2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
Jane Maienschein Arizona State University
On the Organism in Development and Heredity
As Oscar Hertwig pointed out a century ago, the central biological problem of the
day concerned preformation and epigenesis: which is more important for organic
development? Does an organism begin preformed in some sense and just grow
larger, or does that form and organization emerge gradually during development?
And how? This fundamental problem of morphogenesis was thus a concern of
both structure and function, of pattern and process, of morphology and physiology.
As E. B. Wilson pointed out, these were at root issues concerning The Cell in
Development and Heredity. And the questions could be approached through several
alternative epistemological frameworks. Investigation in the 1890s did not solve
all the problems, of course, and the intervening 100 years has seen a waxing and
waning of various strategic attacks. Along the way, it has become clear that we are
not even quite sure what counts as an organism, and how organisms are organized.
Yet, as a special issue of Science reported recently, “unlike human centenarians
who are reaching the end of life, developmental biology is basking in its fullblown
prime. Indeed the excitement and promise of the field have never been
greater, as researchers close in on the secret of how a single fertilized egg cell goes
through the complex and beautifully orchestrated series of changes that create an
entire organism.” (1994. 266, p. 561) This is an ideal time to reflect on issues of
what counts as an organism, how we know, and what we have learned during a
sequence of efforts to study development and heredity.
David McGee University of Toronto / Max Planck Institute for the History
of Science
124
William Petty’s Double-Bottom
On December 6, 1864, Samuel Pepys and Sir Anthony Deane proposed a series of
wagers to Sir William Petty with respect to the performance of the experimental ship
Petty was building in Dublin. They even offered to double their bets if Petty would
actually sail in the vessel on its maiden trials. If accepted, the proposed wagers
would have amount to more than £2000, which was an awful lot of money in those
days. How could Pepys and Deane be so sure they would win? Pepys, was of course,
the former Secretary of the Navy. Deane was the leading English naval architect of
his generation, and regarded as the first to be able to successfully apply physical
theory in calculating the displacement of the ships he designed. This paper takes
advantage of the differences in approach to the application of theory by Deane and
Petty, particularly the use of measured plan drawings, in order to explain what went
wrong with Petty’s foray into shipbuilding, but also to explain features of the
relationship between science and design that historians must take into account in
order to understand the problematic relations of science and early modern technology.