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

with previous understandings of research policy. Although the DFG became famous first and foremost
for its peer review system of single-researcher grants, it acquired a stable position within the German
innovation system of the Weimar Republic because it managed to direct research at this larger scale.
Klein, Ursula
E-mail Address: klein@mpiwg-berlin.de
Experiments, Formulae, and the Order of Organic Matter
European chemists' classification of organic substances changed dramatically after 1830. The new
mode of classification focused on the composition and "binary constitution" of organic compounds,
investigated by experiments, rather than on the observable properties and natural origins of organic
matter. It represented an entirely new order of epistemic objects aligned with a new concept of the
"organic." This paper studies the historical origins of this new chemical order and the collective resources
of its construction. It pays particular attention to problems linked to chemists' earlier attempts to
fit the experimentally created "artificial" derivatives of "natural" organic substances, i.e., materials
extracted from plants and animals, into the existing taxonomic tree. Furthermore, it illuminates the
relation between the new mode of classification and the new mode of representing the composition and
constitution of chemical compounds by means of Berzelian formulae, introduced in 1813.
Krige, John
E-mail Address: John.Krige@hts.gatech.edu
Philanthropy and the National Security State: The Ford Foundation's Support for European
Physics in the late 1950s
"Philanthropy and diplomacy", Volker Berghahn has argued, "became close partners in the cold
culture wars of the post-1945 era". A "symbiotic" relationship was established between the big Foundations
and Washington such that the former effectively "allowed themselves to be used as private instruments
of public policy". In this paper I want to explore this claim by describing the support for European
physics by the Ford Foundation in the 1950s. This support had two major moments. The first was
in 1955, and coincided with the Atoms-for-Peace conference in Geneva. The Eisenhower
administration's plan to encourage international exchange in the nuclear field was used by officers in
Ford to justify their support for CERN (which they mistakenly labeled the European Organization for
Nuclear Energy) and for Niels Bohr's Institute in Copenhagen. The second wave of support occurred in
the immediate post-Sputnik era. It was deliberately coordinated with an initiative taken inside NATO to
strengthen western science in the face of a presumed Soviet threat. The officers of the Foundation were
always emphatic that these funds were not intended to finance scientific research, and were coherent
with Ford's mission to promote American style democracy in Europe. This paper will explore their
political and ideological agenda, and show how their wish to strengthen science, especially physics, in
Europe dovetailed with the needs of the national security state in the 1950s.
Kroker, Kenton
E-mail Address: kenton.kroker@utoronto.ca
"Dreams and Rapid Eye Movement as Experimental Objects in American Psychology"
Since its professional and disciplinary consolidation at the beginning of the twentieth century, American
psychology has devised numerous experimental models, all of which have some claim to being the
foundation of a scientific psychology. Kurt Danziger (1990) and Martin Kusch (1999) have argued that
psychological practices maintain their authoritative status by drawing upon and reconstructing existing
social structures. In Ian Hacking's (1999) terminology, psychology is organized around interactive kinds.
These discussions, however, do not address the mediating role of instruments in modern psychology.