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

noise and inscriptions of nature. In my discussion of some specific cases (e.g. the scientific debate on the
fluid photographs that were taken at the Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière) I'd like to show how it could
become an act of declaration whether a certain inscription on a photographic plate should be treated as
technical noise or as a trace of nature, how distinctions between 'facts' and 'artifacts' became problematic,
how 'nature' and 'technology' could intersect.
Gerson, Elihu
E-mail Address: gerson@ieee.org
The Origins of Natural History
The early modern origins of natural history are to be found as much (or more) in the humanistic
disciplines as in the sciences traditionally conceived. Natural history as a way of understanding nature
developed as one of a group of disciplines (along with the ancestors of philology, history, and geography)
devoted to describing the world rather than understanding the causes of things (the province of
natural philosophy) or for appreciation and imitation of exemplary works (the province of rhetoric and
the fine arts). Comparative biology and other disciplines rooted in the descriptive tradition are thus
different from those rooted in the experimental-mechanical tradition. Over time, natural history developed
concern with causal analysis, so that we may reasonably bracket natural history with the sciences
by the beginning of the nineteenth century. But the differences in origin remain clear in the development
of the two traditions.
Gilbert,James
E-mail Address: James_B_Gilbert@umail.umd.edu
Popularizing Darwin
In 1925, during the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, Edgar Rice Burroughs was asked by the
Hearst newspaper chain to comment on the argument between creationism and evolution. There was
nothing odd about this request, with its assumption that the author of the Tarzan books and scores of
science fiction and adventure stories had something important to add to the debate. Hearst recognized
that Burroughs was one of the 20th Century's major popularizers of Darwinian theory. His writings
were filled with extended discussions and windy expositions of evolution, hereditarian theories, and
ideas about eugenics. Given the very uneven teaching and the rise and fall of Darwinism in American
public schools, it is arguable that a great many Americans (in particular boys and young men who were
his avid fans) had their most thoroughgoing and explicit exposure to the concepts of evolutionary theory
through reading science fiction and other works written by Burroughs over the first half of the 20th
Century. Even in the first Tarzan novel, and far more explicitly in later stories, Mendelian hereditarian
and Darwinian evolutionary theory are central elements of the plot and recurrent themes. This paper
will briefly discuss the teaching of Darwinian theory in public and Catholic high schools before 1960 as
a background for exploring what Burroughs had to say about evolution and the peculiar eccentricities of
his interpretations. I will pay particular attention to The Land That Time Forgot, a trilogy of stories in
which Burroughs explores in considerable detail ideas of evolution, eugenics, heredity, and reproduction.
My purpose will be to determine what young readers might have concluded from this intensive
exposure to ideas (however inaccurate a portrayal of science) that they only occasionally encountered in
school. My conclusion is that Burroughs should be taken seriously as one of the important science
popularizers of the 20th century. In more general terms, his case suggests the larger conclusion that
elementary science education (for better or worse) has been conveyed through popular culture as much
as in the classroom.
Gingras, Yves