a research station in Cuba,
the Atkins Institution, corresponds strikingly with two major turning points in Caribbean history:
the 1898 Spanish-Cuban-American War and the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This correspondence is
not coincidental. The Atkins Institution was entangled in the same economic relations that drew
the US into the Cuban War for Independence in 1898 and which helped provoke the
nationalization of US properties (including Atkins) after the Revolution. Located at Soledad, a
plantation owned by Massachusetts sugar baron Edwin F. Atkins, the gardens and biological
laboratory of the Atkins Institution were sites of both contestation and collaboration among
Cuban and American scientists, businessmen, workers, and government officials. The Atkins
Institution sought to serve multiple interests: agribusinesses’ demands for the improvement of
economic plants for export, domestic needs for subsistence crop diversification, and researchers’
desires to study broader questions of tropical biology and natural history. The story of how these
interests converged and diverged at Atkins illuminate the complex relationship of science and
business in the early twentieth-century Caribbean. The Atkins Institution’s multiple alliances
helped make it one of the longest-lived US stations in the region during the early twentieth
century. Nevertheless, the station’s implication in US economic imperialism ultimately
contributed to its estrangement from Harvard and its marginalization as an international research
site for tropical biology.
Author: Karen Rader
Title: “Live Animals in Museums: Reframing the Science of Life, From ‘The Watchful
Grasshopper’ to ‘The Insect Zoo’
Abstract: Before 1950, non-human animals in most museums were paradigmatically dead and
stuffed – mounted either in habitat dioramas or featured specimen displays. But from midcentury onward, natural history and science museums throughout the United States began to
feature live animal displays, ranging from individual animal demonstrations to full-scale animal
ecosystems-- and in some cases, even animal experiments. Using accounts from both the
producers and the consumers of these displays, this paper will explore how the presence of live
animals in museums complicated public understandings of the post-war life sciences. Animal
experiment displays required visitors to engage with animals as laboratory subjects; these
exhibits raised questions about biologists' control and manipulation of nature, while providing
very little in the way of broader social or scientific frameworks for understanding such work. By
contrast, live animal ecosystem displays strove for a more holistic portrayal of contemporary
biological knowledge of animal life; but these exhibits highlighted unsavory aspects of
contemporary life sciences (such as corporate sponsorship) while obscuring research process.
Author: Sally Ragep <sally.ragep@mcgill.ca>
Title: Rational Sciences in Islam
Abstract: The Rational Sciences in Islam (RaSI) project (http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/RASI/),
centered at McGill University, is an object-relational database created to store information on the
rational sciences within the scientific, philosophical, and theological traditions of Islam before
1900 CE. RaSI allows for more than the entry and extraction of standard bio-bibliographical
information of manuscripts; among other things it records and makes accessible content,
paleographic, codicological, and ownership information gleaned from these manuscripts. In
many cases there are direct links to images of texts. For this panel I focus on 3 main components
of the project: a basic description of the purpose of the project; how we went about collecting
images; and interesting ways that scholars can use the data as a powerful tool for historical and
sociological research.
Author: Evan Ragland
Title: The New Chymical Medicine of Franciscus Sylvius: Chrysopoeia, Experiment, Sensation
and Secrecy
Abstract: Franciscus dele Boë Sylvius (1614-1672) was the most popular teaching physician at
the University of Leiden in the mid-seventeenth century and one of the most influential
physicians in Europe. His new medical system based in chymical phenomena and especially the
prevalence and power of acids and alkalis found numerous proponents and detractors, including
Robert Boyle and Hermann Boerhaave. This paper re-situates Sylvius’ chymical and medical
work by pointing to his complex and even adversarial relationships with the teachings of Joan
Baptista Van Helmont and René Descartes, his use of chrysopoeia to explain the activity of the
glands, and his experimental anatomy and pathology. In his chymical laboratories, dissections in
the anatomical theater, and daily clinical work, Sylvius integrated new theories and practices in
his goal to found medicine on the twin pillars of the right sensible qualities and limited
corpuscular reasoning. Drawing from several published student theses, this paper also argues that
Sylvius’ pedagogical method made students active participants in the creation and validation of
new knowledge. The common experience of tasting, in particular, was taken to reliably
categorize chymical substances—from animals or otherwise—as acidic or alkaline. Finally, we
will examine the connection between Sylvius’ medico-chymical experiments and his commercial
remedies, especially his wonder-drug Sal Volatile Oleosum. Although Sylvius grounded his
claims in ostensibly open, collaborative experimentation, he endeavored to keep his prized
remedy a secret, even after death. Sylvius’ endeavors provide a unique and rich window on early
modern medicine, chymistry, Cartesian philosophy, commerce and pedagogy.
Author: Brent Ranalli
Title: Pansophy Revisited: Comenius’s “Irenic” Approach to Natural Philosophy
Abstract: When J.A. Comenius's (1592-1670) “pansophic” efforts to reform the sciences are
viewed alongside his irenic religious activities, it becomes apparent that he was attempting to
apply to natural philosophy an irenic method of dispute resolution and to inculcate among
philosophers an irenic ethic. The Irenic Method: Comenius's strategy was to let an impartial,
authoritative text serve as "touchstone" to resolve disputes. In religious disputes, the touchstone
was Scripture. For natural philosophy Comenius intended to create a pansophic text to fill that
function. He proposed using Scripture and the pansophic text in similar ways--for example, to
find common ground for disputants by showing that the authoritative text supports multiple
viewpoints, or that it supports none. The Irenic Ethic: Comenius encouraged both theologians
and philosophers to cultivate a number of virtues conducive to dispute resolution, including
tolerance, public-spiritedness, humility, and individual conscience. Comenius's irenic disputeresolution method was a poor fit for modern experimental science. The irenic ethic, on the other
hand, bears a strong resemblance to the “Mertonian norms” that sociologists recognize as
characteristic of modern scientific communities: universalism, communalism, disinterestedness,
and organized skepticism. The norms of communalism and disinterestedness imply the
submission of truth claims to the scrutiny of the peer group. Long before modern institutions of
scholarly peer review were developed, Comenius proposed what were effectively systems of
peer review among theologians and among natural philosophers. Besides clarifying the goals and
methods of Comenius’s pansophic work, this research suggests a relationship between protoscientific virtues and modern scientific norms.
Author: Samuel Randalls
Title: The Productivity of Weather and Climate Prediction
Abstract: Historically there are many examples of studies tying together weather and economy,
from the work on industrial climates through to weather-induced economic cycles. During the
late 20th century, meteorological and economic prediction became further entwined through the
application of mathematical prediction and analyses within studies of the economics of climate
change and for weather futures trading. This paper traces the historical development of these
arenas, the rationale being that they tie together the studies of economists and
meteorologists/climatologists in important ways for thinking about the technical and political in
prediction. Future climatic and economic crisis become entwined discursively (an overheating
planet or economy) and more formally in models of weather insurance exposure, weather futures
prices or the projected future economic costs of climate change. Tracing the development of the
tools, techniques and political supporters of prediction in these arenas is of significant
contemporary consequence in the present climate (economic and geophysical), not least because
these predictions can become performative and productive. That is, part of the goal for both the
fields discussed, involves enabling or accepting a certain degree of future climatic exposure, but
not too costly to create a crisis. The crisis is not defined solely externally to the predictions and
economic framings of that crisis. Climatic exposure, within bounds, may be economically
beneficial. The most dramatic of future climate change scenarios, however, are hard to even
imagine. This paper thus assesses the centrality of predictability in exhortations to manage the
climate to ensure a, ‘our’ and financial ‘future/s’.
Author: Alisha Rankin
Title: Cure-All or Helpful Herb? Debates about the Panacea in Early Modern Europe
Abstract: This paper examines physicians’ struggles to come to terms with the panacea in early
modern Europe. Although cure-alls conflicted with the principles of Galenism, medicaments
purported to cure every ailment were a part of therapeutics from the time of the Greeks. During a
boom in wonder drugs in the sixteenth century, Galenic physicians published numerous works
touting the marvelous properties of various remedies. From the late sixteenth century, however,
the word “panacea,” which had primarily been used to describe herbal cure-alls, increasingly
became associated with chemical preparations hawked by Paracelsian physicians and empirics.
Accordingly, physicians began to denounce vociferously the concept of a cure-all, known
varyingly as panacea, catholicon, or manus dei. At the same time, cure-alls enjoyed broad
commercial success, and physicians continued to promote certain drugs as particularly beneficial
for most ailments. Attacks against panaceas and their salesmen made epistemological sense from
the perspective of Galenic medicine; however, they also forced physicians to do a delicate dance
around the issue of multi-use remedies.
Author: Sylwester Ratowt
<sylwesterr@gmail.com>
Title: "What Is the Consensus of Opinion as to...?": The Age of the Earth Debates and the
Meaning of Scientific Consensus at the End of the 19th Century in America.
Abstract: After Charles Walcott's 1893 address American scientists agreed that they were in
consensus about answering the question "how old is the Earth?": Walcott's article was the
authoritative text and its conclusions were correct. However, this article was understood by its
readers to have a variety of meanings, at least some of which seem contradictory to Walcott's
intentions. Can we say that this community was in consensus if its members approvingly cited
the same text, but took it to hold contrasting meanings? Other characteristics of the debates about
the Earth's age at the end of the 19th century raise additional questions about how to evaluate
agreement. The topic of the Earth's age was of relatively high interest and was discussed by
many, but only few of them conducted any significant investigation of it. Also, the arguments
based on a multitude of independent, ambiguous approaches were rarely compared, but the
numerical results were specific, commensurate, and often compared. This situation pushes us to
decide whose opinions to count and which aspects of texts to consider in evaluating agreement
and how our evaluation compares to the actors' own perceptions of consensus. To help us
comprehend agreement in this late nineteenth century scientific community, I suggest viewing
consensus as shared actions, rather than shared beliefs or opinions. That is to be in consensus
was to giving a common answer, even though this answer carried different meanings for each
community member.
Author: Jonathan Regier
< jonathan.n.regier@gmail.com>
Title: Kepler’s Notion of Empirical Value
Abstract: Astronomical skepticism of the 16th century was obsessed by the fact that two or
more contradictory astronomical hypotheses can represent celestial motions equally well. This
was taken as proof that certainty of the true celestial motions is beyond human reach. Kepler, in
order to advance his extreme realist position, had to provide an explanation of how such
descriptive equivalence is possible. Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy are descriptively
equivalent because “there occurs a degree of separation between the earth and the heaven along a
path which is regularly curved with respect to the path of the sun, by whichever of the two
bodies that separation is brought about. So the above-mentioned things are demonstrated from
two hypotheses insofar as they fall under a single genus, not insofar as they differ.” Nicholas
Jardine argues that here the genus is the particular relativity of motion that subsumes the two
hypotheses. I would like to offer a modified reading. Kepler knowingly subverts the scheme of
Aristotelian first-principles by demanding that hypotheses, when astronomical, be empirically
grounded. Then, syllogistically, they serve as premises for the demonstration of other
hypotheses. We can construe that a genus is itself a hypothesis, but of a more general and more
basic empirical value. Following this line of reasoning, the most fundamental genera would be
statements of existence or of foundational qualities. Axiomatic primacy therefore takes on an
empirical component. I will discuss how these reflections actually exemplify Kepler’s life-long
insistence on a connection between sensation, knowability and mathematics.
Author: Susan Rensing
<rensings@uwosh.edu>
Title: ‘Falling in Love Intelligently’: Eugenic Love in the Progressive Era
Abstract: On February 21, 1915, the Chicago Tribune ran an appeal to readers for letters
describing their experiences falling in love. With the promise of $1 for every letter published, the
newspaper asked its audience to describe what attracted them most to their beloved. “Was it a
wayward curl, a roguish eye, a dimple or an alluring smile? ...Was it the pies she made or the
flowers he brought? ...Was it the possibility of a eugenic ideal?” From a modern perspective, the
last question seems at odds with the first two. The former are whimsical in tone and allude to the
mystery of romance; the latter is clinical in its presentation of love as a decision-making process
guided by specific goals, principles, and values. For the readers of the Tribune in 1915, these
conflicting messages were commonplace throughout popular culture and helped to frame the
eugenic vernacular in the early twentieth century. Eugenics was understood primarily as a
program for changing the relations of the sexes in order to improve future generations of
humanity. In order to accomplish this goal, love needed to become eugenic, not only romantic.
Proponents of this view of eugenics were determined to instill a eugenic conscience in young
people, particularly college-educated women. Furthermore, the enthusiasm with which many
women activists embraced the “possibility of a eugenic ideal” helped consolidate the connection
between eugenics and feminism, suffrage, and women’s rights in American culture.
Author: Lukas Rieppel
< rieppel@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: Collectors for Hire: Charles Sternberg and the Commercial Fossil Trade, 1870-1930
Abstract: My paper concerns a particularly fraught but revealing relationship between the
American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York and Charles Sternberg around the
turn of the 20th century. Sternberg was a prolific writer and freelance fossil hunter who sold
some of his most spectacular specimens to the AMNH. The focus of my paper is structural and
concerns how Sternberg and t he AMNH went about exchanging cash for fossils. I am
particularly interested in how the value of individual specimens was established through a
complex negotiation process. I argue the negotiation strategies adopted by Sternberg and the
AMNH shed considerable light onto the culture of paleontology and perhaps specimen-based
natural history more generally. This is because part of what was at stake in negotiating the value
of a fossil was the status of the parties involved in the negotiation process themselves. Haggling
over fossils was never just about money, it was also about defining what it meant to be an
amateur collector or professional research scientist, neither of which could be easily
distinguished as having an exclusively monetary or epistemic interest in the objects exchanged.
Author: Frances Robertson
Title: British Technical Draughtsmen in the First Half of the 19th Century
Abstract: Information about technical draughtsmen in Britain is elusive. Nevertheless, the
subject of technical expertise was a constant anxiety due to trade rivalry with France at the
period. Debates about worker education, industrial production, design and good taste, were all
enunciated under the single topic of draughtsmanship. One persistent idea set in motion at the
time was of the “apathy” of British workers and their ignorance of mechanical theory and
technical drawing. This myth however is clearly contradicted by the visual testimony of technical
drawings that remain. I will argue that “draughtsmen” became invisible due to changes in the
workplace after 1820. As a technique of industrial production, mechanical drawing is often
described an intersection of theory and practice directed to three-dimensional material shaping,
in accord with the way pupil engineers worked as draughtsmen while acquiring “mechanical
science on the factory floor” in the early nineteenth century. By contrast, I will argue that as
specialist draughtsmen became confined to the drawing office towards the middle of the century,
they entered a two-dimensional world of production on paper where they became subject to
wider debates about the cultural value of drawing. In this paper, I will discuss the kinds of
knowledge that were acquired and displayed by draughtsmen in Britain in the first half of the
nineteenth century. I will argue the invisibility of draughtsmen is the result of discomfort caused
by the difficulty of judging the cultural and social status of these workers and their drawings.
Author: Ann E. Robinson
<ann9robinson@gmail.com>
Title: Organizing Knowledge: The Periodic Table in Popular Culture
Abstract: The periodic table of the elements has been referred to as the symbol of science. It is
everywhere. It is on the flyleaves of textbooks and the walls of science classrooms. It can be
found on every piece of clothing imaginable from underwear to shoes. It is on everything from
shower curtains to beach towels. A quick Google search results in thousands of different periodic
tables. But not all of them are periodic tables of the elements. The periodic table organizes
information about the elements, from atomic structure to chemical properties. While many nonscientists do not remember what information is contained within the periodic table, they do
remember that it is an organizational tool. The form of the periodic table has been used to
organize all kinds of information from the silly to the serious. There are periodic tables of
desserts and periodic tables of the world's philosophies and religions and even periodic tables of
periodic tables. Popular culture has co-opted the periodic table and allowed non-scientists to be,
however briefly, scientists. This poster hopes to shed some light as to why the periodic table has
been embraced by non-scientists. It will depict some of the many ways in which the form of the
periodic table has been used to organize non-scientific information and describe why the creators
of these tables chose to use this form.
Author: Julia Rodriguez <Julia.Rodriguez@unh.edu>
Title: History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean (HOSLAC)
Abstract: This paper will discuss the process of creating a web-based collection of primary
sources in the history of science, medicine, and technology in Latin America and the Caribbean.
HOSLAC (History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean), available at
<http://www.hoslac.org>, which launched in January 2010, provides over 230 digitized and
annotated primary sources, ranging from pre-Columbian times to the modern day, for teaching
and research. These sources include historic maps; photographs of pre-Columbian tools and
artifacts such as the Inca quipu (knotted strings that served as writing and accounting systems);
photographs of individual scientists, scientific institutions, and universities; and excerpted
translations of texts such as Darwin’s descriptions of Latin American flora and fauna. The
sources are accompanied by texts, based on recent scholarship, which place them in historical,
political, and social context. The electronic database is organized into 30 lecture-ready Topics,
such as Aztec agriculture; exploration and navigation; Humboldt and America; and tropical
medicine. During the session, we will briefly discuss the editorial process for this interactive
resource, as well as some of the teaching applications.
Author: Dr. L. de Rooy
< l.derooy@amc.uva.nl>
Title: Evolutionary Morphology: a German Success in the Netherlands
Abstract: In her book Biology takes form, Lynn Nyhart shows that the evolutionary program of
Ernst Haeckel and Carl Gegenbaur held a considerable smaller space in the German biology than
in the original historical picture. How and why did their evolutionary morphological program
gain the historical reputation of having so dominated the late nineteenth-century life science?
Nyhart suggests that the foreign researchers who worked in the laboratories of both Haeckel and
Gegenbaur played a considerable role in this. Carrying this orientation back home, it seems
likely that they created the idea that German animal biology was predominantly influenced by
Haeckel and Gegenbaur. In my talk I want to focus on the professorships in anatomy in the
Netherlands between 1879 and 1900. Evolutionary morphologists of the Gegenbaur tradition
dominated the Dutch anatomical laboratories in this period. In this respect the Dutch situation
seem to confirm Nyhart’s suggestion. However, it was not so much Dutch researchers who
brought this program to the Netherlands, but German Gegenbaur pupils. The most important of
these was Gegenbaur’s closest pupil, Max Fürbringer. Fürbringer was appointed as professor of
anatomy in Amsterdam in 1879, and he played a key role in the establishment of evolutionary
morphology in the Netherlands. In my talk I want explore the ways in which Fürbringer was able
to make evolutionary morphology into a success, where his teacher Gegenbaur was in much
more of a struggle.
Author: Carola Sachse
Title: The Meaning of Apology. Survivors of Nazi Medical Crimes and the Max Planck Society
Abstract: During the first part of the twentieth century, German science led the world. The most
important scientific institution in Germany was the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, including institutes
devoted to different fields of scientific research. When the National Socialists came to power in
Germany, all of German society, including science, was affected. The picture that previously
dominated our understanding of science under National Socialism from the end of the Second
World War to the recent past – a picture of leading Nazis ignorant and unappreciative of modern
science and of scientists struggling to resist the Nazis – needs to be revised. The history of Kaiser
Wilhelm Institutes under Hitler illustrates definitively the cooperation, if not collaboration,
between scientists and National Socialists to further the goals of autarky, racial hygiene, war, and
genocide. This talk will discuss the Max Planck Society Research Program for the History of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Society during National Socialism and place it in the context of “mastering the
past” from several different perspectives: (1) The survivors of bio-scientific experiments, who
demand the definitive recognition by the most prestigious scientific institution in German science
of their suffering; (2) The current Max Planck Society, which finds it difficult to play its
representative role by taking responsibility for this “negative legacy”; (3) The media, which used
this opportunity to polarize and scandalize this conflict; and (4) Historians who study science and
contemporary history, who have thereby gained access to a lucrative and prestigious research
area.
Author: Madhumita Saha
< msaha@iastate.edu>
Title: Seeing Like Statesmen and Scientists: The Role of Techno-Science in Making of Modern
India
Abstract: Visions of development formed a rallying cry for independence movements in the
1950s and the 1960s. This paper draws from the arguments of Akhil Gupta and Gyan Prakash as
to how in the post-Second World War period, development became the raison d’ etat of newly
independent states and techno-science the handmaiden to achieve that goal. Development was
broadly conceived by the empowered nationalists as economic progress and social
modernization. This paper discusses the complementary and differing strands of development
discourse in independent India. It analyzes the ideas of statesman such as Jawaharlal Nehru,
Indira Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar; views of the right wing Hindu organizations and the
Communist Party of India on role of techno-science. This paper analyses ideas of scientists from
several disciplines to understand how they sought to professionally contribute to the national
development and work with Indian state towards that end. To construct the history of the
interaction of techno-science, modernity and development, the paper uses private papers of
politicians, reports of National Development Council, the Planning Commission of India and the
Indian Science Congress. My arguments are that though development, modernity and technoscience are posed as universal phenomena, but the contemporary Indian situation and contending
ideology actually defined the concepts in terms of regional and social imperative and that
influenced how they visualized the use of techno-science. The increasing relevance of technoscience in the development agenda led to the rise of technocracy in India, which worked closely
with political machinery and even shared decision-making power.
Author: Kuni Sakamoto
<kuni.sakamoto@gmail.com>
Title: God, Intellect and Angels in the Cosmology of Julius Caesar Scaliger
Abstract: The sixteenth-century Aristotelian Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558) expounded his
cosmology in his Exoteric Exercises (Paris, 1557), a work that was to become a popular textbook
of philosophy in the transalpine countries. He maintained there that the movements of the
celestial spheres were caused by the cosmic intellects, which he identified with angels. Starting
from this assumption, he explored various relevant topics: Why are the heavenly movers called
"intellects" and "angels"? In what respects are they different from God and sublunary beings?
How do they move the celestial orbs? In dealing with these issues, Scaliger carefully elaborated
his idea on the traditional angelology to incorporate it into his Aristotelian conception of the
universe which was conditioned by the controversy with his arch-opponent Girolamo Cardano
(1501-76). Historians have long known of the existence of Scaliger's theory of the cosmic
intellects, since Johannes Kepler supported it when writing his Secret of the Universe (Tubingen,
1596). However, because he finally rejected Scaliger's idea, they have generally dismissed it just
as a remnant of the "pre-modern" way of thinking, with the result that little research has been
conducted on it. To compensate this lacuna of research, the present paper examines Scaliger's
theory and provides the basic information on the causal explanation of the celestial movements at
the threshold of the "New Astronomy."
Author: Frederick W. Sakon
Title: An Analysis of Sturm’s Theorem: “A rare example of simplicity and elegance” Emerging
from a Network of Scientific Inquiry and Informing Further Innovation in Algebra
Abstract: Charles–François Sturm (1803 – 1855) decided to pursue mathematics beginning in
1819 (Speziali, 2008, p. 126) and within a short amount of time, his mathematical study
introduced him to a broad field of fellow practitioners, in every type of association imaginable.
Early in his career he published articles that appeared in a volume edited by Gergonne and by the
recommendation of Duke Victor de Broglie (living at the time in the same château where Sturm
was employed as a private tutor), met with the scientific elite in Geneva, including Laplace,
Poisson, Fourier, and Ampère, among others (Speziali). In our current work we describe the life
and work of Sturm, with particular attention to his famous theorem, first published in 1829. Of
his theorem Charles Hermite observed, “Sturm’s theorem had the good fortune of immediately
becoming classic and of finding a place in teaching that will hold forever. His demonstration,
which utilizes only the most elementary considerations, is a rare example of simplicity and
elegance.” Inspired by this characterization, we read, translated, and interpreted both primary and
secondary sources to analyze Sturm’s simple, precise tool for solving polynomials of any degree.
Furthermore, we reveal the relationships and connections among the many mathematical and
scientific personalities generating significant advances related to the solvability of polynomial
equations. In particular, we construct a portrait of the interdependencies among individuals and
developments, which were influenced and driven by Sturm.
Author: Funke Sangodeyi <fsangod@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: Visualizing Hearing on the Cellular Level in the 1980s
Abstract: My paper is an examination of the iconic “dancing hair cell video” created by
physiologist Jonathan Ashmore in 1987 (< http://www.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/ashmore/ohc2-s.mpg>)
and the scientific, technological and cultural context within which it was situated. The video was
created at a point of transition in the production of images of cells at a moment when questions
of how to best produce an image in real time occupied researchers working on living biological
objects with light microscopes. Video microscopy had developed over the course of the 1970s
and early 1980s; its enthusiasts championed its potential for biological research. The video was
made just as computer processing was emerging as a new and accessible tool for cell biological
experimentation. The ability to manipulate the image of a living object was central to both
technologies; video was a transition point towards the extensive manipulation permitted by
digitization. The hair cell video captures the shift in the conceptualization of hearing as an active
rather than a passive process, in which outer hair cells began to be conceived of as cochlear
amplifiers, with an active role to play in the process of hearing, rather than as passive parts of a
circuit. This new view of hearing suggested an emerging view of “cellularity” in the mechanism
of hearing that superseded previous models predicated on the influential work of hearing
research pioneer and electrophysiologist Georg von Bekesy.
Author: Tiago Saraiva
<tiago.saraiva@ics.ul.pt>
Title: Frontier Organisms: Genetics, the Circulation of Karakul Sheep and the Imperial
Landscapes of Fascism
Abstract: Nonhuman animals have become main actors in the history of science. Robert
Kohler’s flies or Karen Rader’s mice are familiar characters to most scholars in the field.
Drawing on this trend, I follow the work of geneticists at the University of Halle, exploring
Karakul sheep as model organism for the study of artificial insemination during the Nazi period.
But the ability of Karakul to thrive under harsh environmental conditions and its high value in
the fur market also made it a perfect companion species for imperial expansion. During the
1910s research undertaken at the Institute for Animal Breeding at the University of Halle was
tightly connected to German colonization of the arid areas of Southwestern Africa through sheep
farms, but in the Nazi period geneticists were praising and exploring karakul properties for the
colonization of Poland and the Ukraine. The Halle Institute became in the 1930s a center for
Karakul circulation exporting certified rams for countries with expansionist ambitions, namely to
fascist Italy for the colonization of Libya and Ethiopia and to Portugal for the white settler
colonization of the frontier region of Southern Angola. This paper connects the laboratory
production of pure forms of life, the development of artificial insemination and the history of the
frontier. The narrative intersects the interests of historians of science for model organisms with
those of environmental historians for the history of the frontier. It contends that such intersection
contributes to a better understanding of the historical dynamics of the expansion of fascist
regimes.
Author: Lisa T. Sarasohn
<LSarasohn@oregonstate.edu>
Title: John Donne's Flea and Robert Hooke's Louse: What Vermin meant in 17th-Century
England
Abstract: Robert Hooke, in his 1665 Micrographia, the first graphic description of the findings
of the Royal Society’s microscopic investigations, wrote that the device had revealed a “new
visible world.” This world teemed with insects, whose complex design, according to Hooke,
proved the wisdom of God’s providential ordering of his creation. But the insects themselves
were described with words that belied the benevolent intent of their creator: “This is a Creature
so officious, that ‘twill be known to every one at one time or other, so busie, and so impudent,
that it will be intruding it self in every one’s company, and so proud and aspiring withal that it
fears not to trample on the best, and affects nothing so much as a Crown” (213) This paper
begins with the question of why did Robert Hooke look at a louse? Its goal is to historicize the
cultural meaning of insects in early modern England, particularly those closest to human beings:
vermin. Lice, fleas, bedbugs and mites crossed the boundaries between human and non-human,
and elicited responses ranging from disgust to awe. Their inescapable presence challenged
binaries of human/animal, living/dead, wealthy/poor, racial purity/mongrelization,
English/foreigner. Vermin allow us to penetrate the cultural values of the early modern past, just
as the insects themselves breached the boundary between the inside and outside of the people
they inhabited.
Author: Emil Sargsyan
Title: Mathematical Models and the Mechanical Philosophy in 17th-Century Physiology:
Comparing the Mathematical Theories of Muscle Contraction of Giovanni Alphonso Borelli and
Johannes Bernoulli
Abstract: Before his work on differential equations and the notable brachistochrone problem,
Johannes Bernoulli studied medicine at Basil University, and in 1690 applied Leibniz’ recently
invented differential calculus to biology for the first time. Armed with new mathematical
techniques, Bernoulli utilized Boyle’s work on gases in offering an explanation for the shape and
function of the invisibly minute globules responsible for muscle contraction. However, Bernoulli
was building on the earlier work of the Italian mathematician and iatromechanical writer
Giovanni Alphonso Borelli. Writing a few decades earlier, unlike Bernoulli, Borelli did not have
the calculus at his disposal, but was instead utilizing geometry and the law of the lever. In my
paper I focus on how these distinct mathematical tools reflected the different ways in which the
two writers depicted the microscopic mechanisms responsible for muscle contraction. In a sense,
the available mathematics helped forge the underlying corpuscular structure and mechanism.
This latter claim is significant because neither Borelli nor Bernoulli had empirical evidence for
the actual shape of the microscopic structures they were describing.
Author: Dr. Yasushi Sato, GRIPS
Title: A Space Science Virtuoso in Japan: The Historical Evolution of the Institute of Space and
Astronautical Science
Abstract: After the ban on the research and development of aerospace technology was lifted in
Japan in 1952, researchers at the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS) of the
University of Tokyo acquired unique scientific and engineering strengths fairly quickly. In 1970,
they successfully launched an artificial satellite called Osumi, making Japan the world’s fourth
country to launch a satellite. Since then, ISAS has constantly launched satellites and probes,
producing original, and often eye-opening, scientific knowledge about the universe. Today, the
world-renowned journal Science regularly arranges special issues when ISAS completes major
projects. While ISAS’s scientific and engineering efforts were strictly focused on the peaceful
side of space exploration, its institutional roots were not unrelated to Japan’s wartime effort.
ISAS’s precursor, the Institute of Industrial Science of the University of Tokyo, had succeeded
the organizational foundation of the wartime mobilization at the university. Hideo Itokawa, the
visionary leader of ISAS’s early space exploration effort, was a designer of fighters during the
war and then a professor of IIS. Relying on a wide range of engineering expertise that the
industry had accumulated since the pre-war period, ISAS in the postwar period steadily built up
its unique capability to launch satellites and observe the universe, in a highly autonomous
institutional environment. Recently ISAS has been criticized for the high cost of its rockets, but
its scientific achievements have undeniably attained high visibility internationally.
Author: Robin Wolfe Scheffler
<robin.scheffler@yale.edu>
Title: The Fate of a Progressive Science: The Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, Athletes, and the
Science of Work
Abstract: This paper traces the changing relationship between scientific, industrial, and cultural
understandings of working bodies in early twentieth century American fatigue research. In the
Progressive era, fatigue researchers discussed fatigue as a physiological phenomenon and allied
themselves with labor reformers in urging industrial regulation. Fatigue researchers clashed with
advocates of Taylorism, who held that productivity could be perpetually increased through
efficiency improvements. Most historians have ceased their study of this conflict at the end of the
First World War. I examine the interwar work of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory, a joint venture
of the Harvard Business and Medical Schools, in order to trace the impact that the introduction
of biochemical methods had on this debate. The Laboratory’s researchers developed
sophisticated physiochemical techniques to study the blood of exercising subjects. Its studies
have principally been remembered for their innovative suggestion that human physiology could
be holistically understood as a multivariate system in dynamic equilibrium. However, the
Laboratory also used its interwar experiments to assert that physical fatigue was rare among
workers, finding that exercising individuals could attain a biochemically “steady state.” In
contrast to Progressive-era fatigue researchers, its researchers reached this conclusion through
laboratory examination, not of workers, but of members of the Laboratory’s own staff and
champion marathon runners. I draw on the Laboratory’s published research and archival
materials understand how it redefined fatigue, examining its institutional history, scientific work,
and finally how cultural views of athletic, academic, and working bodies helped make its
laboratory studies applicable to labor relations.
Author: Tom Scheiding
<scheidingt@etown.edu>
Title: The Chemical Foundation as Academic/Industry Interface, 1919-1941
Abstract: During the interwar period the characteristics of science in the United States changed
dramatically. These changes included an accommodation of large-scale research and a bridging
of the divide between researchers located in the academy and those located in industry. As
opposed to the environment in Germany where the close relationship between the state and
industry fostered and inspired large-scale research that served both the public and industry, in the
United States the research environment was more de-centralized with little coordination of
funding or activities. At the start of the interwar period in the United States, research in the
physical and natural sciences was restricted because of the inability of scholarly societies to
accommodate both theoretical and industrial interests. Research was also constrained by research
patrons who were unwilling to exert influence in a lasting fashion over scholarly communities.
This changed in the United States, in part, because of the creation of the Chemical Foundation.
The Chemical Foundation was a crucial actor in creating the institutional framework necessary
for fostering this change in chemistry and physics. This discussion not only expands our
understanding of the Chemical Foundation’s role in re-shaping scholarly communities, but also
highlights the extent to which the dueling academic and industrial motivations in the interwar
period shaped the disciplines of chemistry and physics.
Author: Sigrid Schmalzer
Title: Insect Control in Socialist China and Corporate America: A Transnational Tale of Science
and Politics through the Eyes of Three Entomologists
Abstract: Insect pest control will serve as a case study of scientific exchange between China and
the U.S., with the aim of exploring the layers of political significance surrounding science in
these two countries during the mid- to late-twentieth century. The U.S. and China shared many
common experiences in battling insect pests. Moreover, U.S. science had a profound influence
on entomology in twentieth-century China. Yet the significance of international exchange was
largely predicated on a presumption of difference. In 1975, shortly after the restoration of
diplomatic relations, a delegation of U.S. scientists traveled to China to investigate insect control
as practiced there; they returned with optimistic accounts of the rational integration of pesticides
with biological controls and other environmentally sensible approaches. Some U.S.
entomologists sought to use the socialist Chinese example as a means of exposing the pernicious
effects of pesticide corporations on U.S. agriculture and as a goad to spur the U.S. to catch up to
its ostensibly less developed new friend. Of course, insect control in socialist China carried its
own highly charged political baggage, some of which (e.g., mass mobilization and self-reliance)
the state made highly visible to visitors, and some of which (e.g., persecution of scientists) lay
hidden – often in plain sight. Tracing this history through the eyes of three entomologists -Robert Metcalf, Huai C. Chiang, and Pu Zhelong -- will illuminate historical connections and
disconnections while also explaining what the act of comparison meant to participants in the
transnational exchange of scientific knowledge.
Author: Henning Schmidgen
<schmidg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de>
Title: Helmholtz’s Curves. Imagery and Precision in His Early Measurements of Physiological
Time
Abstract: In January 1850, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) published a short report about
his measurements concerning the propagation speed of “stimulations” in the living nerve.
Scholars such as Frederic Holmes and Kathryn Olesko have reconstructed the “investigative
pathway” that led Helmholtz from his initial work on muscle action to the striking study of
nervous time. Against the background of new archival findings, this paper argues that
Helmholtz’s investigative pathway also was a “semiotic passage,” i.e. a quest for signs that
would capture and transmit his findings in appropriate ways. Drawing in particular on the curve
recordings and the corresponding written explanations he sent to the Paris Academy of Science
in September 1851, the paper will show that Helmholtz used his graphical recordings in order to
communicate the basic principle of his previous measurements to the academic public. Initially,
he had carried out his time measurements by using the electromagnetic timing method suggested
by the French physicist Claude Pouillet (1791-1868). In his 1850 report, Helmholtz had failed,
however, to explain the physiological application of this method, even though his colleague and
friend, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) revised the report when translating it into French. In
this situation, the curves were not meant as measurements, but served to illustrate the basic
procedure of his previous experiments, the so-called variation and subtraction method. In other
words, Helmholtz’s curves were indeed ‘images of precision,’ but not precise images.
Author: Margaret Schotte
Title: Diagramming the Sea: Depicting Charts and Currents in 17th-Century Navigation
Textbooks
Abstract: Becoming a sailor in the 17th century required a considerable facility with numbers.
Captains and pilots needed to be able to calculate tides, take depth soundings, make astronomical
observations and chart their course. And yet despite the presumption that barely literate sailors
would require shortcuts and crutches--in the form of diagrams and illustrations--to learn
mathematical techniques, this is not borne out by their textbooks. Most contemporary navigation
textbooks are in fact relatively modestly illustrated, merely augmenting standard mathematical
and cosmographical diagrams with depictions of new instruments. However, certain sections do
contain new visual material, namely those dealing with charting courses and calculating currents.
For these mathematical problems specific to the sea, textbook authors had to invent explanatory
schema. Drawing upon a range of English and Dutch textbooks, this paper will consider how
conventional mathematical diagrams were adapted to nautical problems. From basic schematics
that represent the vector forces of currents to the elaborately contrived patterns of hypothetical
"traverse courses," these visual representations of sailing can shed light on early modern
maritime pedagogy and practical mathematics alike.
Author: Efram Sera-Shriar
Title: An Informant’s Guide to Observing Man: Ethnographic Questionnaires, and the
Development of Early Observational Practices in ‘the Field’
Abstract: Early nineteenth-century ethnologists in Britain relied on the observations of travelers,
missionaries and British officers alike for ethnographic material. In most cases the data collected
failed to address key areas of ethnological enquiry. Responding to these limitations the
Ethnological Society of London (f. 1843) produced a body of literature devoted to the scientific
study of ‘Man’ that aimed to standardise and improve the observational practices of informants
working in the field. Building on the work of historians such as Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison,
Daniela Bleichmar and Anne Secord this paper will argue for a more extensive notion of
observational practices. All forms of specialised observational practices involve laborious
training, and practitioners from any discipline develop discriminating practices, which seek to
identify those characteristics that an object of study possesses that are of importance to
researchers. This paper will be divided into two sections. It will begin by considering the early
aims of the Ethnological Society of London, and focus on its initiatives to develop a global
network of ethnographic data exchange. For this, it will look at articles from the society’s
periodical the Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1848). In section two, it will
examine instructive literature produced by members of the Ethnological Society such as James
Cowles Prichard’s ethnographic guide from 1849 and Thomas Hodgkin and Richard Cull’s
questionnaire from 1851. In doing so, this paper aims to reconsider the notion of the armchair
observer and demonstrate early ethnology’s commitment to improving its ethnographic practices.
Author: Jole Shackelford
Title: A Tale of Two Astronomies: Late Renaissance Astrology and Biological Rhythms
Abstract: Tycho Brahe employed two complementary images to depict celestial astronomy and
terrestrial astronomy, reminding the viewer that medieval and Renaissance natural philosophers
supposed a connection between the motions and qualities of the stars and the properties and
behaviors of terrestrial bodies. Such correspondences were typically explained either by causal
rays emanating from heavenly agents and bearing down on terrestrial patients, or by the World
Soul, which provided immediate, harmonic connectivity to all parts of the cosmos. Renaissance
theories posited either a dependence of lower passive beings on higher agencies (Aristotelian), or
else the dependence of an inferior materiality on a superior and metaphysically prior form or soul
(Neoplatonic), but did not impute active temporality to terrestrial essences. All this changed
when the Paracelsians relocated the stars into mundane substances and attributed to them the
endogenous temporal behaviors and rhythms of plants and pathogens, metals and men. When we
look at Tycho’s woodcut illustrations of the twin astronomies, we behold the historical moment
when his friend, the Paracelsian biologist Petrus Severinus, was groping for ways to comprehend
and express this new idea of a temporality as an internal property of organisms, as much as
saltiness, hardness, or the ability to provoke urination. Severinus’ attribution of temporal activity
to an endogenous agent or archeus within bodies initiated an intellectual thread that ran through
early modern vitalism and contributed to the complex weave of late nineteenth and early
twentieth-century physiological understanding of biological rhythms.
Author: Grace Shen
Title: Survey as Resource: The Geological Survey of China and Scientific Nationalism, 19281949
Abstract: Though the Geological Survey of China was established quite soon after the 1911
revolution that overthrew the imperial order and established the Republic of China, the
international reputation it earned in the 1920s was more closely linked to its charismatic leaders
than to the guidance of the state. In fact, the Chinese government was in a continual state of flux
until the Nanjing Decade (1928-1937) when an uneasy consolidation of power ushered in a new
era for both the nation and its representative organs. The revitalized party state hoped to
capitalize on the Geological Survey’s success in gaining foreign respect and finding mineral
resources, but I will argue that it was ultimately the Survey that reshaped the ethos and
operations of the state rather than the other way around. This paper will explore the ways that the
institutional history of the Survey left its imprint on first the National Defense Planning
Commission and then the National Resources Commission, both of which led national economic
policy during the War of Resistance against Japan. Of course, the Geological Survey did not
remain untouched during this period of engagement with the government, and its own
institutional restructuring positioned geology at the forefront of scientific research during the
wartime retreat to inland China. Tracing institutional changes in the Survey will allow us to link
shifts in geological practice and disciplinary identification to the political demands of the party
state on one side and the epistemological demands of the land on the other.
Author: Brittany Shields
<bshields@sas.upenn.edu>
Title: Place and Space in the History of Mathematics: A Comparative Study of the University of
Göttingen and New York University’s Mathematical Institutes under the Leadership of Richard
Courant
Abstract: In his remarkable career, the mathematician Richard Courant (1888-1972) oversaw
the construction of two world-class mathematical institutes, one in the late 1920s at the
University of Göttingen (he lost his position there in 1933), and one at New York University in
the 1960s. My comparative project considers these two architectural spaces as historical artifacts
that illuminate the social and intellectual practices of twentieth century mathematics. I consider
each building’s planning, construction and habitation processes, drawing on blueprints, meeting
minutes, correspondence and other documents to understand how space mattered to those whose
work required not laboratories or gardens, but the right kind of private workspace, desk and
blackboard, situated in the proper relationship to shared workspaces, a library and classrooms.
Important scholarship on architecture and knowledge production has suggested profound
reciprocal relationships between the space of scientific inquiry and the identity and practice of
the scientists. As Peter Galison, Thomas Gieryn and Stuart Leslie have proposed, buildings are
both active agents and sources of evidence in the negotiation of scientific identity. My work
looks at a group often viewed as unbounded by the demands of a laboratory, and demonstrates
the complex spatial dimensions of a seemingly abstract knowledge field.
Author: Stephanie Shirilan <shirilan@syr.edu>
Title: Allegrifying the Spirits’: Scholarly Melancholy and Study as its Cure in Robert Burton’s
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Abstract: In his subsection titled “Exercise Rectified of Body and Mind,” Burton presents an
argument for a method of study not predicated upon solemnity and not weighed in terms of depth
and gravity, but precisely by the degree to which it elevates the spirits. Whereas Burton artfully
equivocates on the effectiveness of nearly every other remedy for melancholy, exposing the
inconsistencies among both defenders and detractors of each approach, Burton is adamant that
busying the mind with study does a body good. The “study cure” he recommends and models
works by warming and stirring the cold and heavy spirits associated with black bile, not towards
the end of producing the white-hot or “cooked” atrabile of Ficino’s melancholic genius but
rather with the intent of procuring relief, out of which a different kind of genius is the
“accidental” result. In order to understand the efficacy of Burton’s study cure, this paper will
position Burton’s epistemology within the context of Renaissance physiology and theories of
perception, melancholic etiology, and the much-debated relationship between melancholy and
genius.
Author: Phillip R. Sloan
< sloan.1@nd.edu>
Title: Biophysics and Holism at the University of Chicago, 1934-1965: Resistance to
Molecularization
Abstract: The development of holistic and organismic perspectives in the life sciences in the
early twentieth century at the University of Chicago department of zoology, under the
intellectual and administrative leadership of Charles Otis Whitman, Charles Manning Child,
Frank Lillie, Paul Weiss, Alfred Emerson, and W. C. Allee, made it the foremost institution in
America pursuing these perspectives in developmental embryology, ecology, and comparative
biology. This paper will examine the way in which modern biophysics and eventually molecular
biology then entered the University of Chicago in the face of this strong pre-existent tradition. I
will demonstrate how this story does not fit either the typical story of “molecularization” via the
role of emigré physicists and the funding emphasis given to biophysics at several institutions
during the Warren Weaver era of the Rockefeller Foundation (Kay 1987), or the picture
developed at other institutions studied in depth (Chaderavian, 2002; Strasser, 2006). This paper
will detail aspects of the unusual history of the interaction of biophysics and organismic biology
at Chicago that led in this case to an initial failure of the biophysical program at the University of
Chicago and the continued prominence of organismic biology at Chicago into the 1960s, when
molecular genetics and biophysics were able to gain the ascendancy under the Presidency of
former Caltech geneticist George Beadle. This historical case history illustrates the complex
interactions of institutions, funding, and intellectual traditions in configuring the importance of
organismic perspectives in biology.
Author: Jenny Leigh Smith
Title: The Cache Economy: Science, Capital and Socialism
Abstract: “The Cache Economy” explores the science of seed collecting at the N.I. Vavilov AllRussian Research Institute of Plant Industry from its founding in 1893 through to the present
day. This collection was the world’s first seed bank, and for most of the 20th Century it was also
the largest and most complete. Founded when Russia was still a monarchy, the Soviet Union’s
Ministry of Agriculture devoted considerable time, money and effort to expanding the collection
and keeping it the best in the world, even as Nikolai Vavilov, its founder, was denounced as an
ideological enemy of the state. Since the end of the Soviet period the collection has languished. It
is currently wholly supported by charitable donations. “The Cache Economy” uses the Vavilov
seed bank as a lens for understanding how living capital, such as seeds, have been used during
the long 20th Century to create scientific authority and to explore how the meaning and purpose
of such living collections have evolved over time. I argue that seed banking in the Soviet Union
came to be motivated by some of the same impulses that drove many of its consumers to hoard
food and other staples: the specter of scarcity and a distrust of state power. Emerging under
autocratic socialism, this skepticism has spread and multiplied in recent years. “The Cache
Economy” considers biopolitics in a socialist context and argues that contemporary bio-banks,
often understood as profit-driven capitalist fabrications, unexpectedly have their origins in
socialist economies of scarcity.
Author: Stephen Snobelen
Title: Isaac Newton and the Genesis Creation
Abstract: Historians of science have long studied the interplay between biblical interpretation
and the rise of science. Recent work has suggested that biblical interpretation often played a
positive role in the development of empirical science. This paper considers both Isaac Newton’s
views on the Genesis Creation and what effect they had on the development of his natural
philosophy. Newton’s writings on the Genesis Creation are found in no single treatise, but are
fragmentary and spread through six decades of theological, prophetic, alchemical and natural
philosophical manuscripts. The sources include his undergraduate notebook, drafts for his
Principia and Opticks and his 1680-1681 correspondence with Thomas Burnet, who used
Cartesianism to explain Mosaic sacred history. The recent accessibility of these papers allows a
reconstruction of Newton’s views on Genesis. Beginning with a brief survey of contemporary
views on the Genesis Creation (including those of Bishop Ussher), this paper reconstructs
Newton’s own positions. Did Newton (like Galileo) use the hermeneutics of accommodation to
reconcile the new astronomy with Genesis, including the description of the heavenly bodies in
Day 4? Did he develop a Mosaic cosmogony? To what extent did he distinguish between
creation and subsequent natural history? Did he differentiate creatio prima from creatio
secunda? What about creatio ex nihilo? And how do his beliefs about the Genesis Creation relate
to the Principia and Opticks? These are some of the questions treated in this first study dedicated
to Newton’s views on the Mosaic account of origins.
Author: Mark Solovey
<mark.solovey@utoronto.ca>
Title: To Measure, Monitor, and Manage the Nation’s Social Progress: U.S. Senator Walter
Mondale’s Initiative to Create a Council of Social Advisers, 1967-1974
Abstract: Social indicators, quantitative or qualitative measures of social well-being, flourished
as a topic of study in the U.S. and elsewhere from the late 1960s until the mid 1970s. Their rising
popularity is often ascribed to a backlash against purely economic measures of society, while
their decline has usually been blamed on their inability to live up to promised potential.
However, the link between the academic production of social indicators and the political demand
for such indicators has been largely unexplored. Between 1967 and 1974, U.S. Senator Walter
Mondale, with the encouragement of action-oriented social scientists, attempted to pass
legislation that would have formed a Council of Social Advisers (CSA) and mandated an annual
social report by the President, largely based on social indicators. The CSA proposal was
explicitly modeled after the Council of Economic Advisers, and sought both to emulate and
counterbalance its precursor’s ability to measure, monitor, and manage the nation’s welfare.
Shortly after Mondale stopped pursuing this initiative, it faded from view; it has also been
forgotten (or ignored) by historians. Our talk will describe Mondale’s efforts, consider the
involvement of economists and other social scientists (and their views for and against his
proposal), and examine links between the political process and the social indicators movement.
Though the analysis here is historical, this episode may also be worth looking at in light of recent
efforts in a similar direction, including George Washington University political scientist Amitai
Etzioni’s 2009 proposal to create a White House Council of Social Advisers.
Author: Sverker Sörlin
<sorlin@kth.se>
Title: Producing Arctic Climate Change: Hans Ahlmann’s ‘Polar Warming’ Theory in the Field
and in the Media, 1920 to 1960
Abstract: In the first half of the 20th century there were attempts to demonstrate and explain
climate change with empirical focus on different regions of the world. One of those regions was
Scandinavia and the North Atlantic where Stockholm geographer Hans Ahlmann conducted
multi-site glaciological field work since 1920. The results led Ahlmann to launch, in the 1930’s,
his theory of “polar warming.” This paper will outline the style of field work that Ahlmann
conducted, often in collaboration with local informants and partners among native Sámi,
Greenland Inuit, and Icelandic farmers, and it will contextualize his quest for precision in
emulating the ideal of the laboratory. His data suggested a comprehensive warming trend, but
only in the polar regions. He was sceptical of global warming and human climate forcing. In
particular the paper will contextualize Ahlmann’s theory in the science politics of climate change
as it appeared in diplomacy and the media, where it was at times heavily publicized, both in
Scandinavia, the UK, and in North America. He could also disseminate his ideas on polar
warming in his post- WW II career as a friend of the Soviet Union, a diplomat (ambassador to
Oslo 1950 to 1956), and as advisor to the Swedish and Norwegian governments. The case of
Ahlmann’s ultimately ill-fated theory of polar warming demonstrates how climate change as a
social fact is produced in a complex process involving not only science, but also local
knowledge, the mass media, and politics.
Author: Thomas A. Stapleford
Title: Re-Imagining Markets: The U.S. Consumer Movement and Federal Economists, 19201970
Abstract: During the interwar years, the U.S. federal government housed a plethora of
economists with strong ties to a revitalized consumer movement. These ties, maintained in no
small part by female economists, helped drive both major policy initiatives and more subtle (yet
important) conceptual approaches to the empirical work done by government economists. By the
mid- to late-1960s, however, the links between economists and the “third wave” of the consumer
movement had severely eroded, damaged by both the fall of home economics as an academic
discipline, anti-communist attacks on participants in the interwar consumer movement, and
changes in the economics profession itself. In this paper, I sketch the broad outlines of this
narrative while using one example – the assessment of product quality in consumer goods -- to
illustrate an important intellectual consequence of these broken ties, namely inattention to how
ignorance affects consumer markets.
Author: Jennifer Steenshorne
Title: "A Treatise of Buggs": The Use and Re-Use of Natural History in 18th-Century England
Abstract: In 1730, John Southall published A Treatise of Buggs, an examination of the history
and means of eradication of the Cimex lectularius, or the bed bug. What makes Southall’s
“treatise” interesting is his dedication of the work to Sir Hans Sloane, “First Physician in
Ordinary to His Majesty; President of the Royal Society, and also of the College of Physicians,”
claiming that not only had Sloane endorsed the work, but introduced Southall to the Royal
Society, thus gaining the approval of its members. He included a plate of the lifecycle of the bed
bug, engraved by Sloane’s own engraver. Southall used the prestige of the Royal Society and
cloak of Natural History to back up his claims and sell his product. Southall’s pamphlet made
reappearance in 1793, reprinted in its entirety (including plate), by a “physician” now dedicated
to the president of the Linnean Society, Sir James Edward Smith. The title was changed to the
more “scientific” A Treatise on the Cimex Lectularius; Or, Bed Bug. This new edition was
purportedly published in response to the request of “numerous respectable gentlemen” in light of
the “great increase of these nauseous insects.” Is this pamphlet merely an interesting footnote to
natural history? This paper will examine the two editions of Southall’s work to show how
popular literature and natural history were intertwined, how something could be both a “clever
advertisement” and an early examination of the Cimex lectularius and its habits.
Author: Joan Steigerwald
<steiger@yorku.ca>
Title: The Subject as Instrument: Galvanic Experiments, Organic Apparatus and Problems of
Calibration
Abstract: What was being studied in galvanic experiments? Galvanic phenomena promised a
new technique for investigating the roles of nerves and muscle fibers in effecting muscular
contractions. They also appeared to introduce new forms of electricity, electricity generated in
organic material and through metallic contact. They were also productive of chemical changes in
organic parts and metals, and were suggestive of relationships between chemistry, electricity and
organic processes. But because galvanic experiments intersected with such a variety of
phenomena and interests, it was not always clear in these experiments what was being studied —
what constituted the phenomena being investigated, what was the apparatus generative of that
phenomena, and what was the instrument reading that phenomena? The human subject
intervened into galvanic experiments not only as the subject trying to make sense of the
phenomena, but also as a corporeal part of the experiments, as a sensitive instrument capable of
reading the phenomena. The experimental subject inserted himself as an instrument into the
experiment because it was not always clear from the entanglement of animal parts, metals and
liquids how to distinguish the phenomena investigated from the instruments of their
investigation. This paper focuses on the galvanic experiments of Alexander von Humboldt and
Johann Wilhelm Ritter. The self-experiments of Humboldt and Ritter acted as further witnesses
to their experiments with frogs, confirming their reading of those results and their calibration of
frogs as instruments, and extending the instrumentality of their experiments into the subject as
well as the object studied.
Author: Thomas Steinhauser
Title: Materials, Methods, and Management: the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Physical
Chemistry under the National Socialists
Abstract: The era of Fritz Haber in Berlin-Dahlem ended in 1933. Due to the racist legislation
of the new NS-government he and the leading scientists of his Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for
physical Chemistry left in 1933. A group supervised by the new provisional director Gerhart
Jander tried to re-organize the facility as a military research center. The attempt failed and from
1935 on, the new director Peter Adolf Thiessen implemented again a more scientifically oriented
structure. Thiessen, a national socialist and talented science manager connected research objects,
methods, and ideological attitude in a way that made his institute a first-class address with
excellent resources in the scientific landscape of NS-Germany. Moreover, elements of his
scientific program survived the Nazi régime, because the personal research agendas of many
young scientists and PhD students at the institute were coined by the projects and the outstanding
available equipment. The talk wants to sketch the activities at Thiessen's institute with a focus
not only on the administrational history, but on the relations between the scientific work done at
this institute and the different political fields of warfare, autarky, and education. This shows how
the researchers at this institute adapted to the specific national demands and how they also
followed up their own professional traditions creating interdependencies between scientific and
national interests.
Author: Anne M. Stiles
Title: Silas Weir Mitchell’s Nervous Malady and its Influence on the Rest Cure
Abstract: Nineteenth-century American neurologist and novelist Silas Weir Mitchell is perhaps
best known for his creation of the rest cure for nervous women, whom he compared to vampires
and subjected to a mind-numbing regimen of bed rest, isolation, and overfeeding. In fact,
Mitchell’s own experience with mental illness – a factor seldom discussed by the physician or
his biographers – may have helped to shape the development of the rest cure. Mitchell was a selfdescribed neurasthenic who often suffered from the same headaches, insomnia, depression, and
other ailments that plagued his female patients. Mitchell’s punitive treatments of female
neurasthenics helped deflect attention from his own nervous illness, which he described in letters
to friends and alluded to in his novels about traumatized Civil War veterans. In his writings and
clinical practice, Mitchell tried to distance himself from his suffering female patients by vilifying
and infantilizing them in various ways. Moreover, Mitchell’s attempt to popularize and treat
George Beard’s fashionable new disorder, neurasthenia, was a calculated way to distance himself
from the pejorative (and feminizing) diagnosis of hysteria. This label he reserved for his more
resistant female patients. This talk will explore how and why one man’s personal experience of
nervous illness helped institutionalize negative attitudes toward similarly afflicted women.
Author: Michael Stolberg
Title: Fat, Dumb, Slow, and Prone to Sudden Death: Obesity in Early Modern Medicine
Abstract: The perception of obesity as one of the major health risks of mankind and the rise of
the ideal of a slim, slender body are both widely seen as developments of the 19th and 20th
centuries only. A closer look at early modern medical writing shows, however, that obesity was
widely discussed and commented upon as undesirable, unhealthy and sometimes fatal in the 16th
and 17th centuries already. Apoplexy, asthma, putrid fevers and other deadly diseases were
attributed to excessive fat in the body. Obese people were also described as endowed with a
range of undesirable physical and mental qualities, from ugliness and physical immobility to a
lack of intelligence and courage. Drawing on early modern textbooks on pathology and medical
practice, on several dozens of specialist treatises and dissertations about fat and obesity, and on
histories of individual cases of obese patients this paper will analyze learned medical accounts of
the nature, causes, effects and treatment of obesity in the period roughly between 1540 and 1680.
It will trace the negative images medical authors associated with obesity. It will sketch their
efforts to provide a plausible explanation of the underlying pathological processes which made
some of the negative traits of obese people appear as a virtually inevitable, natural necessity.
And it will examine the driving forces behind the physicians’ interest in this topic and the
response with which their warnings met among the general population.
Author: Bruno Strasser
Title: “The Fourth Paradigm”? Natural History in Silico
Abstract: The “data deluge” is upon us. The resulting “flood” threatens to “drown” all of those
who have not learned to “swim in a sea of data”. From the pages of the Economist to those of
Nature, such aquatic (and biblical) metaphors for the new threat posed to humanity by an
unprecedented amount of data have abounded. Statements about data floods, unlike those of sea
floods resulting from climate change, seem to attract few skeptics. Scientists, and quite a few
social scientists, have announced how this new environment could lead to the emergence of a
“data-driven” science and a “Fourth Paradigm” – i.e., to follow previous empirical, theoretical,
and computational paradigms. This paper will bring historical perspective to these claims. It will
argue that, from the Renaissance to the present day, at least one science has been fundamentally
“data-driven”: natural history. The novelty of current “data-driven” research derives, not from its
focus on large amounts of data, but from the hybridization of natural historical and experimental
practices, a process that took place during the twentieth century. In order to examine this claim,
this paper will focus on the place of natural historical practices in the production of knowledge
about the experimentally determined structures of proteins stored in the Protein Data Bank,
founded in 1973. Finally, it will reflect on how this historical perspective can illuminate current
debates about “data-driven” science.
Author: William C. Summers
<william.summers@yale.edu>
Title: Measurement of X-Radiation: From Biology to Physics and Back
Abstract: This paper will explore the interplay between biological studies on X-rays, the
understanding of the physical nature of radiation, and attempts to measure X-rays in the context
of the development of biophysics and radiation science in the early 20th century. The problem of
how to measure the quantity of this new form of radiant energy appeared when X-rays were
applied in medical practice. Early standardization of X-rays by their biological effects used hairloss (epilation dose) as the endpoint against which other methods were compared. Even though
Thompson and Rutherford noted the ionizing power of X-rays in 1896, it was not until 1918 that
Krönig and Friedrich introduced ion production to measure X-rays. International adoption of the
“röentgen” (r) as a unit of X-radiation (based on the number of ions produced in air) did not
come until 1928, however. Radiation measurement was intimately entangled with the changing
understanding of the physics of light, atomic structure, and the interaction of radiation with
matter. When biological experiments used doses measured in physical terms, i.e., quantized ion
pair production, it became possible to use radiation as a mechanistic tool to study genes,
chemical changes, and cells. For example, in a famous paper Timoféef-Ressovsky, Zimmer, and
Delbrück (1935) noted: “Because the radiation was dosed in r-units in the aforementioned
experiments, it can thus be established that, within the broad range of doses tested, the induced
mutation rates are directly and linearly proportional to the ionization rates of the radiation.”
[italics in original]
Author: Mary Sunderland
Title: Collections-based Research at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Abstract: Broad twentieth-century trends in the life sciences deemphasized museum collections
and fieldwork. However, in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, a university-based
museum with no public exhibits, collections steadily guided and defined its research.
Collections-based research, as opposed to field- or laboratory-based work, characterizes the
research conducted at the MVZ throughout the past century’s period of transformative change in
the life sciences. In particular, during his long directorship from 1941-65, the ornithologist Alden
Miller encouraged a range of physiological and biochemical research that involved museum
specimens, such as studies to determine the biochemistry of feather coloration. According to
Miller, the collection was the curator’s primary scientific tool. Presenting curators as researchers
was important to Miller, especially because it was not obvious to his colleagues in the Zoology
Department, where respectable research was increasingly judged in terms of its genetic and/or
molecular content. Aware of this, Miller deliberately promoted research that was both cutting
edge and dependent on the collections. Neither stringently field- nor laboratory-based, this type
of research posed certain clear limitations, but also imbued studies with historical perspective
and theoretical grounding. Research into the physiology of migration, photoperiodicity, and
reproductive cycles relied on museum specimens, contributed to questions of evolution and
speciation, while also incorporating a variety of new techniques and approaches both in the
laboratory and in the field. Examining the MVZ’s collections’ formative role in research during
Miller’s mid-century era sheds light on the changing place of natural history museums in the
biological research community.
Author: Kathryn Tabb
<kathryn.c.tabb@gmail.com>
Title: Charles Darwin and the Natural History of Reason
Abstract: Late in his career Charles Darwin famously used photographs of mental patients to
illustrate the expression of emotions. My paper traces Darwin’s interest in insanity back almost
fifty years to his stint as a medical student at Edinburgh. The young Darwin heard phrenologists
like W.A.F. Browne and transmutationists like Robert Grant reject the rationalist psychology of
the Scottish Enlightenment in favor of the associationism of Locke and Hume. Phrenology
brought the mind under the control of science by locating it with precision within the brain,
where it could be annexed by evolutionary theorists – and later by the first mental psychologists,
whom Darwin would influence profoundly. While Darwin was never an enthusiast for
phrenology, I argue that the so-called “metaphysical notebooks,” written fifteen years after
Darwin left Edinburgh, reveal the lasting influence of this period upon his thought. Eager for a
materialist revolution – “M. Le Comte’s idea of theological state of science, grand idea,” he
scribbled in 1838 – Darwin drew on the insights into mental illness of his physician father and
transmutationist grandfather to sketch a primitive theory of embodied reason. In fragments,
Darwin suggests that the insane behaviors of the individual are analogous to the instinctual
behaviors of the species. On both the individual and the species, memory leaves its mark. I
conclude that while Darwinian evolution revolutionized the sciences of mind, it was itself
inspired by the efforts of earlier natural philosophers and, notably, medical materialists, to reveal
the natural history of reason through empirical methods.
Author: Adam Takahashi
<adam.takahashi@gmail.com>
Title: The Animation of the Heavens in Albert the Great’s De caelo et mundo
Abstract: Albert the Great (1200-80) wrote a commentary on Aristotle’s On the Heavens under
the title De caelo et mundo (ca. 1250), which constituted (after the Physica) the second part of
his project of paraphrasing and commenting upon Aristotle. In this treatise, he developed a
sophisticated system of the universe, paying special attention to Aristotle’s discussion of the
animation of the heavens. This idea, according to which the universe is conceived as a great
living being, was popular among the ancient Greeks, who viewed it not as a primitive
superstition, but as a persuasive scientific doctrine. This idea continued to be discussed through
the ages, and was seriously debated by early modern physicians and scientists, including Fernel,
Bruno, Galileo and Kepler. Aristotle’s theory has been rather neglected by historians in
comparison to its counterpart, the Platonic doctrine of the “World-Soul” (anima mundi). The
present paper examines the case of Albert’s reception of this theory. In this connection, notions
such as the active intellect, celestial causality and cosmic heat will be shown to be crucial for
understanding his conception of the universe as being organized in analogy to living beings. This
paper will also cast light on Averroes’ transformation of this theory, and the way in which
Albert, in turn, used Averroes’ elaboration for his interpretation of Aristotle’s original theory.
Author: Ying Jia Tan
<yingjia.tan@yale.edu>
Title: Intersecting Worldviews: Ricci World Maps in China
Abstract: This paper examines the historical context of the maps and geographical treatises
published by the Jesuits in China from 1584 to 1644, focusing primarily on Matteo Ricci’s
Kunyu wanguo quantu and Liangyi xuanlan tu published around 1603. Based on a close reading
of the contents on both versions of the map, it situates the Ricci world maps within the evidential
learning movement that called for the revival of classical mathematics and natural history in the
late Ming. This paper demonstrates how Ricci and his Jesuit colleagues participated in the
cosmological debate in the late Ming about the sphericity of the Earth when they published the
world maps. Through this intricate process of co-authorship, the Jesuits and their Chinese
collaborators harmonized Western and Chinese conceptions of the cosmos and presented the
humanist vision of a harmonious world under one heaven in the world map. This paper also
looks at the material culture surrounding the production of the world map. The strategic
employment of woodblock printing, the economies of exchange of geographical prints and the
inclusion of multiple prefaces were some examples of how the Ricci world maps combined the
printing practices of China and Early Modern Europe. A critical reexamination of the Jesuit
world maps challenges the conventional image of the Jesuits as the scientific apostolate and
allows one to appreciate the map as the product of a cross-cultural pictorial conversation.
Author: Ksenia Tatarchenko
Title: Splitting and Optimizing in Mathematics and Politics: the History of “Lions-Marchuk”
Cooperation in Numerical Methods (1966-1993)
Abstract: “We work more like the Russians,” wrote Jacques-Louis Lions, the prominent French
mathematician, to the director of the Los Almos Laboratory, following his 1977 visit to the
institution renowned for its supercomputers and research in numerical analysis. The statement is
rather problematic when considered in light of two common assumptions dominating the history
of Soviet computing: Soviet computers were few and not very good; levels of secrecy were
extremely high, causing isolation from the international scientific community during the Cold
War. Yet the comment by French scholar was not a complaint, but an allusion to fundamental
differences in approach and practice across the Atlantic. This paper demonstrates that a more
nuanced picture of Soviet computing emerges when it is not measured solely against the
American record and when computers are considered primarily as scientific instruments. The
case under investigation is the so-called “Lions-Marchuk” collaboration under the umbrella of
the Soviet-French bilateral agreement of 1966. Cooperation in computing became one of the
most successful aspects of this Détente agreement thanks to the efforts of Jacques-Louis Lions
and Guriy Marchuk, applied mathematicians who shared strong interests in splitting methods. By
the 1980s, both scientists were propelled to the highest levels of the national scientific
administration and techno-politics in their respective countries. This bi-national cooperation was
maintained through their networks well into the 1990s. I will explore how the "Lions-Marchuk"
cooperation became possible and its implications for science, institutions and politics in France
and the USSR.
Author: David Theodore
<theodore@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: The Hospital of the 20th Century: Folk Taxonomies and Contested Ideals
Abstract: This essay explores three key architectural proposals made for Montreal’s Royal
Victoria Hospital. My goal is to understand the way hospital architecture embodies and sustains
specific tensions between (folk) taxonomies of medical knowledge and (contested) ideals of
clinical practice. The broader goal is to conceptualize space in the history of science beyond
knowledge legitimization and the ”reflection” of medical progress. I argue that emphasizing a
symbolic role for hospital plans is one of the key ways doctors maintained the definition of the
hospital as a medical institution, despite its philanthropic beginnings and ever-widening social
roles. The paper examines: H. Saxon Snell’s grandiose initial plans for the hospital published in
the important British architectural journal The Builder in 1893; the plans for the postwar surgical
and medical buildings published in hospital journals in 1955 and 1956; and unpublished plans for
a radical reconstruction of the hospital in 1970. The architectural drawings document a change
from disease-based to organ-based clinical practice, from nursing-based to “family-centered”
care. As a coda, the current unbuilt proposal for a new Montreal “superhospital” will bring the
story up to date. My analysis draws on recent scholarship in visual history of science and the
architecture of museums and display. Since administrators, physicians, builders, and donors all
modify architectural proposals, plans can be read as evidence of how the hospital choreographs
these groups into larger social organizations. But as well, as substantial points of contact between
these participants, architectural drawings bridge social and medical ideals.
Author: Tian, Song <tiansong9@gmail.com>
Title: Why does a human, a mammal, have to drink milk of cow, another mammal?---Milk
Myth, A Study on Milk Phenomena in Contemporary China Since 1980s
Abstract: Milk consumption and production in China have increased more than 25 times since
1980. It indicated that an increasing number of Chinese people, who consumed fewer dairy
products before 1980s, have developed a new habit of drinking milk. Why and how did this
change occur? What consequences have this change caused? I propose three main reasons for the
milk phenomena in China: nutritionists’ assertion of “milk is nutritious”, governmental
promotion, and commercial advertisement, and these three enhanced each other under the
ideology of scientism. I argue that, it is not neutral and objective in the production and
dissemination of the scientific knowledge which claimed that “milk is good for health”, and they
are closely related to the very idea and the interest of dairy industry. By analyzing the milk
phenomena in China, I argue that “historical evidence” is more important than “scientific
evidence”; milk is not necessary for human’s health, especially for most Chinese nations (min
zu), and furthermore, the “industrialized milk” sold all over current markets is harmful for health.
The fashion of drinking milk in China can be perceived as a kind of witchcraft-scientific
witchcraft, from which the dairy industry is the biggest beneficiary. Lastly, I stress that
industrialized cattle breeding and milk producing violate the basic principles of animal ethics; a
large industrialized cattle farm, as an abnormal part of the local ecology, must result in
environmental consequences. I take milk as an example for showing the shared aspects of any
industrial product in the so-called industrial civilization.
Author: Leslie Tomory
Title: The Origins of William Brownrigg's Theory of Airs: Links between Medicine and
Pneumatic Chemistry
Abstract: In the 1740s, William Brownrigg articulated a theory of pneumatic chemistry that
broke from the still dominant Aristotelian and iatrochemical traditions that regarded air as one of
the fundamental elements. In five unpublished papers presented to the Royal Society, he
effectively argued that airs represented a different state of matter, and that atmospheric air was in
fact a mixture of many different kinds of airs that only held their elasticity in common. These
ideas are particularly important because he formulated them well before Joseph Black’s results
about fixed air were published in 1758, and give an insight into the roots of pneumatic chemistry
as it developed in the eighteenth century. In this paper, I examine the sources of Brownrigg’s
ideas and particularly the ways in which they related to contemporary medical theory and
practice. Inspired by his medical training, Brownrigg investigated how airs reacted with the
human body. Using medicines as an analogy, he argued that since airs produced different effects
on the human body, similar to the solids or liquids which had produced them, these airs must be
as different as solid and liquids are. Brownrigg’s chemico-medical ideas are further linked to key
notions about the medicinal properties of airs advanced by Joan Baptista van Helmont and
Friedrich Hoffmann.
Author: Dominique Tournès
Title: Off the Target? Exact Solution to Approximate Differential Equations in 18th- and 19thCentury Ballistics
Abstract: Among the many methods devised to compute firing tables, one is to delete or modify
certain terms of differential equations of ballistics to make them integrable in finite form.
Inaugurated by Johann Bernoulli, this approach was particularly cultivated by Borda, Bézout,
Legendre, and Français for the case of air resistance proportional to the square of the velocity,
then by other authors for various laws of resistance supposed to correspond better to experience.
We study this approach over the 18th and 19th centuries and examine the following questions:
what are the numerical tables which were calculated according to this method and to what extent
have they been actually used by the artillerymen? How was the mathematical part of the error
estimated, coming from the fact that one changes terms in the differential equations? What
interactions can be identified between theoretical processes and empirical observations, both in
the choice a priori of the simplifications of equations and in the experimental verification of
results provided by tables ?
Author: Meg Upchurch
Title: Transgendered Cells: A History of Metaphors about Astrocytes
Abstract: Cells within the nervous system are generally divided into two types: neurons and
glia. Neurons, long-known to have the capacity to change their electrical potential, hence to be
"active," have received the bulk of attention from researchers. Indeed, the study of the nervous
system is called neuroscience, whether the cells being studied are neurons or not. Over the past
two decades, researchers have accumulated evidence that one form of glial cell, the astrocyte,
contributes to communication within the nervous system in a fashion that is increasingly
characterized as "active." As understanding of the communication functions of astrocytes
developed, metaphorical descriptions of them changed from lifeless "packing material" to
"housekeepers," "nursemaids," and other social roles characterized by female gender and
subordinate status. Two turning points in the conceptualization of glial cells came when
researchers reported that chemicals released from astrocytes appeared to regulate the formation
of communication points between neurons and that astrocytes were responsible for generating
the oxygen level changes valued by researchers studying brain function. With this evidence that
glial cells not only contribute to, but actively regulate, processes highly valued by
neuroscientists, glial cells moved up in social rank and changed gender, becoming "masters of
the synapse" and "architects of the brain." The increased appreciation of glial cell function did
not eliminate the use of hierarchical, sociopolitical metaphors to describe these cells, but as the
cells become more valuable to nervous system function, they become more "male."
Author: Helen Veit < hveit@msu.edu>
Title: The Cultural Algebra of Nutrition: Rational Eating & Dietary Substitution in the
Progressive Era
Abstract: In the first three decades of the twentieth century, nutrition metamorphosed from the
obsession of cranks and faddists into a respected science. In these years, the popularization of
calories made food energy readily quantifiable while the discovery of vitamins made it seem
crucial to control what kinds of food fueled human engines. The exhilarating message of modern
nutrition science was that when food was broken down into component parts, educated people
could maximize their intake of desired components by substituting one part, or one food, for
another. Food became the variable in a powerful new kind of cultural algebra, and this logic of
nutritional equivalence contributed to the increasingly popular notion that Americans could and
should eat rationally. Based on this ideal, reformers in the early 1900s informed the poor that
they should give up meat, eat cheaper forms of protein, and save money; by the 1910s, the U.S.
government demanded that Americans eat substitutes like cornmeal and fish instead of wheat
and beef needed for food aid shipments to Europe; and by the 1920s, Americans used scientific
dietary substitution as a central strategy in a new cultural obsession with reducing weight.
Backed by nutrition science, dietary substitution sparked a revolution in the ways Americans
thought about food and their bodies. Indeed, it relied on an ideological substitution of its own:
namely, when choosing what to eat, Americans should think about thrift or national security or
health, rather than following the blind dictates of habit or pleasure or tradition.
Author: Jeremy Vetter
<jvetter@email.arizona.edu>
Title: Capitalist Nature: The Sciences of Development in the American West, 1860-1920
Abstract: In the modern world, knowledge and control of nature have been increasingly
dominated by scientific expertise. This paper adopts an environmental region—the American
West, focusing on the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains—as its unit of analysis and asks how
that region became known scientifically. In other words, how were that region’s natural
resources and diverse environmental characteristics described, analyzed, and transformed by
knowledge makers who were connected with the expanding system of metropolitan, global
science? Previous studies of science and environment in this period have emphasized the
involvement of scientific experts in the origins of natural resource conservation and
environmental reform. This paper complements the existing literature by shifting the historical
focus to the issue of economic development. Despite the importance of conservation and reform,
especially for leading national scientific figures, historical evidence suggests that the framework
of economic development and resource exploitation was even more central to the practice of
science in relation to the environment and society. To be sure, threads of conservation thinking
were also significant, but within this region (and even outside of it to a great extent) such ideas
were subordinate to larger capitalist developmental goals. Yet to serve as “sciences of
development,” these bodies of knowledge had to be articulated as distinct from capitalist profitmaking and economic motives. Among the many “sciences of development,” this paper deploys
examples from geology, meteorology, soil science, agrostology (study of range grasses),
agronomy, and biogeography.
Author: Anne C. Vila
Title: The Burning Pleasures of Gastro-Chic: Modern Stimulants, Health, and the 'Nervous
Temperament' from Lorry to Balzac
Abstract: At the outset of his "Traité des excitants modernes" (1839), Balzac declared that the
absorption of certain recently introduced foodstuffs, like coffee and tea, had taken on such
excessive proportions that modern societies and their inhabitants were being changed in
inestimable ways. Balzac thus summed up several decades of worry in Francophone Europe
concerning what could be called an early version of gastro-chic. Although both coffee and tea
had lost their status as foreign curiosities by the mid 1750, they still attracted attention from
medical hygienists like Lorry and Tissot, who criticized their near universal use among men of
letters and others of 'nervous temperament'. Anxiety over heavy tea- or coffee-drinking focused
both on their "burning" effects on the body's digestive organs and on the transformations which
this gastronomic fashion seemed to wreak on the mood and mind. As Balzac would later put it,
coffee was especially attractive and pernicious to those he called "you illustrious Human
Candles--you who consume your own brilliant selves with the heat and light of your minds."
This paper will examine the pleasures and dangers which eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury French physicians and moralists attributed to coffee- and tea-drinking among studious
males. It will consider both the fear these authors sought to instill in their readers toward coffee
and tea, and the curious body-mind circuits they imagined were set in play by the consumption
of these substances.
Author: Marco Viniegra
<viniegra@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: The Medieval Hippocrates: a Late Middle Ages Transformation of the Greek Medical
Tradition.
Abstract: During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a master collection of medical writings
was established as the canon basis of medical teaching at universities across Europe: known in
Italy as the Articella, it contained works attributed to Hippocrates and his self-proclaimed
disciple of the second century, Galen. (Galen had become the main source of Hippocratic
medicine.) Within the canon, medical authors of the time also created sets of subtexts containing
commentaries to the Hippocratic and Galenic documents, integrated in different editions of the
Articella according to the needs of the editors, the learned medical writers themselves. One of
these texts, the Divisio librorum Ypocratis, elaborated by Marsilio Santasofia in the late
fourteenth century, lists and describes nineteen Hippocratic texts that are outside of the canon
and contradict formally the conventional Galenic reading of Hippocratic medicine. This list was
intended to provide a small group of highly learned medical practitioners attending to monarchs
all over Europe with a new understanding of Hippocrates and the nature of medicine. Why did
these authors oppose Galen and introduce new radical interpretations of such tradition? How
does this transformation alter our understanding of Hippocrates, Galen, and Hippocratic
medicine? Why has this break away from Galen been ignored by practitioners and historians of
medicine? I will address these questions while arguing that the compilers and commentators of
the Articella broke away from the established Galen-based reading of Hippocrates and created
new relationships between new and old texts, re-inventing the Hippocratic tradition and opposing
it to Galen.
Author: Alexei Volkov
Title: Chinese Mathematics in Vietnam: Transmission and Adaptation
Abstract: The transmission of mathematical knowledge from China to Vietnam started as early
as Vietnam gained its independence in the 10th century AD; however, until recently no efforts
have been made by Western or Asian scholars to investigate this case. My investigation of the
history of transmission of Chinese mathematical knowledge to Vietnam in the 15th-20th
centuries involves a series of questions that can be formulated as follows: What were the Chinese
and Vietnamese social institutions in which scientific knowledge was generated, perpetuated,
and eventually transmitted or received? What were the motives for the transmission or reception
of this knowledge? What were the social positions and functions of the individuals involved and
what were their political agendas? How was the process of transmission implemented; was it
sporadic or planned, continuous or not, performed via written texts or oral instructions? In order
to answer these questions, I will present the results of my study of the extant Vietnamese
mathematical treatises preserved in the Library of the Institute of Han Nom Studies and in the
National Library of Vietnam (both in Hanoi, Vietnam), and in the library of the French School of
the Far East (EFEO, Paris, France). I will also present biographical information concerning
Vietnamese mathematicians of the 15th-19th centuries found in various Vietnamese historical
documents.
Author: Adelheid Voskuhl
<avoskuhl@fas.harvard.edu>
Title: Natural Histories of State and Industry: Proto-Industrial Artisan Production and State
Sciences in 18th-Century Europe
Abstract: Artisan workshops and manufactures were subjects of interest for a wide range of
people in Europe in the eighteenth century, just “before” the Industrial Revolution. Travelers,
scholars of government and economics, writers, and industrialists embarked on journeys and
produced texts about manufactures and their interaction with the state and society. Among these
works were encyclopedias, multi-volume econo-geographical reports, theoretical treatises,
textbooks, and epistolary travel reports. They provided insight into the wide regional variety of
manufacture, as well as theoretical reflection on the implications of industry, trade, and luxury
for the common good. Constituting this body of knowledge as a legitimate academic discipline
was actively promoted at the time by scholars, bureaucrats, and princes, and the knowledge
served a number of epistemic, social, and political functions (as Andre Wakefield’s work on
cameralism has shown). I look at this body of knowledge as an effort at the time to constitute
jointly as objects of empirical and theoretical inquiry the European states and their industrial
development – an effort to create a “natural history” of the state and its manufactures. Bringing
together questions from the history of science and the history of technology in this study allows
me to trace how man-made industry and labor became subject to empirical ordering and
theoretical reasoning in ways parallel to the natural history of the natural world, and it also
allows me to compare with each other perspectives at the time on the epistemic and metaphysical
status of “scientific” knowledge in relation to “technological” knowledge.
Author: Erich Weidenhammer
Title: Modernizing Medicine in the Enlightenment: John Pringle and the Medical Place of
Chemical Knowledge
Abstract: When the medical foundations of the eighteenth-century chemical advances are
properly considered, one must still talk of a vast epistemological common ground shared by
experimenters working within and without the medical trades. This space was informed by a
common desire to fuse experimental philosophy with key medical issues. The paper explores this
transitional period in the chemical discipline by examining the career of Scottish-born physician
John Pringle (1707-1782), president of the Royal Society (1772-1778) and personal physician to
King George III. The paper studies Pringle's experimental methodology, investigating
putrefaction and antiseptic medicine, which won him much acclaim beginning in the 1750s and
proved influential in the emerging domain of pneumatic chemistry. Mme. d'Arconville's essay on
putrefaction and Joseph Priestley’s early pneumatic experiments are shown to have roots in
Pringle's work. The argument integrates Pringle's contribution as a natural philosopher with his
lifelong connection to the vibrant Edinburgh medical community, and particularly, his
substantial contribution to the modernization of its pharmacopeia. Although traditionally
considered within the respective domains of chemical and medical historians, these two aspects
of his career are really part of a common effort to establish the ‘materia medica’ on an empirical
footing and to investigate the medical potential of recent discoveries.
Author: Martin Weiss
<weiss@strw.leidenuniv.nl>
Title: "You say musaeum, I say museum…"
Abstract: Things always get interesting when a large sum of money suddenly becomes
available. When the Mennonite Dutchman Pieter Teyler van der Hulst died a rich, childless
widower in 1778, it turned out he had bequeathed his fortune to a foundation that was to be set
up in his name, and stipulated that the money be used to stimulate "theology, the arts and
sciences, and the common good". In something of a liberal interpretation of Teyler's words, the
energetic young doctor Martinus van Marum then persuaded the trustees of this foundation to
construct the magnificent Teyler Museum. Through his own work, van Marum subsequently
turned this into a major centre of scientific research in the Netherlands. He corresponded with
and met eminent contemporaries such as Lavoisier, Banks, Goethe, and Franklin. Yet it soon
transpired that the trustees had other interests besides science. Above all, van Marum's blatant
utilitarianism didn't go down well with his financial backers. The conflicts that inevitably ensued
are revealing with regards to the different concepts of science that existed at the dawn of
modernism, and how they could clash. This paper will focus specifically on the role of the
museum in these debates. Intriguingly, the museum (as van Marum called it), or musaeum (as the
trustees referred to it) seems to have formed the eye of the storm. Tensions ran higher, for
instance, over the matter of public lectures. Finally, it will be shown how the museum's
collection policy heralded an increasing split between art and science.
Author: Stephen P. Weldon <spweldon@ou.edu>
Title: World History of Science Online: Preparing for the Future of Information Discovery
Abstract: Under the auspices of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of
Science, The World History of Science Online is an international collaborative effort whose
purpose is to engage the needs of scholars doing research in the global and digital research
environment. Its purpose is to create and foster truly global finding aids, to do so in ways that
cater to the particularities of historical thinking, and in ways that recognize the limitations of
both users and suppliers of discovery tools. Information discovery in the digital age must meet a
number of competing interests. We need tools that are interconnected; tools that are accessible to
scholars regardless of their institutional affiliation; tools designed with historical research in
mind, that take into account the varieties of resources, from archival finding aids to
bibliographical databases to digitized documents. As serious scholars with complex historical
research, we must move beyond the Wild West of the Web and the increasingly common
Google-style search strategies. WHSO (see our website at http://www.dhst-whso.org/) began in
2003 as an effort to increase access to digital resources worldwide. The plans, goals, and
challenges of this project will be discussed.
Author: Jacqueline Wernimont
Title: Calculating Possible Worlds: Calculus as Part of the History of Scientific Possible Worlds
Abstract: While Thomas Kuhn’s 1986 paper, “Possible Worlds in the History of Science”
engaged history of science with possible world discourse theory, we have had limited
historicization of the emergence of possible worlds philosophy in the contexts usually explored
by historians of science and mathematics. As a philosophic tradition, possible worlds theory can
be traced back to Gottfried Leibniz. His philosophic statements were intimately linked to his
work on calculus. At the same time that Leibniz faced an epistemological and religious crisis
precipitated by his mathematical work, investigations into the possibility of other worlds by
natural philosophers such as Bernard Fontenelle or Giordano Bruno were emerging as popular
and rigorous explorations of a universe that seemed to have suddenly expanded. This paper will
situate Leibniz's mathematical work and the ensuing philosophic work in the possible worlds of
early modern natural philosophy and within a broader tradition of possible worlds in the history
of science.
Author: François Wesemael
<wesemael@astro.umontreal.ca>
Title: From J. Winthrop, Jr. to E.E. Barnard: The Arduous Path to the First Sighting of the Fifth
Satellite of Jupiter
Abstract: The 1610 observation by Galileo Galilei of the four brightest satellites of Jupiter is
deservedly considered one of the most significant astronomical discoveries of the seventeenth
century. By contrast, Jupiter’s fifth satellite, Amalthea, is a much more difficult object to
observe, as it is 2,000 times fainter than the faintest Jovian satellite observed by Galileo. Even
though several tentative detections of a fifth satellite were reported over the years, it is only in
1892 that a true discovery, made with the Lick Observatory 36-inch refractor, was reported by
the American astronomer Edward E. Barnard. In this contribution, we first review the historical
circumstances surrounding one of these premature reports, namely that made in 1664 by the
governor of the Connecticut Colony, John Winthrop, Jr. Our discussion of Winthrop’s
observations builds and expands upon the analysis of John W. Streeter (Isis, 39, 159-163, 1948).
We then consider the observations carried out by Barnard, and show to what extent this muchdelayed discovery resulted from the combination of his exceptional visual acuity, of the first-rate
telescope optics built by Alvan Clark & Sons, and of very good observing conditions at the site
on top of Mount Hamilton.
Author: Elizabeth A. Williams
<elizabeth.williams@okstate.edu>
Title: Martyrs to the Stomach: Self-Experiment in the Science of Digestion of the Late 18th
Century
Abstract: In the late eighteenth century many physiologists regarded digestion as the most
obscure of the bodily functions and some believed that the best or only way to solve the
mysteries of the stomach was through self-experiment. An inspiring precedent was found in the
life-long self-experimentation pursued by Santorio Santorio (1561-1636) to measure “insensible
perspiration” by charting his own bodily intake and discharges. A century later the Italian
naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani undertook self-experiments designed to illuminate the process of
digestion. Spallanzani ingested a variety of foodstuffs enclosed in cloth or wooden casings to
gauge the relative roles of the gastric juice and so-called “trituration,” the mashing and pounding
of food substances in the stomach. He also engaged in vomiting-at-will to retrieve gastric juice in
which to soak foodstuffs outside the body (“artificial digestion”). Spallanzani’s experiments
closely resembled those pursued by A.-A.-J. Gosse in northern France. Digestive self-experiment
was also undertaken by the English physician William Stark, whose death at the age of twentynine some contemporaries blamed on the extremely restricted diets he adopted to test their
effects on himself. This paper examines these cases of digestive self-experimentation. It then
contrasts subsequent representations of these experiments as acts of investigative heroism to
characterizations of other forms of aberrant eating (anorexia, bulimia, and pica) that
Enlightenment physicians defined as pathological and sought means to curb.
Author: Kelly Wisecup
Title: Cataloging Discovery: Tobacco and Encounter in Sixteenth-Century Virginia
Abstract: Sometime during the winter of 1585-6, English mathematician Thomas Harriot
smoked tobacco in Virginia. Tobacco’s virtues and vices as were already well-known, thanks to
Nicholas Monardes’ herbal of New World medicines, Historia medicinal de las cosas que se
traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (translated into English as Joyfull News out of the New
Found World). Monardes described tobacco’s uses as a medicine and a stimulant, but he also
connected Native American uses with diabolic, magical knowledge, for he wrote that the Natives
smoked tobacco to communicate with the devil. Similarly, Harriot suggested that the Roanoke
Algonquians employed tobacco to enter into trances and to access divine powers. Yet while
Monardes explained tobacco’s effects by referencing ancient authorities’ descriptions of herbs
with similar properties, Harriot described his own experiences smoking tobacco. Specifically, in
his Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, Harriot explained that he
discovered tobacco’s qualities by “suck[ing] it after [the Natives’] manner” (16). Rather than
aligning himself with Native religious practices, however, Harriot placed his description of
tobacco in a catalog, in which he listed tobacco’s virtues and uses. The catalog positioned
tobacco as an object useful for potential colonists and distanced Harriot from aspects of Native
medical knowledge European medical practitioners had described as heathen. This paper
examines colonists’ rhetorical strategies for relating medicinal discoveries; it employs a
transnational and inter-cultural context to investigate how colonists rewrote humoral theories
positing that the Americas would modify their mental and physical characteristics.
Author: Shannon K Withycombe
<skwithycombe@wisc.edu>
Title: Enveloped in Mystery: Nineteenth-Century Embryology Through Miscarriage Materials
Abstract: In 1873 the Philadelphia Obstetrical Society formed a committee to examine in detail
a three-month-old fetus brought to the society by Dr. C. A. McCall. After “a careful microscopic
examination,” the committee decided that the specimen deserved even further study based on its
interesting presentation. Among the questions asked by the committee was “can this be regarded
as a case of superfoetation?” Superfoetation, or the phenomenon of a second conception in a
woman already pregnant, was one of many mysteries of human generation and development that
physicians in nineteenth-century America attempted to solve using fetal tissues obtained from
cases of miscarriage. This paper will survey medical articles from the nineteenth century to
determine how physicians used miscarriage materials for embryological research. Doctors
whisked fetal tissues away from the bedside, floated them, dissected them, shared them with
colleagues, and placed them in museums, in trying to learn more about the secrets of
reproduction. I will also explore the resonance of this embryological work within the larger
scientific community of nineteenth-century America, to piece together the many players –
doctors, scientists, and miscarrying women – involved in discovering the mysteries of human
generation. The construction of the fetus over the course of the nineteenth century required a
large host of historical actors, and this paper will begin to explore the intersections between the
science of reproduction and medical practice.
Author: Barbara Wittmann
Title: The Portrait of a Species: A Case Study on Biological Drawing
Abstract: Biological taxonomy is one of the few fields in which drawing has survived as a
scientific practice of major importance. Indeed, the name and written description of a new
species is regularly supported by a graphic representation. However, beyond their mere
illustrative function, these drawings are deeply involved in generating morphological knowledge.
My paper will trace the pathway of the production of the graphic representation of an Australian
sole fish that was first described and drawn at the Berlin Museum of Natural History in 2006. It
will focus on a close reading of the drawing process and it will show that the success of a
scientific drawing is highly dependent on the smooth interplay between its internal and external
conditions. The power to understand a specimen’s structure will finally turn out as an activity in
which ‘old’ and ‘new media’ merge into unique assemblages, therein creating a ‘flying splice’
between the representation of phenomena and their abductive interpretation.
Author: Charles T. Wolfe
Title: “From Substantival to Functional Vitalism and Beyond: Animal Economies, Organisms
and Existential Attitudes”
Abstract: Vitalism has suffered from its nineteenth-century reinterpretations in terms of ‘vital
forces’ and ‘entelechies’, notably at the hands of Hans Driesch (Driesch 1914). And it continues
to be presented as an extreme, almost mystical view in current biological and philosophical
discourse, with a claim that “living matter is ontologically greater than the sum of its parts”
(Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). But when we consider the writings produced by the 18th-century
‘Montpellier vitalists’ (the physicians associated with the Faculty of Medicine at the University
of Montpellier), notably Théophile de Bordeu, Louis de La Caze, Henri Fouquet, Jean-Joseph
Ménuret de Chambaud and, best-known, Paul-Joseph Barthez, we find no traces of such
metaphysically laden vital forces. Hence one can interpret this ‘Enlightenment’ form of vitalism
as functional rather than substantive (Wolfe 2008, 2009): it is more of an attempt to ‘model’ or
‘describe’ organic life without reducing it to fully mechanical models or processes, than an overt
metaphysics of Life. Here I return to the relation between the Montpelliérain model of organism
(organized bodies, organization, animal economy) and more metaphysically committed forms of
vitalism such as Stahl’s ‘animism’. I suggest that the Newtonian, organizational, functional
models of life developed by the Montpellier vitalists open onto an ‘attitudinal’ vitalism which
can survive the various 20th century counter-arguments, from the Vienna Circle onwards. It is
not a ‘metaphysics of organism’ in the sense of Hegel or of Hans Jonas (cf. Jonas 1966). But
does this attitudinal vitalism still require (or constitute) a metaphysics?
Author: Stefan Wolff
Title: The Deutsches Museum in National Socialism
Abstract: The Deutsches Museum for science and technology in Munich is unique because of its
special exhibitions and its internal structure. It was not run by the state, but was dependent on
financial support from the state and German industry. We have to distinguish different levels
when studying the history of the Museum: the administration with the staff, the exhibitions, and
events for which it served as a location, like in the case of the infamous propaganda exhibition
“The Eternal Jew”. The physicist Jonathan Zenneck was the chairman of the directorate of the
Museum during the entire Nazi period. The Museum was honored by a visit from Hitler and
could open a new exhibition of automobiles as well as one dedicated to the construction of the
motorways in 1938. The latter was planned and financed by leading Nazi engineer Fritz Todt.
Between 1937 and 1940 Todt tried to take over the Museum, but gave up when he became
involved in other matters at the beginning of the war. After the war Zenneck used those
controversies with Todt to claim that he had defended the non-political character of the Museum
against the “Nazis”. This enabled him to claim opposition to the Nazi regime in general. In fact,
the Museum cooperated with the Nazi-state to the advantage of both sides. This was not merely
an opportunistic attitude, rather the result of real convictions.
Author: Aaron Sidney Wright
<aaron.wright@utoronto.ca>
Title: How Do You Draw a Black Hole? Penrose Diagrams in Theoretical Physics and
Cosmology, 1963-1973
Abstract: How can scientists see the unobservable? This paper traces the origins and
development of one tool physicists use to investigate and learn about theoretical objects that are
unobservable in principle: Black holes. Rather than follow experimental or observational
apparatuses, this paper will contribute to the growing effort to study theoretical physicists’ paper
tools for research and for pedagogy. In 1963 Roger Penrose (Birkbeck College) introduced a new
method of picturing the universe. Paralleling the development of Renaissance perspective
drawing, mid-twentieth century mathematicians and physicists developed new ways of thinking
about space and time with new graphical tools. Rather than the traditional flat-perspective
Minkowski diagrams that resemble a regular Cartesian plane, these new “conformal” diagrams
represented infinity—the horizon—as a line on the page. Penrose (or conformal) diagrams
quickly became an important part of research in cosmology, and were adapted to suit
researchers’ differing needs. However, use of the diagrams was also a marker of a scientists’
socialization and philosophical view of the universe. Diagrams were adopted by those who
believed in the centrality and reality of the geometric structure of Einstein’s equations and were
eschewed by those who stressed the centrality and reality of fields above all else. This is
illustrated by contrasting two influential textbooks on cosmology, Gravitation by Charles
Misner, Kip Thorne, and John Wheeler (1973), and Gravitation and Cosmology by Steven
Weinberg (1972). This work will add to our understanding of the computational and
metaphysical power of diagrams in scientific practice.
Author: Christian Wüthrich <wuthrich@ucsd.edu>
Title: A Giants' Singular Struggle: Einstein, de Sitter, Weyl, and Klein's Debate on an Alleged
Singularity
Abstract: This paper explores an early episode in the history of Albert Einstein's general theory
of relativity that turned on the interpretation of singularities. Einstein, in an attempt to restore
stability to an otherwise imploding universe, introduced his infamous cosmological constant into
his equations in 1917. Within a week, the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter produced a
spacetime model of the modified equations. To Einstein's dismay, de Sitter's model violated his
beloved "Mach's principle". Consequently, Einstein set out to nullify de Sitter's model. The
ensuing debate between Einstein and de Sitter, which also draws in, one by one, the
mathematicians Hermann Weyl, Felix Klein and, from afar, David Hilbert quickly degenerates
into what might uncharitably be depicted as a comedy of errors. For over a year, Einstein, de
Sitter, and Weyl fail to recognize that the singularity--a mathematical pathology--they believe to
have identified in de Sitter's model is a mere artefact of an unfortunate choice of coordinates in a
perfectly regular geometrical space, akin to the perfectly regular origin of a polar coordinate
system. This paper seeks to explain this failure and its persistence over a surprisingly long period
by offering an analysis of their correspondence, the mathematical traditions that they have been
trained and operate in, and--paradoxically--their precipitant desire to endow the mathematical
structure with physical meaning. A case will be made that Einstein simply lacked, due to his own
negligence, the requisite mathematical training, while Weyl was led astray by Hilbert's blatantly
inadequate characterization of spacetime singularities.
Author: Yibao Xu
Title: Mathematical Content of Newly-Published Bamboo Strips of the Qin Dynasty
Abstract: In December of 2007, the Yuelu Academy of Changsha, China, purchased a collection
of bamboo strips from an antiques dealer in Hong Kong. Among these strips are more than 220
whose contents are clearly mathematical. Due to the fact that one strip in the group mentions the
thirty-fifth year of the reign of the first Emperor of Qin, the dating of these mathematical strips is
believed to be no later than 212 BCE. At the moment, nothing is known about the archaeological
provenance or the condition of the bamboo strips when they were first discovered, nor is it
known exactly when or from where they were unearthed. But because these strips are apparently
at least twenty-five years earlier than those of the previously earliest-known mathematical work
from ancient China, the筭數書 Suan shu shu (Book on Numbers and Computations), found in a
Western Han tomb in December-January of 1983-1984, the Yuelu strips are extremely important
primary sources for studying Chinese mathematics of the Qin and Han periods (221BCE220CE). Based on recently released reports as well as two published papers by researchers at the
Yuelu Academy, this talk will consider the nature of these strips, analyze their contents, and
explore their relations with both the Suan shu shu and the well-known Chinese classic text,
九章筭術 Jiuzhang suanshu (Art of Mathematics in Nine Chapters).
Author: Chen-Pang Yeang <chenpang.yeang@utoronto.ca>
Title: Mechanical Objectivity or Instrumentalizing Theory? Introducing Automatic Recorders in
Radio Ionospheric Sounding, 1930-39
Abstract: Radio ionospheric sounding refers to an experimental scheme that sends radio waves
to the sky and obtains information about the ionosphere from the returning waves. Within a
decade after World War I, it had become the major means to probe the upper atmosphere. In the
1930s, the U.S. National Bureau of Standards and the U.K. Radio Research Board introduced
instruments to automate data recording in ionospheric sounding. They employed oscillographic
displays, built inscription gadgets, and devised control mechanism to synchronize data
acquisition with the change of sending signals. There are two ways to understand this
instrumental development. We can view it in terms of what Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison
have called “mechanical objectivity” that minimized human interference, facilitated
repeatability, and reduced personal equations. The Bureau of Standards’ design of the automatic
single-frequency sounder corroborated this view. Yet, an alternative way is to understand the
automation as a mechanical embodiment of theory-laden experimental procedures. In other
words, the automation was the instrumentalization of the theory that underscored the
experimental scheme. The American and British researchers’ invention of the sweep-frequency
recorder reckoned precisely the mandate of the magneto-ionic theory, the dominant model of
radio-wave propagation. In this regard, Kuhn and Hansen’s old wisdom that instruments were
theory-loaded constitutes a fresh reminder that the operating principles of apparatuses permeated
even to things as “neutral” as visual interface and data inscription. I argue that this concept of
instrumentalizing theory is useful in examining scientific sensors/detectors in general.
Author: Nasser Zakariya
Title: Genres of Synthesis, and the Works of George Gamow"
Abstract: Across a career spanning many decades, in formative work in nuclear physics,
cosmology and ultimately origins of life, George Gamow published and lectured in a wide
variety of venues. Apart from his extensive technical publications, he also composed highly
successful generalist and popular accounts of biology, geology and physics, textbooks for college
use and a series of Alice-in-Wonderland-like tales of science, the once well-known Mr.
Tompkins series. This latter was ultimately given a filmic treatment by a young Stan Brakhage.
Taken together, these works trace out different genres of synthesis, different schemes for
establishing the unity of science on the basis of different generic or representational forms. These
offer a potential order in Gamow's work, and those of his collaborators, as well as suggesting the
ways in which the technical and more generalist works play off and inform one another. They
indicate a period of time where different schemes for understanding scientific unity were being
experimented with, prior to a moment when a history of the world (and its own implications for a
synthesis of the different scientific disciplines) was to produce consensus.
Author: Fabio Zanin
<fabio.zanin@liceobrocchi.vi.it>
Title: Tracing the Industrial Revolutions to its Origins: Scientific Knowledges and
Technological Innovations in Great Britain (1713-1800)
Abstract: Technological innovations are among the crucial factors at the origins of the Industrial
Revolution in Great Britain. Some historians have recognized the causal nexus between new
scientific knowledges, in fields such as physics and chemistry, and technological innovations.
However, an evaluation of the impact of the spread of scientific knowledges on technological
development hasn’t been tested, yet. I will suggest a method to quantify the scientific knowledge
incorporated in technology, by using a model based on Cavalli Sforza’s theory of cultural
evolution to four different fields of industrial production (1. spinning and weaving of cotton, 2.
bleaching and colour fixing, 3. fusion and moulding of iron, 4. application of Watt’s steam
machine to pumping processes in coal mines), for the period 1713 (2nd edition of Newton’s
Principia Mathematica)-1800 (expiration of the patent of Watt’s steam machine). According to
the theory of cultural evolution, culture is a complex mechanism, in which peculiar unities of
cultural information (ideas) spread like the unities of biological information (genes). Ideas pass
from one person to another by the language, and whenever they are transmitted they undergo
changes; sometimes they go adrift (isolation) or they migrate. The application of an evaluation
model based on such a theory to the research concerning the geographical spread of
technological innovations will make it possible, in my opinion, to answer to the question how
precisely the way scientific knowledges spread was correlated to the success of those innovations
at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Author: Anna Zeide
Title: From Farm to Can: The Canning Industry and Agricultural Production in the Early 20th
Century
Abstract: The canning industry in America first developed to preserve surplus agricultural
products that were intended for local markets. But as the industry expanded in the years after the
Civil War, canning factories began to contract with farmers to grow produce directly for
preserving purposes. This shift brought with it an investment in agricultural research and new
relationships among business, government, and university scientists. Often, the characteristics of
an ideal crop differed based on whether it was destined for the can or the fresh market. For
example, smaller fruits were desired for canning if the fruit was to be canned whole, as this
decreased the time necessary to cook the fruit. So, the project of breeding ideal crops took on a
new face as canners began to sponsor breeding programs of their own. By 1920, the National
Canners Association had established a Bureau of Raw Products Research, which sought to
improve the quality of raw materials that entered canneries. As canners began to sponsor such
research, the industry’s relationship to agriculture became one that was both more controlling
and more cooperative. Whereas other historians have written about how scientific interests and
private seed companies shaped breeding practices, this paper will explore how the burgeoning
food processing industry created a program of applied science around agriculture. The canning
industry exerted pressure on scientific study, which led to a research program at the intersection
of private companies, public universities’ science departments, and agricultural experiment
stations in the early twentieth century.
Author: Marlon Zhu
Title: Typhoon Warning and Local Politics in Shanghai’s Inter-Port Meteorological Scheme,
1869-1882
Abstract: This article deals with the articulating of a network for meteorological observational
scheme along China coast from 1869 to 1882 by the materials on English newspapers in
Shanghai and Hong Kong. Shortly after a severe typhoon in 1881, the Shanghai General
Chamber of Commerce proposed a meteorological scheme for coordinating meteorological
observations along the China coast, on the purpose that typhoon forecasting transmitted by
telegraphic cable was thus to be possible. This paper demonstrates how the foreign mercantile
community mobilized resources to fulfill the scheme, and how they persuaded a reluctant—Sir
Robert Hart, the Inspector-General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, which started an
observation project since 1869—to cooperate within the scheme. I want to argue that it was a
“public opinion” envisioned on newspapers that “translated” somewhat forcibly the earlier
efforts by Hart.
Author: Yaakov Zik
<zikya@013.net>
Title: Science and Instruments: Levi ben Gerson's (1288–1344) Pinhole Camera
Abstract: In his Astronomy, Levi ben Gerson discussed, inter alia, the functioning of the
pinhole camera. Levi based his analysis on Euclidean geometry. Since the time of Euclid
geometry had been the tool for addressing theoretical and practical problems in optics and
astronomy. Levi is no exception in appealing to geometry while developing a theory of the
pinhole camera. He assumed rectilinear propagation of rays in the projection of light and the
casting of shadows on a screen behind pinhole. Levi went, however, beyond the longstanding
tradition of measuring the diameter of the luminaries, for he developed an instrument and a
method for finding the angular size of the radius of the Sun and Moon. We follow the way Levi
combined theory with instrument. Specifically, we document how he determined whether or not
the Sun’s sphere is eccentric to the center of the world, using the projection of light through an
aperture. Apart from pursuing an intense study of observational and theoretical astronomy, Levi
consolidated the triad, method, theory, and instrument.