2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
pressures, as for example when the PHS withdrew as the national distributor
of one venereal disease education film in the face of opposition from the
Catholic Legion of Decency.
Philip␣ J. Pauly Rutgers University
Fighting the Hessian Fly: Ecology and Diplomacy in a Time of Revolution
In the early 1780s a new wheat pest appeared in New York and New Jersey.
Soon named the “Hessian fly” by Revolutionary War veteran and American
Philosophical Society member George Morgan, it engaged the attention of
American leaders interested in maintaining agricultural prosperity, building
science, and promoting what Morgan called “a useful National Prejudice”
against the forces that had been brought to America by George III. The insect
became a source of real tension between the United States and Great Britain
in 1788, when the Privy Council, on the advice of Royal Society president
Joseph Banks, used it to justify a ban on the importation of American wheat.
Debates over the origin, range, and behavior of the Hessian fly illuminate
science-based understandings of human-mediated biological invasions, as well
as the bases for prudential official judgments about invasion risks, prevalent
in the late 18th century. The episode also provides a concrete example of the
practical problems involved in insect species identification immediately after
Linnaeus. Finally, the sudden end to diplomatic concern over the Hessian fly
in late 1789 demonstrates the nesting of disputes about biological invasions
within the wider framework of “political ecology.” Famine and the French
Revolution induced British leaders to reassess the risks and benefits of cheap
American wheat; the immediate danger posed by the potentially riotous human
population of England was more compelling to them than the imagined
consequences of an invasion by the Hessian fly.
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Denise Phillips Harvard University
Citizenship and Science:
German Civic Scientific Societies and the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848
In the first half of the 19th century, Germany’s civic voluntary associations
formed the organizational bedrock of both political liberalism and middle class
public life. Over the same period, voluntary associations also became central
to the pursuit of natural science. By 1850, every German town of any size or
importance had its own local natural scientific society these associations
provided an important intellectual forum for both eminent scholars and obscure
local notables. Local societies joined together everyone who laid claim to the
title ‘natural scientist’ in this period. This group included university professors,