2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
the recurring seasons, and the apparent motion of the sun in the sky. Sundials
were also social tools. Since Hellenistic times, they coordinated people’s meal
times, and with the rise of monasticism, they also coordinated religious
devotion. During the 14th to 17th centuries, as feudal society built on the
rhythms of the countryside gave way to more urban, commercial society, time
became a precious commodity to be budgeted and spent wisely. Merchant
time was not the cyclical flow familiar to farmers, friars, and astronomers, but
money slipping through the fingers. With the new time pressures came new
images of Time. Classically portrayed as a winged youth holding a sundial,
Time came to be seen in the Renaissance as a ruthless old man, an inescapable
force causing ruin and decay. Sundials reflected these different (cyclical vs.
linear) attitudes toward time. As time pressures became keenly felt by all
members of society, the production of sundials increased dramatically in
Europe. Many new types of pocket sundials kept busy people on schedule.
Variations in the mathematical forms and designs also reveal how people spent
their time and what they valued most. The strength and originality of this
paper are its primary sources. It takes as its foundation over 2000 historic
sundials preserved in museums worldwide. Although literary evidence is useful,
it is only by the close inspection and comparison of many dials from different
places and periods that one can build a picture of astronomy and mathematics
in daily life, time discipline, and consumer culture.
Londa Schiebinger Pennsylvania State University
Gender in the Voyages of Scientific Discovery
The past several years have witnessed renewed interest in 17th- and 18thcentury
botany, the “big science” of early modern Europe. Historians have
begun to analyze the importance of plants for the economic expansion of the
major western European states in this period, and to explore the role of botany
in European colonial expansion. This paper explores how gender relations in
Europe guided naturalists as they explored other lands, peoples, and their
knowledges. For over one hundred years the French, for example, sent
specimens from colonial gardens in the Antilles to botanists working at the
distinguish Parisian Jardin du Roi. The British furnished the elaborate Kew
Gardens with dried and living specimens and exotic seeds from their extensive
system of gardens stretching from Saint Vincent in the West Indies to Calcutta,
Sydney, and Penang off the west coast of the Malay peninsula. How did gender
mold what was included or not included in these shipments?
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