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

Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom II
The Path Not Taken: Henry A. Wallace and the Reconstruction of American Science after World War II
The history of American science policy after World War II has focused primarily on the guiding influence of Vannevar Bush’s landmark
report, Science: The Endless Frontier. In this report, Bush argued that research of the type normally conducted in universities would drive
technological innovation in industry. He also acknowledged the need for government funds to support the advancement of science and
technological innovation, but he firmly believed that such resources should be politically insulated from federal control and restricted
to the best private sector research institutions. The paper will challenge and broaden this interpretive framework by examining an equally
significant but less well-known science policy proposal introduced by Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace in 1945. An ardent
New Dealer who had previously served as secretary of agriculture and vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, Wallace proposed a
state-centered plan for the reconversion of America’s wartime industries back to peacetime production. He believed that existing government
laboratories, rather than elite universities and other private sector institutions favored by Bush, should provide the scientific
knowledge that industry, especially small manufacturers, would need to compete effectively in a steadily expanding national economy.
Manfred D. Laubichler, Arizona State University (manfred.laubichler@asu.edu)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom VI
Universal Biology - Dream or Reality?
Connoisseurs of Science Fiction are familiar with the idea of a universal biology. Different, but mostly still recognizable life forms, especially
to someone trained in morphology, populate novels, movies, and the TV series. In terms of their basic biology, physiology, and
pathology these life forms represent an extension of earth-based biology or simply a broader comparative focus. A second, and more
problematic, kind of new life forms is represented by cyborgs, self-replicating automata, and artificial life. The challenge of these life
forms for (fictional) biology is not too simply broaden the comparative focus, but to generate a new form of universal biology, one that
is based on more fundamental principles or more general abstractions. However, both ideas—the broadening of a comparative focus
and the development of fundamental principles of life have also been important strategies in the development of general and theoretical
biology. This paper will investigate the history of scientific attempts to define a “universal biology” in the context of both new biological
discoveries and fictional representations. It will be argued that the idea of a “universal biology” has been a powerful force in both
science and fiction and that the “two cultures” often had a symbiotic relationship with each other.
Elizabeth H. Lee, Harvard University (elee@fas.harvard.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom III
Genealogies of Piracy: Alienation and Early-Modern French Geographical Knowledge
Legal depositions against pirates filed in early-modern France are a rich site for the investigation of the construction of evidentiary
claims about geography and identity. This paper examines one such deposition through two genealogies to show how piracy ven before
or independent of the conception of intellectual piracy was complicit in early-modern knowledge production. The Relation authentique
of Binot Paulmier de Gonneville’s journey to the Indies in 1503-1505, a travel narrative whose topography of ambiguous clues tantalized
later geographic sleuths, exists as a result of several acts of alienation. Upon returning to Honfleur on May 20th 1505, Gonneville
and surviving members of his crew filed a deposition with the Admiralty of Honfleur against the pirates whose attacks had alienated
the crew of the L’Espoir from life and property. For a deposition against pirates, this document contains relatively little about material
goods lost and a surprising amount of detail about encounters with Indians. While at least one manuscript copy remained in the family,
a century and a half later an official copy of the deposition was commissioned to help Gonneville’s descendants prove their exemption
from Louis XIV’s droit d’aubaine or his tax on foreigners. The question at heart was whether or not Gonneville’s adopted son and
heir Essomericq, an Indian prince he had brought back to France in 1505, had been forced to remain in France. In other words, the
foreign or non-foreign status of Gonneville’s descendants, issues of Essomericq’s marriage to a relative of Gonneville’s, rested in part
on a reading of this legal document. This analysis of the genealogies of the deposition and of Gonneville will illustrate how piracy
contributes to the story of geography broadly construed as the study of the relations between peoples and places.
Ålbert C. Lewis, Indiana University -Purdue Univ. Indianapolis (alewis2@iupui.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country D
G.B. Halsted and Mathematics on the American Frontier
Upon his arrival from Princeton University as mathematics professor at the newly organized University of Texas at Austin in 1884, the
thirty-one-year-old George Bruce Halsted readily adopted the stance of a man poised for success on the frontier of American mathematics
and took his place in a society that often perceived itself as standing in contrast with the European and Eastern US traditions in
which he was raised. His principal mathematical subject, non-Euclidean geometry, originated in the Old World, but he saw himself not
so much as a researcher as a new type of distinctively American college professor who was devoted to teaching for its own sake. The
status accorded educators vis-à-vis researchers in mathematics appears to have declined during Halsted’s life, and by the time of his
death in 1922 the mathematics profession was clearly split between the two. Halsted’s debate over methodology with John Dewey, his
success with students at Texas, such as L.E. Dickson and R.L. Moore, and the decline of his own career, make him emblematic of some
of the main trends of the time.