2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
pharmaceutical production of Chinese herbal medicine. However, as the
Institute gradually developed into an intelligence organ of the Japanese State
in the times of Sino-Japanese conflicts (1928, 1931 and 1937-45), the Institute
became a reality of cultural invasion and posed an imperialistic threat to the
geobody of Chinese nation. Against such a historical backdrop, the knowledge
of taxonomy emerged as a prioritized subject in Chinese scientific community
in order to facilitate the recognition and protection of the nation’s natural
resources. This paper first foregrounds the international context in which the
founding of the Institute was envisioned. It then analyzes the ambivalent
sentiments and positioning between the Chinese and the Japanese scientists in
the setting of the Institute. Subsequently, it focuses on the Chinese debate on
taxonomy versus experiment within the discipline of biology, and finally
concludes with the socioeconomic ramification and political implication of
transnational science.
Frederick␣ B. Churchill Indiana University
Bloomington Situating a New Science:
Boveri and the Embryological Analysis of Chromosomes
In this talk I intend to examine Theodor Boveri’s efforts to explore the
“constitution of the chromatic substance of the cell nucleus” through a series
of sophisticated morphological and experimental procedures that were
ostensibly a reflection of the moving frontier of the microscopical research of
the day. His investigations drew together a broad range of loosely connected
biological phenomena into a new conception of chromosomes. His
achievements were rigorous in technique and argumentation—well beyond
the standards of contemporary biology, and his results became the foundation
of what is now known as “classical genetics” . At the height of his career
Boveri presented his research as a new science, which he described as the
“Embronalanalyse des Zellkerns.” Its procedural details, however, turned out
to have only short term implications for the development of genetics and
embryology.
64
Jonathan Clark University of Kent at Canterbury
History from the Ground Up:
Bugs Political Economy and God in Early Nineteenth Century Britain
Long regarded as a hierarchical, organic model of society, the bee-hive—
together with ant and termite colonies—became more than the traditional
preserve of monarchists in the late eighteenth century. Social insects supplied
important evidence for Enlightenment values that challenged the hierarchy in