2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
science in response to a program sponsored by the John M. Templeton
Foundation. Brief comments on this phenomenon are followed by a discussion
of syllabi and supporting materials from one such course, focusing on
pedagogical issues related to our discipline. The audience will be encouraged
to raise questions about the program and about the types of courses it supports.
Alexis De␣ Greiff Imperial College, London/Observatorio Astronómico
Nacional, Colombia
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The North-South Exchange viewed from the Boundary:
Abdus Salam’s Conception of the Scientific Internationalism during the
Cold War
Abdus Salam was founder and first director of the International Centre for
Theoretical Physics—ICTP—at Trieste, a leading institute for co-operation
between Third World physicists and [his—their] colleagues in the North
during the Cold War. ICTP constituted a meeting point between North and
South as well East and West, thus a boundary. ICTP spread a particular view
of internationalism and co-operation between North and South. In this paper,
I describe Abdus Salam’s views of international co-operation in physics and
its role in the development of the Third World. His ideology entailed a specific
reading of the history of science and a conception of the North-South
relations. His experiences as a member of a heterodox Muslim sect, as
Pakistani and Professor at Imperial College, as well as his position as director
of ICTP shaped that ideology. I analyse the genealogy and the evolution of
his internationalists ideas. Finally, a comparison is made between the Salam’s
arguments, and those developed by natural scientists working the South and
close to the “dependency theory.”
Michael␣ S. Dettelbah Smith College
Map as Metaphor, Map as Math:
The Meanings of Cartography in the Enlightenment
The use of a geographical model for accounts of the progress of knowledge
was commonplace in the Enlightenment, and for that reason we tend to treat it
as a metaphor, a conventional figure of speech. Its frequency might instead
indicate the importance of controversies over the role of maps and map
projections to Enlightenment discussions of the status of physical knowledge.
That is, the description of knowledge as a process of creating a true map of the
earth might not be metaphorical at all, but quite literal and the subject of much
debate. Was the globe an essentially mathematical object, a transcendental
structure for organizing physical knowledge? Or did the very arbitrariness of
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