2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
the physical and biological sciences can provide a basic understanding of the
“earth system” and a diagnosis of what has gone wrong economics and
conservation biology can provide solutions. It is the role of government to
choose among the solutions and to put them into effect. One way into global
change research for social scientists is through what are called “integrated
assessments.” The new demand for integrated assessment is not a request for
a whole earth dialogue but rather a purchase order for a whole earth model. As
it is now understood, integrated assessment is about coupling physical,
biological, and economic models. In this talk I will describe and analyze these
recent attempts at constructing whole earth models.
Vladimir Jankovic University of Manchester
Fear and Medical Politics of the 1999 Solar Eclipse in Serbia
“Leave your Home only if you Have to” was the message which the Serbian
Ministry of Health issued on the day of the last August’s Solar Eclipse. In the
official statement—published in the majority of daily newspapers and
magazines and broadcast on TV and radio—the Ministry of Labor, Health and
Social Politics and the Hidro-Meteorological Institute asked Serbian citizens
to stay away from the eclipse’s twilight and take precaution if they decide to
observe the phenomenon. The statement said that the atmospheric changes
during the eclipse may cause hypertension, stomach pains, tachycardia, an
increase in blood sugar and an intense itch. These announcements created an
unusual sense of anxiety especially as their rhetoric echoed the air-raid warnings
issued during that year’s NATO bombardment. In the meantime, the
government and opposition parties seized the opportunity to influence public
opinion by manipulating medical, meteorological and astronomical information
and producing a fascinating mixture of political argument and doommongering.
In this context, I wish to examine the activities of medical and
astronomical establishments and the extent to which their political affiliations
affected the construction of public fear.
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Sarah Jansen University of Cambridge/Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science
Arsenic and Candy: The Colorado Beetle in Germany, 1872-1914
“Foreign” insects became an issue in Germany in the early 1870s, during a
period of rapid industrialization and of international trade hastened by the
introduction of steamboats. The first two insects seen as foreign threats to German
(agri-)culture were the grapevine louse and the potato beetle, both of North
American origin. These insects assumed twofold cultural positions of increasing