Session Abstracts for 2013 HSS Meeting Sessions are sorted alphabetically by session title. Only organized sessions have a session abstract. Title: 100 Years of ISIS - 100 Years of History of Greek Science Abstract: However symbolic they may be, the years 1913-2013 correspond to a dramatic transformation in the approach to the history of ancient science, particularly Greek science. Whereas in the early 20th century, the Danish historian of sciences Johan Ludvig Heiberg (1854-1928) was publishing the second edition of Archimedes’ works, in the early 21st century the study of Archimedes' contribution has been dramatically transformed thanks to the technological analysis of the famous palimpsest. This session will explore the historiography of Greek science broadly understood during the 20th century, including the impact of science and technology applied to ancient documents and texts. This session will be in the form of an open workshop starting with three short papers (each focusing on a segment of the period of time under consideration, Antiquity, Byzantium, Post-Byzantine period) aiming at generating a discussion. It is expected that the report of the discussion will lead to the publication of a paper surveying the historiography of Greek science during the 20th century. Title: Acid Rain Acid Science Acid Debates Abstract: The debate about the nature and effect of airborne acid rain became a formative environmental debate in the 1970s, particularly in North America and northern Europe. Based on the scientific, political, and social views of the observers, which rationality and whose knowledge one should trust in determining facts became an issue. The papers in this session discuss why scientists from different countries and socio-political backgrounds came to different conclusions about the extent of acidification. How did civil servants and politicians handle scientific controversy? Who benefited from scientific uncertainty? In discussing such questions, the panel seeks to illuminate the complexity of acid rain debates, showing that the issues at stake went far beyond saving the environment from pollution. Title: Agricultural History of American Science Abstract: Does science have an agricultural history? What would the history of science look like if it were told from the perspective of agriculture? This session explores the intersection between two distinct historical subfields-- agricultural history and the history of science--by focusing on U.S. agriculture from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. The production of food and fiber through agriculture has been extraordinarily significant as a shaping context for the production and circulation of knowledge, the development of scientific institutions and funding, and the construction of key ideas and concepts in the natural sciences. The session will emphasize larger historiographical arguments, using specific case studies from U.S. history as starting points for reflecting more broadly on the potential for reframing the history of American science from an agricultural perspective. We thus explore the possibility not only for an enhanced focus on the history of the agricultural sciences--themselves arguably understudied given their enormous importance and widespread pursuit--but also more provocatively how the history of science might be re-envisioned as agricultural history. The related subfield of environmental history is a significant mediating influence for many of us, but while there has already been considerable discussion of the intersection of the history of science with environmental history, there has been less attention to agricultural history as a field, even though it, too, has its own organizations (e.g., Agricultural History Society) and offers promising opportunities for integrative scholarship between subfields. Presenters include both agricultural/environmental historians and historians of science. HSS 2013 Session Abstracts Title: Applying Science in America during the Cold War: Regulation, Industrial Management, and Leisure Abstract: The Cold War era was marked by an increased profile for science in American industry and public policy. But in many cases, the role of science in planning and development was complicated by the particular context in which it was deployed. The papers in this panel offer four instances where using applied science in the United States during the Cold War was complicated by regulatory concerns, changes in industrial management, and new uses of leisure time. James Bergman discusses the development of industrial agriculture and frozen foods had to be integrated with the perceived realities of annual climatic change and regional differentiation. Renée Blackburn considers how the development of new safety technologies by auto manufacturers in the 1960s had to negotiate the changing regulatory environment informed by regulatory science in that period. Peter Neushul’s paper discusses World War II-era science, wave pools, and surfing. And James D. Skee looks at the case of the Disney organization, to show how operations research and other consultants at times molded their work to support the needs of executive decision makers. In each of these cases, scientists sought to prove the worth of their discipline; but disciplines had to change in order to accommodate the shifting contexts in which they were deployed. Title: Behavioral Sciences in the Postwar Era: Community of Discourse or Community of Practice? Abstract: With roots in the massive World War II mobilization of social scientists, a distinctive, cross-disciplinary “behavioral sciences” community emerged in early Cold War America. Self-labeled “behavioral scientists” of the postwar years shared some traits with earlier periods of avowed scientism in U.S. social science—notably the 1920s. But the postwar “behavioral sciences” community was distinct from earlier efforts to promote a nomothetic science of man. Shared wartime service yielded landmark studies, methodological innovations, and enduring networks that, together, suggested that Minerva’s owl was set to take flight. Postwar behavioral scientists were distinguished, too, by their ambitious theorizing and formal modeling, often in a mathematical key. The embrace of mathematics extended to empirical research design and rigorous graduate training. The elite and well-connected social scientists promoting the behavioral sciences argued for—and often carried out—team-based interdisciplinary projects organized around real-world problems. Some of these same figures acted as brokers in an unprecedented patronage system centered on foundations and military sources. By the early 1950s the behavioral sciences movement was in full swing—a peculiar mixture of cocksure scientism, methodological rigor, and Cold War government service. Though its institutional and patronage profile began to shift by the early 1960s, the behavioral sciences’ intellectual agenda—notably the focus on formal modeling and systematic theory—remained broadly influential within American social science for decades. Title: Beyond Blood and Guts: Probing the Body for Knowledge in the History of Medicine Abstract: How have medical experts positioned themselves as arbiters of truth by examining structures of the body for hidden meaning? This panel explores historical cases in which the medicalized body was configured as an esoteric text, the specialized knowledge contained therein legible only to the the discerning physician or scientist. The body’s structures, qualities, morphological configuration, and physiology could all be mined for useful information about the health, temperament, criminal tendencies, racial identity, and other intimate characteristics of the individual. The proficiency of physicians and scientists in reading the body thus allowed them to assert and negotiate the role of the expert. Miriam Rich analyzes how an early nineteenth-century obstetrician claimed a therapeutic mandate through his reading of the uterus as a locus of racial difference; Courtney Thompson examines the development of phrenological theories and claims to expertise around the body of the criminal in prisons and court rooms in the early nineteenth century; Lisa Haushofer explores how the bodies of patients and animals were understood to articulate the anatomical, physiological and surgical “removability” of the spleen in the 19th century German states; Eli Anders considers how notions of bodily individuality inflected late-nineteenth century debates about the efficacy of bloodletting; and David Jones looks at surgeons’ debates about the nature of coronary artery HSS 2013 Session Abstracts disease in the mid-twentieth century. Together, these case studies illustrate how knowledge read from the body was broadly deployed in therapeutic, legal, and medical settings. Title: Biology on Land, at Sea, and in the Air: Research Methods, Transportation Technology, and the Biological Sciences in the United States, 1930-1975 Abstract: The increasing sophistication and changing nature of biological research in the United States during the period between 1930 and 1975 was impacted by many factors, not the least being the increasing growth of government agencies such as the USDA, NRC-NAS, CAA, and the various arms of the Smithsonian Institution, that facilitated various research projects in the biological and environmental sciences. In addition to institutional support and monies, the availability of new transportation systems such as aircraft, and seemingly less glamorous