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Please note that these abstracts are subject to change. All abstracts will be printed in the final meeting program. If you would like to make corrections, please e-mail the changes to hssexec@u.washington.edu by 25 May!

Anke te Heesen Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Closed and Transparent Orders: How the Furniture of Collections was Seen in the Enlightenment

The growing interest in natural history in the 18th Century can be demonstrated by the boom in ownership of natural history cabinets of that time. They were owned by physicians, natural historians or amateurs. Within the cabinet, specimens were named and classified, ordered and stored. These activities demanded tools such as paper and ink, books and boxes. A special tool of this period, and very obviously fundamental to a cabinet, was the cupboard in which naturalia were kept. Through a study of depictions and descriptions of natural history cupboards, we might answer the question of how natural history was presented, and how the manners of presentation changed during the 18th century. By analysing the structure of the cupboard, I will argue for the emergence of a different mode of access to naturalia, in the transition from a largely haptical appreciation of the objects of nature to a largely visual one. On the one hand, such a study provides an example of how pictures can be used as a historical (re)source, while on the other hand we can see how they served to express a certain style of presentation. It is the aim of this paper to show how nature was visualized, and, in the same time, to offer a closer look at the practice of visualization itself.

Philip M. Teigen National Library of Medicine
Language, Logic, and the Historiography of Medicine

Historians and philosophers of science tell us that theory choice is often underdetermined, meaning that theory choice is not based exclusively on observations of nature. In short, the facts don't speak for themselves. If scientific theories are underdetermined, then, surely historical narratives and theories are also. Indeed, using another conceptual framework, Hayden White argued this point in Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973). What lies between the reservoir of sources that historians of medicine draw upon and the products of their research? It is the operating system humans use to create and interpret discourse, otherwise known as Rhetoric. Almost all medical historiography is devoted to sources and subject matter few scholars have explored the logic and language of medical history. The reasons most are reluctant to do so are several, including three treated here: 1) confusion about the nature and applicability of theories of reading and writing to historical productions 2)fear that such exploration will distract from the main business of producing specialized research 3)fear that the acknowledgement of a rhetoric of medical history will undermine the authority of historical accounts. After arguing that there are beneficial reasons for including rhetorical analysis in traditional historiography, I conclude by pointing out that Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886)--whose institutionalization of historical study in the university and promotion of archival research revolutionized historical scholarship--explicitly drew upon rhetorical theory in promulgating his classic statement about the nature and purpose of the historical enterprise.

Carsten Timmermann Centre for History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Folk Knowledge‚ and Professional Politics: Medical Historians and Popular Science in Inter war Germany

For historians of western medicine in the last few decades, writing on professionalisation and the authority of medical experts was a way of dealing with the power structures of the postwar world. Is this still necessary at the dawn of the new millennium? Today, ethics commissions and malpractice suits increasingly curtail the autonomy of medical professionals. With "alternative" and "complementary" therapies more popular than ever, it seems as if patients are rapidly regaining the right to their own bodies. Issues of choice (and regulation) are becoming increasingly important. And informed choice presupposes enlightened consumers. What could be our function as historians in all this? Historians usually contribute to political debates either by suggesting analogies with the past (and pointing out differences) or by seeking to uncover the roots of a current situation. By exploring the attitudes of interwar German medical historians towards popular science, in this paper I will follow the first path. Weimar Germany experienced an explosive rise of medical alternatives--homeopathy, biochemistry‚ naturopathy and others--all organised in large lay societies. These societies saw the education of the population in health matters as part of their mission. Representatives of the medical profession, however, dismissed all non-licensed healers as quacks‚ and their activities as illegitimate. My paper examines the roles of contemporary medical historians in these conflicts, their contributions to the debate and their positions on issues of choice and popular knowledge. While some historians argued for extensive health education of the public, others denounced it as "profanisation." Studying Weimar medical culture, how it differed from our present situation and how it was similar, may help us to understand our own role today.

Jonathan R. Topham University of Leeds
Religious Practice and the Uses of Scientific Books

Over recent years, historians have taken the practice of science increasingly seriously, leading to major historical revisions in a number of areas. By contrast, historical discussions of 'science and religion' are still often dominated by consideration of predominantly propositional beliefs of theological and scientific kinds. The object of this paper will be to demonstrate the value of exploring religious practice for understanding the place of science in the religious culture of early nineteenth-century Britain. In the burgeoning world of print in this period, a far wider range of readers encountered scientific material than ever before. For many, however, such material was read and encountered primarily within the context of religious practice. In this paper I will explore some of the ways in which reading science was incorporated into the diverse practices of Christian devotional life. The discussion will draw in part on the various forms of reading advice and instruction available in the period, from conduct manuals and periodical reviews to sermons and addresses. This will be complemented by materials relating to individual reading experiences, drawn from diaries, letters, and autobiographies. By focusing on the practices of reading and of Christian devotion, the paper will highlight the extent to which scientific material was valued or feared not so much for its propositional content, as for its effect on religious feeling. That this was so undermines the traditional historiographical emphasis on the importance of a propositional natural theology, and indicates instead the importance of a variety of discourses about nature which were considered useful in engendering religious sentiments and sensibilities in readers.

Jonathan R. Topham, University of Leeds, Geoffrey N. Cantor, University of Leeds, and Gowan Dawson, University of Sheffield
Science in the Nineteenth Century Periodical: Demonstration of the SciPer Database

The Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies at the University of Sheffield and the Division of History and Philosophy of Science at Leeds University have joined forces to mount the SciPer [Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical] project. This project aims to identify and analyse the representation of science, technology and medicine, as well as the inter-penetration of science and literature, in the general periodical press in Britain between c.1800-1900. This highly interdisciplinary project addresses not only the reception of scientific ideas in the general press, but also examines the creation of non-specialist forms of scientific discourse within a periodical format, and the ways in which they interact with the miscellany of other kinds of articles found in nineteenth-century periodicals. The periodicals to be indexed include not only such mainstream titles as the Edinburgh Review and the Cornhill but also examples of satirical, denominational, radical, womenÕs and childrenÕs periodicals. The projectÕs primary objectives are, firstly, to produce a series of analytical essays which will consider the portrayal of the sciences within the general periodical literature of nineteenth-century Britain, and, secondly, to publish a searchable electronic index which will enable researchers engaged in a broad range of historical and literary searches of a scientific content of the indexed periodicals. Although the electronic index will not be published until early 2002, a prototype containing a limited range of titles will be demonstrated at the St. Louis meeting. Historians of science will thus be able to appreciate the potential of this new and exciting research tool. See also the SciPer website: http://www.sciper.leeds.ac.uk

Steven A. Walton University of Toronto
Thomas Hood and Armada Angst: How Mathematical were the Military Sciences?

In 1588 when Thomas Hood addressed his audience as the Mathematical Lecturer for the City of London, the Spanish Armada loomed large in all his listeners' minds. So, not surprisingly, when Hood enumerated the benefits of the mathematical lectureship, military utility ranked high on his list. But this belief -- that mathematics would directly benefit the military -- was not inspired by the Armada. John Dee had noted as much in his Mathematicall Praeface nearly two decades before. And by the turn of the century, everyone seems to have tacitly agreed that the military was one of the logical places of employment for the mathematical practitioners. When historians of science have looked at the mathematical practitioners, they have silently taken up this assumption and called the military sciences tacitly mathematical in the late 16th century, and even pushed it back to the early 16th century. Here I want to consider just what it was that was "mathematical" about warfare in the later 16th century. In particular, a survey of some of the English cases of men interested in the military and interested in the mathematics allows us to reconsider the mathematization of warfare. In the end, I suggest that war was not so much mathematized as "arithmeticized", suggesting that simple quantification, not the more impressive theoretical understanding (which did characterize other professions in which the mathematical practitioners found work), was the goal.

Deborah Jean Warner Smithsonian Institution
"I never intend to wrap my Talent in a Napkin": Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Achievement

Steven Shapin has described Robert Boyle as the paradigmatic experimental philosopher one whose reputation for speaking the truth was based, in large part, on his aristocratic birth, extravagant wealth, and Christian piety. Other factors that contributed to Boyle's trustworthiness included chastity, frailty, and dislike of fashionable society. And then there was his modesty. In Shapin's words, a man who would be seen as a scholar and a gentleman "should not seek egotistically to celebrate himself...but modestly to detach knowledge from the self that produced it." Shapin further suggests that Boyle's "philosophical identity continued [to be] a usable template" well into the 20th century. Portraiture, however, suggests otherwise. That is, many men of science, even in England, did not fit their public image to Boyle's template. In this paper I will examine the three "electric" portraits of Benjamin Franklin that proclaim a celebration of self, and identify the accomplishments that raised Franklin from obscurity to fame. Each shows Franklin as a vigorous and well-fed man comfortably ensconced in his study, apparently content with his merchant-class status, and pleased with his mastery of the science and technology of lightning. This form of portrait a person with the specific tools and/or products of his/her achievements may have begun with medieval depictions of saints, but became especially common with the opening of secular avenues of achievement in the 18th century. Natural philosophers and mathematical practitioners were often depicted in this way, but so too were as artists, authors, antiquarians, and other achievers. This suggest that historians of science might do well to regard 18th century "men of science" within the larger framework of "men of achievement."

Michael P. White McGill University
Modern Times: Temporality and Modernity in Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology

If recent scholarly interest in Charles Lyell can be said to have a common aim, that aim would most likely be, in Michael Bartholomew's words, "to push Lyell out to the margins." Far from occupying his previous status as the harbinger of modernity in the guise Darwinian evolution, radical historicism and modern geology, he now appears as an isolated and problematic figure. Discussions of his significance often seem to be as specific as they were previously broad. Lyell is now reduced to the "supreme anthologizer," an adherent of pagan cyclical cosmology, a Newtonian synthesizer, or the last great Enlightenment "armchair theorist." Yet, Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830-33) remains an important document of abiding intellectual interest because of its complex and contradictory representation of an immense time frame for earth history. In the wake of recent scholarship in the history of science in Britain, scholars such as Stephen Gould and Rachel Laudan, have characterized the significance of Lyell's "deep time" as an idiosyncratic function of his obsession with methodological and narrative unity. I argue, to the contrary, that the cultural significance of Lyell's temporal outlook can better be understood in the complex combination of a variety of contemporary temporal frameworks rather than as a sterile advocacy of the "deep time" of geological science. By examining his superimposition of a variety of temporal registers not usually associated with Lyell's text, and which comprise the futuristic as well as the retrospective orientation of modernity, (eschatological, pagan, and geological), Lyell's Principles can be thus be understood as a site of intersection for the multiple and contradictory temporalities organizing British society during the period surrounding the publication of Principles of Geology.

Paul S. White University of Cambridge
Passion for Science: The Display of Feelings in Late-Victorian Biology

Recent studies in the history of objectivity, instrumentation and scientific discourse have traced the gradual effacement of the emotions from scientific practice over the course of the 19th century. This trajectory, which follows long-standing accounts of the emergence of the modern scientific profession, needs substantial revision. What I provide, instead, is an account that suggests the enduring importance of various forms of feeling, both in the public presentation of scientific research, and in the constitution of scientific community. In this paper, I discuss a public debate over the nature of feeling and its place in the experimental life sciences and medicine in late Victorian Britain. Following from concerns over the practice of animal experiment, a critique was mounted against physiologists and their scientific supporters by high-political, high-church, and literary figures, and by members of the medical profession. The critique focussed on the scientific practitioner as a master of feelings, especially the tender affections of sympathy, compassion, sorrow and pity, feelings widely held to be the highest forms of human nature, and crucial marks of distinction between human and beast, feelings that were possibly obliterated in the process of scientific training and discipline, thus rendering practitioners heartless machines or monsters. Physiologists and their defenders worked to legitimate themselves on several fronts: they publicly demonstrated the physiological basis of feeling in lower mechanical and instinctual processes, they exhibited their concern for animals through the use of anaesthesia and other pain-saving technologies, and they displayed their feeling for humanity through the sacrifice of their own health and life in the battle against disease.

Catherine Wilson University of British Columbia
Data first!? The History of Philosophy vis-a-vis the History of Science

Philosophers and scientists occupy different niches. They consume different resources, and they transform them into different products. Philosophers do however make use of (small quantities of ) scientific product.. Scientists themselves occasionally look back at philosophy for inspiration, but philosophy is not a resource for science. The "data first principle" predicts this result. Science feeds philosophy when epistemological relations are in order. By extension, the data-first principle predicts that history of science feeds the history of philosophy but not vice-versa. Historians of science don't need what historians of philosophy produce. The issues philosophers historically liked to debate-the existence of an external world, whether ideas represent reality, the necessity of causal connections, whether we can believe the impossible-had to be regarded either as settled or as unimportant in order for scientific work to proceed. Perhaps the triumph of the data-first principle and the present-day distinctness of science and philosophy can't be projected backwards, even to the 17th century. But if science and philosophy were not at the time partitioned, then neither was a resource for the other. The present paper explores the possibility that there is a disciplinary vector pointing from the history of philosophy to the history of science. The claim that historians of science can't help familiarizing themselves with the history of philosophy because of the historical lack of partitioning is true but doesn't bear on the stronger thesis. Rather I want to argue that what is characteristic of philosophy is a concern, on one hand, with normality, proper functions, and moral-theological fittingness, and, on the other, with definitions, criteria, and the validity of arguments. Wherever we see these preoccupations infiltrating scientific discourse, there philosophy is providing input to science. That is why the history of philosophy can provide input to the history of science. (Examples.)

Roland Wittje Department of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Scientific Instruments as Source Material for History of late 19th and early 20th century Physics

History of experimental physics can make good use of scientific instruments preserved either from a certain experiment or from the relevant era in general. They may supplement written texts, photography and/or oral histories on a particular subject. As relics of scientific practice in past times, they often tell a story by themselves. They can also serve to offer a valuable new perspective on other source material. Interpreting surviving instruments, however, is not as established in history of science as other types of sources are. As with all forms of research the interpretation of surviving scientific instruments comes with its own strengths and difficulties. I propose to draw Hertz' experiments on electromagnetic waves, as well as early 20th century lecture demonstration instruments and a Van de Graaff particle accelerator built in Norway in the 1930s as examples for how remaining instruments contribute to research in history of physics. The instruments in question have often undergone various modifications and other changes during their period of use. A timeline if modification can often be discovered after a close study. Of course, this indicates that we cannot assume an existing piece of equipment to be in its original condition but rather in the state it was when it was put out of use. There are also examples of instruments being considerably altered after coming into possession by a museum or another collector. To learn from a particular instrument, one must often use either with original or the copy in a performance. This can imply everything from testing proposed modes of function to repeating experiments.

Katharine Wright IHPST, University of Toronto

Humanism, Antihumanism, and Technoscience

Scholars in science studies have recently turned their attention to humanism as a way to understand developments in twentieth century science. In doing so, they are joining a debate about the nature and meaning of humanism that has been going on with particular force since the time of Heidegger. But historians of science tend not to acknowledge this rich intellectual history in their work, resulting in the impression that the humanism/antihumanism debate arises from the development of science and technology alone. I will outline the history of the concept of humanism in the twentieth century, with attention to critical figures such as Heidegger, Sartre, the poststructuralists, and the contemporary political philosophers who are attempting to revive humanism. That history will place recent history of science in a new light, notably Andrew Pickering's work on technology and social theory and N. Katherine Hayles's work on the history of cybernetics, both of which advocate posthumanism as a way to transcend the humanism/antihumanism debate. But it is not clear that this is a straightforward solution. The stakes in the humanism/antihumanism debate are high, and I will show that this extends to that small part of the debate that is going on in history of science and science studies.