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

Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom II
Science or Politics?: Nazi Racial Biology, ‘Pure Genetics’ and the Rockefeller Foundation Connection
Unitl the mid 1930s, eugenics was viewed as an international movement adhered to by renowned biomedical scientists worldwide. The
experience of National Socialist “racial policy,” however, challenged the claims that eugenics was a project based merely on scientific
insights. This paper will discuss how the boundaries between the scientific and politcial sphere were redefined in a situation of extreme
political dension during the early years of the Third Reich by examining the role of the Rockefeller Foundation. Prior to 1933, the
Foundation unerwrote projects directly related to German eugenics. After the “Nazi seizure of power,” however, the foundation was
under pressure to question its German support. Yet the Foundation had difficulties rejecting the new German regime outright, since it
defined itself as a strictly non-political organization. Interestingly, this tension had repercussions on German science, as the Foundation
restricted its financial support to German scientists regarded as “untainted” with “racial questions.” As a result,the Foundation regarded
‘pure geneticists” as better representatives of German science than their more overtly politicized biomedical counterparts. For the
Nazi regime, the international contacts of its most esteemed “pure geneticists” had an inestimable value in a double sense: they were
effective “goodwill ambassadors,” and they were living proof that German genetics, lauded as the basis for racial policy under the swastika,
was not a domain of quacks.
Monika Gisler, University of Basel/University of California, Los Angeles (gisler@sed.ethz.ch)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom VI
Interpereting Earthquakes in 18th Century Protestant Switzerland: Between Science and Theology
The century of Enlightenment was devoted to the idea of a harmonious world designed by God. In this concept, no space was left for
a perception of a natural world with an arbitrary fate. Everything had to be put in order, and was classified with the intention of referring
to the vision of a harmonious world and wise order. This world was described as teleologically structured, according to the wise
plan of God. Therein the arbitrary must have a purpose on a higher level, the negative must be positive, the useless must serve a use.
The teleology of the negative was successful, when nature itself let loose its threats. Natural disasters had thus to be explained, to integrate
them in the new concept. After having been understood and rationalized, they could be integrated into the optimistic vision of a
“good world”. In my paper I will present some endeavors to explain earthquakes by 18th century protestant naturalists in Switzerland.
Their interpretations can be read as attempts to decipher God in nature: if the intentions of God in processes and rules of nature
became understandable with the help of science, God’s will could be calculated. Simultaneously, this would justify scientific research –
it could no longer be considered an invasion into the sphere of God. Their considerations dealt with patterns of both reason and belief.
This had long been ignored or rejected as apologetic by a scientific history that focused first if all on the modernity of these researchers.
In my paper I tend to speak of a conceptualized history of science that involves the social and cultural exogenous factors of knowledge-production
and scientific development. As a consequence, the dialectic production of scientific knowledge with the respective religious
background during the 18th century may no longer be read as anti-modernized or pre-scientific.
Anne Katrine Gjerløff, Department of History, University of Copenhagen (akg@hum.ku.dk)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country B
Adventures of the Ape: Popularizations of Paleoanthropology in Denmark in the 20th Century
Paleoanthropology is among the most popular and popularized natural sciences as the amount of literature testifies. This paper presents
the results of a comprehensive study of the literature on the evolution of man in Denmark in the 20th century, including schoolbooks,
monographs, fiction, museum-catalogues and popular science magazines. The study reveals how the paleoanthropological knowledge
enters society and is altered according to the genres of popularization, the public attitude to the subject and the international scientific
developements and it allows further conclusions about the relationship between science, society and the construction of knowledge
as well as it demonstrates the various connections between theories of human evolution and the selfconcept of modern man.
Sander Gliboff, Indiana University (sgliboff@indiana.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom III
Ernst Haeckel and the Mechanical Causes of Ontogeny
Despite his prominence as a Darwinian in the nineteenth century, Ernst Haeckel was depicted in the early twentieth as an anachronism.
The pioneering historian of biology Erik Nordenskïold, for example, said he had revived an obsolescent romanticism in 1866 and clung
to it dogmatically for over half a century thereafter. Yet Haeckel was anything but unresponsive to scientific developments after 1866.
In particular, Haeckel’s exchanges with embryologist Wilhelm His in the 1870s, over the nature of “mechanistic” causes in development
and the validity of historical inference and explanation, had a lasting effect on his thinking. The experience colored Haeckel’s outlook
on later advances in biology, in which he perceived renewed threats of ahistorical thinking like that of His. This helps explain his negative
assessments of Weismann’s neo-Darwinism, Roux’s Entwicklungsmechanik, and even Mendelism and mutatonism—assessments
that in turn made him look like an obstacle to progress in some of the first histories of modern biology.
Daniel Goldstein, University of California, Davis (dgoldstein@ucdavis.edu)