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

stars. Franckenberg’s book had a diverse readership that included the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. As an alternative to the recent thesis
of Ingrid Rowland that Kircher wrote his own speculations of the plurality of worlds in his book Itinerarium exstaticum based on readings
of Giordano Bruno, I will suggest that the substance of Franckenberg’s Oculus Sidereus, which contained a detailed summary of
Bruno’s poem “De Immenso et Innumerabilibus” could have just as likely served Kircher as source material.
Andrew Jewett, Yale University (andrew.jewett@yale.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom II
American Scientists and the International Reconstruction Debate
As scholars such as Peter J. Kuznick and Elizabeth Hodes have shown, American scientists contributed prominently to the pre-1941 discussion
of the proper response to European fascism, and later drove the debate over the control and uses of nuclear energy after the
war’s end in 1945. This paper provides a bridge between these two “scientists’ movements” by showing that American scientists participated
in a vigorous public discourse on global reconstruction that took place between about 1942 and 1947. While many of the nation’s
researchers were ensconced in the top-secret laboratories of the Manhattan Project during the later years of the war, others were helping
to shape the public’s expectations for the postwar international order. The paper will analyze the range of political-economic views
on display in such widely read texts as chemist and Harvard president James B. Conant’s Our Fighting Faith (1942), ecologist W. C. Allee’s
“Where Angels Fear to Tread” (1943), geologist Kirtley F. Mather’s Enough and to Spare (1944), and astronomer Harlow Shapley’s “A
Design for Fighting” (1944); in scientists’ contributions to the Harvard faculty report General Education in a Free Society (1945) and the
popular edited volumes Science and Man (1942), Beyond Victory (1943), and Our Emergent Civilization (1947); and in the writings of Shapley,
Harold C. Urey, Victor F. Hess, I. I. Rabi, Philipp Frank, and Arthur Holly Compton for the annual volumes of the high-profile
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life.
Ann Johnson, University of South Carolina (annj@sprintmail.com)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country C
Molecules or Very, Very Tiny Beams? Writing Algorithms to Model Carbon Nanotubes at NASA
At the NASA-Ames Research Laboratory since the mid-1990s, computational nanotechnology research has brought together practitioners
from several different disciplines to try to predict the behavior of carbon nanotubes under a variety of stresses. The rub is that
these stresses have not been successfully measured in actual nanotubes. Consequently, the computational models must stand in for the
missing experimental data. Further complicating this process is that fact that constructing models of nanotubes requires both
macroscale thinking about stresses using beam theory and nanoscale thinking about the geometry of chemical bonds. As a result, the
construction of new algorithms to blend these effects drawn from different scales has become one of the central projects of computational
nanotechnology. Algorithm design has also been influenced by parallel developments in computational geometry. Thus a new
regime of scientific practice is at work here, blending theoretical computer science, engineering theories, and ab-initio chemical models.
This paper examines this regime and the interplay between computing and nanoscale research at NASA-Ames a site appropriately dedicated
to both high-end computing and materials science research.
Kristin Renee Johnson, Arizona State University (johnskri@mit.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom VII
Defending Systematics: The Plague Flea and the Role of Species Identification
The pathogen responsible for plague, the bacillus Yersinia pestis, was discovered in 1894, but a suggested connection between rats and
fleas in plague transmission remained controversial. It took cooperation between epidemiologists, field workers, and the flea systematist
Karl Jordan to resolve the controversy. This episode is often cited in entomological circles as an excellent example of the importance
of pure entomology to applied entomology and medicine in general. Jordan’s role in the episode took place during a period in which
systematics lost ground to the resources and prestige of applied entomology and his writings on the subject reveal interesting factors at
stake in this transition as well as in the history of the naturalist tradition in the twentieth century. This paper forms part of the proposed
session entitled; Dimensions of the Naturalist Tradition in America
Matthew L. Jones, Columbia University (mj340@COLUMBIA.EDU)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom V
Leibniz and the Persona of the Decorous Natural Philosopher
This paper considers the early modern call for decorous modes of writing and speaking as a central heuristic in Leibniz’s account of the
persona necessary to encourage the discovery and creation of harmony in the world. The demand for decorous means—techniques
appropriate for humans—figures fundamentally in his account of outward self-presentation and rhetorical style as well as in his account
of written techniques necessary for discerning the hidden harmonies in the diversity of natural and mathematical appearances. Such
decorous writing practices were essential for creating the natural and statistical knowledge necessary for proper rule of the state; such
a decorous philosophical persona was necessary to enable the monarch to produce the greatest amount of harmony in his domain.