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The search for mechanisms in molecular biology was transformed by the discovery of the Watson-Crick double helix structure of DNA in 1953. The mechanisms of gene replication and gene action became the focus of attention. Biochemists and molecular biologists investigated different components of the mechanisms of protein synthesis and depicted the mechanism differently in their diagrams. Analysis in terms of mechanisms provides a new historical interpretation of relations between biochemistry and molecular biology in this period.

Although best known for his studies of Newton and Lavoisier, Henry Guerlac was among the first historians of science to engage in the ethnographic study of researchers. During World War II, Guerlac served as the historian of the MIT Radiation Laboratory, the pre-eminent American radar research installation. Guerlac was well suited to the job his Harvard dissertation on "Science and War under the Old Regime" had argued for a fundamental connection between the growth of science and the development of the art of war. This paper addresses Guerlac's work in the Rad Lab with respect to his prewar research. How did Guerlac practice history on the run and how did he integrate his beliefs and assumptions with the active world surrounding him? In turn, might we use what Guerlac called "the biography of a secret weapon," to gain insights into the development of a new academic discipline during the postwar era–the history of science?

In 1637 Descartes published the long-sought law of refraction, nowadays known as "Snel's law." This finally made possible the exact investigation of the properties of refracted rays. In course of the seventeenth century two phenomena of refraction were recognized to contradict the sine law, namely color dispersion and strange refraction. In their efforts to find laws for these problematic phenomena, students of optics employed a remarkable strategy, which illuminates to the historian the way early forms of physical optics originated in a transformation of traditional geometrical optics. In order to account mathematically for color dispersion and strange refraction, Newton, Bartholinus and Huygens extended the mathematical structure of Descartes‚ derivation of the sine law. This left open the question how the new regularities in the behavior of light rays these men found ought to be interpreted in terms of matter-in-motion. The answer was not apparent in Descartes‚ derivation of the sine law, and that is how the question could be both new to geometrical optics and decisive for the development of new forms of optics during the seventeenth-century.

In recent years historians of modern American science have begun to investigate the practice of international science during the Cold War. They have simultaneously begun to explore how scientists became players in foreign policy, taking on unprecedented roles within the Department of State and within the intelligence community. Scientists also contributed to formulation of science and technology programs for Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s and launched new forms of international organizations to address global environmental concerns. Taking on these important topics require cooperation between historians of science and scholars in related fields, including diplomatic history and international policy it is emerging as one of the more vigorous subfields of the history of modern American science. While three contributors to the 1985 historiographic volume of Osiris [Thibodeau, Roland, and Rossiter] touched on international science after 1945, none directly addressed the issues central to this paper. This presentation will draw on several sources: an extensive overview of new work in these fields for my current NSF grant (Science, the Cold War, and Democratic Values: Scientists in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945-1963), as well as recent publications on international science after 1940 (Cambridge History of Science series, forthcoming) and the intersection of history of science and recent scholarship in diplomatic history (in Thomas Söderqvist, ed., The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology, 1997).

From roughly 1850 to 1950, the US telegraph system relied on the labor of a special segment of workers: low-paid, teen-aged messenger boys. Such workers were a technology unto themselves, acting as the physical input and output components of a vast electrical system of pneumatic tubes and wires. But these boys (and they were nearly all boys) were "constructed" not only as factors of information production, but also as commodities for sale to consumers. The uniformed messenger was the human embodiment and living advertisement of the telegraph service, straddling the line of "modernity" between the lightning lines and the slow safety bicycle. He not only delivered messages, he was the original "office temp," hired out by the hour for any kind of miscellaneous duty. And telegram customers knew they were purchasing not only a rapidly-delivered message, but the trustworthiness of the messenger as well. Thus at the same time that telegraph managers tried to hone the messenger boy's technological efficiency, they were also forced to worry about the messenger boy's human potential–a regulatory and public relations problem which finally resulted in the creation of a messenger boy school within the very walls of the Western Union headquarters, meant to produce the businessman of tomorrow out of the message technology of today.

In the later Middle Ages, astrology played an important part in academic discussions of the physical world. For many medieval scholars trained in natural philosophy, the powers pouring down from the nobler, celestial realm helped to explain the diversity of the lesser, terrestrial world. These powers also accounted for the specific "virtues" of earthly objects that cannot be explained by their elemental composition alone, such as the attractive virtue of lodestone and the healing powers of herbs and minerals. Among university-trained physicians, who were keenly interested in the human body's interaction with the macrocosm, astrology was a valuable resource for understanding the nature of health and illness, as well as for predicting the outcome of disease and choosing appropriate therapies. This paper will examine an issue that has only recently become prominent in historical accounts of late medieval science, namely, the religious context of learned medicine and astrology. It will focus on a unique document, a speech delivered around 1400 by a student at the University of Montpellier at the time of his reception as a bachelor of medicine. In it, the bachelor weaves together astrological and religious themes as he displays to the assembled crowd of teachers and students his knowledge of the medical authorities. Drawing heavily on Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, as well as other classical and medieval sources, the bachelor presents a broad, moral vision of the cosmos created out of divine goodness and unified by celestial forces--what historians in other contexts recently have called "Christian astrology." Viewed against the background of contemporary devotional practices, such as the cult of the saints and religious healing, the religious dimension of his speech reminds us that, from the point of view of many learned physicians at least, astrology and Christianity were more compatible than is often acknowledged by historians. While relying on fairly commonplace arguments and sources, the bachelor's remarks reveal how astrological ideas helped to shape physicians' identity as learned men who understand the natures of things and can thus counsel people legitimately about how to live well.

This paper examines moments of loss of control over the object of knowledge in diverse biomedical contexts. It focuses on physiological and psychological laboratories and medical clinics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and argues that moments of loss of control over the object of knowledge were defined as "emotion." The paper studies the emergent definition of emotion–as loss of control–on three different levels: at the level of individual subjects/organisms– where the subject's loss of self-control was interpreted as a moment of emotion; at the level of the production of biomedical knowledge–where moments of disorder or loss of control over the object of knowledge were defined by the experimenters in terms of moments of emotions; and at the level of the social relationships of the laboratory–where emotion materialized in the types of interactions that governed the manipulators and manipulated. Emotion signified a breakdown in order/control–at the level of the individual body of the organism/subject, at the level of the laboratory and its control over the object of knowledge, and at the level of (the failure to produce) biomedical knowledge. The paper interprets this emergent definition of "emotion"–as disorder–in the context of a culture that saw in the machine a model for the production of objective–"mechanical"–knowledge. It concludes that failures to mechanize, control, and know the body-as-machine were labeled as–"emotion." And suggests that the meaning of emotion in biomedical settings should be interpreted in the context of what social historians have defined as a modern "emotionology."

In teaching the history of premodern astronomy, one has unusually rich opportunities for engaging students in hands-on activities. For example, students can easily learn to predict the position of a planet according to Ptolemy's planetary theory, by making a scale drawing for the chosen moment. Students can gain a much deeper understanding of what epicycles and equants are for by working through a simple exercise of this sort than by many hours of passive listening to even the most learned lectures. Moreover, scale drawing was a shortcut procedure endorsed by Ptolemy himself (in his canons to the Handy Tables). I will give three examples of possible hands-on student projects chosen form the history of ancient and medieval astronomy: planetary theory, sundials, and astrolabes. The talk will be illustrated by actual examples of student work.

Gertrude Stein is the most famous student ever to have attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Yet biographers and critics too frequently assume that her literary and medical careers are separate, even antithetical, professional realms. My paper examines Stein's medical education in a variety of contexts: contemporary sexual science the emergence of modern medical professionalism and the beginnings of Stein's career as an experimental, modernist writer. I argue that the descriptive approaches of Stein's early fiction find their roots in the contemporary transformation of professional medical training. Under the leadership of Franklin Mall, JHU's medical school became the first to teach gross anatomy in the dissecting room rather than the lecture hall--a dramatic shift from descriptive to what Mall called "inductive" method. For the first time, students such as Stein focused their study on detailed studies of individual organs. Stein herself made detailed sections of the human brain, producing sixty-three painstakingly detailed drawings of the human brain, from the embryo to the adult her detailed reports were incorporated into the 1899 study, "The Nervous System", and a lengthy article she prepared for submission to the newly formed "Journal of Anatomy." As one of her colleagues observed, Mall "introduced [students] directly into scientific work," viewing his students as "independent scientific workers." Stein's year-long study of the human brain thus marked not merely her admission into a male-dominated professional class, but her membership in a newly emergent class of "brain" workers–the emergent class of professionals whose labor was not manual but mental. Yet the irony was that while JHU had admitted women to the medical school amidst considerable controversy, its own experimental science continued to assert that such women were mentally unfit for the very experimental thought to which professional medical education had now turned. Contemporary scientific accounts of biological sex differences–many originating in JHU's department of biology, where Stein's brother Leo was a graduate student–had established the so-called "variability" hypothesis, which posited distinctive forms of male and female intelligence rooted in distinctive brains. Stein's "brain work" took place in the context of preliminary research in Mall's laboratory which would ultimately refute variability however Stein's very involvement in experimental research confronted variability's sexist assumptions in the realm of professional science. For many contemporaries, the kind of detailed diagramming performed by Stein and Florence Sabin–the woman physician who was named to the JHU faculty during the same years–was understood as manual, rather than mental, labor. As Stein herself remarked, brain models were considered "an excellent occupation for women and Chinamen." Women such as Sabin and Stein thus found themselves in the contradictory position of performing manual labor on the mental organ, their own intellectual capacities linked not to the avant-garde of scientific experimentation but to an increasingly obsolete tradition of anatomical description. They faced a milieu remarkable not only for its sexist ideology, but for the imbrication of that ideology within the professional enterprise itself. Following the rejection of her scientific research, Stein endeavored to remain in the domain of "brain" workers, migrating from science to literature. While biographers and critics have seen Stein's defection from medicine to literature as a dramatic crossing of the literature/science divide, I argue that we might see her career transition as marking a shift from one form of "brain" work to another. In the course of transition, Stein would import a set of scientific concepts and descriptive conventions–conventions which I argue formed the basis for her most celebrated formal innovation, abstractionism. In the final section of the paper, I show that Stein's abstractionism is rooted in the type/variant dichotomy of the variability hypothesis, arguing that Stein's well-known stylistic devices of repetition and abstraction constitute Stein's literary refutation of sexual science. Stein's break with the conventional fictional frame finds its roots not in the domain of abstract formal or linguistic concerns, but within a specific historical debate within the history of anatomy. Her experimentation marks not merely her position as the cutting edge of a literary avant garde, but her continued position within a class of "brain" workers.

In the late nineteenth century, agricultural science was a lonely occupation. Relegated to isolated outposts of science on rural estates and smaller college towns, agricultural scientists often were governed by farmers or bureaucrats who had relatively little respect or understanding for their scientific culture. Further, agricultural scientists found that mainstream scholars based at larger institutions placed the applied sciences on the fringes of their disciplinary networks. In this context, my paper will address the appeal of internationalism among European and American agricultural scientists at the turn of the century. International cooperation provided these scientists with networks of communication that served dual purposes: the access to a wider community of scholars lessened their social frustrations, while opportunities to compare research results solidified the empirical basis for their work and helped raised the status of their profession. My paper will trace these scholars and their efforts to build networks of communication in the 30 years that surround 1900. The story will emphasize their meetings, societies, and other forms of international cooperation, including the appeal of artificial languages like Esperanto and Pasigraphy. Also, I will connect their internationalism with monism and other reactions against the scientific mainstream. By focusing the rhetorical and the cultural appeal of internationalism, the paper will offer a fresh look at the topic in an era known for its political tensions and "national styles" of science.

Lynn White, Jr. was a noted historian of the medieval period whose work included studies of the relationship of religion to the science and technology of that time. White argued repeatedly, and in a number of different contexts, that in examining the history of the Middle Ages, particularly the later Middle Ages, the roots of a number of modern phenomena could be discovered. In this presentation, I will focus on two of White's articles. One that continues to draw the attention of scholars today is "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" (1967). It presents the argument that the origins of modern environmentalism can be found in the Judeo-Christian tradition as it developed in the Middle Ages with a focus on separation between humans and natural world, and with nature seen as subservient to human interests. Literary scholars see this proposition recurring in the work of such present-day nature writers as Annie Dillard. However contemporary scholarship has overlooked another important White article, "Science and the Sense of Self: The Medieval Background of a Modern Confrontation" (1978). Here he contends that in the second half of the Middle Ages religion played a crucial and positive role in forming a culture conducive to technological and scientific advancement. This paper, now largely ignored, deserves as much attention as the 1967 article because it contains a substantial argument providing a balance to so much of today's emphasis on science and religion as antagonistic. My presentation will begin with a brief synopsis of White's position and will then analyze it in light of present-day scholarship.

This paper provides an American perspective on the historiography of science, technology and the environment, with special emphasis on the current state of the field. It examines the extent to which recent works in environmental history incorporate science, technology, and culture into coherent explanations of social change, and identifies thematic needs and opportunities at the intersection of these fields. It celebrates the 15th anniversary of the Forum for the History of Science in America by focussing on recent works, but also acknowledges seminal works from the past 75 years.

The history of the history of science is often conceived as if the discipline emerged in response to a set of philosophical problems and issues defined by Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. At first glance, such a conception is not unreasonable. The almost forty years since the publication of the Structure has seen the formation of an amorphous discipline now often called "science studies." This new discipline is comprised of a number of other disciplines, notably the history of science, the philosophy of science and the sociology of science. These disciplines can be understood as united insofar as they share a common interest in Kuhn's central thesis that social consensus has as much to do with the genesis and development of scientific knowledge as rationality. This paper argues that this "standard" view does not represent the spirit or direction of the history of science. My contention is that the methodology and focus of the history of science is primarily directed towards a set of problems and issues articulated Wilhelm Dilthey not Thomas Kuhn. In his "Critique of Historical Reason", Dilthey argued that a distinction must be made between what would now be called the natural and social sciences (Natur- and Geisteswissenshaften). He claimed that the subject matter or content of the human sciences prevented the human sciences from ever sharing a methodology with the natural sciences. From Dilthey's analysis emerged a debate about whether the human sciences are hermeneutical in a way the natural sciences are not. It is this debate that underwrites work in science studies in general and the history of science in particular. To establish this argument, this paper examines recent work in the history of science, especially Steven Shapin's A Social History of Truth and Ian Hacking's Re-Writing the Soul. This paper also draws from work in historiography, hermeneutics and literary criticism to critically re-evaluate the role of the idea of history in science studies from the perspective of Dilthey's philosophy of history.