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

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of Mössbauer spectroscopy at Argonne in search for answers to the following questions: What are the incentives for collaboration when there is no need to fund expensive apparatus? How does international multidisciplinary collaboration play out over time when it is not driven by financial considerations? What role do the “Homes of Big Science” (the U.S. national labs) play in the development of smallscale research? And finally, should accelerator-based Mössbauer research be thought of as “Big Science”? Peter J. Westwick, Caltech (westwick@hss.caltech.edu) Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom II Remobilizing for Defense in the 1980s: The Case of the Jet Propulsion Lab In the late 1970s the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), a NASA center run by Caltech, perceived eroding support for its main mission in planetary exploration. In response, JPL pursued new sponsors in the military. The military buildup at the time included a strong space component, and JPL specialized in survivable spacecraft, remote sensing, data telemetry, and image processing all subjects of interest to national security programs. JPL managers could thus satisfy a national priority, and at the same time serve their own institutional interests by supporting key staff with defense funding. They thus reversed the usual scientists-on-tap argument for government-funded labs, namely that scientific research would keep technical people available for defense programs; instead JPL undertook defense work to keep technical staff on tap for future diversion to scientific programs. The resumption of defense work, however, came in a very different climate from the mobilization of scientists and engineers in the early Cold War, including JPL’s own work under the Army before 1958, and it would have to overcome anti-military sentiment, at the lab and on the Caltech campus, spawned by the Vietnam War and the Cold War arms race. After intense debate over the morality of military research and the effects of classification, Caltech approved defense work at JPL. Subsequent debates over JPL’s work for the Strategic Defense Initiative likewise ended in approval. Despite changing social contexts, practical accommodation continued to overcome principled protests, and scientists and engineers proved willing once again to mobilize for the military. Paul White, University of Cambridge (psw24@cam.ac.uk) Saturday, 20-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom IV Darwin’s Correspondence and the Imperial Archive If Darwin has been regarded as a collector this has usually been with respect to his beloved beetles or Galapagos finches. Yet in the years leading up to the publication of Descent of Man (1871), Darwin gathered materials on human form and expression from correpondents throughout the British dominions, the Americas, and the Far East. This paper will explore the role of his correspondence as a medium of collection and as a means of transforming local peoples into exhibits of human evolution. Greg Whitesides, University of California, Santa Barbara (jgw@umail.ucsb.edu) Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Texas Ballroom II Manufacturing Faith: The Industry at the Intersection of American Science and Spirituality Since the 1970s, developments in genetics, neuroscience, alternative medicine, and ecology have engaged scientific, religious, and environmental communities in dialogue over issues of science policy and practice. By the 1990s, commentators spoke of a new religion and science “dialogue,” but the movement was more than just dialogue. Institutions were created, educational programs established, and scientific research funded and undertaken. In short, an “industry,” spanning numerous fields, was built. Today, this industry is part of American culture and essential to those groups looking to participate in science policy debates, disseminate their interpretation of science to the public, and inform the practice of American science and medicine. This paper provides a model of this industry by dividing the participants and organizations into five basic “affiliations:” 1) Scientific Outreach (e.g. the National Institutes of Health Ethics, Legal and Social Implications program or the American Association for the Advancement of Science Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion); 2) Religious Outreach (e.g. the Presbyterian Assembly for Science, Technology and the Christian Faith or the Catholic Committee on Science and Human Values); 3) Science and Religion “Professionals” (e.g. the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences or the John Templeton Foundation); 4) Scientific Esotericism (e.g. SETI, Health & Spirituality, Institute on Noetic Sciences); 5) Religious Esotericism (e.g. Discovery Institute and Institute for Creation Research or Transhumanism and Ecofeminism). The industry has three main activities. First, a few participants conduct research in parapsychology, spirituality and health, immortality, extraterrestrial life, and genetic enhancement. Others attempt to influence science policy, particularly genetic science policy, through bioethics. Finally, the industry helps shape American spirituality by providing competing interpretations of contemporary sciences. Combining these various perspectives reveals a unique glimpse into an industry critical to the assimilation of science in American culture and the manufacture of American science and spirituality. Chen-Pang Yeang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (cpyeang@mit.edu) Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Texas Ballroom II Toward a Science of Noise This paper examines how noise evolved from an annoying matter of fact in engineers’ experience into a scientific concept. Radio engineers had been troubled by “tube noise,” disturbances at the output of vacuum-tube circuits, and had attributed its cause to tubes’ defects. After the mid-1910s, however, physicists began to understand noise in terms of fundamental physical laws. In 1918, Walter
Schottky at Siemens & Hauske in Berlin argued that the discrete nature of electrons results in disruptive fluctuations”shot noise”at tube current. In 1925, John B. Johnson and Harry Nyquist at the Bell Telephone Laboratories also suggested that the current passing a resistor exhibits fluctuations “thermal noise”-due to electrons’ random thermal motions, and tube noise is largely thermal noise of tube’s input resistance. Based on statistical-mechanical reasoning, the shot-noise and the thermal-noise theories predicted relationships between noise intensity and fundamental constants such as electron’s charge or Boltzmann’s constant, which became the objects of experimental verification. General Electric researchers Albert Hull and N. W. Williams’s determination of charge of electron from measuring shot noise and Johnson’s determination of Boltzmann’s constant from measuring thermal noise offered major empirical evidence for noise’s physical theories. By the 1930s, radio engineers used such theories to reduce and to characterize vacuum tubes’ noise levels, and to predict the ultimate limit of electronic devices’ performances. The statistical treatments of noise in these endeavors would lead to Claude Shannon’s information theory in the 1940s that revolutionized modern communication technology. The history of noise therefore sheds light on how modern science and engineering extract useful information from uncertainties and disturbances while controlling their detrimental effects. Charles N Yood, Lyman Briggs School of Science, Michigan State University (cny1@psu.edu) Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country C Building Big Iron: Applied Mathematics, “Hybrid Areas” and the Social Organization of Computational Science at Argonne National Laboratory, 1949-1970 From 1949-1970, the work and organization of Argonne’s Applied Mathematics Division contributed significantly to the emergence of “computational science” in the late 1980s as a distinct methodological approach to the investigation of physical and biological phenomena (alongside theory and experiment). While the advancement of digital computer technology is a significant part of this story, possibly more important was the AMD’s efforts to integrate computers and their attendant personnel into the scientific process. Early on, the directors of the AMD envisioned a new role for applied mathematicians vis-à-vis scientists and engineers in the development of mathematical models suitable for digital computers. In particular, the pursuit of “computational science” required that applied mathematicians be incorporated more directly in all stages of science and engineering practices from problem formulation to the definition of what constituted a solution. Arguments in favor of such a collaborative structure drew on Cold War rhetoric, debates within the mathematical profession, and issues surrounding the increasing quantification of the sciences. While computers (and the need for sophisticated, yet efficient mathematical models) allowed applied mathematicians to contend for such a position, it was also necessary for applied mathematicians to stake out a new research agenda that balanced their service requirement to scientists and engineers with the necessity to conduct research in the foundations of mathematics. Chris Young, Alverno College (chris.young@alverno.edu) Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Texas Ballroom VII Status and Agenda in Wildlife Preservation: William T. Hornaday as Zoologist and Activist William T. Hornaday led wildlife conservation efforts in the late 19th century. His training in zoology provided a basis for setting national agendas at a time when conservation was only an emerging concern. Being in the mainstream of biological science a the turn of the century and particularly having interests in conservation of wildlife, Hornaday also demonstrated consistent support for eugenic notions of human groups and the importance of preserving favored groups over others. The consistency of this agenda raises challenging questions about broader connections between conservation of wildlife and eugenics, which historians of science have only begun to explore. In this paper, I am especially interested in how Hornaday’s status as a leader in conservation provided greater status to his eugenic views, whether the reverse association was more significant, or whether the connection can even be demonstrated as significant to either approach. Finally, I am exploring what legacy of eugenics, if any, carries forward in conservation efforts to the middle of the twentieth century, by which time Aldo Leopold ranked as a leading voice. Jeris Stueland Yruma, Princeton University (stueland@princeton.edu) Friday, 19-Nov-04, 1:30 - 3:10 PM - Hill Country D How Experiments are Remembered: Discovery, Discipline, and the Birth of Fission The story of fission begins with facts: in December of 1938, in Berlin, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann demonstrated chemically that some of the uranium atoms they had bombarded with neutrons had split into various elements, including barium. Hahn and Strassmann’s colleague, Lise Meitnerin Sweden having recently fled Nazi Germany and her nephew Otto Frisch then offered a physical explanation for the process and Frisch christened it “nuclear fission.” From here, though, the story is contested. Otto Hahn alone was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery. He would later argue that until her flight, Lise Meitner’s physical mindset had prevented him from realizing that fission was taking place in their experiments. Historians in turn have argued the presentation of fission as a chemical discovery facilitated physicist Meitner’s being written out of the story. An examination of newspaper and journal articles on fission, however, suggests that the presentation of fission as a chemical discovery necessitates the presentation of its physical explanation as well. When Hahn is called a “chemist,” Meitner as physicist is mentioned. When Hahn is termed a “scientist,” he, or he and Strassmann alone are discussed.
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Page 27 and 28: Elise S. Lipkowitz, Northwestern Un
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Page 49 and 50: Bourgeois Automata: Mechanical Bodi
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