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

have begun to engage seriously with the role of print culture as a source for public participation in the
scientific revolution, as well as an important epistemological framework of the new philosophy. This
paper attempts to approach the transformations between 'low' and 'high' mathematical traditions by an
examination of the ways in which mathematicians utilized the market of printed books. The production
of mathematical books, like many other genres, rested between a new market imperative and an older
structure of patronage relationships. In both cases, novelty was demanded, although this novelty often
took the inconspicuous form of translations, re-drawn diagrams, and new commentaries on old texts.
Nevertheless, the transformative nature of these printed "novelties" made possible transformations in the
way mathematical knowledge could be packaged and traded. I will examine the variety of mathematical
texts available to early modern readers, and identify meeting points between mathematical traditions.
The field of mathematical texts, placed well within the social world of early modern actors, can illuminate
the ways in which the increased availability of mathematical texts, and an attendent
autodidacticism, fostered both the appropriation of artisanal knowledge by erudite curiosi, and the
advancement of mathematicians as philosophers and sages.
Hofer, Veronika
E-mail Address: Veronika.Hofer@eunet.at
Physiology gains space. On the meaning of Sigmund Exner's Founding of the Phonogrammarchiv
This paper addresses the encounter between science and aesthetics as two sides of a characteristic
trait of Vienna at the turn of the century. Sigmund Exner's foundation of the world's first sound archive
in 1899 represented not just another deed of a member of a family of scientific founders. In order to
understand what distinguished the Phonogrammarchiv from similar institutions founded quickly thereafter,
we must consider it within the intellectual history of Central Europe. While the Berlin
Phonogrammarchiv laid emphasis on creating a systematic musicology, the Viennese aimed at languages,
music, sound portraits of renowned personalities, as well as the voices of animals and the cries
of children. In search of the idea of culture that stood behind this innovation, we have to take into
account that the particular scientific atmosphere of the Habsburg Empire strongly favoured the use of
methods from the natural sciences for research in the humanities and the arts. In Vienna, empiricism had
eventually become a significant movement through the influence of Franz Brentano, Johann Friedrich
Herbart, and Ernst Mach. To be sure, Sigmund Exner was the head of the world-renowned Physiology
Department of the University of Vienna, an outstanding researcher in the field of perception, and the
respective brain functions. But there was also a specific focus to his research, which induced him to
found the Phonogrammarchiv in order to collect the recordings of "acoustical phenomena" originating
from nature and culture.
Hook, Ernest
E-mail Address: ebhook@socrates.berkeley.edu
Different Voices were Heard: Geneticists' Views in the 1930s and 1940s on the Consequences of
Race Crossing
During the 1930’s and 1940’s in the USA and Britain William B. Provine (1973) claimed that geneticists
changed their minds about the biological effects of race crossing not because of scientific evidence
but because of repugnance to Nazi doctrines. I suggest in contrast that there is no evidence that anyone
changed their minds about the scientific consequences of race crossing, in response to Nazi doctrines or
anything else, but rather, in the USA and Britain different voices spoke up or became silent. Elderly
geneticists whom I surveyed could recall no one altering beliefs about any putative adverse consequences
of race crossing. Julian Huxley cited evidence that under some circumstances race-crossing
could have adverse effects. Thus an alternative more complex view is that: i) there was wide variation