2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
but also scientifically minded state bureaucrats, doctors, ministers and
businessmen. Like other kinds of voluntary associations, scientific societies
presented a potential challenge to state authority. In claiming the right to speak
for the general good, they moved into a position that had previously been
occupied by the state alone. Governed by constitutions and ruled by elected
officers, these societies presented in microcosm the principles that early 19th
century liberals hoped to realize in the polity as a whole. This paper will
examine the role of scientific associations in the liberal revolutions of 1830
and 1848, analyzing the place of civic natural scientific activity in relation to
other projects that aimed to reconfigure political authority in this period.
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Wade␣ E. Pickren American Psychological Association
Life and the “Age of Psychology”:
The Public Image of Psychology in the 1950s
The rapid growth of psychology after World War II brought unanticipated
benefits and problems to organized psychology. The benefits included a sharp
increase in membership in the leading psychological organization, the American
Psychological Association (APA), and a concomitant rise in the knowledge
base of psychology. Changes in American society contributed to the growth
of the practice of psychology through an increased demand for psychotherapy
and other mental health services. The increased salience of psychology in the
public eye was not an unmixed blessing to professional psychologists. The
problematic relationship of psychology and the public is examined through
the lens of the series on psychology that ran in Life magazine during the middle
years of the 1950s. At the time of their publication, it was estimated that the
Life series increased public awareness of psychological concepts more than
any other publication ever had. The articles in the series are examined in the
light of archival correspondence between the series editor for Life, Ernest
Haveman, and Michael Amrine, public information officer for the American
Psychological Association. This episode is discussed in terms of how the
psychological imagination of the American public was shaped in the middle
years of the twentieth century.
Chris Pires University of Wisconsin
Power of the Unified Narrative:
Placing Botany in the Evolutionary Synthesis
The traditional Evolutionary Synthesis narrative, as told by zoologist/historian
Ernst Mayr, characterizes a transformation in twentieth century biology from
diverse efforts performed by fragmented subdisciplines to a unified effort that
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