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

In the late 19th century there were two conflicting interpretations of cathode rays. According to the first view, mainly endorsed by
British physicists, they were beams of charged particles. The alternative view, favoured by German physicists, was that they were another
species of waves in the ether. In that context, Walter Kaufmann (1871-1947) reported, in early 1897, his measurements of the magnetic
deflection of cathode rays. He pointed out that, on the assumption that cathode rays were charged particles, those measurements
implied that their charge to mass ratio was three orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding ratio of the ions of electrolysis.
Furthermore, the value of that ratio depended neither on the chemical composition of the gas contained in the cathode ray tube nor
on the material of the tube’s electrodes. Both of these implications eliminated the possibility that cathode rays were composed of electrolytical
ions. Kaufmann then concluded, mistakenly, that the identification of cathode rg at atomic exchange during the four year period
leading up to the establishment of the Atomic Energy Research Institute (AERI), a body comparable to the AEC. Established in
the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” address of December 1953, AERI was designed to provide South Korea with a cheap,
efficient source of energy, power which would subsequently drive the nation’s industrial and economic recovery. The collaborative relationship
between American researchers and their Korean counterparts was complicated, however, by tensions centering on: (1) the proper
approach to be taken toward nuclear power (research-based versus industrial), (2) the relationship between the construction of new
facilities and the larger Korean university community, and (3) the type and length of training necessary to undertake an atomic energy
program. If the successful start-up of South Korea’s first research reactor in 1962, along with its first commercial reactor in 1977,
remains in part a legacy of this early period iy those very results that were supposed to falsify its precursor.
Katherine Arens, University of Texas, Austin (k.arens@mail.utexas.edu)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country C
Mach, Haeckel, and the Rejection of the “Two Cultures”: Popular Science as Epistemology in German-Language Science of the
(Last) Fin de siècle
At the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, Austria and Germany attained international visibility in physics, chemistry, biology,
and many technical fields. This presentation will take on a less familiar side to this preeminence: a large corpus of popular science
writing by major scientists aimed at the German-speaking public. Using as case studies the Popular-Scientific Lectures (1886, 4th ed. 1916)
and Knowledge and Error (1905) by (physicist, 1838-1916) and The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century (1899) by Ernst
Haeckel (evolutionary biologist, 1834-1919), this presentation will argue for the significance of such texts not simply as publicity for the
pure sciences, but as a significant force in establishing science as a dominant social paradigm for scientists and lay people alike. Not
popularized in the common sense of the term, these texts are at pains to present cognitively accessible thought experiments to the general
public, and thus to bridge the general world view of the era and the specific scientific world view of front-end theory. Thus Mach’s
famous thought experiments are recast as observations of historical and natural phenomena, to make the case by examples that the point
of view of the observer and the anthropocentric rationality often imposed on analytic frames may need to be questioned. Haeckel takes
on a more difficult project in evolutionary biology, teaching through the Riddle of the Universe how biological evidence of historical
process ought to be thought through — including in a speculative mode that tacitly combats what today might be called creationism.
Such very visible texts, I argue, create a Central European environment for science that integrates ethical-social considerations (and questions
of historical hermeneutics) with the pure sciences, and creates a very different epistemological claim for science and scientific theory-building.
The most specific results of this approach are a rejection of a purely mathematical approach to modeling of natural
processes and an insistence on the physicality and cultural position of the observer, rather than an assertion of neutrality. Thus, just as
Canguilhem argued for early modern science, and as Roger Caillois did for species biology in the twentieth century, Mach and Haeckel
take their sciences as fundamental determined by social processes rather than as theory in its own right, rejecting the very idea of “two
cultures” and the competition for resources, status, and validity which that notion is predicated on.
Jean-Francois Auger, Universite Louis-Pasteur, Strasbourg (jean-francois.auger@gersulp.u-strasbg.fr)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country C
The Cultural Meaning of Leon Provancher’s Entomological Collections, 1877-1980
At the end of the ninetieth century, the French Canadian naturalist and priest, Leon Provancher, built entomological collections containing
more than one thousand previously unknown species of hymenoptera. Still in existence today, the collections are consulted by
entomologists for research in systematic. In this paper we explore how the cultural meaning of this scientific artefact has been shaped
by scientific, educational and political considerations. Provancher built insect collections according to his fixist and anti-evolutionist
beliefs. He wanted to contemplate God’s creation, publish insect descriptions in his journal, Le Naturaliste canadien, and exchange correspondence
with North-American natural historians. Provancher’s first collection was given for reference purposes to the Quebec
Department of Agriculture in 1877, and the second was bought for courses in natural history by the College of Levis in 1888. After the
naturalist’s death in 1892, a third collection was acquired by the Quebec Museum of Public Instruction. The collections were used as
teaching tools for college students in natural history and for reference purposes in economic entomology by civil servants. The two collections
possessed by the government were finally brought together in the Provincial Museum in 1933. They were used by American
entomologists for work in systematic and were visited by Quebec City citizens during public exhibitions. The collections had been physically
altered when the type specimens were put into separate drawers by the curator, according to the international standard code in
entomology. When the museum began to specialize its collection in the arts, the entomological collections were transferred to the
Department of Biology at Laval University in 1962 according to an agreement with de Quebec Department of Culture. They were used
to train entomologists in master’s and doctoral degrees. The remaining collection was kept by the College of Levis in its museum of his-