RESEARCH ARTICLES
William Harvey, Aristotle and astrology ANDREW GREGORY The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 199 – 215 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000393 Published Online on 01st August 2013
In this paper I argue that William Harvey believed in a form of astrology. It has long been known that Harvey employed a macrocosm–microcosm analogy and used alchemical terminology in describing how the two types of blood change into one another. This paper then seeks to examine a further aspect of Harvey in relation to the magical tradition. There is an important corollary to this line of thought, however. This is that while Harvey does have a belief in astrology, it is strongly related to Aristotle's views in this area and is quite restricted and attenuated relative to some contemporary beliefs in astrology. This suggests a more general thesis. While Harvey was amenable to ideas which we associate with the natural magic tradition, those ideas had a very broad range of formulation and there was a limit to how far he would accept them. This limit was largely determined by Harvey's adherence to Aristotle's natural philosophy and his Christian beliefs. I argue that this is also the case in relation to Harvey's use of the macrocosm–microcosm analogy and of alchemical terminology, and, as far as we can rely on the evidence, this informs his attitudes towards witches as well. Understanding Harvey's influences and motives here is important in placing him properly in the context of early seventeenth-century thought.
Onwards facing backwards: the rhetoric of science in nineteenth-century Greece KOSTAS TAMPAKIS The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 217 – 237 doi: 10.1017/S000708741300040X Published Online on 01st August 2013
The aim of this paper is to show how the Greek men of science negotiated a role for their enterprise within the Greek public sphere, from the institution of the modern Greek state in the early 1830s to the first decades of the twentieth century. By focusing on instances where they appeared in public in their official capacity as scientific experts, I describe the rhetorical schemata and the narrative strategies with which Greek science experts engaged the discourses prevalent in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Greece. In the end, my goal is to show how they were neither zealots of modernization nor neutral actors struggling in isolated wastelands. Rather, they appear as energetic agents who used scientific expertise, national ideals and their privileged cultural positions to construct a rhetoric that would further all three. They engaged eagerly and consistently with emerging political views, scientific subjects and cultural and political events, without presenting themselves, or being seen, as doing anything qualitatively different from their peers abroad. Greek scientists cross-contextualized the scientific enterprise, situating it in the space in which they were active.
Savage numbers and the evolution of civilization in Victorian prehistory MICHAEL J. BARANY The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 239 – 255 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000356 Published Online on 09th August 2013
This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappropriations of an iconic 1853 story from Francis Galton's African travels. In response to a fundamental lack of physical evidence concerning prehistoric men, savage numbers offered a readily available body of data that helped scholars envisage great extremes of civilizational lowliness in a way that was at once analysable and comparable, and anecdotes like Galton's made those data vivid and compelling. Moreover, they provided a simple and direct means of conceiving of the progressive scale of civilizational development, uniting societies and races past and present, at the heart of Victorian scientific racism.
‘Keeping in the race’: physics, publication speed and national publishing strategies in Nature, 1895–1939 MELINDA BALDWIN The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 257 – 279 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000381 Published Online on 11th July 2013
By the onset of the Second World War, the British scientific periodical Nature – specifically, Nature’s ‘Letters to the editor’ column – had become a major publication venue for scientists who wished to publish short communications about their latest experimental findings. This paper argues that the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Rutherford was instrumental in establishing this use of the ‘Letters to the editor’ column in the early twentieth century. Rutherford's contributions set Nature apart from its fellow scientific weeklies in Britain and helped construct a defining feature of Nature's influence in the twentieth century. Rutherford's participation in the journal influenced his students and colleagues in the field of radioactivity physics and drew physicists like the German Otto Hahn and the American Bertram Borden Boltwood to submit their work to Nature as well, and Nature came to play a major role in spreading news of the latest research in the science of radioactivity. Rutherford and his colleagues established a pattern of submissions to the ‘Letters to the editor’ that would eventually be adopted by scientists from diverse fields and from laboratories around the world.
The conquest of vitalism or the eclipse of organicism? The 1930s Cambridge organizer project and the social network of mid-twentieth-century biology ERIK PETERSON The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 281 – 304 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000435 Published Online on 29th October 2013
In the 1930s, two concepts excited the European biological community: the organizer phenomenon and organicism. This essay examines the history of and connection between these two phenomena in order to address the conventional ‘rise-and-fall’ narrative that historians have assigned to each. Scholars promoted the ‘rise-and-fall’ narrative in connection with a broader account of the devitalizing of biology through the twentieth century. I argue that while limited evidence exists for the ‘fall of the organizer concept’ by the 1950s, the organicism that often motivated the organizer work had no concomitant fall – even during the mid-century heyday of molecular biology. My argument is based on an examination of shifting social networks of life scientists from the 1920s to the 1970s, many of whom attended or corresponded with members of the Cambridge Theoretical Biology Club (1932–1938). I conclude that the status and cohesion of these social networks at the micro scale was at least as important as macro-scale conceptual factors in determining the relative persuasiveness of organicist philosophy.
‘Saving the lives of our dogs’: the development of canine distemper vaccine in interwar Britain MICHAEL BRESALIER, MICHAEL WORBOYS The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 305 – 334 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000344 Published Online on 05th July 2013
This paper examines the successful campaign in Britain to develop canine distemper vaccine between 1922 and 1933. The campaign mobilized disparate groups around the common cause of using modern science to save the nation's dogs from a deadly disease. Spearheaded by landed patricians associated with the country journal The Field, and funded by dog owners and associations, it relied on collaborations with veterinary professionals, government scientists, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the commercial pharmaceutical house the Burroughs Wellcome Company (BWC). The social organization of the campaign reveals a number of important, yet previously unexplored, features of interwar science and medicine in Britain. It depended on a patronage system that drew upon a large base of influential benefactors and public subscriptions. Coordinated by the Field Distemper Fund, this system was characterized by close relationships between landed elites and their social networks with senior science administrators and researchers. Relations between experts and non-experts were crucial, with high levels of public engagement in all aspects of research and vaccine development. At the same time, experimental and commercial research supported under the campaign saw dynamic interactions between animal and human medicine, which shaped the organization of the MRC's research programme and demonstrated the value of close collaboration between veterinary and medical science, with the dog as a shared object and resource. Finally, the campaign made possible the translation of ‘laboratory’ findings into field conditions and commercial products. Rather than a unidirectional process, translation involved negotiations over the very boundaries of the ‘laboratory’ and the ‘field’, and what constituted a viable vaccine. This paper suggests that historians reconsider standard historical accounts of the nature of patronage, the role of animals, and the interests of landed elites in interwar British science and medicine.
Writing, printing, speaking: Rhesus blood-group genetics and nomenclatures in the mid-twentieth century JENNY BANGHAM The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 335 – 361 doi: 10.1017/S0007087413000332 Published Online on 02nd August 2013
In the 1940s and 1950s, British and American journals published a flood of papers by doctors, pathologists, geneticists and anthropologists debating the virtues of two competing nomenclatures used to denote the Rhesus blood groups. Accounts of this prolonged and often bitter episode have tended to focus on the main protagonists' personalities and theoretical commitments. Here I take a different approach and use the literature generated by the dispute to recover the practical and epistemic functions of nomenclatures in genetics. Drawing on recent work that views inscriptions as part of the material culture of science, I use the Rhesus controversy to think about the ways in which geneticists visualized and negotiated their objects of research, and how they communicated and collaborated with workers in other settings. Extending recent studies of relations between different media, I consider the material forms of nomenclatures, as they were jotted in notebooks, printed in journals, scribbled on blackboards and spoken out loud. The competing Rhesus nomenclatures had different virtues as they were expressed in different media and made to embody commitments to laboratory practices. In exploring the varied practical and epistemic qualities of nomenclatures I also suggest a new understanding of the Rhesus controversy itself.
ESSAY REVIEW
Unsuitable for ladies? Jim Endersby The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 363 – 367 doi: 10.1017/S000708741400020X Published Online on 01st May 2014
BOOK REVIEWS
Anne Van Arsdall and Timothy Graham (eds.), Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West: Essays in Honor of John M. Riddle. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Pp. xvi+377. ISBN 978-1-4094-0038-7. £80.00 (hardback). Anna Dysert The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 369 – 371 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000211 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Avner Ben-Zaken, Reading Hayy Ibn Yaqzān: A Cross-cultural History of Autodidacticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Pp. xiv+191. ISBN 978-0-8018-9739-9. £31.00 (hardback). Lydia Wilson The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 371 – 372 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000223 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy . Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. v+281. ISBN 978-0-226-68295-2. £16.00 (hardback). Neeraja Sankaran The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 372 – 374 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000235 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Mary Quinlan-McGrath, Influences: Art, Optics, and Astrology in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. xi+284. ISBN 978-0-226-92284-3. $35.00 (hardback). Steven Vanden Broecke The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 374 – 375 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000247 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Julia Allen, Swimming with Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale: Sport, Health and Exercise in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2012. Pp. xii+297. ISBN 978-0-7188-9276-0. £20.00 (paperback). Diana Garrisi The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 376 – 378 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000260 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Michael Keevak, Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. Pp. ix+219. ISBN 978-0-691-14301-5. £24.95 (hardback). Alexandra Cook The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 378 – 379 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000272 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Dan Ch. Christensen, Hans Christian Ørsted: Reading Nature's Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xix+743. ISBN 978-0-19-966926-4. £39.99 (hardback). Nanna Katrine, Lüders Kaalund The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 379 – 380 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000284 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Pratik Chakrabarti, Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine in the Tropics. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Pp. x+304. ISBN 978-1-58046-408-6. £60.00 (hardback). James F. Stark The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 381 – 382 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000296 Published Online on 01st May 2014
József Illy, The Practical Einstein: Experiments, Patents, Inventions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. xi+202. ISBN 978-1-4214-0457-8. £31.00 (hardback). Sean Johnston The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 382 – 383 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000302 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Peter Ayres, Shaping Ecology: The Life of Arthur Tansley. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Pp. xii+213. ISBN 978-0-470-67154-2. £19.99 (paperback). Andy Hammond The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 383 – 384 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000314 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Peter J. Westwick (ed.), Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Pp. xii+308. ISBN 978-0-87328-249-9. £30.95 (hardback). Robert W. Smith The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 384 – 385 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000326 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Michael D. Gordin, The Pseudo-science Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. Pp. x+291. ISBN 978-0-226-30442-7. £18.50 (hardback). Simone Turchetti The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 386 – 387 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000338 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Matthew Wisnioski, Engineers for Change: Competing Visions of Technology in 1960s America. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2012. Pp. xvii+286. ISBN 978-0-262-01826-5. £24.95 (hardback). John Z. Langrish The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 387 – 388 doi: 10.1017/S000708741400034X Published Online on 01st May 2014
Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Pp. xx+451. ISBN 978-0-262-01726-1. £20.95 (hardback). Jayita Sarkar The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 388 – 389 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000351 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Carsten Timmermann and Elizabeth Toon (eds.), Cancer Patients, Cancer Pathways: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pp. xii+270. ISBN 978-1-137-27207-2. £55.00 (hardback). Catriona Gilmour Hamilton The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 389 – 391 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000363 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Peter Mansfield, The Long Road to Stockholm: The Story of MRI. An Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. x+241. ISBN 978-0-19-966454-2. £25.00 (hardback). Maria Björkman The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 391 – 392 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000375 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Books Received
Books received The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 393 – 396 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000193 Published Online on 01st May 2014
Book Reviews
Gideon Manning (ed.), Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2012. Pp. x+248. ISBN 978-90-04-21870-3. €105.00 (hardback). Mihnea Dobre The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 47 , Issue 02 , June 2014, pp 375 – 376 doi: 10.1017/S0007087414000259 Published Online on 01st May 2014