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

logical knowledge. Mastering various forms of visual media therefore constituted an important part of a medical scientist’s professional
repertoire. At the same time as specimens conserved in various techniques were on display in medical museums, the general public
could see artefacts of the same kind in the popular wax museums. Another phenomenon closely connected to the medical discourse
was the freak-show: they both objectified odd or deviant bodies for their own interests. Wax museums, freak-shows and medical museums
also share a common history, dating back to the old collections of curiosities. Other connected phenomena around 1900 were
phrenological and hygienic exhibitions. This media history of medical imagery and display concerns scientific and popular concepts of
medicine and the body. It also involves questions about cultural representations of power, gender, class and ethnicity.
Laura J. Snyder, St. John’s University (snyderl@stjohns.edu)
Thursday, 18-Nov-04, 5:00 - 7:00 PM - Texas Ballroom VI
Lord Only of the Ruffians and Fiends?: William Whewell and the Plurality of Worlds Debate
Upon receiving a copy of William Whewell’s work, Of the Plurality of Worlds, in 1853, his friend John Herschel wrote back: “So this then
is the best of all possible worlds—the ne plus ultra between which and the seventh heaven there is nothing intermediate. Oh dear! Oh
dear! ‘Tis a sad cutting down. Lord only of the Ruffians and Fiends….I can’t give in my adhesion to the doctrine that between this
and the angelic there are not some dozen or two grades of intellectual and moral creatures….” We may presume that Herschel’s tongue
was firmly in cheek, but his dismay was real. Like most other scientists, philosophers and religious people in Britain in the nineteenth
century, Herschel endorsed the view that the universe contained numerous other worlds populated by intelligent inhabitants. (Indeed,
his own work on the double stars had contributed evidence, according to many, for this pluralist position.) Whewell’s book was one of
the first by an eminent intellectual to oppose this general trend since the 16th century. What was perhaps most odd about this is that
Whewell had endorsed pluralism twenty years earlier, in his contribution to the Bridgewater Treatises (works commissioned for the purposes
of showing how various scientific disciplines could contribute to Natural Theology). In this paper I will show that Whewell’s
reversal had mostly to do with three factors: important developments in his philosophical outlook; the influence of Richard Owen’s
theory of archetypes on Whewell’s view of the argument from design, and Whewell’s perception of a need to strengthen such arguments
in light of evolutionary accounts of human origins; and new findings in the sciences of geology and astronomy. By examining
this shift in Whewell’s position, we may increase our understanding about the interplay between science, religion and philosophy in the
plurality of worlds debate in the nineteenth century.
Alistair Sponsel, Princeton University (asponsel@princeton.edu)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom III
Fathoming the Depth of Charles Darwin’s Theory of Coral Reef Formation.
This paper is a revisionist account of the development of Charles Darwin’s theory of coral reef formation. I argue that Darwin undertook
a coral program long before the presumed genesis of his work on reef formation, and show how accounts that emphasize the geological
implications of the theory overlook the theoretical weight of his ongoing work on coral biology and distribution. I will propose
that Darwin’s coral theory is based on the model of Humboldt’s theory of altitudinal speciation, and I will argue that this view sheds
new light on the significance of the Beagle’s hydrographic mission for Darwin’s theory-making.
Matthew Stanley, Iowa State University (stanley@fas.harvard.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Big Bend A, B, & C
The Pointsman: Maxwell’s Demon and Victorian Freewill
James Clerk Maxwell’s “demon” is conventionally understood to be an attempt to show the limitations of the second law of thermodynamics.
This is certainly an important element, but in this paper I will explore the cultural roots of the demon, particularly in
Maxwell’s religious development. Maxwell’s Christian faith was a mix of several theological influences, but issues of free-will and human
choice in the world were always central to his religiosity. He initially modeled the human soul as a pointsman on a railroad as a way to
retain free-will in a mechanistic universe. This image of human choice coming from very slight evasions of energy physics provided a
resource he later applied to the problems of statistical understandings of thermodynamics. Maxwell’s demon was thus a theological
construct as well as a thermodynamic one, and this paper will investigate the relationship between its role in these different contexts.
Laura Stark, Princeton University (lstark@princeton.edu)
Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Hill Country C
Practicing Morality: Psychological Research Practices and the Rise of Human Subjects Regulations in Postwar America
During the 1970s, the research practices defined by professional psychologists as morally acceptable for their own discipline would form
a prominent part of the newly created US federal human subjects regulations. This extended the reach of the practices beyond their origins
in experimentalism and in the discipline of psychology, and therefore imposed the possibilities of knowledge and conceptions of
the subject that such practices imply. By focusing on psychology, this paper develops an account of American human subjects regulations
beyond their legitimating myth, which paints the American regulations as an obvious and direct response to the Nuremburg Code.
Engaging with recent interest in morality among historians of science, this paper argues that postwar psychologists defined their moral
methods at a time when commitments to the proper way to conduct experimental research came into conflict with ideas about the