By Heidi Hausse and Abe Gibson
On the morning of September 24, 2014, a crowd of enthusiastic scholars descended on the historic Jefferson Building in Old City Philadelphia to take part in the seventh annual Introductory Symposium, hosted by the Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science. The event provided historians of science with an exciting opportunity to share their research with likeminded individuals, and to discuss potential synergies in a congenial atmosphere over food and drinks.
The first session of the day focused on the history of the life sciences during the twentieth century. The first three speakers described biology prior to the Second World War, and their projects therefore share certain thematic elements. For example, Jeffrey Johnson and Daniel Liu both discussed scientific efforts to explain the essence of life in chemical and physical terms during the early twentieth century. Johnson described his work on German biologist Emil Fischer, who believed that one could directly control a cell’s nucleus, and who thus represents an important figure in the early history of synthetic biology. Liu also discussed efforts to explain life’s processes on material grounds during the early twentieth century, but he focused on scientific investigations into the nature of protoplasm, the presumed “stuff” of life at the time. Meanwhile, Abe Gibson described his project on the science of cooperation between the world wars, and the extent to which these investigations challenged strict materialism.
The second half of Session 1 examined developments in the life sciences after World War II, especially the broader social milieus in which they took place. Maurizio Meloni discussed the socio-political pressures that have shaped the epistemic construction of key notions in biology like the gene and the brain since the end of World War II. Meanwhile, Phillip Honenberger discussed his project on the intellectual and institutional origins of the “new” philosophy of biology, which identifies the numerous philosophers and biologists who helped establish the new discipline. Finally, Kelly O’Donnell discussed her project on the women’s health movement from the 1960s to the 1980s, with special emphasis on activist Barbara Seaman’s contributions.
Session 2 showcased scholars whose research employs textual, artistic, and material analyses. Kirsten Poole discussed her project on the structures of language in the seventeenth century, including the Lutheran preference for “plain” and “simple” scriptures, and the implications thereof. The research is part of a larger project that Poole is developing that examines Bacon, Milton, Cavendish, and the general allegorical environment of seventeenth-century England. The next presenter, Stefano Gattei, discussed the origins of the well-known Flammarion Engraving that has proved so popular among science enthusiasts. Combining a critical analysis of the image with a close reading of several written texts, Gattei offered apparently conclusive evidence that the engraving could not have been produced prior to 1882, as some have claimed.
Another theme that permeated Session 2 was the close relationship between the arts and the medical sciences. Elizabeth Lee and Naomi Slipp both examined health and medicine in nineteenth-century art, but from different perspectives. Lee considered the ways in which images of classically beautiful Greek women were employed as evidence that corsets were bad for one’s health and wellness, and, more broadly, the persistent popularity of Romantic ideas even after Robert Koch’s famous discoveries. By comparison, Naomi Slipp discussed the interesting ways in which the histories of artistic pedagogy and medical pedagogy overlap. Her research examines how practitioners in both fields developed artistic anatomy, and the ways in which classical representations of the human body influenced medical pedagogy.
The scholars who presented during Session 3 were united by their common desire to place the histories of science and medicine within their broader social, cultural, and political contexts. Jonson Miller presented his research on the education of engineers at Virginia Military Institute during the antebellum era, for example, while Jessica Linker described her project documenting the various ways in which women influenced science in America between 1720 and 1860. Despite their different case studies, Miller and Linker were both equally interested in determining who exactly participated in the scientific enterprise prior to the American Civil War, and what exactly influenced the nature of their participation.
The others who presented during Session 3 were likewise interested in studying the history of science in context, particularly an international context. For example, Julia Mansfield discussed her research documenting yellow fever outbreaks in Philadelphia between 1790 and 1823, and the extent to which these episodes complicated American efforts to establish international commerce. Harun Küçük described the relationship between science and Islamic tradition in eighteenth-century Istanbul, and the ways in which rhetoric of innovation influenced this relationship. Finally, Roberto Chanca Tapia discussed his project on the ambiguous naming of Amazonia, and the extent to which Jesuit missionaries, Franciscan missionaries, and native peoples crafted different sets of knowledge about the Amazon.
The last two sessions of the day featured many kinds of projects related to the history of medicine and the history of technology and material culture. Session 4 asked questions about minds, bodies, and society. Cara Kiernan Fallon and Heidi Hausse’s papers discussed social responses to elderly bodies in 20th century America and amputated bodies in 17th century Germany, respectively. Both gave examples of communities rethinking spaces—such as New York crosswalks—and objects—such as applying clock mechanisms to artificial arms—to accommodate and provide for the quality of life of a growing group within the larger population.
Rachel Walker, Elisabeth Yang, and Jesse Ballenger examined the relationship between minds and bodies in different ways. Walker reconsidered cultural understandings of female beauty by connecting it to physiognomy, a discipline popular from the late-18th to mid-18th century that looked at the body (specifically the face) from the outside to deduct the nature of the mind inside. Yang’s paper on early modern childhood, by contrast, worked from the inside out: she introduced the “mind-body” narrative, which insists on the power of the mind to influence the health of the body. Ballenger pointed to another approach to medicine, mind, and society. He used the Alzheimer’s field to discuss how increasingly sophisticated ways to treat the suffering mind in modern biomedicine has evolved hand-in-hand with disenchantment towards medicine by the public and even practitioners.
Session 5 was filled with objects and spaces. One recurring theme was the dynamism and creativity in adjusting and refitting existing materials to solve problems. Nicole Belolan, who showed a photograph of wheels attached to an 18th-19th century armchair, described the artifacts that early Americans created in response to physical impairments as “improvisations.” Amanda Casper’s work on home alterations in Philadelphia (1865-1925) showed citizens adding overhanging bathrooms and building wooden kitchens onto their homes, on the one hand, and on the other, regulatory attempts by the government to enforce safety measures and encourage the installation of new technologies, such as electrical wiring.
The present-day neighborhoods Juan-Andres Leon discussed, by contrast, gave examples of communities taking the government-issued label of superfund site and spinning it into a badge of local pride, and a strategic way to ward off unwanted residential developments. This idea of neighborhood awareness and responses to environmental changes also appeared in Gwen Ottinger’s discussion of air pollution. Ottiger posed questions about the influence of environmental activism and “citizen monitoring” on monitoring and regulating technology, and of different ways technology has influenced the expression of ethical claims. What is the difference between a community’s “right to know” and the “right to a healthy environment”?
Experts, technicians, and artisans—experimenting human hands—took the spotlight in the papers of Ignacio Suay-Matallana and Nadia Berenstein. Suay-Matallana’s discussion of the customs laboratory of Madrid put “experts” in several contexts, such as their training and the sources of their authority, as well as the special configurations of the laboratories in which they worked. The concept of expertise was also important in Berenstein’s paper about the 20th century science of flavor, which argued that flavor is an art, and food chemists were ordinary artisans.