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

Edward Jurkowitz, University of Ilinois at Chicago (jurkowit@uic.edu)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country C
Liberal Unities of Mind and Knowledge: Hermann Von Helmholtz’s and Ernst Mach’s Images of Intellect and Epistemology
Analyzing popular and scientific works I illustrate that the leading German and Austrian scientist-philosophers Hermann Helmholtz and
Ernst Mach drew extensively from the cultural resources of German liberalism, but turned these resources to different ends. Not only
did they employ key liberal notions such as freedom and law in their public addresses; they also pursued a particularly liberal form of
scientific practice. They consciously acted in accord with particular rules when engaging colleagues and foes, and developed a correlated
set of epistemological standards for determining and framing knowledge and theories. However, Helmholtz and Mach turned common
liberal values to different ends, in part due to the differing political and cultural situations in the German states and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire in which they respectively worked. In particular, they differed in the kinds of unity that they promoted within fields
of science and for the scientific community more generally. Helmholtz worked to lay foundations for fields of science that would ensure
cooperative investigation on a unique, commonly agreed upon set of fundamental assumptions. In contrast, Mach consciously rejected
the possibility of a unique scientific foundation, and spent much time undermining the authority of proposed unitary foundations.
In short, Helmholtz and Mach pursued different conceptions of epistemological and social order within science.
David Kaiser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (dikaiser@mit.edu)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom III
The Atomic Secret in Red Hands?: Cold War Fears of Theoretical Physicists
Two assumptions became widespread among members of Congress, the federal judiciary, and the national media in the years after World
War II: theoretical physicists alone possessed the “atomic secret” for how to build atomic bombs, and theorists were more left-leaning
politically than other types of scientists. Yet both assumptions were demonstrably false. The atomic bombs had been designed and
built during World War II by an intense interdisciplinary collaboration between experimental and theoretical physicists, electrical and
chemical engineers, metallurgists, and others. Likewise, thousands more experimentalists and engineers than theorists ran afoul of the
new loyalty-security apparatus in the decade after World War II (at governmental, industrial, and academic laboratories), yet only the theorists’
cases reached national headlines. The staying power of the associations surrounding theorists thus points to the changing cultural
place of “pure scientists” in the United States — and, by extension, to the fraught position of scientific authority more generally —
during the early years of the Cold War.
Eriko Kakuzaki, Rissho University (hazime@ris.ac.jp)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country D
History of Human-Animal Interaction in Japan
In the present study, we surveyed a history of human-animal interaction in Japan with the view of animal protection and social welfare.
The most famous law for animal protection is Shorui Awaremi no Rei in1685. It is a notorious law of giving priority to lives of living
animals over those of human beings. For example, a horse doctor who injured a dog was killed under the law in 1702. However, this
law had a good aspect. It was against the act of deserting such animals are dogs, horses, cattle. Recently, human-animal interaction in
Japan has been changing dramatically. Animal assisted therapy at special nursing homes for the aged has become popular. At last, the
law for assisted dog for disabled person was promulgated in 2000.
Minsoo Kang, University of Missouri, St. Louis (nikosgnoma@hotmail.com)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom V
The Living Machines: The Automaton as a Modernist Symbol, 1886 - 1909
Following the industrial revolution, there is a tendency in European writing to describing the ubiquitous machines of the era as living,
superhuman beings. This study examines the imaginative works of three early modernist writers - Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Alfred Jarry,
and F. T. Marinetti - in which the most overt symbol of the age of living machines, the automaton, or a device made to mimic living
beings, makes appearances. The central contention of the analysis is that the description of such an artificial construct as a vital creature
and a vision of future merging of humanity with machinery, constitutes an eminently modernist expression of the industrial age,
as it goes beyond the mainstream nineteenth century attitudes of technophile celebration or romantic rejection.
Lauren Kassell, Pembroke College, (lauren@ias.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom VI
All Was This Land Full Fill’d of Faerie’, or Magic and the Past in Early Modern England
Did Adam practice magic? Did he learn it from an angel or the devil? Was it lost in the past, a time when the world was enchanted? This
paper will chart_the ways in which histories of magic were written and read in early modern England, documenting the meanings that