2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
of his death. This paper aims to make a small contribution to this anniversary
from the vantage point of a Galileo scholar. That is, I would like to make a
critical comparison and contrast between the respective trials of these two
thinkers: I plan to focus on the causes for their condemnations by the Inquisition;
the procedures followed during the proceedings; and the aftermath in modern
Western culture. My expectation is that to compare and contrast the two trials
together will provide a better understanding of both the Galileo affair and the
Bruno affair. Some of the questions and working hypotheses to be explored and
tested are: that just as in the Galileo affair one must resist the temptation to act
as if the only issues were astronomical and scientific (and thus neglect the
methodological, philosophical, and theological issues), so in the Bruno case
one must resist the temptation of claiming the only issues were metaphysical
and theological (and none astronomical); that although the cause for which
Galileo was fighting was not worth dying for, Bruno’s cause was, and indeed it
required his ultimate sacrifice (as some authors have suggested, e.g., Ernest
Renan, Albert Camus, and Hans Blumenberg); and what is the significance of
the fact that the documentation of the two trials is similar only with respect to a
single document, namely the “executive” summaries of the respective
proceedings on the basis of which a final sentence was arrived at?
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Gerard␣ J. Fitzgerald Carnegie Mellon
“Mechanization through Standardization,”
Bacteriological Engineers and Biological Weapons at LOBUND, 1928-1955
This paper examines the scientific and technological development of the isolator
system designed and constructed by Professor James A. Reyniers of the
Laboratory of Bacteriology at the University of Notre Dame (LOBUND) from
1928-1955. Originally designed in 1928 as an instrumental system to facilitate
“germ-free” and pure culture work in bacteriology, the isolation machinery
provided an experimental space free from possible external contamination.
The system also provided biological and medical researchers with an equally
effective space for bacterial containment. During World War II, and continuing
throughout the Cold War, United States scientists utilized this system as an
experimental bacterial and viral containment system for biological weapons
research. Isolation units were employed in Reynier’s group at the University
of Notre Dame for the freeze-drying of typhus and by Karl Meyer research on
plague sponsored by the United States Navy at the University of California at
Berkeley. In addition, Theodore Rosebury who headed the Airborne Pathogen
Laboratory at Camp Detrick, converted isolators into experimental cloud
chambers to test Serratia Marcescens, Bacillus Globigii, Brucella Suis,
Malleomyces Mallei, and Pasteurella Tularensis as possible air-borne biological
weapons. Research conducted at Camp Detrick was especially important in
early post war decision making on future biological weapons research projects.
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