2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
techniques. Although computers were widely used in this period as instruments
of scientific production, their status as legitimate objects of scientific scrutiny
had not yet been established. Computer programming in particular was
considered by many to be a “black art, a private arcane matter, general
programming principles were largely nonexistent, and the success of a program
depended primarily on the programmer’s private techniques and inventions.”
Those scientists who left “respectable” disciplines for the uncharted waters of
computer science faced ridicule, self-doubt, and professional uncertainty. As
the commercial computer industry expanded at the end of the decade, however,
corporate interest in the science of computing increased significantly. Faced
with a serious shortage of experienced, capable software developers, corporate
employers turned to the universities as a source of qualified programmers.
Academic researchers, unsure of what skills and knowledge were associated
with computing expertise, began to develop a detailed psychological profile
of the “ideal” computer scientist. Their profile included not only an aptitude
for chess, music, and mathematics, but also specific personality characteristics
(“uninterested in people,” “highly detail oriented,” etc.). Many of these early
empirical studies turned out to be of questionable validity and were of almost
no use to potential employers nevertheless, many of the characteristics
identified in these early personality profiles survived in the cultural lore of the
industry and are still believed to be indicators of computer science ability. My
paper explores the development of computer science as an academic discipline
from the perspective of the corporate employers who encouraged it as a means
of producing capable programming personnel. I explore the uneasy symbiotic
relationship that existed between academic researchers and their more
industrial-oriented colleagues. I focus on the use of psychological profiles
and aptitudes as a means of identifying “scientific” abilities and expertise.
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Fa-ti Fan Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Nature and National Narratives in Early Twentieth-Century China
One of the most powerful discourses of nationalism is the argument that the
components of a nation are “naturally” bound together. For the nation idealized
in this discourse, its people, land, and sovereignty constitute an organic whole
whose history is an analogy, or even an extenuation, of natural history. This
paper examines an influential strand of Chinese nationalism in the first decade
of the twentieth century when the influx of Western science—including natural
history, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and racial science challenged traditional
Chinese knowledge of “nature.” Chinese intellectuals constantly had to revise
their conceptual framework and invent new language to accommodate Western
learning. This paper analyzes how the historical actors defined and redefined
history, tradition, and nationhood in relation to the transmutations of the concept
of nature.
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