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

is argued that they should be treated with a degree of skepticism that is traditionally associated with oral histories.
Tania Munz, Princeton University (tmunz@princeton.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom VII
Birds, Bees, Lights, Camera, Action - Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and the Behavior of Animals on Film
In this paper, I discuss the role of film in the animal behavior studies of Nobel Laureates Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz. Both
scientists were enthusiastic and prolific producers of films. They used the medium as a scientific instrument - to capture, slow down,
and repeat behaviors - and as a didactic tool in their many popular and scientific lectures. I analyze how they tailored their films to fit
different audiences and discuss the nature of their collaboration with the German Reichsstelle für den Unterrichtsfilm (later, the
Göttingen Institut für den Wissenschaftlichen Film), the government arm that supported and distributed most of their films. I also show
how von Frisch and Lorenz managed tensions between aesthetics, entertainment and standards of scientific decorum, and analyze the
epistemological status of film as a scientific tool - how was the medium seen vis-à-vis naked-eye observations and how did the staging
of animals and their surroundings and the inclusion of drawn animations affect its perceived truth content?
Jane H. Murphy, Princeton University (jmurphy@princeton.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country A
The Ubiquity of the ‘Uncommon Sciences’: Scientific Practices in 18th-Century Cairo
Questions of how to characterize and in turn periodize 18th-century Egyptian scientific practices have been at the heart of a debate
over Ottoman intellectual life of that age. By carefully examining both the intellectual issues that invigorated 18th-century manuscripts
and the social settings in which these texts and their authors circulated, the scientific practices themselves become valuable sources for
understanding the wider intellectual and social worlds of eighteenth-century Cairo and their place in Ottoman and Mediterranean contexts.
I show that different social and linguistic groups were brought together by scientific interest and that these practices were in no
way antithetical to scholarly religion, Sufism or elite Mamluk culture, but that they existed primarily because of their role in these circles.
Carla Suzan Nappi, Princeton University (nappi@princeton.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country A
Dragon’s Blood and Cardamom: The Foreign and the Distant in Early Modern Chinese Natural History
The history of foreign natural objects in China is simultaneously a history of poison and plague, medicine and commerce. In a literary
tradition fundamentally concerned with reporting, judging and “correcting” the wisdom of past and contemporary scholars, deciding
what stories to believe, and why, played a primary role in discussions of natural objects. As they had been previously, observability and
visibility were important grounds for demonstrating the believability of claims about the natural world, which created an interesting set
of epistemological negotiations around plants and animals that were NOT easily observable: those at the tops of mountains or deep in
deserts, buried in vast oceans or deep snow, those whose lifetimes lasted thousands of years, those from foreign lands and unfamiliar
texts. Shadow, burial, and obscurity are important loci for illuminating Chinese notions of nature. Since earliest recorded times Chinese
natural history writings incorporated records and descriptions of animals and plants from distant lands and foreign languages, and early
modern scholarship on natural objects was particularly rich with such claims. Through a careful study of the treatment of “foreign”
nature in late Ming and early Qing texts, the paper will illustrate the simultaneous roles of observation and obscurity as crucial aspects
of knowledge-making in 16th and 17th century China, and will attempt to place China in an “early modern” world system of commerce
of goods and ideas about the natural world.
William Max Nelson, University of Califorina, Los Angeles (williamn@ucla.edu)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom VI
Healing Time’s Eunuch: Buffon and the Generation of the Future in Enlightenment France
The French philosophe Georges Buffon is well-known as a natural historian, but several dimensions of his important role in the
Enlightenment transformation of historical temporality have been overlooked. In the mid-eighteenth century, Buffon carried out
numerous experiments with animals in an attempt to find the means to counter-act what he perceived as their degeneration. Buffon
began his endeavor attempting to harness nature’s own regenerative tendency toward a balanced original state. In the process, he identified
and articulated the theoretical means to “embellish” nature and exceed its original state. He thus opened-up, to an unprecedented
degree, the possibility of constructing the future of the natural world through willful human intervention. Quite ironically, the understanding
of historical temporality was transformed as the constructability of the future arose out of Buffon’s attempts to recover a
“lost” state of nature.
Elizabeth R. Neswald, National University of Ireland, Galway (lukretz@hotmail.com)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Hill Country B