Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

maintained that the diamond trials constituted one of many procedures demonstrating that the objects of
chemical research often defied reliable containment, control, and measurement with the available repertoire
of laboratory devices. The fugitive properties of gross solids like diamond when subjected to
extreme conditions as well as the variety of airs, subtle matters, and imponderable principles that populated
eighteenth-century laboratories suggested a fluid physical world which resisted instrumental
management and measurement. This view implied that the chemical laboratory did not provide a dependably
disciplined space for the conduct of quantitative experiment. According to many Enlightenment
chemical practitioners, the mundane conditions of the laboratory substantially constrained both the
precision and the certainty that should be ascribed to experimental facts. In contradistinction to conventional
historical accounts, this paper will argue that the misgivings expressed by Enlightenment chemists
about precision determinations did not result from their ideological opposition to measurement. Instead,
their skepticism ensued from their examination of the material and practical strictures of the laboratory.
DeVorkin,David
E-mail Address: david.devorkin@nasm.si.edu
Evolutionary Thinking in American Astronomy from Lane to Russell
Textbooks and popular histories of astronomy have tended to describe late 19th and early 20th century
American astronomy as highly empirical. Here we show evidence that evolutionary thinking lies at the
base of some major American contributions to astronomy and astrophysics from 1860 through 1920.
Highlighted will be the spectral classification schemes from Harvard and Henry Norris Russell’s adoption
of a spectrum-luminosity diagram to describe his theory of stellar evolution.
Dick,Steven
E-mail Address: dick.steven@usno.navy.mil
Cosmic Evolution and the Biological Universe
The "Biological Universe, the idea that life is abundant throughout the universe, was the ultimate
claim for the action of evolution in 20th century astronomy. Cosmic evolution was seen as ending not
with a physical universe of planets, stars and galaxies, but with a universe of life, mind and intelligence.
Already at the beginning of the century Percival Lowell advanced Mars as a specific case of this view.
While it was largely eclipsed during the 1920s and 1930s by James Jeans’s planetesimal hypothesis,
which implied that planet formation was rare, with the decline of that theory, and observational claims in
the 1940s, the biological universe began a career that has continually strengthened during the century.
The search for life became a substantial research program, with NASA as it primary patron, and a driver
of the U.S. space program. For many the Biological Universe was not only a hypothesis, but a world
view with a status similar to Copernicianism and Darwinism, with all the implications implied in science
and popular culture. Compelling but very difficult to prove, the search for life beyond Earth is a window
on how scientists function at the limits of scientific endeavor.
Dick,Steven
E-mail Address: dick.steve@usno.navy.mil
The Biological Universe and Science Fiction
The idea of a universe full of life - what I term the Biological Universe- is a kind of scientific world
view similar in status to the Copernican and Darwinian world views. As such it has implications for
society in general. Science fiction may be seen as one way (UFOs are another) that popular culture has
elaborated on this world view over the last century. The alien theme in science fiction is closely related
to the extraterrestrial life debate, and to science in general. H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds shows the
effect of Darwin and Percival Lowell; Arthur C. Clarke, Stanislaw Lem and others were steeped in the