Abstracts of the History of Science Society 2004 Austin Meeting 18 ...

some tangible benefits, but the state potentially retarded innovation when administrators overestimated their ability to map the natural
world. The life of petroleum geologist Charles Gould illustrates how scientists who worked as government agents faced enormous pressure
to produce information in order to meet the demands of business, government, and the scientific community. Each of these constituencies
in Oklahoma often looked to Gould to provide them with information to locate oil. Gould began teaching geology at the
University of Oklahoma in 1900, served as state geologist, and by 1920 had distinguished himself as the foremost expert of Southern
Plains’ geology. Whether he succeeded in his mandate as a state official to provide the information these different constituencies needed
is the central question this study attempts to answer. As James C. Scott has argued in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve
the Human Condition Have Failed, many state efforts “to make a society legible” by mapping its people and resources often failed because
they invested too much faith in science and technology. The state of Oklahoma often failed for reasons very similar to those described
by Scott. As the first director of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, Gould undertook a massive effort to map the state’s resources. He
taught a cadre of graduate students how to locate natural resources through field work, but he and his students many of whom he later
employed did not attempt to incorporate the knowledge so-called practical oil men generated from their encounters with nature while
“wildcatting” in the hills of Oklahoma. As Scott argues, state agents’ unwillingness to take seriously the “indispensable role of practical
knowledge” and “informal processes” that governed local populations’ interactions with the natural world often accounted for the
failure of many states to administer their domains. Although the Oklahoma Geological Survey was not a complete failure, it demonstrated
a pattern very similar to that which undermined state authority in other societies.
John P. Friesen, University of Leeds (phljpf@leeds.ac.uk)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom V
Newtonian Natural Philosophy and the Ancients- Moderns Controversy at Christ Church Oxford
In recent decades scholars have noted many Tory High-Church supporters of Newton in the early eighteenth century. What has yet to
be adequately explored is the extent and nature of this support given fears that the Anglican Church was in danger from Whigs and
Low-Churchmen and the connections between Newton and anti-Trinitarian heresy during this period. This presentation explains how
Newton and his natural philosophy could be supported and promoted by opponents of the post 1688 revolutionary settlement in
England. At Tory institutions such as Christ Church Oxford Newtonian natural philosophy was taught by David Gregory and John Keill
as well as the physician John Freind. These men had close political, religious and cultural ties with Tory literary men like Francis
Atterbury and William King as well as the satirists John Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. These men took an active role
in the ancients-moderns controversy defending ancient knowledge against large claims made for modern learning by the Whigs Richard
Bentley and William Wotton. This presentation shows how Gregory, Keill and Friend argued that Newtonian natural philosophy represented
a revival of ancient lost knowledge; Newton was thus not a vain modern whose theories surpassed those of previous thinkers,
instead his system represented a restoration of ancient cosmological ideas. Tory High-Church natural philosophers could represent
Newton as a champion for the ancients and as a modest pious natural philosopher, unlike many contemporary thinkers who used reason
to undermine established authority, intellectual and divine. There is evidence that the teachings of Christ Church Newtonians penetrated
the broader milieu of Tory High-Church literary wits. This may partly explain the few direct attacks on Newton by Tory satirists
of science in the early eighteenth century despite the many Whig and Low-Church supporters of Newton during this period.
Xaq Frohlich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (frohlich@mit.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Big Bend D & E
Origins of the US “Sound Science” Rationale and its Confrontation with Europe’s “Precautionary Principle” Over GM Foods
By the late 1990s, policy debates over genetically modified (GM) foods became the center of international tensions over trade, characterized
by Europe’s generally more critical attitude towards biotechnology than that of the US. As European nations began to impose
trade-barriers on the unpopular products, disputes between US and European government officials spilled over into international trade
arenas, culminating in the opposing rationales of the US’s “sound science” and Europe’s “precautionary principle.” While many attribute
the standoff to irreconcilable cultural differences, that Europeans were “risk-averse” and Americans “risk-prone”, one had only to
look to the 1970s NIH moratorium on recombinant DNA research to find the roles reversed, with US scientists responding to uncertain
risks with “undue” precaution. How did such a policy reversal in the US regarding genetically modified organisms come about?
This paper examines four phenomena, which led to a shift in the US in the intervening years from precautionary concern over GMOs
to an enthusiasm backed by “sound science”: 1) a shift in the political atmosphere surrounding scientific research in general, from the
1970s anti-war distrust to a 1980s global economic technology imperative, 2) in the wake of the rDNA debates, lingering frustrations
and sensitivities of US scientists and officials regarding the encroachment of public debacle into scientific controversies, 3) the continued
lack of observed hazards—despite increasing use and release—that became the de facto “evidence” for the safety of rDNA products,
and 4) the post-Asilomar acceptance of the molecular characterization of rDNA products as “substantially equivalent,” despite
remaining uncertainty. Meanwhile, I will discuss how political movements in Europe took an opposite path regarding genetic technologies,
food safety, agriculture and the environment, resulting in the standoff with the US in the 1990s. While it is unclear whether the
current GM food moratorium in Europe will follow the path of the 1970s US rDNA moratorium and give way to technological imperatives,
the similarities of the two debates raise questions as to the extent to which such controversies are caused by transitory social and
economic conditions rather than intractable cultural differences.
Bernd Gausemeier, MPG-Forschungsprogramm (gausemeier@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)