2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
other hand, in order to cope with this data ever more advanced techniques
from information science, particularly techniques of automation and machine
learning, have become staples of biological work. What has been the cost of
this transformation? Drawing upon the case of bioinformatics, this paper will
explore several contexts for advocating tools of information science as the
vehicle for making biology interdisciplinary, and the political economy of
accelerated knowledge production that has been both cause and effect in
reshaping biology as an information science.
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Trevor␣ H. Levere Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and
Technology
Cosmopolitan Isolates at Home and Abroad:
Chemists and Physicians in the 1780s and 1790s
From 1780 until 1787, the Chapter Coffee House Society, a group of chemists,
physicians, instrument makers, and engineers, met in London. The members
had strong ties with the Lunar Society of Birmingham, with political and
religious dissent, and with Edinburgh University. Even though many of them
were Fellows of the Royal Society of London, they formed a group whose
centre of gravity and influence lay outside the establishment. One of their
constant refrains was the insularity of British science, and the lack of ties
between British and continental men of science. And yet at almost every
meeting, discussion would include reports and criticism of the very latest
science abroad, in Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, and
beyond. Magellan, Portuguese priest, natural philosopher, and, most probably,
industrial spy, was the one-man centre of a highly effective scientific
intelligence network. Kirwan was in close touch with French chemists and the
latest chemistry. Others reported on work in German-speaking Europe before
it was published in Crell’s Annalen. Correspondence, travel abroad and visits
from foreign travellers, reinforced by the exchange of publications, meant
that the members of the Chapter Coffee House Society were singularly well
informed about European science. Thomas Beddoes was one among their many
sources for continental intelligence. Beddoes was not himself a member of
the Society, but he was known to many of its members. His information,
translations of German and Swedish texts, later complaints about the Bodleian
library’s inadequate holdings in German science, numerous reviews of German
works in British periodicals, and the strong representation of German science,
literature, and philosophy in his own personal library, all attest to the presence,
in at least some English quarters, of a lively awareness of the latest
developments in European science and medicine. His encouragement of
Coleridge’s visit to Germany was just one fruitful manifestation of this
awareness.
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