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

forcefully by some influential geologists: to trace the root of geological thinking to the Romantics and to claim a fundamental
“Germanness” of the science. This perspective, together with some rather ingenious attempts to construct a new philosophy and a fitting
historical account of geology, proved to be amazingly influential even in the longer run; though parts were toned down, remoulded
or forgotten in the post-War years,it has continued to enjoy considerable success, particularly in the popularization and historiography
of geology in Germany. The talk will analyse the origin and the core features of this specific viewpoint, as well as offering some
examples of its still lingering influence.
Henning Schmidgen, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (schmidg@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom V
The Early History of Reaction Time Experiments, 1850-1865
The history of reaction time experiments is usually traced back to the research work carried out by Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and
the staff of his Leipzig laboratory founded in 1879. This paper offers a different account. It draws attention to the fact that measuring
reaction times in human beings was already performed by Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) in the context of his pioneering investigations
of nerve impulse speed in frogs (1850). Helmholtz did not publish any detailed report on his findings in the time experiments
with humans. However, in the following years, scholars such as Adolpe Hirsch, Rudolph Schelske, and Friedrich Kohlrausch set out to
verify experimentally the general results Helmholtz had given in a popular lecture in 1851. Based on archival evidence, the paper argues
that the ensuing debate about methodological and technological problems in reaction time measurements anticipated key issues discussed
by the growing community of psychologists throughout the 1880s and 1890s. The reaction time experiment is thus traced back
to the research carried out by physiologists, astronomers, and physicists well before Wundt started his lab at Leipzig.
Hans-Walter Schmuhl, University of Bielefeld/Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft (hans-walter.schmuhl@uni-bielefeld.de)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom II
Racial Science, Eugenics, and Developmental Genetics: The Politics of the Paradigm Shift at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1938-1945
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWIA) serves as a prime example of the symbiotic
instrumentalization of science and politcs during the Third Reich. However, precisely because of this symbiotic relationship in the area
of racial science, genetics, and eugenics during the early years of the Third Reich, research practice in these fields became somewhat
calcified. As a result, the first Director of the KWIA, Eugen Fischer (1874-1967) and his former student, and second Director (since
1942) Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (1896-1969), initiated a reorganization of the Institute’s reserch program under a new paradigm of
developmental or physioloical genetics (Phänogenetik)—a research trend that was internationally recognized in the early 1940s. This
resulted in a shirft of focus from a concern with the human genotype to phenotype. In addition, it marked a new preoccupation with
the interaction of proteins, enzymes and hormones as well as the interplay between genes and environment in the developmental
process. Perhaps most importantly for the interface of biology and politcs under the Nazis, this new research direction at once served
as a novel and interesting resource for National Socialist racial policies, led to the designation of the KWIA as “war essential,” and paved
the way for morally problematic and outright criminal activities on the part of some KWIA scientists.
Rebecca Press Schwartz, Princeton University (rpress@princeton.edu)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom III
Scientists Under Scrutiny in World War and Cold War
In the years of the early Cold War, the national security state focused a great deal of scrutiny on the physicists who were supposed to
be at once technically capable of revealing nuclear secrets and constitutionally unsuited to guarding them. While that scrutiny was in
some ways a reaction to the unique foreign and domestic political circumstances of the Cold War years, it drew upon and continued the
security that was a feature of the wartime Manhattan Project. Among the manifestations of this continuity were the transfer of personnel
to the Atomic Energy Commission from the Manhattan Project, the transfer of investigation files from the Manhattan Project
to the FBI, and the continued emphasis during the postwar years on the same people who had been most suspected during World War
II. While the emphasis on Communist espionage seems explicable in the early Cold War context, that assessment is complicated by the
realization that that emphasis, too, was a continuation of the primary emphasis on Communist espionage during World War II, when it
seems a less likely priority. This talk will examine how the Manhattan Project put into place the people, apparatus, and investigations
that were readily available to be drawn upon in the postwar period in the service of the newly urgent security imperative to prevent
atomic espionage.
Anne Secord, University of Cambridge (pas6@hermes.cam.ac.uk)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom VI
Social Class and the Boundaries of the Field in Nineteenth-Century British Botany
In 1830s Britain, men of science began self-consciously to shape diverse forms of knowledge of nature into scientific disciplines,
attempting to establish a hierarchical distinction between the work of generalisers and local collectors. This paper will explore these