History of Science Society Annual Meeting Cleveland, 3-6 November
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History of Science Society Annual Meeting Cleveland, 3-6 November Session Abstracts Alphabetized by Session Title. Abstracts only available for organized sessions. Paper abstracts begin on page 23. Aesthetics and Politics: Towards Building Relationships between Media Studies and History of Science Abstract: This session will explore the political implications of aesthetics with an eye towards furthering the ongoing conversation between media studies and the history of science. Each of these papers engages with a central moment or theme in the history of science and technology and analyses it through an interdisciplinary framework. Our papers are all linked by a central concern with the relationship between the embodied self and political and socials structures dominated by scientific and technological rhetoric. We all explore issues of design, the visual, images, and imagination in order to begin to build a new methodology around mediation, politics, and aesthetics in the scientific imaginary. All at Sea? Oceanography and Geopolitics in the Twentieth Century Abstract: Inspired by Ronald Doel's call for more critical analysis of the links between physical scientists and 'environmental' knowledge, specifically the desire to control as well as observe the earth, this panel examines the interface between oceanographers and the political/economic contexts in which they worked during the twentieth century. Lajus uses the under-examined history of Soviet oceanography to explore the role of major international projects -- notably the 1932-33 International Polar Year – in shaping a disciplinary community, as oceanography became an asset to state action in Arctic environments. Roberts argues that the oceanographic career of Hans Pettersson (best known to historians of science for his work in nuclear physics) reveals that the massive influx of money during the 1950s produced new geographies of patronage, most notably international networks with heavy American state influence. Voyages of discovery under Nordic flags were replaced by more prosaic surveillance with value to statecraft. Turchetti examines one of the most important of these networks – the NATO sub-committee on oceanography – showing that its rise was driven by military-strategic utility, and that its fall was connected to the growing importance of ‘environmental’ concerns (as distinct from strategic surveillance of environments). Sörlin’s commentary will ask how these perspectives add nuance to histories of the environmental sciences, with particular emphasis on the interplay between state funding and environmental control. Bodies, Colonies, and Stem Cells Abstract: Stem cells are usually viewed as recent biotechnologies, having emerged primarily from in-vitro fertilization experiments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. Our aim is to complicate this history by situating stem cells within a strand of biological thought in which the metazoan body is viewed as a colony of cells. The session will bring together an interdisciplinary panel to explore both the historical roots of the ‘colonial’ metaphor (in the work of August Weismann and Ernst Haeckel, among others) and the implications of the metaphor in contemporary stem cell science and policy-making. Exploring the history of biology in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of metaphor in science, the impact of biotechnologies, and science policy, this panel would have a wide appeal amongst historians of science. Placing stem cells within this broad historical and metaphorical frame helps to explain some of their disruptive implications for our understanding of human life and its boundaries. Rieppel’s paper will focus on the genesis of Weismann’s germ/soma distinction and how it relates to his evolutionary theory of metazoan senescence. Stevens will elaborate the use and implications of the colonial metaphor in stem cell science, exploring their role in constructing the stem cell as at once a bodily and extra-bodily entity. Hurlbut’s paper will draw out some of the implications of the parts-versus-wholes problem for public reasoning and policy discussions around embryo-related research. Fagan’s commentary will utilize her expertise in the philosophical ramifications of stem cells in order to draw together these themes. Brave New World: The Culture of Chymistry in Early Modern England and America Abstract: Chymistry, the pre-modern term for alchemy, held a significant place in the emerging experimental sciences as a discipline that challenged traditional knowledge systems by presenting a new research paradigm for understanding and manipulating nature. Moreover, early modern society understood chymistry as an expression of “modern” thinking, a harbinger of a new age. With this premise, the four papers in this session explore the theory and application of chymistry on both sides of the Atlantic, their diverse views encompassing the ideals and realities of its practice: John Dee’s scientific and magical ideas concerning the uses of American nature in terms of Elizabethan empire-building; the evolution of a colonial health care system in New England as seen through John Winthrop Jr.’s iatrochemical medical practice; the trans-Atlantic career of the seventeenth century minister and alchemist John Allin as a product of Anglo- American Puritan culture; and the impact of iatro-medical discourse on shaping early modern chymical philosophy and practice. In one sense, these narratives reflect facets of profound changes affecting Western culture over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, engendered by geographical and intellectual discoveries. Equally, the papers cohere to illuminate the interplay between a shifting cultural environment and an intellectual arena in flux. From this transverse slice into the past, this panel seeks to expand scholarly discourse around the meaning and use of early modern science in the Old and New World, and identify enduring strands of influence. 2 Bringing Science to the Public: What Can the Science Studies Scholar Do? Abstract: As debates in the United States over the reality of global warming and the validity of evolution by natural selection have demonstrated, the American public has a strong interest in the role of science in society. Historically, scientists have felt compelled to educate the broader public about science and apply their expertise to societal and political matters. Historians and other science studies scholars are often as well-suited as scientists, and in some cases probably better equipped, to contribute to general education, science education, and science policy. Armed with an appreciation of science and its interactions with society, scholars of science studies see situations differently than scientists and other professionals. This begs the question: How can science studies contribute to general education, science education, and science policy in the United States and across the globe? This panel discussion brings together prominent scholars who have experience bringing scientific facts and information to the public and policymakers through the spoken and written word. They will present their perspectives on the role of science studies in providing accurate scientific information to a general audience and discuss ways that historians and other science studies scholars can contribute to bringing science to the public. The Centennial of Mme Curie’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2011, 1911) and its Social Significance Abstract: This session reflects on the scholarly significance of the Centennial of Mme Curie’s (2nd) Nobel Prize, (2011, 1911) declared the International Year of Chemistry (IYC-2011), by re/examining several inter-related themes on commemorative practices, women in science, and comparative history of science. The changing commemorative practices for Mme Curie and her discoveries of radium and radioactivity in the 20th century are examined by Pnina G. Abir-Am. Robert W. Seidel examines the transition from natural to artificial radioactivity at the Curie Institute and its far reaching radiopharmaceutical ramifications before and after WW2. The complex collegial relationships of Mme Curie with female and male competitors from other countries, most notably Rutherford, are discussed by David Wilson, a biographer of Ernest Rutherford. Perspectives for the future on a century of historical research on women in science will be provided by Margaret W. Rossiter who just completed the 3rd volume in her trilogy, Women Scientists in America, 1972-2000. (Baltimore, 2011) Maria Rentetzi, a younger scholar and author of Trafficking Material and Gendered Research Practices: Radium Research in Early 20th Century Vienna (Columbia University Press, 2008) will serve as commentator. Consuming Bodies: Statistics and the Human Sciences in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries Abstract: This session explores ways in which statistical knowledge and quantification generated new epistemological objects at the intersection of the natural, human and social sciences in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the consuming body, rather than the biometrically defined body, the papers study how the quantification of food as calories postulated a rational, “counting” subject, how dietary standards and metabolic norms emerged from the interaction of experiments on individuals and surveys of groups, and how different approaches to measuring human consumption created different objects of investigation. In the 3 process, the papers identify tensions