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

What is a "lab"? How do individuals cooperate to solve scientific problems, and how do personal,
political, and logistical factors affect their decisions about what experiments to perform? To what extent
do the ideas emerging from a "lab" depend on the lab's physical space, which shapes the interactions
within a Principle Investigator's (PI's) group? To address these questions, I will focus on the troubled
group of physiologist Johannes Müller in Berlin. Between 1833 and 1858, Müller's students included
Jakob Henle, Theodor Schwann, Hermann Helmholtz, Emil Dubois-Reymond, and Ernst Haeckel. The
close quarters in which they worked made their relationships crucial, for Müller never had a lab in the
modern sense. He and his students performed their experiments either in a few small rooms adjacent to
the medical dissecting hall or at Müller's anatomical museum. Schwann did the studies leading to cell
theory in a hotel room on Friedrichstrasse. In trying to reconstruct the ways these scientists developed
their ideas, we can work only with their conflicting stories about what occurred in their laboratory space.
Nicholas Jardine has proposed that DuBois-Reymond's and Virchow's accounts of Müller serve the
students' own interests, establishing their PI as a precursor who paved the way for their own achievements.
In seeking the origin of scientific ideas, we must interpret two layers of texts shaped by personal
perspectives: those published to present observations to other scientists, and those published to tell
historians how this science was done.
Palmeri,JoAnn
E-mail Address: palmerij@ou.edu
Popular and Pedagogical Uses of Cosmic Evolution
By the end of the 20th century, evolution had become a theme pervading the physical as well as
biological and social sciences. In the process, the theme of Cosmic Evolution has become the standard
narrative backdrop against which scientists have presented unifying and integrating accounts of science
and the cosmos. The pervasive and compelling nature of such accounts has led many observers to
characterize the theme of Cosmic Evolution as the myth of our time - a creation epic, a secular story of
origins. Since the 1950s astronomers have played a key role in contributing to the construction of this
narrative, which has been most recently characterized as The Epic of Evolution. In this paper I examine
the contributions of astronomers to the creation, popularization and promotion of the epic theme of
Cosmic Evolution.
Pang,Alex
E-mail Address:
Paris, Elizabeth
E-mail Address: eparis@dibinst.mit.edu
A Laboratory’s Life: Consequences of Not Being Allowed to Build the Next Machine
At the end of August 1965, the physicists at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator Laboratory in
Massachusetts (CEA) received the disappointing news. Their appeals had failed. The Atomic Energy
Commission had awarded the right to build the United States’ first electron-positron colliding beam
storage ring to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California (SLAC). Despite losing the storage
ring competition, however, the Cambridge group did not lose their passion for the project. Desperate to
continue both operating their laboratory and exploring this new frontier, they embarked on a course
which would beget brilliant innovation as well as extensive experience, both frustrating and practical.
Furthermore, the results from the soon-to-be-eclipsed university facility lived constantly in the shadow
of the impending construction of SLAC’s purpose-built ring. A cynical eye might see CEA’s struggles as