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An Icy Feud in Planetary Science Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Andrew J. Ross
This article examines the fault lines upon which two scientists, Carl Sagan and Edward Teller, debated the nuclear winter hypothesis in the 1980s. It investigates how Sagan and Teller practiced science and understood its social value through their analyses of the nuclear winter idea. Crucially, this article identifies a planetary method to both scientists’ analyses that incorporated both environmental
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From Gas Hysteria to Nuclear Fear Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-04-01 Peter Thompson
While the histories of chemical and nuclear weapons are often categorically demarcated, this paper presents the transitional history between the development of early chemical weapons and the first atomic bomb in order to reveal both the institutional and imaginary connections between the two. In the wake of World War I, nationalized chemical weapons research provided one blueprint for the kind of large-scale
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How to Be an Epistemic Trespasser Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Shobita Parthasarathy
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How to “Be Expert” in Early Modern Europe Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Alisha Rankin
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How Not to Be an Expert Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Catherine Mas
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How to Call a Duck Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Alexandra Hui
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How to Train Your Analyst Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Katja Guenther
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How to Win Games and Influence Football Players Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Gian Marco Campagnolo
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History as a Tool for Natural Science Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2022-02-01 Sjang L. Ten Hagen
Historical methods have long been put to use in the making of natural knowledge. In this article, I examine the use of historical methods by nineteenth-century physicists, focusing on the Austrian researcher Ernst Mach in particular. I argue that Mach applied methods characteristic of the then-dominant historical and philological disciplines to his own discipline of physics. He construed history as
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Re-Envisioning the History of Cellular and Molecular Biology Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Andrew S. Reynolds
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Wilsonian Renormalization in the 1970s Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-11-01 Julia Harriet Menzel
This paper examines the history of the renormalization group, a cornerstone of contemporary theoretical physics, focusing on the work of Kenneth Wilson (winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in physics) and affiliated scholars in the 1970s. In particular, it reconstructs how studies of the renormalization group led to formative interactions between two distinct branches of physics, namely particle physics
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The Fall of Vannevar Bush Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Johnny Miri
Vannevar Bush was at the forefront of American research policy during World War II, but he suffered a steep fall after the war, and by 1948 had left government service altogether. What motivated such a significant loss of influence? Drawing on previously unexamined sources, this article traces the causes of Bush’s decline in authority to his loss of powerful allies, particularly with the death of Franklin
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Template Theories, the Rule of Parsimony, and Disregard for Irreproducibility—The Example of Linus Pauling’s Research on Antibody Formation Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Ute Deichmann
In 1940, Linus Pauling proposed his template theory of antibody formation, one of many such theories that rejected Paul Ehrlich’s selective theory of preformed “receptors” (antibodies), assuming instead a direct molding of antibody shapes onto that of the antigen. Pauling believed that protein shapes—independently of amino acid sequences—determined antibody specificity and biological specificity in
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The Politics of Early Programming Languages Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-06-01 David Nofre
There probably has never been such a controversial programming language as Algol. In the early 1960s the disciplinary success of the so-called Algol project in helping to forge the discipline of computer science was not matched by a significant adoption of the Algol language, in any of its three versions. This contrast is even more striking when considering the contemporary success of IBM’s Fortran
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Andean Man & the Astronaut Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Jordan Bimm
In 1958, Bruno Balke, a former German Luftwaffe doctor working for the United States Air Force (USAF), led a team of airmen up Colorado’s Mount Evans. Could acclimatization to the thin mountain air boost the oxygen efficiency of future astronauts living in artificial low-pressure spacecraft environments? To judge their improvement, Balke, an expert in the nascent field of space medicine, compared their
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“The Door to the Promised Land of Atomic Peace and Plenty” Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-04-01 Gisela Mateos,Edna Suárez-Díaz
Most countries met the promotion of the peaceful uses of atomic energy as a tool for social and economic development with skepticism. In countries where it took hold, its acceptance was driven by a few elite actors. In Mexico the most salient included the Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Nabor Carrillo, and William Draper Jr., President of the Canadian-based Mexican Light and
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Science in the Age of Invincible Surmise Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-04-01 Joseph D. Martin
The Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project at the University of Michigan was an unusual specimen of the post–World War II nuclear research initiative. Its origins were modest; it sprang from a student-led effort to construct a living war memorial—a mission it maintained even as it grew into a peaceful-atom program. Rather than taking advantage of the copious government support for scientific research available
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Nature and Modernity in an East Asian Key Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-04-01 Nicholas Witkowski
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Teaching in a Swimming Pool Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-04-01 David P. D. Munns
In the 1950s, American public universities began training a vast new cadre of nuclear engineers, technicians, and scientists in specially designed and built “teaching reactors.” As this article describes, a generation of nuclear engineering undergraduates and graduate students were exposed to an open, accessible, and above all, visible demonstration of nuclear energy through educational “swimming pool”–style
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Funny Origins of the Big Bang Theory Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-02-01 Alexandre Bagdonas,Alexei Kojevnikov
Popularization of science typically follows the lead of scientific research, conveying to lay audiences ideas and discoveries initially published in professional scientific literature and vetted by the expert community. The physicist George Gamow (1904–1968) did not respect this tradition, but promoted some of his most unorthodox scientific hypotheses as funny stories in his popular writings for non-specialists
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Secrecy and the Genesis of the 1951 Dutch-Norwegian Nuclear Reactor Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2021-02-01 Machiel Kleemans
Despite the restrictions on knowledge and materials of the Anglo-American nuclear monopoly in the early Cold War, Norway and the Netherlands managed to build and operate a joint nuclear reactor by July 1951. They were the first countries to do so after the Great Powers. Their success was largely due to the combination of the strategic materials of heavy water (Norway) and uranium (the Netherlands)
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Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Genomics in Hawai‘i Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Joan H. Fujimura,Ramya M. Rajagopalan
This paper examines how populations in a multiethnic cohort project used to study environmental causes of cancer in Hawai‘i have been reorganized in ways that have contributed to the racialization of the human genome. We examine the development of two central genomic data infrastructures, the multiethnic cohort (MEC) and a collection of reference DNA called the HapMap. The MEC study populations were
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Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Warwick Anderson,M. Susan Lindee
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Normalization and the Search for Variation in the Human Genome Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Soraya de Chadarevian
This essay reflects on the tension between standardization and the search for variation in the human genome. The stabilization of the human chromosome count in the 1920s was based on the consensus that “Whites,” “Negroes,” and “Japanese,” as well as women and men, had the same number of chromosomes. Yet the idea that there might be chromosomal differences between various groups of people was never
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First Peoples of the Atomic Age Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 M. Susan Lindee
In this article, I explore the history of biological materials that scientists and physicians collected from those who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Originally acquired beginning in 1946 to track the genetic effects of radiation in the offspring of atomic bomb survivors, these materials gradually became relevant to other kinds of biological and biomedical research. Many of
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From Racial Types to Aboriginal Clines Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Warwick Anderson
The mid-twentieth century Australian fieldwork of Joseph B. Birdsell illustrates, perhaps uniquely, the transition from typological structuring in physical anthropology before World War II to human biology’s increasing interest in the geographical or clinal patterning of genes and commitment to notions of drift and selection. It also shows that some morphological inquiries lingered into the postwar
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Congress Mania in Brussels, 1846–1856 Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 David Aubin
In 1853, the director of the Belgium Royal Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet, welcomed delegates from several countries to two consecutive meetings that have acquired considerable reputation as the first international congresses of, respectively, meteorology and statistics. This paper examines the local context where several similar international congresses (on free trade, universal peace, prison reform
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Science and Diplomacy around the Earth Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Giulia Rispoli,Doubravka Olšáková
In this article we discuss two phases in the evolution of global environmental programs, namely the Man and Biosphere Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, with the aim of showing their hidden diplomatic ambitions from both US and Soviet perspectives. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet views on the biosphere prevailed thanks to the influence of Soviet scientists in the International
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The (Science Diplomacy) Origins of the Cold War Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Simone Turchetti
The US monopoly of information regarding nuclear weapons was one of the distinctive features of the early Cold War. It encouraged US officials to bolster their country’s hegemonic role in post-war affairs, something that scholars have previously referred to in terms of “atomic diplomacy.” This paper shows that Cold War atomic diplomacy originated in an ancestral form of what we call today “science
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Early Twentieth-Century Ocean Science Diplomacy Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Sam Robinson
This paper is a response to a 2018 call for greater understanding of how previous examples of marine science diplomacy could help shape present day efforts to draft a new law of the sea that protects marine biodiversity and conserves the marine environment. It tackles this through analysis of the various twists, turns, and challenges of early science diplomacy efforts in marine science during the early
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The Philosopher and the Rooster Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Geert Somsen
Unlike what is often presumed, scientific internationalism persisted through the First World War and its aftermath. Although many scientists aligned themselves with their belligerent nations after 1914, and although Germany and Austria were excluded from international meetings after 1919, the rhetoric celebrating the universally fraternizing nature of science continued as if no such ruptures existed
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Exploring the Many Meanings of Purpose and Dialogue in Religion and Science Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-05-28 Joseph Satish Vedanayagam
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Science in India and Indians in Science Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-05-28 Lachlan Fleetwood
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Industrialization as a Historical Episode Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Adelheid Voskuhl
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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Russell McCormmach and the Empathetic Worldview Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Suman Seth
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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Obsolete, Extraneous, or Pertinent? Philosophy of Science and Historical Studies in the Physical (Natural) Sciences Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Jutta Schickore
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Giuliano Pancaldi
Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far
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Historical Studies in Which Sciences? The Revolving Door of Engineering and Technology Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Cyrus C. M. Mody
The first eleven volumes of Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences treated science for the most part as an academic, monodisciplinary pursuit of knowledge with little thought of application or contact with wider society. That changed abruptly in 1981 with Volume 12. Ever since, the journal’s name has steadily broadened, while its content has come to include ever more interdisciplinarity and application
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Weimar, Cold War, and Historical Explanation Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Julia Harriet Menzel,David Kaiser
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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The First Publication of Mendeleev’s Periodic System of Elements Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Petr A. Druzhinin
This study explores the full set of handwritten and printed materials associated with the 1869 publication of the first version of Dmitrii Mendeleev’s periodic system of elements: “An Attempt at a System of Elements Based on Their Atomic Weight and Chemical Affinity.” Using innovative historical research methods, the author has been able to refute the publication date traditionally associated with
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When National Styles Were Stylish Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Michael D. Gordin
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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From Modern Physics to the Cold War and Beyond Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Zuoyue Wang
This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.
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Exploiting Nazi Science and Technology and the History of Technology Transfer Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2020-04-01 Hermione Giffard
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Creation, Evolution, and the Continuing Conflict Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-11-01 James C. Ungureanu
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The New Critical History of Surveillance and Human Data Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-11-01 Theodora Dryer
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The Artificial Cell, the Semipermeable Membrane, and the Life that Never Was, 1864–1901 Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-11-01 Daniel Liu
Since the early nineteenth century, a membrane or wall has been central to the cell’s identity as the elementary unit of life. Yet the literally and metaphorically marginal status of the cell membrane made it the site of clashes over the definition of life and the proper way to study it. In this article I show how the modern cell membrane was conceived of by analogy to the first “artificial cell,”
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Biopolitics and the Collective Predicament Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-11-01 James F. Stark
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Tracing National Origins, Debating Ethnic Homogeneity Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Jaehwan Hyun
This article examines the interaction between human population genetics and the reconstruction of national identities and histories. Since the first use of mitochondrial DNA analysis of human origins in 1987, scientific research on population history using genetic technologies, or genetic history studies, has flourished, engaging with diverse politics of social identity and national belonging across
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Adhering to the “Flashing Yellow Light” Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Gabriel Henderson
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, despite growing political, scientific, and popular concern about the prospect of melting glaciers, sea-level rise, and more generally, climate-induced societal instability, American high-level science advisers and administrators, scientific committees, national and international scientific organizations, and officials within the Carter administration engineered
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The History of Stem Cell Research Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Cheryl Lancaster
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Building Canals from Panama to Mars Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-09-01 Emily Simpson
This article explores common themes between the Martian canal debate and the building of the Panama Canal. The focus is on the American period of canal construction in Panama beginning in 1904. The scope of the discussion ends with the Martian opposition of 1907. During this period, the Martian and Panamanian canal narratives intersected at points that reveal mutual values relating to the use of political
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“A Ray of Sunshine on French Tables” Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-06-01 Austin R. Cooper
The French citrus industry in Algeria grew rapidly in terms of land area and fruit production from the 1930s until Algerian Independence in 1962. This article contends that technical expertise regarding citrus cultivation played a role in colonial control of Algeria’s territory, population, and economy. The French regime enrolled Algerian fruit in biopolitical interventions on rural ways of life in
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Biographies in Shaping and Reshaping Science Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-06-01 Queenie Ng
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How “Facts” Shaped Modern Disciplines Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-06-01 Sjang L. Ten Hagen
This history of the concept of fact reveals that the fact-oriented practices of German physicists and historians derived from common origins. The concept of fact became part of the German language remarkably late. It gained momentum only toward the end of the eighteenth century. I show that the concept of fact emerged as part of a historical knowledge tradition, which comprised both human and natural
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“The Lucky Start Toward Today’s Cosmology”? Serendipity, the “Big Bang” Theory, and the Science of Radio Noise in Cold War America Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-04-01 Kendrick Oliver
The discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation—an inflection point in postwar cosmology—has not lacked chroniclers, but few have drawn deeply upon the available archival record. Many accounts emphasize the serendipitous manner in which the radiation was detected. This article redefines the relative contributions of luck, skill, and circumstance to the discovery by thickening the contexts in
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Establishing and Consolidating a Research Field Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-04-01 Eugenio Bertozzi
This paper retraces the biography of a milestone instrument in the history of physics—the cloud chamber—introduced by Charles Thomson Rees Wilson in 1911 and vastly adopted in successive studies on particle physics. It offers a comprehensive reading where the development of the instrument is kept in tight connection with the knowledge of microphysics from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s: it
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Making a Community of Experts Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-02-01 Matthew Shindell
In the second half of the twentieth century consensus became the language through which scientists and other experts spoke truth to power and provided expert advice for policy making. Historical scholarship on science policy has acknowledged this trend but has not explained how consensus came to play such a large role in the relationship between experts and policy makers. This paper examines two historical
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Why Edgar Anderson Visited Math Departments Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2019-02-01 Kim Kleinman
Edgar Anderson of the Missouri Botanical Garden had long and rich collaborations with such mathematicians and mathematically inclined biologists as R. A. Fisher, Sewall Wright, and John Tukey. It was Anderson’s Iris data that Fisher used to develop his linear discriminant function to capture multiple variations. A sabbatical with Wright in 1933 helped hone Anderson’s mathematical skills while helping
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Things and Data in Recent Biology Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2018-11-01 Soraya de Chadarevian
There is much talk about data-driven and in silico biology, but how exactly does it work? This essay reflects on the relation of data practices to the biological things from which they are abstracted. Looking at concrete examples of computer use in biology, the essay asks: How are biological things turned into data? What organizes and limits the combination, querying, and re-use of data? And how does
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An Episode in the History of PreCrime Historical Studies In The Natural Sciences (IF 0.7) Pub Date : 2018-11-01 Rebecca Lemov
This article traces the rise of “predictive” attitudes to crime prevention. After a brief summary of the current spread of predictive policing based on person-centered and place-centered mathematical models, an episode in the scientific study of future crime is examined. At UCLA between 1969 and 1973, a well-funded “violence center” occasioned great hopes that the quotient of human “dangerousness”—potential