The Changing Image of The Sciences

THE CHANGING IMAGE OF THE SCIENCES
THE CHANGING IMAGE OF

THE SCIENCES
Edited by
!DA H. STAMHUIS
TEUN KOETSIER
CORNELIS DE PATER
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
and
ALBERT VAN HELDEN
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-94-010-3937-6 ISBN 978-94-010-0587-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-010-0587-6
Printed on acid-free paper
The cover plate The Pomegranate, which can be found in black-and-white on page 111 as Figure 3,
portrays, with a combination of realism and scientific analysis, both insect and plant specimens at
various stages of development. It is taken from Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorphosis Insectorum
Surinamensium. Over de voortteeling en wonderbaerlyke veranderingen der Surinaamsche insecten
(1705), facing page 9. Copyright Teylers Museum Haarlem, reprinted with permission of
Teylers Museum Haarlem.
AII Rights Reserved

© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002
Softcover reprint of the hardcover lst edition 2002
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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CONTENTS
IDA H. STAMHUIS, TEUN KOETSIER, CORNELIS DE PATER

and ALBERT VAN HELDEN / Foreword ix
ALBERT VAN HELDEN / Introduction
MICHAEL S. MAHONEY / In Our Own Image: Creating the Computer 9

From "Giant Brain" to Information Appliance 9
The Transparency of Software 14
The World of the Computer 19
BERNADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT / Changing Images of Chemistry 29

Introduction 29
Creating Life 29
The Wonderful World of Chemistry 32
The Ways Back to Nature 36
GARLAND E. ALLEN / The Changing Image of

Biology in the Twentieth Century 43
Introduction 43
The Nineteenth Century Background 47
Biology and the Physical Sciences: Experimentalism and Reductionism 48
The Technological and Institutional Imperative 57
The Technological Imperative 57
Professional and Institutional Imperatives 61
Integrative Processes 62
The Economic, Social and Technological Context in the
Development of an Experimentally and Mechanistically
Based Biology in the Twentieth Century 70
The Industrialization of Agricultural Productivity 72
The Imperative of Social Control 72
v
vi CONTENTS
Differences Among Eugenics Activities in Different Countries 76

A New Eugenics Today? 80
Conclusion 81
ABRAHAM PAIS / The Image of Physics 85

Introduction by the Editors 85
Introduction 85
Einstein's and Bohr's Views on Philosophy 88
On Relativity Theory 93
The Special Theory 93
The General Theory 94
On Complementarity 96
Some Final Comments 102
SALLYGREGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L. OPITZ /

Re-imag(in)ing Women in Science: Projecting Identity and
Negotiating Gender in Science 105
Introduction 105
Margaret Cavendish - Defiant Natural Philosopher with
an Independent Voice 107
Maria Sibylla Merian - Innovative Entomologist Working
within Conventions 110
Mary Somerville - Queen of Celestial (and Domestic) Science 114
Ada Lovelace - Mathematician Calculating Body Image 117
Agnes Pockels - Surface Chemist and "Hausfrau" 120
Jantina Tammes - Geneticist Defining Her Own "Weak Constitution" 123
Marie Curie - Independent and Eminent Collaborator 127
Conclusions 130
DAVID CHRISTIAN / Science in the Mirror of "Big History" 141

Introduction 141
Science in the Mirror of "Big History" 143
Big History 144
Science as Creation Myth 146
Systems of Knowledge 149
Pre-Human Knowledge Systems 150
Human Knowledge Systems of the Palaeolithic 152
Science as a System of Knowledge 158
Science and the Future? 162
Conclusion 164
Appendix: A Modem Creation Story 165
CONTENTS vil
STEVE FULLER / The Changing Images of Unity and Disunity in

the Philosophy of Science 171
The Misrecognition of Unity in Recent History and
Philosophy of Science 171
The Gospel According to the Disunificationists 171
Reducing (Away) the Philosophical Component of Reductionism 173
The Root Image of Disunity as Intercalation 176
Unity and Disunity as Expressions of Constructivism and Realism 179
The Natural and the Normative: Aligned or Opposed? 179
Evaluation and Application: Clear or Blurred? 180
Historical Conditions for the Unity and Disunity of Science 183
The Unity of Science as Natural: Deductive and Inductive Versions 183
The Unity of Science as Artificial 184
Pro-Unity: From Sublation to Reduction 185
Anti-Unity: From Kant to Kuhn 187
Conclusion: Beyond Misrecognizing to Rediscovering the
Unity of Science 189
Authors and Editors 195
Index 199
IDA H. STAMHUIS , TEUN KOETSIER, CORNELIS DE PATER AND
ALBERT VAN HELDEN
FOREWORD
This volume started as a historical conference on 15 and 16 June, 2000 at the Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The theme The Changing Image of the
Sciences was chosen because of the great concern within and without the university
with the worldwide decrea sing interest in the natural sciences and, as a consequence,
the alarmingly low numbers of new students . The image of these sciences as dull,
uninspiring, masculine , environmentally unfriendly and very technical was men-
tioned as an important reason for that decreasing interest. We felt that historical con-
text would help in the discussions around these recent perceptions.
Many interesting aspects of the problem could be distinguished, and intriguing
questions could be asked. One possibility was to study the changing image of the dis-
tinct sciences as experienced by the general public, by the scientists themselves, or in
disciplines in which natural sciences are applied. Also, how could the theme be con-
nected to the phenomenon of the low numbers of women in science? How could the
image of science as an inaccessible technical subject be turned into a view of science
as an essential part of life of which everyone understand s the main line? And how
essential and unavoidable is the partition of science into many distinct disciplines?
We discovered that the theme was even richer than we had expected . One impor-
tant reason for this was that we were privileged to share our ideas with a number of
very fine scholars who were able to shed light on the theme in ways we had not antic-
ipated. We present their thoughts here, hopefully to a broad audience' . This book
studies changing images, in words as well as in the pictures that are an essential part
of making the theme accessible. We hope the book will be useful to a broad spec-
trum of readers , from our colleagues in universities to the general public. But our
particular hope is that it will be used as a textbook in undergradu ate courses in the
history of science and in science and society. In addition, for people with specific
interests , the individual chapters can stand on their own and be studied in courses in
the various sciences, or in philosophy.
Six weeks after the conference, Abraham Pais, one of the speakers, passed away.
We enjoyed the lively presentation of his paper at the conference and feel very hon-
ored to have the opportunity to publish what will probably be his last paper.
ix
1.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier, C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds) , The Changing Image of the
Sciences, ix-x,
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain .
x IDA H . STAMHUIS ET AL .
Results of "Draw-A-Scientlst" Test
Symbols 01
Rosoarch
Facial Hair 38%
48%
Labeoal63%
Male 92% A SCIENTIST AT WOR K
Figure I. Results of a "draw-a-scientist" test. Source: Jane Kahle "Images of science: the
physicist and the cowboy", in Barry Fraser and Geoff Giddings (eds), Gender issues in sci-
ence education (Perth: Curtin University of Technology, 1987).
We thank the organising committee for the discussions which resulted in an inspir-
ing conference, the Board of the Faculty of Science of the Vrije Universiteit for mak-
ing it possible to organise the conference and to publish the volume, and Elly
Manenschijn for her help as co-organisor of the conference and text editor of the book .
NOTE
Roy MacLeod (University of Sydney)'s paper on "The changing image of science in the museum" is
not published in this volume.
ALBERT VAN HELDEN
INTRODUCTION
The title of our book would lead the reader to believe that in speaking of the chang-
ing image of the sciences, we are taking for granted the multiplicity of sciences, as
these are practiced, for instance, in modern universities. That was, of course, not
always the case. Although we can point to some subjects, for instance mathematical
astronomy, as being demarcated to some extent from other subjects as far back as
Antiquity, the current division into individual sciences can hardly be traced back fur-
ther than the nineteenth century. Moreover, the further we go back in history, the more
we must subsume science under general knowledge or scholarship: scientia. Some of
the earliest images of episteme or scientia , are those of forbidden knowledge - often
related to technology - on the one hand, and the absent-minded scholar on the other.
These are powerful metaphors - in word as well as image - that have been appro-
priated in various ages for different purposes.
The Greeks gave Western society its first images of the power of knowledge and
those who produced it. Prometheus ridiculed the gods, stole their fire, and brought it
down to Earth. For this, Zeus had him chained to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where
a vulture fed on his liver during the day, while it grew back at night. He was finally
freed by Herac1es. From the perspective of humanity, Prometheus was a great bene-
factor: besides giving mankind fire, he taught it the cultivation and uses of plants and
how to tame horses. Indeed, after he was freed, he joined the gods on Mount
Olympus. Right from the beginning, we see here the two-edged sword of technical
knowledge: on the one hand forbidden knowledge and on the other a great boon
to mankind . For the later aspects he was especially celebrated among the English
Romantics .
In European history, the image of forbidden knowledge was expressed strongly in
the story of Faust, which began as a German folk tale (about a real scholar), first
printed by 1. Spies as Volksbuch von Dr. Faust in 1587, and made well-known by
Marlowe into The Tragical History ofthe Life and Death ofDr. Faustus a few years
later. Related is the Jewish legend of the Golem, an artificial man created from
dust by rabbi Low in Prague by means of Cabbalistic magic. Initially, the Golem
helped the community solve its problem, but when his services were misused he
turned on it. The themes of Faust and the Golem, of mankind's eternal quest for
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier, C. de Pater and A. van He/den (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences, 1-7.
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain .
2 ALBERT VAN HELDEN
Figure I. Atlas, ca rryi ng the heavens, watches a vulture pecking at the liver of Prometheus.
6th ce ntury B.C. Vat ican Museum. Permission of the Vatican Museum.
Figure 2. Dr. Faustus conjuring the earth-ghost. Title image of Christopher Marlowe :
Dr. Faustus, 1636. Permission of the Mary Evans Picture Library.
(forbidden) knowledge crop up time and again in Western culture, from Goethe's
Faust and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to J. Robert Oppenheimer's citation of the
Bagava Gita upon the first successful test of the atomic bomb. The power that comes
with knowledge is always a two-edged sword: the motives are often pure, but the
results are frequently disastrous .
The second theme, that of the absentminded professor, also has its origin in
Antiquity, although the images were contradictory. OfThales of Miletus (sixth cen-
tury B.C.E.) it is said that on the one hand he correctly predicted a bountiful harvest
of olives, obtained a monopoly on olive presses, and made a fortune when the har-
vest turned out to be in fact bountiful. It is related about him on the other hand that
he was so intent on looking up at the heavens as he was walking, that he fell into a
ditch. Archimedes (third century B.C.E.) helped defend the city of Syracuse from the
INTRODUCTION 3
Figure 3. Greek stamp issuedApril 28, 1983. The illustration of Archimedes is adaptedfrom
a well-known Renaissance mosaic depicting his death. Source: Chris Rorres' website on
Archimedes, http://www.mcs.drexel.edul-crorres/Archimedeslcontents.html
Roman forces with his war machines, but it is said that he really only cared about
abstract mathematics, and when the city fell and a Roman soldier entered his
house , Archimedes was working on a mathematical problem and did not wish
to be disturbed: the soldier killed him.
In more recent times, these images become mixed with that of the pursuit of
useless knowledge. Early in the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon wrote:
Men have entered into a desire oflearning and knowledge, sometimes upon a nat-
ural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with
variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to
4 ALBERT VAN HELD EN
enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and
profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to
the benefit and use of men . I
The Royal Society of London set itself a Baconian program, but their work was often
satirized. When in his Micrographia of 1665 Robert Hooke praised the progress made
in the improvement of the telescope and spoke of a day when perhaps animals might
be seen on the Moon, Samuel Butler published a poem, The Elephant in the Moon, in
which "A learned society of late, / The glory of a foreign state, / Agreed upon a sum-
mer's night, / To search the Moon by her own light; / To make an inventory of all, /
Her real estate and personal ...." Needless to say, the gentlemen found all manner of
human affairs going on on the Moon . Indeed, they were observing a war, in which a
large elephant had broken loose. "It is a large one, far more great/Than e'er was bred
in Africa yet; / From which we boldly may infer, / The Moon is much the fruitfuller,'?
Some of the other activities of the Royal Society also raised the hackles of the
satirists. In his Travels in Several Remote Nations ofthe World (1726) Jonathan Swift
Figure 4. The Golem from the film "Der Golem" by Paul Wegener (1914). Source: http://www.
davkamusic.com/images /go/em jpeg
INTROD U CTION 5
reported that the gentlemen of the Academy of Lagado carried out research into
"extracting Sun-beams out of Cucumbers," "to reduce human Excrement into its
original Food," and "softening Marble for Pillows and Pincushions. " That sort of
criticism of the pursuit of useless knowledge, often with a serious purpose , has not
ceased. It was not so many years ago that the American Senator William Proxmire,
a watchdog of governmental spending on science, published a monthly "Golden
Fleece Award," in which he singled out such apparently nonsensical scientific
research projects as finding out why people fall in love." The image was very much
that of scholars who had lost touch with reality and were fleecing the public.
The papers in this volume pursue some of these themes in the modem period. The
first group pursued the theme in individual sciences. Michael Mahoney chooses as
his subject a device, the computer, and the new science it has generated over the past
half century. We now see the computer as the basic ingredient in an emerging new
electronic medium that is as different from its predecessors, as many now say, as
print was from manuscript. But as Mahoney points out, the image of the computer
began very differently, and it has gone through several changes since then. Half a
century ago the machine itself was the central icon, associated with cleanliness, tem-
perature control, and an almost priestly class of initiates. Today the central image is
that of a network in which the computer itself is all but invisible, and when we do
see it, it is as a small decentralized home- or office-appliance, soon to be merged
with our telephones and televisions.
But computers have also changed the way science is often done. The awesome cal-
culating power of even small computers means that models can be built in which one
can change the initial parameters and see the results . Increasingly, problems involv-
ing complexity that could never be solved before the computer can now be calculated
by models and algorithms. Computers have given rise to a middle area between
experimental and theoretical/mathematical science that has in effect become a new
branch of science.
Bernadette Bensaude- Vincent's paper is about the problem one level down from
biology, and very much related to Allen's paper. The chemists (and Bensaude-
Vincent focuses precisely on synth etic chemistry) are seen as being historically in
competition with Nature itself. Here we are not talking about describing, imaging,
nature so much as competing with nature's creative aspects . In its modem form, this
competition goes back to Wohler's supposed synthesis of urea from "inorganic"
substances. Regardless of the fact that Wohler did not exactly start with inorganic
reagents, the synthetic chemist was increasingly seen, and saw him/herself, as a
benevolent creator of useful substances for mankind: better living through chemistry.
Obviously, this image has become hopelessly fractured since Hiroshima and Silent
Spring. Yet, in the pharmaceutical laboratories, in spite of all the arguments about the
costs of new medicines , increasingly effective new medicines are created every year.
We have had to learn to live with the Janus face of synthetic chemistry.
It is interesting to see, in Bensaude's paper, how the normative use of the notion
of nature in the popular mind often clashes with the chemist's notion. Where natu-
ral on the packaging in the supermarket stands for pure, to the chemist reagents
found in nature are anything but pure, so that for him/her natural often stands for
impure. Each generation of (synthetic) chemists has to (re)construct the image of its
6 ALBERT VAN HELDEN
relationship with nature. Is nature the source of impurities or the source of environ-
mentally safe materials? Is nature to be seen as an engineer to be emulated, or is it
to be improved upon? As Henk Timmerman said in his perceptive comments during
the meeting, when he went into the field, in the 1960s, he was inspired by literature
that extolled the beauty and usefulness of chemistry. Today that image is very
different, and it remains to be seen how many of our children will eventually choose
a career in chemistry.
Garland Allen's paper outlines the changing image of biology in terms of the
dialectic between reductionism and holism. For much ofthe century and a half from
the middle of the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth, reductionism was in the
ascendancy. At the beginning of the twentieth century, quantitative and experimental
biology, based on both the methodological model and the results of physical science,
was at the center of the process of professionalization of the science: the new pro-
fessional biologists, many of whom came from specialized research laboratories,
constructed an image of the biologist as a hard-core scientist. In doing so (although
Allen does not explicitly say so) they tended to represent those doing traditional field
work - natural history - as amateurs . The dominance of reductionist biology, going
right up to the current-day genome project, Allen argues, is consonant with, and
encouraged by, industrial Capitalism . The negative social effects of this approach to
biology are illustrated by the history of eugenics in the twentieth century. Holistic
biology, which was associated with vitalism at the end of the nineteenth century, has
developed into a sophisticated science that investigates interaction, homeostasis,
feed-back mechanisms, etc; notions that clash with the conceptual basis of the
Capitalist market place, according to Allen. Although this approach to biology has
long stood in the shadow of its reductionist antagonist, as still testified to by funding
levels and manpower, one gets the feeling that the increasingly complex problems of,
e.g., the environment are now benefiting the image of holistic biology.
In his essay, the late Abraham Pais illustrated the image of physics in the twent-
ieth century by focusing on the approaches and personalities of Albert Einstein
and Niels Bohr, the two most influential physicists of the twentieth century. As Ben
L.G. Bakker remarked in his comments on Pais's paper, perhaps physicists are no
longer interested in the deep philosophical questions that Bohr wrestled with, and
perhaps this is one of the major reasons why physics is becoming less attractive as a
career for young people. There is no question, however, that twentieth-century
physics constructed its image around the concerns and personalities of its most
gifted practitioners in the decades between the world wars.
The papers in the second group deal with issues not limited to one particular sci-
ence. Kohlsted and Opitz choose individual personalities . Their essay is, as it were,
an exploration trench through the subject of how women scientists constructed their
image. They have chosen seven lives ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth
century. It is clear that all these women consciously had to construct an identity,
something male scientists usually do not have to because society has provided them
with ready-made occupational identities . Until well into the twentieth century,
women have had to deal with a widespread perception that they were scientists
despite their gender, and they used various strategies to deal with this problem. The
earlier flamboyance that was an option for Margaret Cavendish and Mary Somerville
INTRODUCTION 7
has never been much of an option for women from modest backgrounds, and it is
interesting to note that twentieth-century women scientists have often used the
demands of domesticity and the frailty of their health to construct an identity that
freed them from distractions and allowed them to do their research.
David Christian pleads for an image of science as a whole. Science has become a
huge patchwork quilt on which everyone works. It is the "whole" of the story of our
modern international culture and should be taught as a new creation story. Thus sci-
ence is not opposed to religion in its account of where and when we are, it is simply
our particular version of the history of the world, beginning at the Big Bang, that
contains all our knowledge . But the story is incredibly complex and filled with
abstruse, technical detail, and this means that a "new intellectual apartheid" threat-
ens. There is, thus, a widespread need for a telling of the big story to a wide audi-
ence without all the technical detail that is caused by specialization . We must write
books and teach courses in which this story, the history of the universe, is told in
plain language. The image of science thus, ultimately, becomes the image of Man.
Finally, Steve Fuller's paper deals with the question whether science is (to echo a
question of the Pre-Socratic philosophers) one or many. The "disunification" that
currently characterizes science, and is reflected in its institutions, is, he argues, a
case of mistaken identity. Fuller traces ideas about the unity of science since Kant,
and shows how, through changing approaches to science and changing ideas in the
philosophy of science, the trend toward seeing science as "disunified" has steadily
gained ground, to the point where the ideas and metaphors - even the motives - of
those who earlier pursued a unification program are misread . He ends with a cautious
proposal to rehabilitate the unificationist approach for which he suggests two
metaphors : a refurbished notion of the encyclopedia as a locus of debate where
attempts are made to transcend disciplinary boundaries, and the notion of a unified
river splitting up into many related branches.
These papers do two things. On one hand, they provide accounts ofthe way sciences
are perceived at this time, snapshots of sciences that are ever changing and interpre-
tations that must change with them. On the other hand, they provide arguments for
how we ought to study these changing images and present them to our students and
the public. In the conference where these papers were presented orally, the papers led
to lively and useful discussions . We hope their printed versions in this book will do
the same.
NOTES
J Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (1605) . Modernized spelling taken from Marie Boas
Hall, The Scientific Renaissance 1450-1630 (New York: Harper & Brothers , 1962) 249.
2 Samuel Butler, The Elephant in the Moon (written ca. 1665; first published in 1759). In George
Gilfillan (ed.), The Poetical Works ofSamuel Butle r 2 volumes (Edinburgh : James Nichol, 1854)" 103ft'.
3 Jonathan Swift, Travels in Several Remote Nation s ofthe World (London , 1726) part III, ch. 5.
4 Award for March 1975. See Taxpayersfor Common Sense "The Golden Fleece Awards 1975-1988."
http://www.taxpayer.net/awards/goldenjleece/19 75-1980.htm . Consulted 22 May 2002.
MICHAEL S. MAHONEY
IN OUR OWN IMAGE: CREATING THE COMPUTER
FROM "GIANT BRAIN" TO INFORMATION ApPLIA NCE
In the years following World War II, the world appeared to be entering a new age,
the Atomic Age, portrayed as an era of prosperity fueled by energy "too cheap to
meter". Automobiles, trains , planes, homes, industry would all draw their power
from nuclear reactors of various sizes and formats, and society would assume new
forms around the possibilities of ubiquitous, unlimited energy,' Some of those
visions became reality, some turned into nightmares. Fifty years later we draw on
atomic power, but the phrase "atomic age" is more likely than not to evoke images
of a nuclear winter of desolation.
Instead, we speak now of the "Information Age" , or the "Computer Age" . It too is
a product of World War II, but the potential of the electronic digital computer for
social transformation was not immediately evident. Costing upward ofa million dol-
lars, weighing several tons, drawing a hundred kilowatts of power, it seemed at first
destined for limited scientific use. Several subsequent and unforeseen developments
had to occur before the possibilities became clear. The "computer age" of which
people spoke in the 1960s referred to large mainframes in the scientific laboratory,
the government agency, the military command center, or the corporation.i The com-
puter was the agent of automation, the tool of Big Brother. "I am a human being ,"
protesters of the late '60s exclaimed, taking their cue from the then common IBM
punch card, "do not fold, spindle, or mutilate" (Figures 1-3).
Few at the time foresaw, or even imagined, computers with many times the capac-
ity of those mainframes sitting on people 's desks or indeed on their laps, serving as
agents for personal business and as tools of Little Brothers seeking not to exercise con-
trol over society but to wreak havoc on it. In the 1950s, the computer was an object of
wonder, viewed through plate glass windows and tended by technicians. It was a visi-
ble statement of corporate and governmental power. Today, at least in the developed
world, it has become a common appliance, an instrument of personal power as much a
part of daily life as television and the telephone. Indeed, it is on the verge of combining
with television and the telephone to form a single information/communication/
entertainment device, in stationary and portable format (Figure 4).
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier; C. de Pater and A. van He/den (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences. 9-27.
© 2002 K/uwer Academic Publish ers. Printed in Great Britain.
10 M IC HAEL S . MA HONEY
Figure 1. Early mainframe UNIVAC.
Figure 2. Early mainframe lLLlAC.
Figure 3. Early mainframe IBM 704.

IN OUR OWN IMAGE : CREATING THE COMPUTER 11
Figure 4. Palm" i705. Courtesy of PalmInc.
Our image of the computer is evolving along with it. As it becomes more com-
mon, we grow less conscious of its presence. Yet, at the same time, it increasingly
shapes our view of the world. We think of the computer as a machine, as a thing.
Indeed, we speak of the computer, as if it were a single, generic device. But there is
no computer, only computers. Or rather, the computer is an abstract scheme, first
devised by Alan M. Turing in 1936 and then articulated by John von Neumann and
others in 1945. In a paper addressed to a recondite problem in mathematical logic,
Turing sought to capture what it meant to speak of a number as "computable".
"According to my definition," he wrote, "a number is computable if its decimal can
be written down by a machine".' But what kind of machine? Turing imagined a
device that shifted among a finite number of predefined states in response to sym-
bols read from and written to a potentially infinite tape. He showed how any logical
function could be expressed in terms of the operations of such a device, that is, could
be defined as a Turing machine. Moreover, since the states and operations themselves
can be denoted by symbols, it was possible to define a Universal Turing Machine that
would first read the description of a particular computation and then carry it out. The
purpose of the exercise was not to design an actual machine or to do computations,
but rather to show that some functions cannot be computed and, more important, that
there is no function for deciding whether any given function can be computed or not
(Figure 5).
The "First Draft ofa Report on the EDVAC", published in July 1945, bears only
John von Neumann's name, but it was the outcome of his collaboration with John
Mauchly and Presper Eckert, the designers of the ENIAC.4 Its significance lies in
transforming Turing's abstract scheme into a general design for a physical device.
The finite state machine became the control and arithmetic units, the tape became
memory. In keeping with Turing's central insight of a universal machine, von
Neumann 's report placed data and instructions in the same memory, thus allowing
the device to modify the instructions as it proceeded (Figure 6).
This scheme has remained the basic structure of the vast majority of computers.The
processors have become faster and logically more complex, the memory (both primary
12 MICHAEL S . MAHONEY
Figure 5. Turing machine .
John von Neumann et al., EOVAC Architecture
+ A <= I +J
- A<=I-J
A <=A+rJ
I A <=UJ
I A<=I
J A<=J
s A<=(A>=071:J)
msm98
Figure 6. The basic elements of the von Neumann architecture .
and secondary) has expanded in size and speed of access, the modalities of input and
output have grown more varied, all by orders of magnitude. This has happened largely
through the development first of the transistor and then of integrated circuits of every
larger capacity and ever more complex circuitry (Intel's Pentium'" II chip of 1997
(Figure 7) has 7.5 M transistors and an instruction set of over 500 operations;
the Celeron'", a cheap chip, has 19M transistors) . But for all that speed and
memory, what a computer can do depends ultimately on the instructions that reside
IN O UR OWN IMAG E : C RE ATI N G THE C O M P U TE R 13
Figure 7. Intel's Pentium®II chip - actual size, approximately I crrr' .
in the memory and therefore can be modified in the course of the computation they
describe.
Those instructions, or programs, do the work of the computer. Without programs,
computers can do nothing. They are in and of themselves essentially form without
content, no more useful than a radio or television set without broadcasting. Stunning
advances in hardware have placed computers within everyone's reach , often without
our knowing it.Yet, in a profound sense, those marvels have simply created "world
enough and time" (as Andrew Marvell said in another context") for software to pur-
sue the possibilities of computing. Within the theoretical limits set by Godel and
Turing, it is the software that has defined what computers can do, or rather what we
have wanted them to do and can make them do. The software shapes our image of
the computer and, as Sherry Turkle suggested in The Second Self, reflects our image
of ourselve s even as it reshapes it. 6
THE TRANSPARENCY OF SOFTWARE
As computers have become ubiquitous, they have also become transparent, or even
invisible (Figure 8). What is today called a "computer" is at first glance a combination
of a typewriter, a pointing device, and a television set connected through a box. The
screen displays images, which we manipulate or change by means of the keyboard
and the mouse, responding to guidance provided by menus listing the options
available to us. Following those menus, we can prepare a document, construct and
maintain a database, keep accounts, browse the Internet, or do any of a myriad of
things enabled by applications software developed to work in conjunction with the
operating system (Figure 9). In all this, the average users among us remain blissfully
unaware of the programming that is required simply to start and maintain a
graphical user interface (GUI) or WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, pull-down menus)
environment. Once in the environment, every click of the mouse on a menu triggers
the loading of a complex program. The bliss lasts, of course, only until the interface
fails, at which point most of us are helpless, even those among us who know a great
deal about computers.
To do something about those failures would require opening one of two boxes: the
physical box that connects the components or the virtual box of programs that run
on it. Depending on the manufacturer, the physical box may be more or less acces-
sible, but opening it doesn't help much, except for installing or removing compo-
nents which themselves have been designed as sealed units. Increasingly, the virtual
box has been sealed just as tightly, if not by proprietary code, then by daunting
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complexity. Wrapped around the physical computer are layers of software, which
place various users at varying distances from the machine. It is the software which
defines the computer for the user and in so doing engages the user in a complex
social web of computing? The more user-friendly the computer, the more tightly
bound the user is to decisions made by others (to wit, the software developers) about
what may be done and how to do it.
The source of one of the world's largest personal fortunes and of many smaller
ones, software now so dominates the economy that it is hard to imagine that it did not
exist until the late 1950s, when the term itself first appeared." Until then, there were
only programs, written for the most part for specific machines and designed for spe-
cific purposes . Software shifted attention from the machine to the program, or rather
from the computer to computation. Software resulted from the convergence of two
lines of development dating back to the first computers: one aimed at facilitating the
writing of programs; the other, at understanding the nature of computation itself."
When computers were new, writing programs meant listing the exact sequence of
machine instructions necessary to carry out a computation. It also meant keeping
track of where the instructions and the data would be stored in memory. Running a
program meant loading it into the machine from cards or tape (paper or magnetic),
setting the register to the location ofthe first instruction, and starting it. For a task of
16 MICHAEL S. MAHONEY
any complexity, programming was difficult and tedious, and running programs
singly was inefficient and wasteful of time measured by tens of thousands of
dollars a month. Programs generally required extensive debugging, which only
added to non-productive time on the machine. Moreover, each change of computer
entailed a complete rewriting of the program, a task made more difficult by pro-
grammers' efforts to take advantage of the special features of each new model
(Figure 10).
Beginning in the mid-1950s response to these problems took two forms: pro-
gramming languages and operating systems. Each aimed at turning the routine
aspects ofthe tasks over to the computer or, more precisely, to a program running on
the computer. Programming languages relieved the programmer of the burden of
knowing the specific sequence of machine instructions for basic operations and
keeping track of the specific location of the operands. To add two numbers and store
their sum, for example, one simply declared A, Band C as variables and then wrote
"C : = A + B", leaving it to the compiler to assign locations in memory for the vari-
ables and to fill in the sequence of instructions for adding the values in locations
A and B and storing the result in C.
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mt op : inti
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Figure I I. The solution of the Towers of Hanoi in a high-level language.
High-level, or problem-oriented, languages represented a fundamental shift in

thinking about computing, which the design ofAlgol in 1959-60 made explicit: they
separated computation from computers. to That is, each language defined an abstract
machine; one now programmed an Algol computer, or a LISP computer. The task
of transforming the structure and operations of the abstract device into those
of a particular computer was left to the compiler written for that specific machine
(Figure II).
Compilers thus became in the 1960s the meeting point of practical programming
and the theory of computation. High-level languages posed problems of lexical,
syntactic, and semantic analysis, which were addressed by developments in the the-
ory of automata and formal languages and in formal semantics. These developments
in tum arose from the interaction of research agendas in a variety of disciplines rang-
ing from neurophysiology to linguistics. Converging on the computer, they formed
the new mathematical discipline of theoretical computer science . I I
Operating systems followed a similar path of development. Originating as sched-
ulers and monitors to load jobs and oversee their progress, they took on additional
tasks as computer architectures grew in complexity. Systems with several proces-
sors, some of them dedicated to input and output devices, made it possible for sev-
eral processes to run at the same time, sometimes in parallel, sometimes alternately
as they required different portions of the system. Multiprocessing called for master
programs that kept the central processors busy, assigning tasks to the subsidiary
18 MICHA EL S . MAHONEY
processors and swapping tasks in and out as data arrived or were being recorded, pro-
tecting programs and their data from interfering with one another or with the master
program, monitoring processes for run-time errors, recording use of resources, and
mediating between the machine and its operators. All this required scheduling algo-
rithms, system data structures, memory protection schemes, communications proto-
cols, and so on.
What began as a master program gradually became a hierarchy of processes,
which increasingly separated the end user from the computer itself, replacing it at the
top layer with an image of the system. That is, what one could do, how one did it,
and indeed who one had to be to do it, was defined by the operating system manual,
not by the computer manual. As Algol had done for programming languages, so too
OS/360, the operating system for IBM's System 360, made that shift a principle of
design. The system itself was an abstract machine, translated through micropro-
gramming into the particular architectures of a family of machines. The object was
software that would run on any of them. That system in tum presented itself to the
user in a variety of interfaces, through which it was addressed in a variety of systems
programming languages .
With the advent of computers big enough and fast enough to do all these things
while responding in real time to input from operators came time-sharing , one of the
great triumphs of illusion. Here the processes running together were interactive ses-
sions involving users at consoles. As in the multiplexing of telegraph and telephone
message, each user's console received a slice of time repeated so often as to seem
continuous (or at least tolerably slow). Each user's process appeared to have the full
resources of the computer but in fact was an image of the computer swapped in and
out of the central processor as its tum came around. It was, in fact, a virtual com-
puter. On IBM's VM systems, various users could have different virtual computers
and hence be seeing the same real machine quite differently. Of course, users seldom
ever saw the real machine at all, which was kept in a secure area in a controlled cli-
mate. What they saw was a terminal , either a teletype or a video screen, and their
interaction with the computer took the form of a conversation by means of a
keyboard.
Much of this development was guided by a vision of the computer as a public
utility.12 Just as power stations and telephone centrals distributed electrical and
telephone service, so too users at home and office terminals would draw computing
power from wall sockets. The central system would provide not only cycles but a full
range of computing resources and applications software. The computer itself
remained a big machine housed in a dedicated structure and tended by a phalanx of
operators. Before the vision could be realized, the appearance of inexpensive mini-
computers undermined important sectors of the intended market. Even the telephone
company found that a constellation of small, networked machines better met its
needs than did a large central installation.
Appearing as time-sharing reached full development, microcomputers recapitu-
lated this phylogeny of operating systems. The Altair came with no operating sys-
tem. Bill Gates and Paul Allen provided a BASIC interpreter to ease programming
and to monitor the loading and running of programs . Later systems, such as CP/M
and DOS, recreated the single user, single process programming of 1950s and ' 60s,
gradually adding a certain level of multiprocessing for tasks such as printing and
communications. Indeed, until recently, that was all that was required, since the
notion of a personal computer is not entirely compatible with time-sharing: the user
expects to have all the resources of the computer, not just the illusion of those
resources.
However, the personal computer added another strain of development, the graph-
ical user interface (GUI), which emerged from vision of the computer as a tool for
augmenting human intelligence. The idea predated the computer itself. In 1945,
Vannevar Bush, creator of the differential analyzer and director of the U.S.'s R&D
effort during World War II, anticipated the needs of scientists for keeping up with
expanding information and imagined a device he called a "memex't.P It was a per-
sonal system for storing and retrieving textual and pictorial material interlinked
according to the user's needs and interests. J.C.R. Licklider offered another version
of the idea in a seminal article, "Man-Computer Symbiosis", in 1960, and Douglas
Engelbart made it the focus of a research agenda that ultimately transformed the
image of the computer and the relation of the user to it by creating the WIMP inter-
face referred to above.l" Software, then, has removed the physical computer from
view and replaced it by an interface with a virtual world . We work on a "desktop",
opening "folders" and "files" and picking up "tools" by clicking on appropriately
designed icons . Or we survey cyberspace through a "browser", "navigating" our way
through a textual labyrinth of Borgesian intricacy (NB the mixed metaphor - not
mine) . We do not see the computer; we see the image of a world created by the
software (Figure 9).
Most often we do not even see the software, or at least are not conscious of it,
because we do not realize we are using a computer at all. The proliferation of small
computers in homes , schools, and offices represents only a small part of the
computerization of our world. For every visible computer, three remain wholly invis-
ible, embedded in systems with deceptive interfaces that look like telephones, auto-
mobiles, television sets, microwave ovens, and so on. The inventory has come to
encompass most of the technologies with and through which we live in the world
today. The image of the computer is embedded in our image of the world, which
deceptively looks the same as before . (Figure 12)
THE WORLD OF THE COMPUTER
To most of us, it looks the same. To scientists, the image of the world has been
changing. It has become the image of the computer, or more precisely the image of
computation. How that has happened over the past fifty years has only recently
attracted the attention of historians of science, so here I can only raise some issues
for your consideration.
In 1945, as John von Neumann began thinking about the possibilities of the com-
puter, he was also thinking about the limitations of science as classically pursued .
Since the seventeenth century (and even earlier in astronomy), scientists had sought to
reduce nature to physical models and the physical models to mathematical relations.
They had proceeded on the premiss that the structures of those relations mirrored the
structures of the physical models, which in turn mirrored the structures of nature.
Figure 12. Networked computers embedded in our world (as pictured in Communications of
the ACM 43,5(2000)). Courtesy of the ACM.
Von Neumann changed that traditional view by arguing against the need for a
physical model to mediate between nature and mathematics. Mathematical struc-
tures themselves sufficed to give insight into the world, both physical and social.
The job of the scientist was to build models that matched the phenomena, without
concern for whether the model was "true" in any other sense.
To begin with, we must emphasize a statement which I am sure you have heard
before, but which must be repeated again and again. It is that the sciences do not try
IN OUR OWN IM AGE : CREATING THE COMPUTER 21
to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is
meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpre-
tations, describes observed phenomena. The justification ofsuch a mathematical con-
struct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work - that is, correctly to describe
phenomena from a reasonably wide area. Furthermore, it must satisfy certain esthetic
criteria - that is, in relation to how much it describes, it must be rather simple. 15
I
But even then von Neumann assumed that the mathematical structure of the model
would be accessible to analysis and the researcher would understand how the model
worked .
However, the current state of mathematics offered little insight into the problems
of interest at the time, a class of problems exemplified by hydrodynamics which , he
noted in 1945, was "the prototype for anything involving non-linear partial differen-
tial equations, particularly those of the hyperbolic or the mixed type, hydrodynam-
ics being a major physical guide in this important field, which is clearly too difficult
at present from the purely mathematical point of view." 16 "The advance of analysis,"
he remarked elsewhere , "is, at this moment, stagnant along the entire front of non-
linear problems.'t'?
That is what made the computer so attractive. In the absence of analytic solutions,
it could at least provide numerical results and, more importantly, produce them
quickly enough to make the mathematics useful as a model. Beginning with von
Neumann's own project on numerical meteorology, the computer became a site of
scientific investigation in which simulation gradually took the place of analysis . With
the development of programming languages to support symbolic reasoning, model-
ing moved beyond calculating numbers where analytic solutions are not possible and
extended to defining the local interactions of a large number of elements of a system
and then letting the system evolve computationally. For example, rather than seeking
a numerical approximation to the non-linear partial differential equations of fluid
flow, one models the interaction of neighboring particles and displays the result
graphically. Instead of a mathematical function, what emerges is a picture of the
evolving systems; an analytical solution is replaced by the stages of a time series .
In other applications, the results may include new elements or new forms of inter-
action among them. In particular, the system as a whole may acquire new properties,
which emerge when the interactions among the elements reach a certain level of
complexity." Precisely because the properties are a product of complexity, that is, of
the system itself, they cannot be reduced analytically to the properties of the con-
stituent elements. We explore the model not by analyzing it mathematically but by
changing the parameters and seeing what happens (Figure 13).
As computational models move beyond what we can understand mathematically
and what we can recreate experimentally, the world we study is the world in the
computer. In trying to understand life as it is, researchers in Artificial Life (AL)
study life as it could be, unconstrained by biochemistry!" From that perspective,
life as we know it becomes a particular instance of a more general phenomenon, a
phenomenon generated by computation.
Here AL is following the lead of AI (artificial intelligence), which has long
sought to separate thinking from the "meat machine" (Marvin Minsky) with which
22 MICHAE L S . MAHONEY
Gary William Flake
The Computational Beauty of Nature
Figure 13. The world in the machine on the cover of G.w. Flake, The Computational Beauty
ofNature, 1998. Courtesy of Gary William Flake.
humans carry it out. From very early on, the image of the computer has included the
thinking machine. We have now passed the milestone of 2001, the year in which
Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's HAL, the all-knowing, all-see ing computer
of "2001 : A Space Odyssey" attempts to take over a mission to Jupiter, killing its
crew.
Although that prospect may seem comfortably distant at this point, the underlying
premiss has become common. Cognitive science rests on the assumption that
thought is a form of information processing, i.e., that the brain computes . The ques-
tion is not whether, but how. Similarly, while biologists prefer to restrict "life" to its
carbon-based form, they seek the patterns of information by which organisms main-
tain themselves, replicate, and evolve (Figure 14). The genome increasingly looks
like the tape of a Turing machine, read in sequence by the cell, which changes state
in response to what it reads and then may write what is to happen next.
CopyrightIe) 2000 by Thaves. Distributedfrom www.theoomics.com .
Figure 14. Life as software, according to Thaves. Reprinted with permission ofTom Thaves.
One may speak of a metaphor, but it is verging on a metaphysics.P The world has
become computerized by the creation of computational models of the systems in
question . Success in so many areas has led to view the world as a computational
process, so that the world itself has become an "interface" masking the "computers"
embedded in it.
Some here may be familiar with the recent film, The Matrix/" It is science fiction
with philosophical roots in Descartes' evil demon. At some point in the future, the
world has been conquered by superintelligent machines, which use humans, spawned
in huge incubators and then inserted into the Matrix, as sources of energy, draining
their bodies while deceiving their wired brains to believe they are living lives in the
world as we know it. The world these humans perceive, and in which they perceive
themselves to be acting, is a virtual reality. Nothing in it is material; it is simply run-
ning code (Figure 15).
A small group of humans have escaped the Matrix. Their real world has been
reduced to a shabby command module cruising without destination through the sew-
ers below a shattered metropolis, but they have the technical capacity to insert them-
selves into the virtual reality of the Matrix and to exit from it, albeit only at certain
nodes. What happens to them in the Matrix can affect their real bodies psychoso-
matically (neurophysiologically?). Believing themselves struck or shot in virtual
reality can produce the effect physically, rendering them just as hurt or just as dead.
By contrast, knowing with total conviction that the perception is virtual can shield
the physical body. At the climax of the story, the protagonist, Neo, grasps this con-
cept at its core, realizing that he can rewrite the code and with it the rules by which
his deceived mind is killing his body. Through his eyes we see three killers standing
before him in a corridor suddenly resolved, along with their surroundings , into run-
ning code. He is viewing the Matrix as it really is, and he can now act through it at
the level of the code itself. He can now fight the Matrix on its own terms (Figure 16).
Fiction though it may be, that scene captures the image of the world as science is
coming increasingly to view it. To be sure, it remains on the most fundamental level
a physical world of matter and forces. However, whereas its constituents once
interacted by mechanical means, they now process information or are themselves
Figure 15. The future of humans in the world of the computer, as imagined in The Matrix,
Copyright Warner Bros. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission of Warner Bros.
parts of an information process. While the laws of thermodynamics remain in force,

they are supplemented by the laws of information and computation, which define
limits and possibilities of a different kind . In one area after another, from genetics to
psychology, scientists see the world as running code , and they seek to work in the
world through that code.
Throughout the Middle Ages it was common to refer to the machina mundi, the
machine of the world, as a metaphor. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
metaphor became a model (the clockwork universe) and then a metaphysics (the mech-
anistic world ofmatter in motion). In reducing logic to the actions ofa simple machine,
Turing may be seen as the culmination of that metaphysics .F Yet, in retrospect his
scheme was a turning point. His machine was not a mechanism but a computation.
At the turn of the millennium, that is what the world, including ourselves, is becoming.
In many respects it is thereby becoming a world created in our own image (Figure 17).
IN O UR OWN IMA GE : C R E A T IN G T H E C O M PU TE R 25
Figure 16. " Seeing in code", from Th e Matrix, Copyright Warner Bros. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission ofWamer Bros.
Figure 17. The modem creation, by George H. Bindon. Courtesy of George H. Bindon.
N OT ES
Stephen L. Del Sesto, " Wasn't the Future of Nuclear Energy Wonderful?," in Joseph J. Com (ed.),
Imagin ing Tomorrow: History, Technology, and the American Futur e (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986) 58-76.
2 See, for example, Gilbert Burck and the Editors of Fortune, The Comp uter Age and Its Potential for
Management (NY: Harper and Row, 1965).
Alan M. Turing, "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem ",
Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society ser. 2 42 (1936-7) 230-65, at 230 . On Turing and his
work, see Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1983) and the Turing web
page maintained by Hodges at http://www.turing .org.uk/turingl.
4 John von Neumann, "First Draft ofa Report on the EDVAC", in Michael D. Godfrey (ed.), Annals of
the History of Computing 15,4 (1993) 27-75 (available online at http ://dIib.computer.orglanibooks/
an I993 /pd f/a4027 .pdf). For a participant's view of the role of Mauchly and Eckert in the discussions
from which the draft emerged, see Arthur Burks 's introduction to the report as published in William
Aspray and Arthur Burks (eds.), Papers of John von Neumann on Computing and Computer Theory
(Cambridge, MA/LosAngeles: MIT Press/Tomash Publishers, 1987) 6.
S Andrew Marvell (1627-78), ''To His Coy Mistress" (early 1650s): "Had we but world enough, and
time ,lThis coyness, lady, were no crime ."
6 Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1984).
7 Rob Kling and Walt Scacchi , "The Web of Computing," Advances in Computers 21 (1982) 1-90.
8 It is not clear exactly when and under what circumstances the term first appeared, nor, perhaps more
importantly, how it spread. So far, the earliest documented use of the terms occurs in an article by John W.
Tukey, "The Teaching of Concrete Mathematics," American Mathematical Monthly 65 (1958) I- 9 at 2:
"Today the 'software' comprising the carefully planned interpreti ve routines, compilers , and other aspects
ofautomative [sic] programming are at least as important to the modem electronic calculator as its 'hard-
ware' of tubes, transistors, wires, tapes and the like." The quotation marks around the terms suggest that
they were new or recent. It is also worth nothing that Tukey associates "software" with what today would
be referred to as "systems software", as opposed to "applications software".
9 The strains developed differently in Europe and the U.S. The rapid expansion of the industry in
American focused efforts on programming, while Europeans took a more theoretical approach .
10 Peter Naur, "The European Side of the Last Phase of the Development of Algol 60," in Richard
Wexelblat (ed.) , History ofProgramming Languages (NY: Academic Press, 1981) 95-6: "ALGOL 60 is the
name of a notation for expressing computational processes, irrespective of any parti cular uses or computer
implementations." In designing Algol 60, the members of the committee expressly barred discussions
of implementation of the features of the language , albeit on the shared assumption that no one
would propose a feature he did not know how to implement, at least in principle . On the general principle
of separating computation from the computer, see M.S. Mahoney, "Software: The Self-Programming
Machine ", in Atsushi Akera and Frederik Nebeker (eds .), From 0 to 1: An Authoritative History of
Modern Computing (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press , 2002) ch. 7.
11 See M.S. Mahoney, "The Structures of Computation," in Raul Rojas and Ulf Hashagen (eds .), The
First Computers - History and Architectures (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2000) .
12 See, for example, FJ . Corbato and Y.A. Vyssotsky, "Introduction and overview of the Multics system,"
Proceedings 1965 Fall Joint Computer Conference; available online at http://www.multicians.orgl fjcc I.htrn\.
13 Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think," The Atlantic 176, I (1945) 101-9.
14 lC.R. Licklider, "Man-Computer Symbiosis," IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-I
(1960) 4--11. Licklider claimed not to have known of Bush 's article until after having arrived independently
at the ideas in his article . Doug Engelbart, "The Augmented Knowledge Workshop," in Adele Goldberg
(ed.), A History of Personal Workstations (New York: ACM Press, 1988) 185-232; cf. his "Augmenting
Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," prepared for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 1962
and now available online at http://www.histech.rwth-aachen .de/www/quellenlengelbart/ahi62index.htm\.
IS John von Neumann, "Method in the Physical Sciences," in L. Leary (ed.), The Unity of Knowledge
(Doubleday, 1955); reprinted in his Collected Works, A.H. Taub (ed.) (New York: Pergamon Press,
1961-63) VI 492. Von Neumann went on to observe that "simple" is a relative term : " I think it is worth
while insisting on these vague terms - for instance, on the use of the word rather. One cannot tell exactly
how "simple" simple is. Some of the theories that we have adopted, some of the models with which we
are very happy and of which we are very proud would probably not impress someone exposed to them for
the first time as being particularly simple".
16 J, von Neumann to Oswald Veblen, 3/26/45, ibid. 357.
17 H. Goldstin e and l von Neumann , "On the Principles of Large-Scale Computing Machines," ca. 1946,
Collected Works V 2.
I N O UR OWN IM A G E : C REAT I NG T HE CO M PUTE R 27
18 For a technical overview, see Klaus Mainzer, Thinking in Complexity: The Complex Dynamics of
Matter, Mind. and Mankind 3rd edn. (Berlin/New York/London: Springer Verlag, 1997); for a gentler
introduction, see M. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and
Chaos (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). On emergence, see John H. Holland, Hidden Order: How
Adaptation Builds Complexity (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995). Stephen Wolfram makes a detailed
case for the radical novelty of the computational approach in A New Kind of Science (Champaign,
IL: Wolfram Media, Inc. 2002)."
19 See Christopher G. Langton (ed.), Artificial Life: An Overview (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995)
and Claus Emmeche, The Machine in the Garden: The Emerging Science ofArtificial Life (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994).
20 For a critical history of the concept, see Lily E. Kay, Who Wrote the Book ofLife?: A History of the
Genetic Code (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
2\ Web site at http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/.
22 On the mechanization of thought, see Sybille Kriimer, Symbolische Maschinen: Die Idee der
Formalisierung in geschichtlichem AbrifJ (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988) and
Martin Davis, The Universal Machine: The Road fro m Leibniz to Turing (NY/London: w.w. Norton,
2000).
BERNADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT
CHANGING IMAGES OF CHEMISTRY
INTR OD U CTIO N
The tensions between chemistry and medicine (or life science) are as old as chem-
istry itself. They were caused by enthusiastic alchemists who vied with nature or
were accused of doing so. The promise of creating a living creature through labora-
tory operations survived the collapse of the alchemical tradition and profoundly
shaped the public image of chemistry. The dichotomy between the laboratory and
Nature as the creator of life was still at the center of literary images of chemists in
the early nineteenth century. In her popular 1817 novel Franken st ein, Mary Shelley
revived the Promethean image of an all-powerful chemist. This image, which has
created an association of chemistry with witchcraft , magic and charlatanism has per-
sisted through the centuries in spite of the many successful and useful products that
have issued from the chemist 's laboratory. As early as the eighteenth century,
chemists began to substitute artificial, man-made products such as ammonia, oil of
vitriol (sulphuric acid), and what they called "facticious" (that is, artificial) soda
(sodium carbonate) for products formerly extracted from vegetable- or animal-
matter. By the end of the eighteenth century chemistry was, therefore, celebrated as
a useful science, contributing to public welfare and the wealth of nations. Chemists
were no longer perceived as dangerous people. Rather they had become respectable
professionals enjoying social recognition and, often, political responsibilities.
In the mid-nineteenth century, however, the development of synthetic chemistry
revived the competition between chemistry and life. One purpose of this paper is to
contribute to an understanding of how and why the term "synthetic" became a syn-
onym of "chemical" and the antonym of "natural" or "organic" in popular language.
I will also discuss to what extent this common view has changed because of the most
recent developments of chemistry.
CR EATING LIFE
The public view of synthesis rests on a legend created and propagated by chemists
such as Hermann Kolbe, Wilhelm August Hofmann and Marcellin Berthelot. 1 They
29
I.H. Stamhu is, T. Koetsier, C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences, 29-41.
© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain.
30 BERNADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT
pointed to Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea, an organic compound, from inor-

ganic material in 1828 as the death sentence of vital forces. The metaphysical belief
in a vital force was supposedly destroyed by this experiment bridging the chasm
between the inorganic and organic realms. Wohler's synthesis was presented as an
epoch-making discovery, the dawn of a new era, when chemists would be able to cre-
ate organisms.
In reality, vital forces were not swept away by the synthesis of urea. As John
Hedley Brooke has argued, this is a biased interpretation of this synthesis.! Urea is
an organic substance but not an organism; it is a product of life but it was not syn-
thesized through the same process as it is in the organism. It was thus easy for
Claude Bernard to state that chemists could certainly imitate the products of life but
could not imitate the ways of nature.' Thus the anti-metaphysical claim rests on a
confusion between "organic" and "organized" and between product and process.
The claim is also unacceptable because Wohler's synthesis was not a direct syn-
thesis from elements, but rather a partial synthesis from a cyanate. This cyanate was
itself not synthesized from its elements but by oxidation from a cyanide extracted
from horns and hooves of animals. Therefore Wohler's synthesis did not affect the
belief of chemists such as Jons Jakob Berzelius and Justus Liebig in the existence of
a vital force, active in the formation of organized bodies.
The synthesis of urea as a crucial experiment overthrowing a metaphysical dogma
is thus a myth, intended to exalt the power of chemical synthesis. If Wohler's syn-
thesis was an epoch-making discovery it was so not because it killed vital forces but
because it revealed a strange phenomenon, later called "isomerism." Urea was
obtained from the same components as potassium cyanate, although it did not pres-
ent the same properties. Consequently, the belief that the properties of a compound
were exclusively determined by the nature and proportion of its constituent elements
was challenged. Wohler's synthesis was thus a landmark because it drew the atten-
tion of chemists to the arrangement of atoms within the molecule. In the 1860s, the
understanding of the structure of the benzene molecule by August Kekule allowed
the synthesis of many aromatic compounds, synthetic dyes, by the substitution of
atoms within benzene's hexagonal structure.
Substitution of atoms or groups of atoms in a molecular edifice was the real prac-
tice of synthesis in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, the popular
connection between "synthetic" and "artificial" does not rest on this practice. Rather
it was rooted in Berthelot's view of synthesis as a creation. "Chemistry," he wrote,
"creates its own object." This creative faculty, like that of art itself, distinguishes it
fundamentally from the natural and historical sciences." For Berthelot, who
opposed all atomistic views, synthesis was like the construction of an edifice, start-
ing from the ultimate elements - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Berthelot
claimed he could build up carbohydrates, "which are so to speak the building blocks
of the scientific edifice;" and he would then proceed to the synthesis of ternary
compounds made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, such as alcohols; the next step
would start from the alcohols and build up ethers, alkaloids or organic acids, which
in tum would lead to amides such as ureas, at the threshold of living matter.
Through progressive syntheses, chemistry could create anything. This ambitious
program is described at length in Berthelot's popular book La Synthese chimique.
CHANGING IMAGES OF CHEMISTRY 31
Figure I. Marcellin Berthelot. Reprinted with permission of the Agence Bridgeman

Giraudon, Paris.
However, it remained a paper program . In fifty years, Berthelot realized only a small,
insignificant part of his grand design. He synthesized wine alcohol from ethylene
(not from the elements); formic acid by combining carbon and soda; and acetylene
by directly combining carbon and hydrogen in an instrument named "the electric
egg", a name presumably reminiscent of alchemical instruments. The view of syn-
thesis as an artificial creation, therefore, rests on no effective practice. Rather it was
a fantasy, forged with the help of rhetoric and reminiscences.
Today the image of the chemist as a creator is in competition with another heroic
image of the synthetic chemist put forward by the Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann
in the 1980s. In contrast to the nineteenth century image of an all-powerful creator,
manipulating the elements of nature, the modem synthetic chemist is portrayed as an
32 BERNADE T T E BE NSA UDE- VINCE NT
artist engaged into a chess game with nature and using all possible stratagems to
conduct the natural proce ss toward the desired end-product.'
THE WO NDERFUL WORLD OF CHEMISTRY
A second landmark event shaped the image of chemistry in the twenteeth century. On
15 May 1940 while a number of European countries were at war, American citizens
were invited to celebrate welfare through chemistry. Nylon stockings were presented
to the public, and the next morning crowds of customers descended on department
stores to buy the new stockings that would become a symbol of modernity,"
The famous slogan launched by Du Pont, "Better things for better living ...
through chemistry," was initially aimed at erasing the image of chemistry as an agent
of death resulting from the company's participation in chemical warfare during
World War 1.7 However, the publicists who orchestrated the "chemists' crusade "
through various media went far beyond that initial purpose. Their message was that
chemistry not only provided "better things" but generated a new lifestyle, based on
the consumption of these "better things," of material goods. Nylon stockings were
explicitly advertised as a symbol of modernity. Publicists were enrolled to launch
polyamid synthetic fiber 6-6, invented by Wallace Carothers in Du Pont's laborato-
ries. In order to create popular euphoria, a gigantic 2-ton model ofa woman 's leg was
exhibited (Figure 2).8The name given to the fiber was carefully chosen to avoid all
connotations of an artificial substitute for silk. The intention was to break with the
image of synthetic materials as cheap substitutes for expensive natura l materials
such as ivory or tortoise shells, as had been the case earlier in the twentieth century
when, for instance, celuloid and bakelite were introduced commercially as substi-
tutes for ivory and tortoise shell.
It is clear that the intrinsic qualities of synthetic fibers created by chemists were
less decisive for their success than their cultural meaning, carefully crafted by
publicists . The depression of the 1930s heightened the impact of this campaign.
Synthetics were presented as agents of democratization that would answer all mate-
rial needs for all people whatever their social status;" they created economic benefits
and job opportunities, and their supply was regular, whatever the uncertainties of the
market or of warfare . Chemistry epitomized the spirit of scientific control , which
could secure "better living".
The mass production of plastics thus generated a new image of chemistry as a cor-
nucopia of material plenty. Chemistry was powerful enough to complete nature and
improve on it. However the emphasis was no longer on creation , but rather on dis-
covery. Chemists had discovered a new world. In 1940, a popular chemical magazine
described synthesis as the "fourth kingdom", a new continent called "Synthetica,"
whose map was modeled after South America." This widely disseminated image
clearly shows the utopian meaning attached to synthetic polymers . Whereas in 1940,
plastics were the promise of a stable and perfect society, their image changed after
World War II. An unprecedented expansion of plastics on the market, due to the short-
age of metals and other strategic materials during the war, coupled with a new gener-
ation of polymers - thermoplastic s instead of thermosetting plastics - conveyed a
totally different image . Light and brightly colored molded plastic items proliferated
Figure 2. A two-ton model of Marie Wilson's leg is unveiled by a Los Angeles hosiery shop.
The actress is hoisted skyward for comparison. Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library
(Dupont Archives) .
in daily uses, they invaded kitchens, children's rooms and, final1y, were even used in
garbage bags. They encouraged an intensive consumption based on the notions of
disposability and impermanence.
In the 1970s plastics and synthetic fibers were no longer perceived as cheap
substitutes and, in the hands ofartists, architects and Parisian couturiers, became valu-
able materials in themselves. Organic forms, light-weight materials, and synthetic
34 BER NADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT
THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
CENTER OF MODERN LIFE

Figure 3. The chemical industry as the centerof modemlife. From A. Cressy Morrison, Man
in a Chemical World, the Service of Chemical Industry, London, 1937, 17.
colors were praised for their liveliness and plasticity. Curved and airy, synthetic
materials created an aesthetic of their own, in which artificiality became a supreme
value. The French philosopher Roland Barthes described the mythology surrounding
plastics . "Plastic" he wrote "is like a wonderful molecule indefinitely changing ,"!'
Plasticity meant a pure virtuality of indefinite transformations, ignoring the sub-
stance itself.
In the 1980s, when plastics epitomized a lifestyle, chemistry was clearly associ-
ated with the idea of changing personality and superficiality. "Plastic people"
became a cliche referring to persons living on the surface , with no authenticity, no
substance, "as fake as vinyl or formica", noted the cultural historian Jeffrey Meikle .
He also emphasized a paradox :
If the vision then (in the early decades of the twentieth century) was of a cornu-
copia of material plenty, the vision of the new plasticity was of a fully digitized
culture with limitless capacity for responding to the most casual desires by means
of virtually real satisfact ions. Electrons and computers replaced molecules and
molding machines but the vision continued to reflect a faith in technology 's capac-
ity for transmuting nature's imperfections so as to arrive at the dazzling perfection
of the artificial. 12
To sum up, the proliferation of plastics in daily life, encouraged by vigorous cam-
paigns, generated a new pattern of civilization usually referred to as "the plastic
era". 13 It valued artificiality and gave chemistry the prestigious image of vehicle of
modernity.
• I
..:.:~ ...:
: : . 0'
.• r "
. ...
"
f • I '
'
Figure 4. Through fertilizers, insecticides, preservatives and the production of fluids for
refrigerating machines chemistry feeds miIlions. From A. Cressy Morrison, Man in a
Chemical World. the Service of Chemical Industry, London, 1937, 91.
THE WAYS BACK TO NAT URE
Along with intensive consumerism, plastics became a target of criticism in the

1970s - especially in Great Britain. A counterculture emerged which denounced the
infatuation with artificial things as a prime example of the superficiality and inau-
thenticity of modem life. The hippy culture therefore advocated a return to earth and
to nature.
With the rise of environmental concern in the 1970s, the entire chemical industry
came under attack as a factor in pollution . "Chemical" became a synonym of "toxic,"
"dangerous," after a number of serious incidents such as Bhopal (December 1984).
The 40 metric tons of methyl-isocyanate released in the atmosphere by a Union
Carbide pesticide plant which caused about 2000 casualties and 100,000 injuries,
plus significant damage to crops and cattle, quickly called up again the image of
chemistry as an agent of death. Moreover, in the minds of environmentalists, this
accident strengthened the association between chemistry and capitalist multinational
firms, whose aim was profits rather than human welfare.
Chemists and chemical companies first responded to what they considered irra-
tional fears and angers, with reasoning . First, they argued that chemistry cannot be
accused of damaging nature and health, because chemistry also provides drugs to
maintain health and protects natural biodiversity. For instance, the chemists' ability
to synthesize fabrics simulating furs saves a number of animal species traditionally
sacrificed for coats. Chemists also pointed out that it is inconsistent to contrast
"chemical" and "organic" (or biological), because everything is chemical in nature.
Because chemistry provides understanding of biological mechanisms, it also pro-
vides for the rational design of drugs and predictive toxicology. Chemistry is "the
key to life".14 Moreover, they emphasized, chemistry also provides an array of tech-
niques for testing food adulteration or toxic substances. Analytical chemistry helps
guarantee that synthetic molecules are pure. Consequently, against the popular con-
viction that organic, natural products are more healthy than synthetic molecules, it
can be argued that the latter are less hazardous than the molecules extracted from
nature which inevitably contain undesirable impurities.
The notion of purity reveals the gap between the public's and the chemist's views.
In ordinary language, the adjective "natural" connotes an image ofpurity, and "pure"
basically means "authentic", non-adulterated. From the chemist's point of view, a
natural product is always mixed, non-authentic, hence non-reliable until it has been
submitted to a series of purification procedures.
Paradoxically, the concern over impurities has recently been reversed. On the one
hand, impurities first caught the attention of metallurgists and crystallographers when
techniques such as X-ray diffraction allowed them to visualize the microstructure of
metals. They noticed that a number of interesting properties of alloys were due to
impurities in their matrices and that new properties could be obtained by introducing
defects in crystal structures. On the other hand, the chemists' quest for purity revealed
the importance of "doping" materials with impurities. In fact, polymer chemists
never made plastics out of pure polymers. They always added many ingredients: sim-
ple charges, agents of elasticity, agents of reticulation, adhesives, coatings, etc. The
specification of a resin includes not only the nature of the macromolecule but also the
nature and proportion of all the additives. Organic chemists are skilled in the art of
mixing.
The New-Age cult of plasticity and artificiality was, in fact, made possible by
these mixing processes. In the 1940s, chemists began to reinforce plastics with fibers
in order to extend their applications to military purposes : aircraft noses and boats for
the US Navy. IS These early composites (laminates of polyester resins), molded at low
pressures, began to be mass produced in the 1950s in civil applications such as elec-
tric insulators and, when the difficulty of molding large pieces had been overcome,
tankers.
Gradually, reinforced plastics became composite materials. 16 The change was by
no means radical; it was a silent revolution which deeply changed the synthetic
strategies of chemists. The use oflong high-modulus fibers such as carbon or Kevlar,
allowed chemists to design new materials with never-before-seen properties.
In contrast with conventional plastics which are mass-produced, high performance
composites are designed for specific tasks in a specific environments. Unlike glass
fibers, carbon and Kevlar are used as long fibers. They are not spread all through the
resin, but carefully arranged with a definite orientation according to the main forces
experiences in the functioning of the obj ect. Unlike fiberglass-reinforced plastics,
carbon composite materials are anisotropic. They are designed to respond to specific
needs, within specified operating conditions. Each has an architecture of its own.
Like art objects, such composite materials are unique creations. Composite materi-
als occasioned a second reversal of values in the public image of chemistry. Just as
impure became a positive and interesting feature, the superficial became a prime
concern among chemists. The surface of things is interesting in itself. Surfaces, thin
layers, monolayers have properties of their own, because their atomic structure dif-
fers from the structure of the inside. Surfaces are of special interest because they
interact with the outside and determine the performances of composite materials.
High-performance composite materials prompted an even greater change in the
cultural meaning of synthetic. At first glance, nothing is more artificial than those
anisotropic and heterogeneous structures. Materials as light as plastic, with the
toughne ss of steel and the stiffness or heat-resistance of ceramics, are comparable to
centaurs. Like the chimeras invented by the Ancients, they combine different species
in one body.
Ironically, it was when the culture ofthe artificial and synthetic reached its climax
in the 1970s and 1980s that chemists turned their attention to natural products .
Nature thrown out through the front door returned via the back door. Nature, or more
precisely living nature, came back into the world of synthetic chemistry as a source
for two different projects. First, animate nature is being reconsidered as a source of
environmentally safe raw materials. There are many attempts to synthesize polymers
out of vegetable fibers, for garbage bags or other mass-produced products, because
of their degradability.!? Second, living organisms are a source of inspiration. 18 While
trying to design high-performance, multi-functional composites, material scientists
and chemical engineers realized that such materials already existed in living organ-
isms. Optimal combinations of propertie s and adaptive structures are found in the
lowly sea-shells and insects. Sea-urchin or abalone shells are wonderful bio-mineral
SI"~lIi. 1••lIk il ,"~ ••iIL
I"'"'' II' II i....III.1 hP1l1
I"t.,·. ,~ •••d... 11'"1'" lih r,
lI'I,"th ~lIhl.lllIlIl. 'I ....
... "" 'II ~ ...... Ih •• ,I!

11'.1. I• •• ut i, • • d •• I,r81111111
II. tl SI ell 'II st., I Ul"~

SII, .hl1.I! S", . III. 1
'ISIt 1111 ••• " ' 111 ct_
Figure 5. With a single idea chemist Stephanie Kwolek can stop a train. Courtesy of the
Hagley Museum and Library (Dupont Archives).
structures made out of a common raw material , calcium carbonate : they present
complex morphologies and assume a variety of functions. 19 Similarly, the spider's
web is made of a fiber, extremely thin and robust, that offers an unequalled strength-
to-weight ratio. Wood, which originally was one of the most common construction
materials, is now redefined not only as a composite material made out of long,
orientated fibers immersed in a light ligneous matrix, but also as a complex structure
CHANGING IMAGES OF C H E M I S T RY 39
with different levels of organization at different scales. Could such efficient struc-
tures be designed in man-made materials? Nature seems to provide elegant solutions
to the problems faced by modern chemists .
"We can be encouraged by the knowledge that a set of solutions have been worked
out in the biological domain," wrote Stephen Mann, a natural scientist who entered
the field of materials science . "The challenge then is to elucidate these biological
strategies, test them in vitro, and to apply them with suitable modification, to rele-
vant fields of academic and technological inquiry."2o In order to imitate nature,
chemists started to collaborate with biologists. To design advanced materials they
had to understand not only the complex structure of biominerals but they also wanted
to understand how nature makes them. For the aims of modern chemistry go far
beyond the ambition of nineteenth-century chemists who sought to imitate natural
products . The aim now is to challenge the already mentioned remark of Claude
Bernard (see note 3) and to imitate nature 's processes . In biominerals, nature makes
the mortar and bricks at the same time and self-assembles them through the use of
templates with a close control of the process at each level.21
Thus nature is viewed as a model engineer, a wizard who has invented the best
materials that an engineer can dream 0[2 2 She spent billions of years designing and
perfecting high-performance structures capable of sustaining life. Nature is the men-
tor who guides, encourages and teaches the chemist not only the design of materials
but also their repair, and destruction , thanks to recycling processes. Nature is the
master of time. To a number of chemists it seems impossible to improve on nature,
or even to rival her. Material designers have no choice but to start from the building
blocks provided by nature - whether they be proteins, bacteria, micelles or colloids -
In order to achieve their goal. Instead of being the masters of nature, they try to be
her partners.
But I am not going to end on this idyllic image of a "new alliance" between chem-
istry and biology. Biomimetism did not totally kill the Promethean ambitions of syn-
thetic chemists. On the contrary, a few attempts at molecular self-assembly have
revived Berthelot 's utopian views of a brand new world built up by the power of
science. The only difference may be that today the disciplinary fields invoked in
this grandiose program have become so intertwined that it is no longer chemistry
by itself which is endowed with such creative power. Computer simulation, bio-
engineering and chemical synthesis - all three technologies work together to train
technocrats of all sorts, prophets of a new age, when man will be replaced by molec-
ular machines , or "engines of creation't.P
I will conclude , rather, by emphasizing that the Promethean myth of the chemist-
creator has never totally disappeared. The rivalry between nature and the laboratory
is a theme that has been deeply rooted in our culture since Antiquity/" It has been
repeatedly challenged and repeatedly revived in the chemists' rhetoric, more than in
their actual practice of synthesis.
N OT ES
I P. Ramberg, "The Death of Vitalism and the Birth of Organic Chemistry: Wohler's Urea Synthesis
and the Disciplinary Identity of Organic Chemistry", Ambix 47 (2000) 170- 95.
40 BERNAD ETTE B ENSAUDE -VI NCENT
John Hedley Brooke, "Wohler's Urea - a Verdict from the Chemists", Ambix 15 (1968), reprinted in
Brooke, Thinking about Matter. Studies in the History of Chemical Philosophy (Aldershot: Variorum,
1995) 84-1 14.
3 Claude Bernard, Introduction a l 'etude de la medecine experimentale (Paris, 1865, re-edition
Flammarion, 1984) 115-45 .
4 Marcellin Berthelot, La Synthese chimique, 2e ed. (Paris: Alcan, 1876) 275.
Roald Hoffmann, " In Praise of Synthesis", in The Same and not the Same (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1995).
6 Susannah Handley, Nylon The Story of a Fashion Revolution (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999); Jeffrey L. Meikle, American Plastic. A Cultural History (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Susan T.!. Mossman and Peter 1T. Morris (eds), The
Development of Plastics (London : The Science Museum, 1994).
7 David J. Rhees, The Chemists ' Crusade, The Rise of an Industrial Science in Modern America,
1907-1922 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1987); B. Schroeder-Gudehus (ed.),
"Corporate Advertising, Public Relations and Popular Exhibits: The Case of Du Pont", in Industrial
Society and its Museums 1890-1990 (London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1993) 67-76.
8 Susannah Handley, Nylon The Story of a Fashion Revolution (Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1999).
9 Jeffrey L. Meikle, "Plastic, Material of a Thousand Uses", in Joseph 1 Corn (ed.), Imagining
Tomorrow. History, Technology, and the American Future (Cambridge : MIT Press, 1986) 77-96; idem,
American Plastic. A Cultural History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995).
10 See "Plastics in 1940", Fortune (October 22, 1940) 88-89 quoted by Jeffrey L. Meikle, "Into the
Fourth Kingdom: Representations of Plastic Materials, 1920-1950", Journal of Design History 5 (1992)
173-82.
I I Roland Barthes, Myth ologies (Paris: Denoel-Gonthier, 1971) 171- 3.
12 Jeffrey L. Meikle, "Beyond Plastics: Postmodernity and the Culture of Synthesis," Working paper
No.5 in David E. Nye, Charlotte Granly (cds), Odense American Studies International Series (Odense:
Odense University, 1993) 1-15 , quoted on 12. See also "American Plastics. A Cultural History", op. cit.
sup ra 277-305 .
13 Technically the plastic era began in the 1970s when the volume of plastics used in the world super-
seded the volume of stee!. A symbol of the plastic era is Disney World in particular at Epcot Center which
opened in 1982 in Florida. Fiberglass reinforced polyester was used to make a careful replica of an Italian
country house with stained and crumbling stucco (see Jeffrey L. Meikle, American Plastics 284-5).
14 Sec for instance the special issue of L'actualite chimique I I (November 1999), entitled "Chimie et vie
quotidienne", especially Andree Marquet's paper "Je suis la cle de la vie".
15 Bryan Parkyn, "Fibre reinforced Composites", in Susan T.!. Mossman and Peter 1.T. Morris (cds), The
Development of Plastics (London: The Science Museum, 1994) 105-114; Ivan Amato, Stuff: The
Materials the World is Made of (New York: Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 1997); B. Bensaude-
Vincent, Eloge du mixte (Paris, Hachette litteratures, 1998).
16 Originally the term "composite" was used in conjunction with "re inforced plastics". The US Society
for Plastic Industries had a Reinforced Plastics Division which was renamed Reinforced Plastics and
Composites Division, in 1967. In France, a bi-monthly magazine entitled Plastique renforce/Verre textile,
published by the professionial organization bearing the same name, started in 1963 and was rechristened
in 1983 Composites with Plastique renf orce/verre textile as a subtitle.
17 Philip H. Abelson and Allen L. Hammond (cds), Materials : Renewable and Nonrenewable resources
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1976); Julian EY. Vincent, "Naturally New
Materials", Materials Today (1998 or 1999) 3-6.
18 1 M. Benyus, Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature, Quill edition (New York: 1998); Bernadette
Bensaude-Vincent, Herve Arribart, Yves Bouligand and Clement Sanchez, "Chemists at the School of
Nature", Journal ofEuropean Chemistry 26 (January 2002) 1- 5.
19 H.A. Lowenstam and S. Weiner, On Biomineralization (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press,
1989).
20 Stephen Mann, "Crystallochemical Strategies" in Stephen Mann, John Werbb and Robert
1P. Williams (eds), Biomineralization, Chemical and Biological Perspectives (Weinheim: VCH, 1989)
35-6 2, quoted on 35.
21 S. Weiner and L.LA. Addadi, "Design Strategies in Mineralized Biological Materials", Journal of
Material Chemistry 7(5) (1997) 689-702.
22 See for instance Julian F.V. Vincent in Materials Today (1998) 3-6.
23 K. Eric Drexler, Engines ofCreation (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986).
24 Roald Hoffmann, The Same and not the Same, op. cit. 85-126.
GARLAND E. ALLEN
THE CHANGING IMAGE OF BIOLOGY IN THE

TWENTIETH CENTURY
INTRODUCTION
The changing image of the life sciences in the twentieth century can be charted as
the conscious attempt to introduce rigorous experimental, analytical and reduction-
ist methods from the physical to the biological sciences . This change brought
biology from being a largely descriptive to an experimental science that included
both the laboratory and field. Of all the natural sciences, biology underwent the most
profound sequence of changes during the twentieth century. (Biology is defined here
initially in the nineteenth-century sense, as the study of the structure and function -
including aspects of general physiology - ofliving systems, excluding medicine and
medically-related subjects such as pharmacology, epidemiology and public health.)
During the first half of the nineteenth century biology was dominated largely by
issues of natural history: taxonomy, new discoveries relating to geographic distribu-
tion, fossils and extinction, and of course comparative anatomy. Physiology was
largely separate from Lamarck's general term of Biologie at the time, and was
housed institutionally within medical schools and hospitals, as opposed to museums
and botanical or zoological institutions . The connection of physiology to general
biology was clearly recognized, but it shared a largely different intellectual and
social base until at least the l840s.
The "image" of biology at the tum of the century is captured in the illustrations
shown in Figure 1. It is of biology as largely natural history, concerned with the life
histories of organisms, with comparative anatomy and taxonomy among the major
activities in which naturalists were engaged. Laboratories were largely given over to
microscopical work or dissection, with observational skills and drawing ability often
honed to a fine degree. Who, over the age of 50, does not associate biology with dis-
secting and drawing images of frogs, earthworms and flower parts? The tools of biol-
ogy, right up to the period just before World War II, were also relatively descriptive and
simple, not unusually expensive, and did not require highly developed analytical skills.
By the end of the century however, the images of biology had changed so dramat-
ically they would have been unrecognizable to even the most advanced investigators
43
1.H. Stamhu is, T. Koetsier, C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds), The Changing Image ofthe
Sciences, 43-83 .
44 GARLAND E . ALLEN
Figure I. As the century opened, the prevailing image of biology was that of natural history,
concerned with describing and cataloging organisms in nature. As shown in this 1890s col-
lecting trip at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts , biology was
closely tied to field experience and most biologists knew a great deal about the structure and
life histories of the organisms with which they worked. Woods Hole, MA: Courtesy, Special
Collections, MBL/WHOI Library.
in 1900 or 1920 (Figure 2). Today's images include electrophoretic gels, x-ray dif-
fraction patterns, high-resolution electron micrographs, sedimentation coefficients,
and evolutionary lineages based on molecular rather than anatomical data. The mod-
em biology research laboratory presents a totally different appearance - dominated
by large and expensive equipment such as ultracentrifuges, confocal microscopes,
spectrophotomers and an endless array of computers . The eye is no longer the major
point of contact between the biological system and the investigator. What has
brought about this profound change in the way biology "looks" in the course of the
past century? How does this change reflect the way we think about living systems,
how we depict them, manipulate them and understand their history?
The outcome of this widespread dissemination of experimental methods into
biology, however successful in investigation of certain problems, was the failure
to develop a sophisticated method of dealing with complex, interactive systems.
By mid-century, certain areas of biology, notably general physiology and embryol-
ogy, were struggling to find more holistic methods for investigating biological
processes.
In this chapter I will trace the changing image ofbiology as driven by several dialec-
tical imperatives: (1) Philosophically, between mechanistic and holistic (including
(at)
(
Figure 2. Cont.
46 GA RLAN D E . ALLEN
Figure 2. The image of the biologist during the second half of the twentieth century differed
sharply from that at the outset of the century. (a) The high-powered electron microscope
replaced the light microscope for detailed cellular work, and (b) Intricate molecular models,
such as the oxygen-storing protein myoglobin, shown here, replaced detailed anatomical
drawings. The emphasis in both electron microscopy and molecular modeling related struc-
ture to function at the cellular and sub-cellular levels. [(a) Taken from J.J.w. Baker and
G.E. Allen, A Course in Biology (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1968) 70; (b) Taken from
J.J.w. Baker and G.E. Allen, Matter, Energy and Life (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1980
4th ed.) 194]. (a) Courtesy RCA Corporation; (b) Courtesy John C. Kendrew.
dialectical) materialism; (2) Methodologically, between an emphasis on description vs

experimentation; and (3) Economically, by the shift from agrarian to industrialized
society in the west, both in Europe and the United States. Other factors such as
the introduction of new technology (for example electron microscopy, or x-ray
TH E C H A N G I N G IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 47
diffraction), and new institutional structures (institutes for medical research, marine
biological laboratories, and government-sponsored research laboratories) also played
a critical role in the changing face of biology in the twentieth century, and these will
figure also, though less prominently, in the following discussion. For various reasons,
partly relating to space but mostly to the author's area of expertise, this paper will
focus only on western science. The story would be different ifAsian and African sci-
ence were included. The history of life sciences - indigenous and imported - in those
regions during the twentieth century is a much-needed area of study.
THE NIN ET E EN TH C E NT URY B ACK GRO UND
Between 1840 and 1860 several major changes turned the development of general
biology in new directions. One was the conscious rise of mechanistic and reduction-
istic physiology as exemplified by the "Manifesto" of the Berlin "medical material-
ists," Ludwig von Helmholtz, Emil Briicke and Emil Du Bois-Reymond, in 1847. 1
Seen as based on the methods as well as the laws of physics and chemistry, the new
mechanistic materialism (there had been a parallel movement in the eighteenth
century associated with French materialists such as La Mettrie) emphasized that
organisms were nothing more than complex chemical machines, operating accord-
ing to the known laws of physics and chemistry. They opposed the introduction of
metaphysical concepts in biology such as teleology and an elan vital, or "vital force"
that distinguished living from non-living systems. They also adopted a highly
experimentalist stance, emphasizing the importance of asking testable questions and
carrying out detailed, quantitative experiment s to answer them. Their approach took
physiology beyond the borders of the medical school and hospital, raising its meth-
ods and its questions to the level of general biological inquiry. These developments
gave rise to the general physiology of Claude Bernard on the one hand, and the
microb iology of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch on the other.
At the same time, the non-phsyiological aspects ofbiology were revolutionized by
the appearance of Darwin 's On the Origin of Species in 1859. Not only Darwin 's
paradigm of mutable species, but his general synthetic method, bringing together
such disparate areas as comparative anatomy, geology/palaeontology, geographic
distribution , taxonomy, ecology and artificial breeding , made a profound impression
on naturalists and other biologists alike. The latter half of the nineteenth century
found much of biology falling in one way or another under an evolutionary, if not the
specific Darwinian, paradigm. Darwin's work emphasized both descriptive and syn-
thetic methods, giving rise to new areas of investigation such as morphology, the
combined study of structure and its development (ontogenetically and phylogeneti-
cally). As a major research program, morphology dominated much of biological
work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The works of Ernst Haeckel
(Figure 3), among others, came to represent the epitome of morpholog ical work:
highly descriptive, inventive but speculative theories of heredity, development and
evolution that had little basis in empirical or especially testable data (Figure 4). More
than one graduate student in the early 1890s was heard to mutter, "Enough with all
this morphology."
48 GA R LAN D E . ALLEN
Figure 3. The complete naturalist, Ernst Haeckel and his assistant, Nikolai Mikulcho-Maklai
setting off for a collecting trip in the environs of Lazarote, 1866. Haeckel symbolized both the
strong and weak aspects of late 19th century natural history: he combined a keen eye for the
beauty and structure of organisms with a synthetic and often theoretical, but often highly spec-
ulative frame of mind. His biogenetic law became infamous for its claim that the stages
through which an embryo passed represented adult forms of its phylogenetic ancestors.
[From Ernst Haeckel Haus, Berggasse 7, lena, Germany.]
BI O LO G Y AN D TH E P H YSI CAL S CI ENC E S : EX PE R IMENTA LISM AN D

R ED UCTI O NI S M
While the Darwinian paradigm had served as a rallying point for many biologists in
the late nineteenth century, it had also created a new set of problems. The difficulties
faced by the Darwinian theory were many, even from the biological side, and have
been discussed in detail by Bowler, among others .' Underlying all of the specific
problems, however, was a deeper methodological issue. There was a growing belief
that evolutionary theory, and the morphological research program associated with
(a)
(b)
Figure 4. Cont.
(e)
.-:;2. (1\..
., ../) ';
...~ .
"
( (''S. .
.t'..... ........... ( . -"n

.- .
( I 2. ~ ..
...• , .." (' 2. / .

(/ _
., ... ,. ......
.. 1/'~ ..., .....
Figure 4. Much of the study of embryos in the late nineteenth century was dominated by spec-
ulative, phylogenetic concerns . (a) Haeckel's "Gastraea Theory" claimed that the gastrula
(2-cell layer stage in animal development), and similar to modern day Cnidarians such as
Hydra and coral polyps, was the common ancestor of all higher animals. (b) Using embryonic
development as a key to phylogeny, Haeckel constructed elaborate evolutionary "trees" for all
phyla of both the plant and animal kingdoms . (c) The phylogenetic and morphological method
was taken to its most minute and detailed level in the study of patterns of cell division and cell
movement in early embryogenesis, as shown here in this "cell lineage" study, which traces the
ancestry of each cell in the development of the marine annelid, Nereis . [(a) From Erika
Krausse, Ernst Haeckel, vol. 70 Biograph ien hervorragender Naturwissenschaftler (Leipzig:
BSB B.G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1984) 83; (b) From E. Haeckel, Generelle
Morphologie (Berlin: G. Reimer Verlag) Band II, Tafel I; (c) From E.B. Wilson, "Cell Lineage
of Nereis," Journal ofMorphology 6 (1892) Plate XY.]
it, especially identified with the avid pursuit of phylogenies, was at heart a soft,
qualitative, non-rigorous science. While granting that Darwin's theory was synthetic,
critics claimed it was also non-experimental and therefore non-testable, and ulti-
mately must remain consigned to the realm of speculation."
The critics of Darwinian theory, of morphology and of what was seen as specula-
tive science, came mostly from a younger generation of biologists born after 1865 or
1870, especially in the United States, who saw "phylogenizing" as old-fashioned.
THE CHANGING IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 51
Numerous phylogenies could all account for the same evidence, and with no way to
distingui sh between them, younger critics sought to move away from what they saw
as the overriding concern with evolutionary and morphologically-based questions.
Many important biological problems in their own right - for example, the causes of
embryonic differentiation, or the nature of heredity - were being ignored while the
senior investigators in the field were engaged in endless debates about the origin of
one or another taxonomic group . Younger critics also had some unkind words to say
about the purely descript ive fields of taxonomy, comparative anatomy and embryol-
ogy, and what we today would refer to as the nascent science of ecology. They did
not view these areas as unimport ant, so much as they were seen as descriptive,
speculative , and dominating biology at the expense of newer, more exciting and
promising questions.
In contrast, younger biologists in the 1890s were intrigued by the experimental
studies of embryological differentiation initiated by Hans Driesch and Wilhelm
Roux (Figure 5). By experimentally separating the first two blastomeres (daughter
cells formed by division of the fertilized egg) of developing embryo s Roux and
Driesch attempted to test the mosaic theory of development, the idea that during
embryonic development cells successively lost the ability to form a complete organ-
ism - that is, became qualitatively different in their developmental capacity. While
there were complications that made the results of these experiments subject to vari-
ous interpretations (the use of different species, and different methods of manipulat-
ing the blastomeres ), the focus on specific, proximate causation (i.e., how the
organism functions today , not how they might have originated millions of years ago),
approached by experimental method s, appeared to the younger generation of biolo-
gists as a fresh and exciting new approach.'
The methodological paradigm against which Darwinian and morphological theory
was judged was that of the physical sciences and their biological spin-off, physiology.
The hallmark of this methodology was the use ofhypothetico-deductive reasoning ("If
A and B are two mutually exclusive states, and if A is true, then B must be false" -
i.e., the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises), experimentation, the col-
lection of quantita tive rather than qualitative data, and the use of mathematics,
includ ing the nascent science of statistics. Hypothet ico-deductive reasoning set up
alternati ve predictions deriving from competing hypotheses , and then testing those
alternati ves by experimentation. The process was rigorou s in that through the use of
controlled experiments it was possible to narrow down the number of variables being
investigated to one (at a time), and thus determine the causal agents involved.
Quantitative data were not only more precise than qualitative data, but allowed for
more meaningful compari son between experiments and the repetition of experiments
by different investigators. Quantitative data also made it possible to discover more
precise and general relationships in mathematical terms (for example, Vito Volterra's
mathematical formulation of compet itive exclusion in the 'teens and 'twenties,
delineated a more rigorous and precise relation ship among species in a given envi-
ronment than Darwin's qualitative analogy of species as wedges). Experimental and
quantitative methods became the hallmark of the "new" biology.
It was a rather naive view of the nature of the physical sciences on which many
biologists' views of proper scientific methodology were based. In general, it can be
(a)
-
CD.
(b)
"
" .... -,
-,
Figure 5. Representations of the experiments by Wilhelm Roux (a), and Hans Driesch
(b). Using different species and different methods of manipulating the 2-celled embryonic
stage, their experiments, not surprisingly, yielded different results. Killing one of the first two
blastomeres of a frog embryo with a hot needle, Roux got development of only a half-embryo;
he concluded that in cell division hereditary determinants were divided up in a mosaic fash-
ion, so that cells became more and more restricted (determined) in the type of tissue they
could produce. Separating the first two blastomeres from each other by shaking them in a flask
of sea water, Driesch found that each could produce a whole organism. He concluded the
organism was not a simple mosaic but functioned as a whole, self-adjusting "harmonious
equipotential system." [From V. Hamburger, The Heritage of Experimental Embryology
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 10.]
said that the younger generation of biologists was modeling its view of science not
On physics being practiced by cutting-edge physicists in the early 1900s but more by
the classical positivist view of physics and chemistry presented by textbooks and
current philosophical discussions of the nature of science. It should be pointed out
that at least some of the younger biologists involved in championing the "new" biol-
ogy (for example Jacques Loeb, Hans Driesch, William Bateson) were aware of the
debates among physicists and philosophers of science regarding monism vs dualism,
idealism vs materialism - that is, issues raised about classical physics by empirio-
critics such as Ernst Mach and Pierre Duhem. These physicists in the late nineteenth
century questioned any statements about the real nature of matter and assumed a for-
malistic approach to physical and chemical processes that went so far as to view atoms
as only a heuristic device. So far as I can tell, however, between 1890 and 1920, these
sometimes esoteric debates did not significantly influence the formulation of a new
version of mechanistic biology, except within the holistic biology movement (about
which more later) so well explored by Anne Harrington in her recent Reenchanted
Science? Holistic biologists saw in the doctrine of vitalism - at least in some parts of
it - a significant alternative to the strong mechanistic stance that had pervaded much
German physiology in the early decades of the twentieth century. To the extent that
holistic arguments became intertwined in many cases with vitalistic claims,
the issues became increasingly confusing, so that much of the holistic movement
was ignored, or actively dismissed, by younger biologists , especially those in the
United States.
As a result of the emphasis on quantitative and experimental work following the
model of (and ideas embedded in) the physical sciences, the new biology became
increasingly analytical and reductionist in tone . In the first decade of the century the
German-born American physiologist Jacques Loeb referred to phototropic organ-
isms as "photochemical machine s enslaved to the light." And toward the end of his
life, he went so far as to claim that the basic function of all life could be traced to
the nature of colloid s.' C.M . Child at the University of Chicago analyzed the vary-
ing degrees of regenerative power of segments ofplanarians or earthworm s (the head
segments could regenerate more readily than tail pieces) into a chemical gradient ,
measured by decreasing oxygen consumption from anterior to posterior regions. Life
was just a slightly more highly organized version of the chemistry of inorganic and
organic ions and molecules.
When Mendelian genetics became a widespread research program after 1910,
geneticists in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Britain and Germany, also
adopted an analytical and reductionist methodology regarding the nature of heredity.
The problem of heredity had always been seen as encompassing three processes :
transmis sion from parent to offspring, the development of the embryo from fertilized
egg to adult, and the historical development of organisms over time, i.e., organic
evolution . Mendelian geneticists took as their "professional territory" only the prob-
lem of transmission , arguing that "embryologists" should worry about how the
zygote became an adult, and largely felt that evolutionary questions led immediately
to speculation and metaphysics . There was more to their reductioni st treatment than
simply narrowing down the field, however. By adopt ing a particulate notion of genes,
geneticists "reduced" the organism to a mosaic of hereditary particle s each deter-
mining a specific trait and, at least until the mid-teen s, incorporating limited inter-
actions among genes themselves (Figure 6). As the century wore on, genetics
became increasingly paradigmatic as the epitome of the new biology : it was experi-
mental, quantitative , predictive, and mechanistic - as modem as they come. In many
ways this model has continued to dominate the field of heredity down through the
(a) ~
PARE NT S
(b)
.1 n c Tl
Figure 6. Representations of the early development of the Mendelian and Mendelian-

chromosome theory of heredity. (a) Mendel's pea experiments produced predictable results
when pure yellow coated peas (light gray) were crossed with pure green coated peas (dark
gray): the FI were all yellow (yellow was thus said to be "dominant" over green); if these were
crossed with each other, the F2 produced approximately 3 yellows to everyone green.
Mendel's scheme fit neatly into a particulate view of heredity, where every adult character was
represented by a particle, or "factor" in the germ plasm. (b) T.H. Morgan and his school at
Columbia University in New York, showed that Mendel 's "factors," later called genes, could
be represented as discrete "beads", arranged linearly along the visible cell structures called
chromosomes . [(a) From T.H. Morgan, Heredity and Sex (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1914) 76; (b) From T.H. Morgan, A.H. Sturtevant, C.B. Bridges and H.J. Muller, The
Mechanism ofMendelian Heredity (New York: Henry Holt, 1915) 60.]
era of the Human Genome Initiative. This same sort of naive reductionism played
a major role in the development in many countries of the questionable science
of eugenics during the early decades of the century.
The changing face of biology during the twentieth century also involved a shift
from descriptive work in the field to experimental and analytical work in the labora-
tory, from the organism and its variants as found in nature to the constructed and
invariant model organism of the physiological or genetic researcher. Drosophila , the
classical paradigmatic model organism, became highly tailored to fit the needs of
experimental genetics: it was a fast breeder, easy to maintain in the laboratory, had
only a few chromosomes, and most important, could be selected to produce strains
that showed highly discrete phenotypic variants - a perfect system for those, such as
the American school of Thomas Hunt Morgan and others, who had become con-
vinced of the particulate Mendelian theory (Figure 7). Drosophila was, in historian
Robert Kohler's terms, a "breeder reactor", a term he coined in the 1990s, but no
doubt reflecting the early geneticists ' underlying physics envy." Even areas of biol-
ogy as explicitly field-oriented as ecology and population genetics increasingly
adopted an experimental and laboratory stance, even taking laboratory and experi-
mental procedures to the field." Organisms captured in nature for evolutionary study
were placed in "population cages" in the lab where environmental or genetic factors
could be manipulated in a classical experimental vein. Ecological landscapes were
divided and sub-divided into quadrats whose components were counted down to
each individual organism. Hillsides were transected to demonstrate populational
changes as altitudinal clines, and energy components of ecosystems, such as small
freshwater ponds were determined by grinding up its biomass in Waring blenders
to determine their total organic or energy (in the form of ATP) content.
This is not to say that traditional field work ceased to exist or that all ecologists
became laboratory-bound experimentalists. In fact, much field work expanded in the
1920s and 1930s, but it had a different flavor. Ecologists such as Charles Elton,
Henry Chandler Cowles, or Howard Odum called upon other ecologists to bring
a precision and quantitative approach to problems of succession, prey-predator
relationships, the courses of population fluctuations (intrinsic rhythms vs density-
dependent factors), the relationships between area and species diversity. The
Carnegie Institution's Desert Laboratory in Tucson under D.T. MacDougal became
one of the major examples of a new experimentally-oriented ecology. 10 Although a
holistic strain always remained and asserted itself in biological circles, reductionism
held sway and dominated much of biological research throughout the century.
Clashes between reductionists and holistically-oriented biologists (organismic, field-
oriented, naturalists) erupted in the 'teens and 'twenties, and again in the 'sixties and
'seventies. Debates in both periods were acrimonious, and represented a confronta-
tion of opposing world views. The different approaches formed a continual dialectic
throughout the century.
The dialectic was not merely a pendulum swing, however. The analytical-
reductionist dimension drove the oscillation, for, as much as there were attempts to
move beyond reductionism, biologists returned to it again and again. The reasons for
this are complex, including the long tradition of reductionist-analytical thinking
stemming back to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the greater
(a) Bar Ruchmentary
(b)
Figure 7. (a) The fruit fly, Drosophila, became one of the twentieth century's premiere model
organisms . It was ideal for genetic studies that correlated the results of breeding experiments
with cytological analysis of its chromosome structure. Drosophila bred quickly (one generation
every 10-12 days), required simple food, could be bred in large numbers in a small space
(a pair could produce hundreds of offspring in a pint-sized milk bottle), it produced numerous
mutations and it had only four chromosome pairs, thus making microscopical observation less
complex than with organisms having larger numbers, such as mice. Here mutations for Bar eye,
left (compared to full, red colored eyes, right) and vestigial wing, right (compared to normal
wing, left). (b) Work with Drosophila was pioneered from 1910 onward by T.H. Morgan and
his group at Columbia University, shown here at a party, celebrating the return of one of their
members, A.H. Sturtevant, from service in World War 1. Morgan is in back on the right, next to
H.I. Muller; C.B. Bridges is to Muller 's right, and Sturtevant is in front center, leaning back in
chair. [(a) From Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics and Man (New York, NY: Wiley,
1961) 84, Figure 4.4; (b) From Isabel Morgan Mountain.]
availability of tools for taking complex systems apart than for studying them as
holistic entities, and, the greater utility of reductionism to industrial capitalism and
its ancillary medical science, which aimed at controlling and using nature for eco-
nomic development and medical purposes (both for improving health and for invest-
ment). Thus, the tension between the ever-present pressure to manipulate and control
(embodied verbally even in the wording of"controlled" experiment), and the evident
complexity of biological systems and processes, became an important theme in the
life sciences throughout the entire century.
THE T ECHNOLOGICAL AND INSTITUTIONAL IMP ER ATIVE
The Technological Imperative

The dialectic between reductionism and a more holistic approach was fueled by many
technological changes that became a part of biological research from almost the
beginning of the century onward. Light microscopy had developed to almost its full
power by the early decades of the century, the introduction of some new vital stains
and modifications such as oil immersion lenses, darkfield and phase-contrast micro-
scopy notwithstanding (Figure 8). None of these methods matched the revolution
introduced by the electron microscope in depicting the details of cell ultra-structure.
Electron microscopy in all of its forms greatly aided the reductionist tendency to
analyze complex wholes into component parts. Cells could now be understood in
terms of dozens of individual component parts: membranes, organelles, ribosomes
and the like (Figure 9). Concomitant with electron microscopy came methods for
studying the molecular composition of cells: chromatography and electrophoresis
(for separating mixtures of large molecules or cellular components), x-ray crystallog-
raphy (for constructing visual models of molecular structure), and nuclear magnetic
resonance (for investigating quantitatively the proportion of different compounds in
complex mixtures, as would be found in cells). The use of radioactive tracers to fol-
low the path of atoms through the organism or through the cell made it possible to
gain detailed knowledge of the multiple steps in biochemical pathways.
Nowhere is the changing face of biology more dramatically represented than by
examining the evolution of tools and workplace technology used by biologists from
the early to the latter decades of the century. The convergence of many of these
tools in the elucidation of the molecular structure of DNA (the molecule of genes),
of proteins such as the oxygen-transport molecule hemoglobin and myoglobin, or of
enzymes such as ribonuclease or lysozyme, brought the most intimate details of
biological chemistry to full scrutiny in the biologist's eyes (Figure 10). Converging
techniques meant that biologists were able to develop a multi-dimensional view of
biologically important molecules that included not only their biochemical function
but also their molecular structure and genetic control. Biology, like all sciences,
has been driven by another dialectic, that between technique and theory: theories
demanded new techniques; techniques led to new theories .
To take the example of electron microscopy: the observational images of biology
moved from the rather general view of cells as characterized by the best light
microscopes , to the ultra-structure of cells revealed by electron microscopy. In many
Figure 8. (a) Cytologist E.B. Wilson at the microscope, Columbia University, c. 1910. Wilson
was one of the key figures in carrying on the tradition of detailed and careful microscopic
observation while also promoting the advancement of experimental biology. As Columbia
department chairman, he hired and supported the work of Morgan and his group. (b) Wilson's
observations were limited, however, by the relatively low resolving power of even the best
light microscopes, as evident in this photomicrograph of a mammalian nerve cell body in
which only the nucleus and a few indistinct organelles are readily visible. The maximum mag-
nifying power of the best light microscopes was IOOOX . [(a) From Isabel Morgan Mountain;
(b) From George E. Rosen, Journal of Cell Biology, reprinted in A.M. Winchester, Biology
and its Relation to Mankind (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969) 74.]
ways the new observational techniques led to new insights, indeed new paradigms,
about cell function. Revelation of the detailed structure of such organelles as mito-
chondria, chloroplasts, Iysosomes, and structures such as ribosomes and the endo-
plasmic reticulum suggested a far more detailed set of mechanisms by which cells
carry out their various functions than the simple picture of cells as a "bag of
enzymes", in the period prior to 1955. Cells were compartmentalized units, with
structure intimately related to function even at the molecular level. The far more
reductionistic view of the cell that emerged from electron micrograph studies in the
1960s and 1970s owed much to the improved observational techniques associated
with the electron microscope, not only with improved experimental techniques.
Figure 9. Cant.
Figure 9. The electron micro scope revolutionized the study of cell biology, and brought to
light many details of the ultrastructure of cells, particularly organelles and the organization
of the cytoplasm, previously thought to be an amorphous "protoplasm." (a) Transm ission
electron-micrograph (where an electron beam passes through a very thin section of tissue) of
a pancreati c exocrine cell of the bat, showing structures such as the nucleus (N), mitochon-
dria (Mi), endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and Golgi body (G), magn ified 62,000 times. With the
exception of the ER, all these components of the cell had been detected with the light micro-
scope, but their individual structures were poorly understood because so little detail was
observable; (b) Scanning EM (where electron beams are bounced off the surface of a speci-
men of pollen grains of the Duckweed, showing the rough surface that aids in their dissemi-
nation . [(a) From K.R. Porter and Mary A. Bonneville, Introduction to the Fine Structure of
Cells and Tissues (Philadelphia, Lea and Febiger, 1964) 2nd ed., Plate 3; (b) From Gene Shih
and Richard Kessel, Living Images (Boston : Science Books International, 1982) 65.]
Electron microscopy was not just a more high-powered version of light

microscopy from the earlier part ofthe century. From the outset electron microscopy
was allied through the use of radioactive tracers and especially the ultracentrifuge,
with correlating structure and function . This is not to say that light microscopists in
the first half of the century were uninterested in function - but their analytical tools
for determining the function, especially of sub-cellular components, were too crude
to elucidate much detail. By the 1980s, however, it had become possible, using trac-
ers and fluorescent dyes, to follow the movement of molecules such as proteins from
their point of synthesis (ribosome) through their processing (cytosol vs endoplasmic
TH E C H A NG I N G IMAG E OF BIOLO GY 61
Figure 10. Jame s D. Watson (left) and Francis Crick (right) at the Cavendish Laboratory in
Cambridge, with the double-heli x model of DNA (deoxyribonucl eic acid) that they developed
in the early 1950s. Working out the molecular structure of the gene showed not only how the
molecule could replicate itself, but also how it could guide the production of highly specific
proteins, and even how it could be turned on and off. [From James D. Watson, originally pub-
lished in G.E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1978) 218.]
reticulum) to their packaging for export (Golgi apparatus) or localization for use
within the cell. Such elaborate theory development has been made possible by the
correlating of high resolution observational details with biochemical tools that have
become part and parcel of all cell and molecular biology laboratories.
Professional and Institutional Imperatives

A third factor that strongly influenced the development of the "new" biology
was related to the professionalization and institutionalization of science during the
twentieth century. At the beginning ofthe century, most biologists were employed in
universities or other academic institutions, though a small portion found employ-
ment in the growing number of museums and, especially in the United States, the
U.S. Department of Agriculture and its network of experiment stations, which were
established in almost every state by the early 1900s. At the tum of the century most
biologists around the world were still trained in Europe, or had some significant
European experience after training in their home country. Natural history, taxonomy
and morphology still dominated university departments and institutes, which still
went under the traditional names of Zoology, Botany or Medicine. In most universi-
ties in the United States the departments were small, consisting ofperhaps only three
or four faculty members. For very different reasons departments and institutes in
European universities were also relatively small. This meant, among other things,
that individuals had relatively little contact with colleagues in their own fields of
specialization throughout much of the academic year.
Partly to meet the need for interaction with people working in the same areas,
research stations, many at seaside locations where the abundance of marine organisms
provided ample materials for observation and experimentation, came into prominence
in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Anton Dohm founded the Stazione
Zoologica in Naples in 1874, with other stations following in Europe and the United
States in the next several decades (Figure 11). Marine laboratories became central meet-
ing places for the exchange of ideas, techniques and organisms. The Naples or Woods
Hole experiences became, for many, a turning point in their professional lives, as they
rubbed shoulders with established researchers from at home and abroad, met new col-
leagues with whom collaborations could develop, and often encountered new problems
that re-directed the course of their research. Americans returning from Naples in the
1890s and early 1900s left glowing accounts ofthe stimulating experience they encoun-
tered.'! These institutions can be credited with helping push forward the experimental
aspects of biology, though they also remained a haven for the purely descriptive,
morphological or taxonomic work that had dominated late nineteenth century biology.
INTEGRATIV E PRO C ESS ES
Running counter to the triumphant reductionism of the early decades of the century
was a persistent, though often muffled and confusing strain of holistic thinking in
biology.12 It had always been prevalent in a general way among naturalists and those
who studied organisms in their natural habitats. But it emerged in other areas of biol-
ogy as well, interestingly enough in physiology, the very field held up as the most sim-
ilar in rigorous methodology to the physical sciences. Taking its origins in the work
of Claude Bernard on the "constancy ofthe internal environment" in the 1860s, holis-
tic thinking came in a number of forms though, with a common thread that empha-
sized the interaction of components in complex systems, methods of self-regulation
and organization, and the emergence of new properties from interacting systems that
were greater than the sum of their parts. Bernard 's original concept included the
notion of self-regulating systems which operated to maintain constancy of internal
conditions such as blood sugar level, temperature or ionic balance . The notion was
expanded in the early twentieth century by Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon,
(a)
(b)
Figure II. Marine laboratories around the world provided some of the first institutional bases
for a combination of observational and experimental work. Two of the earliest and most well-
known are shown here . (a) The Naples Zoological Station (Stazione Zoologica) was founded
in 1875 by German zoologist Anton Dohrn, and was located directly on the fauna-rich Bay of
Naples . Here is where Hans Driesch first carried out his experiments with sea urchins, and
which became a haven for many American and other foreign biologists. (b) The Naples ideal
inspired the founding of other such laboratories, including the Marine Biological Laboratory
(MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. One of the important features of such laboratories was
the collaborative work that was carried out there, mostly in the summers , but in the case of
Naples, and later MBL, also on a year-round basis. [(a) From Christiane Groeben, The Naples
Zoological Station at the Time ofAnton Dohrn (edited for the Exhibition Commemorating the
Centenary of the Naples Zoological Station, 1975) 36, Figure 21. (b) From the Special
Collections, Woods Hole, MA: MBL/WHOI Library.)
64 G A R L A N D E . ALLEN
Figure 12. More holistic, interactive studies began to emerge in physiology, as in these stud-
ies of the maintenance of homeostatic temperature control in mammals, carried out by
Harvard physiologist WB. Cannon. The cat has had its thoracic and abdominal sympathetic
nerves removedon one side. When exposed to cold air, the sympathetically-controlled hair on
the still-innervated side respond automatically by standing erect (creating a greater layer of
warmth around the body). Cannon identified the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous
systems as one of the important mechanisms that maintains homeostatic control of body tem-
perature. [From Walter B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (New York, NY: WW Norton,
1932); Copyright renewed 1960 by Cornelia Cannon.]
who introduced the term homeostasis to refer to the process of self-regulation, in his
formulation, by means of negative feedback signals (Figure 12). Similar thinking was
apparent in the work on blood buffer systems by Cannon 's colleague L.J. Henderson,
who saw blood as having its own biochemical mechanisms for maintaining a constant
pH (Figure 13). As difficult as it was for biologists to find satisfactory means of
mapping complex interacting systems, it was becoming clear by the 1920s and 1930s
that many biological systems were not reducible only to individual parts, and that
studying interactions had to become a core part of the life sciences. 13
However, this approach faced a number of pitfalls. On the one hand, it was not
easy to study complex systems, since it was difficult to see how the parts fit together
and how interactions actually took place. On the other hand, many who became
THE C H A N G I N G IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 65
Figure 13. Cartesian "Nomogram" used by LJ. Henderson to show the relationship between
various factors (pH, oxygen and carbon dioxide content, temperature, and the like) to the acid-
ity or aklalinityof the blood. Henderson'sconceptionwas one of the earlyattempts, in the I920s,
to express the complex relationships (he could represent as many as seven variablessimultane-
ously) among interactingcomponents in a physiological system. [From LJ. Henderson, Blood:
A Study in General Physiology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928)98.]
advocates for a holistic way of thinking, extended these beyond the empirical and
materialistic, often evincing various sorts of vitalistic, "supra-organismic" or other
metaphysical views that bordered on the mystical. Hans Driesch 's entelechy (from
Ari stotle, referring to the "active principle" converting possibility into reality, a
form of teleology), or Jacob von Uxekiill's challenge to reductionist science in a new
form of Kantian sensationalism were examples of such mystical extremes." In her
interesting study of holistic biology in the inter-war period, Anne Harrington
has explored the dimensions of holi sm in a variety of German biologists and
psychologists, many of whom adhered to some form of mystical vitalism.P On

the other hand, behind the work of Hans Spemann and his school of experimental
embryologists at Freiburg there was a holistic, though non-vitalistic (in any usual
sense of the term) paradigm pervading the study of embryonic differentiation, sug-
gesting at least that non-reductionistic thinking did not have to become vitalistic .!"
Interactionism became an increasingly-recognized part of fields such as genetics
and ecology. By its very definition , ecology dealt with multi-variable systems, and
ecologists from Henry Chandler Cowles' and Frederick Clements' studies of plant
succession in the Indiana dunes and Nebraska grasslands, to Howard Odum's inves-
tigations of senescence in lakes, tried to grapple with these interacting factors
and their effects on the historical development of ecological systems (Figure 14).
Succession was subconsciously, if not consciously, portrayed as a dialectical process
in which each stage of historical development contained the seeds of its own even-
tual replacement. In other words, the process of historical change in vegetation over
time in anyone area is causally related, at least in part, to opposing tendencies within
the given ecological system itself. For example, grasses are among the earliest plants
to invade a sand dune, as most other form s cannot gain a footho ld in sandy soil.
Grasses contribute to the eventually build-up of more dense soil in which woody
plants , like conifers , can become established. Conifers produce a more shady envi-
ronment that drives out the grasses. At the same time, their own seedlings fare less
well in the shade, thus setting the stage for deciduous growth such as cottonwood,
maple or oak-hickory forests (Figure 15).
Dialectical interactions also surfaced in the 1930s and later in some of the most
previously-mechanistic areas, such as genetics . From the early 1900s on, geneticists
had recognized that genes interact with each other (what came to be called epistasis),
and that genes, especially in plants , produce different phenotypes when they develop
under different environmental conditions. In animals this was first noted in what
came later to be called phenocopies, in which change in temperature during the
development of fruit fly larvae (and also other organisms , both plant and animal)
can produce modifications of outward appearance that, in many cases, seem to
mimic known point-mutations. What was beginning to emerge from such studies was
the recognition that genes are not atomistic , mechanical units that produce some
invariable phenotype, but are in fact influenced by each other and by environmental
circumstance, that they display what Richard Woltereck in 1909 termed a "norm of
reaction." In this sense , embryonic development could be seen as far more epigenetic
than ever supposed from the early (1920s and 1930s) attempts to wed Mendelian
genetics to embryonic differentiation.
At another level- that ofthe population - a new dynamic approach arose soon after
the introduction of population genetics to the study of evolution in the 1920s, and
especially with the publication of R.A. Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural
Selection in 1930. Although Fisher himself was highly mechanistic in his approach to
the evolution of populations (he once said he wanted to treat population genetics in
the same manner as the kinetic theory of gases), his and others' approaches were open
to holistic interpretations that could easily be visualized dialectically. Population
characteristics were altered over time by the constant interaction between the con-
servative tendency of genetic material to replicate itself faithfully (what we might
" wI WU& .10 "T 0" Ttll MIDDLE BtACH 0' ~Y•••
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Figure 14. Complexity in Ecological Systems as represented by Chicago ecologist Thomas

Park. The many interacting factors - biological (other organisms), physical (temperature, min-
eral concentration, light) - are depicted here as a network of connected processes, with arrows
indicating directions in which influences flow. [From Thomas Park, "Integration in Infra-
social Insect Populations," in Robert Redfield (ed.), Levels of Integration in Biological and
Social Systems (Lancaster, PA: Jacques Cattell Press, 1942) 123; cited in Gregg Mitman, The
State ofNature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) 152.]
call "heredity") and the periodic and radical tendency of the hereditary
material to become altered by the various mechanisms of variation (unfaithful
replication). Without both of these processes continually in operation, there could be
no evolution; with both present, evolution becomes inevitable.!? Evolutionary
biology - especially since mid-century - became one of the most holistic and inter-
actionist fields within the life sciences (Figure 16).
POPULATION iNTEGRATION
Figure 15. Schematic representation of succession in the sand dunes along the Indiana shore
of Lake Michigan first developed by Frederic Clements and Henry Cowles in the early years
of the twentieth century. Changes in the plant (and animal) communities as the dune evolves
result from conditions changing within the system itself. Given knowledge of the initial con-
ditions , and barring unexpected external influences (weather, human intervention) , the stages
of succession can be predicted within certain broad limits. [From W.C. Allee, A.E. Emerson,
O. Park, T. Park, and K. Schmidt, Principles ofAnimal Ecology (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders,
1949) 569.]
TH E C HA N G I N G IM AGE OF BIOLO G Y 69
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Figure 16. Diagram of an "adaptive landscape", in which populationgeneticist SewallWright
put forward his "shifting balance" concept of evolution. The diagram represents a "contour
map" of an ecological landscape with various "adaptive peaks" each inhabited by particular
species or sub-species (deme), separated by "valleys" of non-adaptive terrain. The populations
on each peak are relatively small. and thus can each contain different gene frequencies
often fixed by chance. Wright's view was meant to integrate the more mechanistic population
genetics of R.A. Fisher with ecological and evolutionary data (including such factors as pop-
ulation size and structure, mating patterns, etc.). [From Sewall Wright, "The Role of
Mutation, Inbreedingand Crossbreedingand Selection in Evolution," Proceedings ofthe Sixth
Internati onal Congress of Genetics I (1932) 356-66.]
In even more mechanistic areas such as biochemistry, an interactionist mode of

thinking became evident in the 1960s and 1970s with the discovery of enzyme
induction and the promulgation of the induced fit model of enzyme activity. The for-
mer, put forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Jacques Monod, Jean -Pierre
Changeaux and Francois Monod, postulated a negative feedback mechanism by
whic h genes con trolling the syn thesis of an enzyme were turned on and off accord-
ing to the concentration of the enzyme's subs trate in the cel l. Based on evide nce
from the induction and repression of the enzyme ~-galactosidase by the substrate
lactose in bacteria, the model suggested a direc t interaction between a component of
the environment and the genome that was nove l and was seen as having potential at
the time for explaining everything from biochemical control processes to embryonic
differentiation. The cell could regulate its biochemical pathways with subtlety, but
only because of an interactive system whose overall effect was greater than the sum
of its parts. Similarly, the recognition that enzyme molecules, once synthesized, can
shift between two conformational states, (i.e., three-dimensional structures) , one

when interacting with the substrate, the other when either the substrate is absent or
an inhibitor is present fostered a more interactive view of molecular structure and
function from the 1970s onward. The induced-fit model of enzyme activity was
advanced to replace the older mechanistic lock-and-key model originally proposed
by Emil Fischer in the l 890s. The lock-and-key model posited a mechanical fit,
highly specific, between an enzyme molecule and its substrate that brought about
alteration ofthe substrate much as a specific key opens or closes a specific lock. Only
the substrate was changed. The induced-fit model, on the other hand, posited an
interaction in which both substrate and enzyme were changed during the process of
catalysis. The difference between the two changes was that the substrate change was
irreversible (the degree of irreversibility being dependent, of course, on the thermo-
dynamics of the reaction) while the enzyme change was reversible (alternating
between its two conformational states).
All of these findings preceded the advent of chaos theory and the recognition of
complexity theory that grew out of the study of biological systems in the 1980s and
1990s. While it did not represent a main current in the life sciences, there has been
a steadily growing recognition among biologists, systems scientists and others that
classical reductionistic thinking has strict limitations as a way of understanding any
sort of higher order interactions in complex systems .
In many ways, however, mechanistic materialism, and especially its associated
reductionism have retained their prominence and influence in modern biology. The
advent of the Human Genome Project (HGP) has brought forth some of the most
radical reductionist claims of the century. Walter Gilbert has been fond of opening a
talk on the HGP by holding up a CD-rom claiming "This is me," while J.D. Watson
has been quoted as saying that "We used to think our fate was in the stars, but now
we know it is in our genes." The application of mechanistic and reductionist think-
ing has found a particularly hospitable area in the late twentieth century in the field
of "behavioral genetics ," in which many human personality traits, mental conditions
(including intelligence) were all claimed to be the result largely of genes, with envi-
ronment playing only a small part. In a revival of the old "nature-nurture" argument,
behavioral genetics in the 1990s came down clearly on the side of "nature" by
mechanically attributing to genes a rigid, determinative power.
TH E E CONOMI C , SO CIA L AND T E CHNOLOGI CAL CONT EXT IN THE

D EV ELOPM ENT OF AN EXPERIM ENTALLY AND M ECHA NI STI CALLY
BAS ED BIOLOGY I N TH E TW ENTI ETH C ENT URY
Since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century all the sciences in the west
have been based on mechanistic principles. It is therefore not surprising that when
biologists began fashioning a new science of biology in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, they would adopt a similar philosophical stance . After all, they
were looking to the successful sciences of the past - chemistry and physics in par-
ticular - as role models. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when
the new biology was being put forward, industrialization in most countries of west-
ern Europe and the United States was expanding at an enormous rate, and in many
places the transformation to a modern industrial state was well underway. Although
mechanistic materialism evolved as a philosophy of nature under the earliest stages
of mercantile capitalism, it became a more pervasive world view under industrial
capitalism. With machine-age images entering the consciousness of increa sing
numbers of people, a new brand of mechanistic materialism became apparent. It was
less crudely mechanical than the automata and simplistic physical models of the
eighteenth century mechanical philosophers, but the new mechanism of 1900 bore
many of the characteristics of its predecessors. There was, however, one apparent -
and significant - difference: the new mechanistic philosophy was more chemical
than physical in conceptualization. It embodied clearly the notion of matter in
motion. The model for visualizing nature was atomistic - individual entities (atoms
or molecules) moving in random space producing, by virtue of sheer number, organ-
ized, predictable results .
The mechanical philosophy was also congruent with the needs of industrial capital-
ism for control over nature and the predictability on which the profit system depends.
In mechanical systems change is thought to be simple, linear and thus predictable.
Thermodynamically-favorable chemical reactions go to completion, or can be stopped
by altering conditions of temperature, concentration of reactants and products; ther-
modynamically unfavorable reactions can be made to go by providing catalysts or the
right energy sources. Mechanistically-based systems have no room for messy, emer-
gent properties or complex, unpredictable outcomes. This is one reason mechanists
at the time had so much difficulty accepting evolutionary theory, since it posited a
major motive force for change coming from contradictions with the organism-
environment nexus. Similarly, capitalist economic theory eschews any necessary sorts
of direction to change coming from interactions or contrasting forces within the eco-
nomic system itself, such as the contradiction between wages and profits, or prices
and profits. Thus industrial capitalism fostered a new brand of mechanistic material-
ism in an area ofthe sciences in which it was showing renewed interest - the life sci-
ences, especially as they related to food production, agriculture, animal husbandry,
mariculture, and, by the end of the century, biomedical production (from automated
lab equipment to an ever-increasing number of pharmaceuticals). All of this can be
seen as having resulted from the shift to industrial , urbanized production, replacing
older agricultural methods and the cottage industry known as the family farm . This
was nothing short of the industrialization of life science, beginning with agriculture
in the 1880s, and spreading increasingly into other areas of biology by mid-century.
Such a transformation reached its peak in the 1980s and 1990s with the explosion of
biotechnology firms and mode of information production.
Industrialization changed a vast array of work and social relations that ultimately
affected the development of the life sciences: it created massive migrations from
rural to more urban centers where factories were located ; it reduced the number of
laborers in agriculture, and produced more agricultural consum ers in the industrial
sector. It therefore required a whole new approach to agricultural production, the
management of the agricultural process along "scientific" and "rational" lines simi-
lar to those being applied to industry. The growth of industry also created massive
urbanization, and the whole host of social problems this process spawned in health ,
education for the new industrial age, and the organized control of large populations,
especially the workforce, a process that came to be called by Rockefeller Foundation

spokesmen in the 1920s and 1930s, social controlP:
The Industrialization ofAgricultural Productivity

By the 1880s in Europe and the early 1900s in the United States the need for
increased food production emerged as a major motive force for a new and expanded
biological research agenda. In the 1840s-1890s agricultural productivity was
increased by the application ofprinciples of "scientific agriculture" , embodied in the
agricultural chemistry of Justus von Liebig and his school at Giessen. Liebig's
approach involved detailed input-output studies of animal and plant chemistry
(metabolism), soil structure and composition, and led to a variety of methods for
application of fertilization and dietary supplements to the feed-bin and barnyard.
Application of scientific approaches to the fishing industry began in Europe in the
1870s, and shortly thereafter in the United States, with the establishment of marine
research laboratories that combined theoretical with practical work on the develop-
ment, ecology, and life histories of important marine food sources (including the
food chains on which the commercially important organisms were dependent). Much
of the stimulus for the founding of such institutions as the Stazione Zoologica in
Naples, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England, the Zoological Station in
Rostock, Germany, Villefranche Laboratory on the southern coast of France, and the
Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in the United States was directly or
indirectly related to the need for increased understanding of the biology of marine
resources so that they could be more effectively managed and controlled.
By the end of the nineteenth century another facet of agriculture began to put
demands on the "new biology" : the need for high-yield varieties of plants and ani-
mals that would increase the productivity of farm land. Fertilizers and animal nutri-
ents would only go so far in increasing the yield per acre. The need to significantly
improve the hereditary quality of standard crops - corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, milk
and eggs (among others) - became another driving force shaping the development of
biology. This need spoke directly to one of the most poorly understood and much-
debated issues among biologists at the time: the nature of heredity. Not only would
new, higher-yielding strains produce more food, high yields achieved by means
of heredity were self-reproducing, and therefore more profitable than high yields
obtained by adding fertilizers and nutrients - processes that had to be repeated every
year. This point was not lost on members of the American Breeders ' Association in
the first decade of the twentieth century, when many of them became enthusiastic
Mendelians. Mendelian genetics owed much of its support from a renewed interest
in agricultural breeding, which had floundered in the nineteenth century for want of
any apparently workable theory of heredity.19
The Imperative ofSocial Control

Biology, like all the sciences, interfaced in various ways with social and political
concerns throughout the twentieth century. Leaving aside medical and public health
issues, many of which dominated the life sciences throughout the century, areas in
TH E C H A N G I N G IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 73
which biology had considerable social and political impact included issues of eugen-
ics (1900-1940), the effects of atomic radiation (1945-1965), population control on
a global basis (1950-present), the evolution of human behavior and mental traits,
and genetic engineering of both agricultural products and human biotypes. In all
these areas, the specifics of the issues changed, but the overall questions - how much
of our social environment is determined by, or determines our biology, remained the
same. It would be impractical to discuss all these issues in the confines of this one
essay, so I will focus on the issue of eugenics as one example of the predominant
influence of mechanistic and reductioni stic thinking in the social sphere.
Eugenics was a movement in the first four decades of the century that attempted
to apply biology in general and genetics in particular to the solution of recurrent
social problems . Claiming that many human social behaviors, mental deficiencies
(low or high LQ. scores), personality traits, manic depression and schizophrenia,
criminality and the like were caused by defective genes, eugenicists sought the roots
of social instability in the turbulent early years of the century in defective biology.
Eugenics became a widespread movement in the first half of the twentieth century -
in the United States, England, Germany, Scandinavia, France, several Latin
American countries, Italy and Russia. The aim of eugenics was to eliminate the var-
ious classes of the unfit by preventing them from breeding and thus passing on their
supposed degeneracy to future generation s.P It was guided by a naive interpretation
of Mendelian genetics - the highly mechanical unit-character concept that mini-
mized interaction between developing organism and environment - and that saw the
individual as socially determined by their genes. This view came to be known in the
later twentieth century, as genetic determinism .
Eugenics was the human counterpart of scientific animal and plant breeding. It
seemed ironic to eugenicists that human beings paid such careful attention to the
pedigrees of their farm and domestic stock, while ignoring the pedigrees of their
children. Eugenics also embodied a belief in the power of science, when rationally
employed, to solve virtually all problems, including social problems so seemingly
intractable as pauperism, crime, violence, urban decay, prostitution , alcoholism, and
various forms of mental disease, including manic depression and "feebleminded-
ness" (retardation). It became a pre-eminent example of the mechanistic program of
social control (Figure 17).
Eugenics movements did not begin to arise in various countries of Europe or the
United States until the first decade of the twentieth century, nor did they become
generally effective in promoting social and political programs nationally or interna-
tionally until after 1910. Although eugenics developed the largest movements in
the United States, Britain and Germany, eugenicists around the world maintained
constant ties with each other and with the movement as a whole. A central clearing
house for much of the international eugenics movement, especially those in western
Europe and the United States, was the Eugenics Record Office (ERa) at Cold Spring
Harbor, New York, headed by the prominent biologists Charles B. Davenport and
Harry H. Laughlin (the day-to-day Superintendent of the ERa ). The various eugenic
movements had their own agendas and orientations to problems that were relevant
to their respective countries (for example , eugenic legislation laws, immigration
restriction, public health, infant care, education etc.). Eugenics was not a monolithic
sucsmcs DltJ1lWS ITS
Figure 17. Eugenics logo, from program of the Third International Congress of Eugenics,
American Museum of Natural History, New York, August, 1932. Eugenics is represented as a
"tree" whose branches are eugenic principles and programs, drawing on a variety of roots for
support (genetics, statistics, anthropometry, genealogy, biography and the like. Eugenicists saw
their effort as a multi-disciplinary enterprise with genetics at its core. [From Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory Archives (can be viewed and downloaded at: http://www.eugenics archive.
OI;g/eugenics.]
movement in any single country, much less internationally. However, certain core
principles and beliefs did link the different eugenics movements together and the
three major international eugenics congresses, held in 1912 (London), 1921 and
1932 (New York), emphasized the similarities among the various movements while
also revealing their differences.
Social movements or organizations that employed the label of "eugenics" in their
name, or as part of their social action programs, generally had several features in
common:
(I) Control of reproduction. Most eugenics movements were concerned in one

way or another with the control of human reproduction. Control could be exercised
at various points in the reproductive process: Marriage: determining who can legally
marry, pregnancy: (leading to abortion offetuses with defects) early on, sterilization
(using voluntary or coercive methods to prevent supposedly defective individuals
have children). Marriage laws also existed in most western countries throughout
the early twentieth century, particularly in the form of anti-miscegenation laws
(prohibiting racially-mixed, and in some cases ethnically-mixed marriages) . Such

laws, prohibiting black-white marriages in the United States had existed since early
colonial days, but had been expanded in many states after the Civil War.
(2) Heredity. To some degree all believed that attention to good heredity ("good
breeding" it was sometimes called) was the starting point for social improvement.
The degree of emphasis on heredity as opposed to environment varied from country
to country, and even within one country over the course of time. Yet, at the core of
eugenical thinking was the conviction that without good heredity ("good seed") all
else was futile. In this regard agricultural metaphors and analogies abounded in
eugenic literature: the importance of good seed or stock was what distinguished
eugenics from other social reform movements.
(3) Research and social action programs. Most eugenics movements focused on
both research and social action programs as part of their overall efforts. Research
meant studying the nature of heredity in human beings, determining the inheritance
patterns of traits (dominant, recessive, sex-linked, etc.), using the methods of pedi-
gree analysis, and the use of correlation analyses between relatives for various traits.
Social action programs included organized lobbying efforts to promote particular
legislation deemed genetically important; promoting educational programs (going
from school to school distributing eugenic literature), eugenic movies, promoting
eugenic contests at state and county fairs, etc. The amount of time distributed
between these various activities varied from country to country, but all eugenics
movements had some combination of both research and political/propagandistic
elements.
(4) Positive vs negative eugenics. Eugenicists advocated one of two major
approaches to improving the quality of future generations: positive eugenics meant
promoting high birth rates among those thought to be genetically superior (usually
people in the higher socio-economic groups), and negative eugenics , discouraging or
preventing (through institutional segregation or sterilization) high birth rate among
those thought to be genetically inferior (usually lower socio-economic groups). Most
eugenics movements recognized that both approaches were important, though over
time the effects of positive eugenics seemed negligible (birthrate continued to fall
among the higher socio-economic groups), so that by the early-to-mid 1920s more
and more effort was concentrated on negative eugenics.
(5) Scientific management and national efficiency. Virtually all eugenic move-
ments in the west, including those in Latin America, mounted arguments to the effect
that eugenics was the application of rational, scientific management, of the sort that
had become common in industrial circles by the early part of the century. Known
as the "industrial efficiency movement," or "Taylorism" (named after Frederick
Winslow Taylor, an American engineer who specialized in efficiency management in
industry), this movement aimed to increase efficiency by solving problems at their
roots, rather than in the aftermath of the effects. Taylor urged that scientific experts
be employed to study efficiency in each industrial setting and to make rational
recommendations based on analysis of data rather than subjective impressions.
Eugenicists applied this same principle to the reproductive process, arguing that it
was more efficient for society to solve the problems of feeblemindedness, criminal-
ity, and social degeneration by preventing such individuals from being born in the
76 GARLA ND E . ALLEN
first place, than having to care for their numerous offspring for generations to come.
The efficiency arguments were prominent in the United States, England, France,
Germany, Scandinavian countries and Latin America; less so in Russia and Japan. In
the United States and Germany, the very high cost of caring for the degenerate off-
spring of hereditary defectives was often compared to the low cost of sterilizing the
original progenitors (Figure 18). Eugenics was claimed to be the rational manage-
ment of humanity's most precious resource, the germ plasm, in the same way as
industry manages its use of resources, and raw materials and the production process.
Differences Among Eugenics Activities in Different Countries

Despite this core of similarities, eugenics movements in different countries had quite
different complexions and embodied quite different ideologies. For example, British
eugenicists were particularly concerned with the high fecundity and inherited men-
tal degeneracy of the urban working class, particularly those labeled as "paupers"
(what British called "the residuum"). By contrast, American eugenicists were more
concerned with the number of "feebleminded" who filled to overflowing the prisons
and insane asylums of the United States, and after World War I, with the swamping
effect they saw arising from the supposed genetic deficiencies of immigrants. In
Germany mentally ill, psychotic, psychopathic and psychiatric patients in general ,
along with the congenitally deaf, blind and feebleminded, were of greatest concern,
while race only became central to eugenics concerns after the National Socialist
take-over in 1933 (Figure 19). In France, where ideas of the inheritance of acquired
characteristics (neo-Lamarckism) held more sway than in other countries, eugeni-
cists concentrated their efforts more on environmental and public health reforms
than on selective breeding . Since Latin American countries such as Brazil took their
cues more from France than any other European countries, their eugenics movement
likewise focused on public health and nutritional measures more than issues of hard
heredity." Latin American eugenicists feared, as did their counterparts elsewhere,
the supposed negative effects of race-mingling, especially between those of
European descent and indigenous Indian populations .
The involvement of the medical community differed considerably from one country
to another as well. In the United States and England, for example, relatively few med-
ical doctors were involved with eugenics, while in Germany and the Scandinavian
countries, France and Latin America, their numbers were much greater. This may be
explained in part by the fact that in Germany and Scandinavia many scientists were
initially trained as MD's, whereas in Britain and the U.S. scientific training was usu-
ally pursued (especially after the 1870s) in graduate biology programs. There is also
some speculation that, at least in the United States, medical doctors were highly
skeptical, if not hostile, to genetics in general, as dealing with pathological condi-
tions over which medicine had no control. Especially because of the emphasis in
France and, by derivation, Latin America, on eugenics as a form of public health,
many more medical doctors were especially active in eugenics organizations and
national commissions in these localities.
Various eugenics movements differed in their adoption of Mendelian genetics as
the major paradigm of heredity. Mendelism was at the center of eugenics research
THE CHANGI NG IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 77
(a)
(b) He r sterilization would hay cost $150.
t h is
~~~~~~='~ry- ?
Figure 18. Economic arguments lay at the heart of most eugenic rationales. The poor and unfit
should not be born because of their cost to society. (a) 1933 Nazi poster showing the cost to
the Prussian state for the care of children with varying degrees of disability, compared to nor-
mal children (125 Deutschm arks, DM): Slow Learners , 573 DM, Educable but mentally ill,
950 DM, and Deaf or Blind children , 1500 DM. (b) A similar message is delivered in this car-
toon from a pamphlet published by the Sterilization League of New Jersey in 1937. [(a) From
Volk und Rasse 8 (1933) 156; taken from Robert Proctor, Racial Hygi ene, Medicine under the
Nazis (Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press, 1988) 183, Figure 36; (b) from Marion
S. Norton, "Sterilization: A Primer" (Sterilization League of New Jersey, 1937).]
78 GA RLAN D E . A L LEN
cur crb )l\fu llth\r .. Lll d) 1 ) 11 (11 ..-

[i chc r t L \ 11 cft II n L l l ..'
rut niet) all In
.-.... ~
Figure 19. 1933 Nazi poster advertising the passage of their sweeping sterilization law, "Law for
the Prevention of Hereditarily III Descendants." The phrase at the top, "Wir stehen nicht allein,"
("We are not alone ") point s out that many other countr ies, as indic ated by the various flags
around the border, also have sterilization laws on the books. Indeed, Germany was rather late
in passing its law (1933), which was based on Harry Laughlin's " Model Sterilization Law" of
1921. [From Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene, Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1988) 96, Figure 19.]
and propaganda in the United States and (less so) Britain. German geneticists in
general took a more holistic approach to the reproductive proces s, and saw Mendel's
theory as emphasizing only transmission of traits and not their development through
the embr yonic process. Scandinavian eugenicists were a hybrid between the German
and British models. The Americans were probably the most blatantly Mendelian (and
THE CHA NGING IMAGE OF BIOLOGY 79
naive) in claiming that single Mendelian genes could determine traits like sea-
faringness, alcoholism, and feeblemindedness . French biologists had rejected
Mendelism in general, in favor of more neo-Lamarckian views, so that very little
eugenic work in France was based on Mendelian theory. A much stronger influence
was the French anthropological tradition and its concern about race degeneration.
The very low birth-rate in France also pushed eugenicists more toward interest in
natalism (care of the pregnant mother and new born) than in most other countries .
Americans, Germans and Scandinavians used the family pedigree method of
analysis to trace genetic transmission of traits, while British eugenicists adopted a
variety of statistical methods, including correlations for various traits between
relatives, analysis of mean differences between populations and generations . The
greater influence ofbiometrical methods in England was largely due to the influence
of Galton and Pearson, who had induced a whole generation of biologists to
apply statistics to biological problems. Neither German nor American eugenicists
had as much familiarity with, or interest in, the statistical side of hereditary
questions .F
In terms of legislative activity, eugenicists in different countries took very differ-
ent approaches and achieved quite varying results. Prior to 1933, the most extensive
eugenical legislation was to be found in the United States. The first involuntary
eugenical sterilization law was passed in the state of Indiana in 1907 (though it was
frowned upon by its governor and later declared unconstitutional), but a number of
similar laws were later passed, especially in the period after World War I. By 1935
over 30 states had passed such laws (the Supreme Court case of Buck vs Bell in 1927
ruled that such laws were constitutional) and by the 1960s some 60,000 people had
been sterilized in the u.S .23 A similar result occurred in Sweden, where a steriliza-
tion law of 1934 also resulted in some 60,000 sterilizations , comparable in number
to the United States but of course representing a much larger percentage of the pop-
ulation. German eugenicists had not passed any significant legislation prior to the
Nazi takeover in 1933, but within six months of coming to power the new govern-
ment passed the sweeping "Law for the Prevention of Genetically III Progeny" (July,
1933). This law directed the involuntary sterilization of those deemed genetically
unfit, both within and outside of institutions, with a final total of some 400,000 ster-
ilizations having been carried out by the early I940s. The German law was based on
laws already passed in 24 U.S. states which, in turn, were mostly based on Harry
Laughlin 's "Model Sterilization Law." By contrast, British and French eugenicists
passed few directly eugenical laws. British eugenicists were instrumental in the pas-
sage of the Mental Deficiency Act in 1913, though this was the only piece of major
legislation they were ever able to get into place. French eugenicists were never to get
any single piece of eugenically-inspired legislation through the Chambers, partly
because the movement itself was divided, and partly because of France's strong
Catholicism , which made issues of abortion, sterilization and birth control in general
highly controversial. The 1930 Papal Bull, Casti connubii, was aimed directly at
eugenical sterilization laws in the U.S., giving a clear signal to Catholics everywhere
that eugenics was in disfavor. In addition, as historian William Schneider has argued,
with its strong emphasis on public health, "natalism" and neo-Lamarkian views,
the French eugenics movement was divided on the best social action programs to
support. Canadian eugenicists were successful in passing an involuntary sterilization
law (based more or less on the American "model law") in Alberta and British
Columbia in the late 1920s. Those laws remained in effect until the early 1970s.
Eugenics, then, was a truly international movement, although dominated on the
international science by the British up until World War I, and by the Americans and
Germans throughout the inter-war period. In the minds of the most ambitious eugeni-
cists, the aim of the international movement was to scientifically manage and control
the vast movements (migrations) and reproductive activities oflarge segments of the
human population, particularly that segment that was deemed genetically "diseased."
Democracy, some American eugenicists lamented, got in the way of making eugenics
a cornerstone of a rational policy. Fascism in Germany had no such problem .
Eugenics received considerable support from major wealthy elites and philanthropic
organizations during the first four decades of the twentieth century because it rein-
forced the self-satisfying view that paupers were poor or criminals were social deviants
because of their individually defective biology and not because of any inherent eco-
nomic or social injustice in the modern industrial state. Eugenics also held out the
promise of social control, by the application of rational principles of genetics to the
solution oflarger social problems. It was concomitant with, and a part of a larger social
and economic philosophy called in the United States "progressivism", in England
and Germany "national efficiency." Like the rational industrial management of the
Taylorism movement, eugenicists argued that in the area of reproduct ive control, this
meant enacting preventive measures such as compulsory sterilization laws allowing the
forcible sterilization ofthose deemed to be genetically "unfit." Under such laws, passed
in the United States, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Germany hundreds of thousands
of people were sterilized in the name of "efficiency." "Efficiency" meant preventing
the problem from arising at the outset, rather than letting the "unfit" reproduce and
then having to deal with the consequences generations later. Behind all of eugenic
thinking lurked the simple-minded reductionism and mechanical thinking that
characterized much of the philosophy of the life sciences in the early decades of the
century.
A New Eugenics Today?

Eugenic-type issues have resurfaced at various times since World War II, but perhaps
no time more prominently than at the present. With many of our social behaviors now
medicalized (turned into "disorders") and many of these claimed to have a genetic
basis, current discussions focus not on sterilization so much as on pre-natal diagnosis
and termination of pregnancy in the case of fetuses found to have one or another
genetic defect (or potential defect). This situation is exacerbated by (1) lack of med-
ical and social service support systems for families of children with inherited disabil-
ities, and (2) increasing insistence by health insurance carriers that policies will not
cover genetic defects (they have been classified in some instances as "prior conditions"
and hence not subject to coverage). Such pressures, albeit not enacted as state or fed-
eral laws, could profoundly affect reproductive decisions . This problem is difficult
enough when the medical conditions themselves are clinically well-defined and unam-
biguous. They are considerably more difficult when the conditions are complex behav-
ioral or personality traits (alcoholism, manic depression, criminality, shyness, attention
TH E C HAN G ING I M AGE OF BIO L O GY 81
deficit hyperactivity disorder, homosexuality, etc. ) for which no clear definitions or

diagnostic criteria exists. Where it is difficult or impossible to define a trait, it is impos-
sible to carry out any reliable genetic analysis. There are critics today who fear that
simplistic genetic determinism could lead to practices as troublesome and immoral as
those experienced during the old eugenic movement. Moreover, excessive focus on
genetic "causes" of complex behavior and personality traits draws attention away from
more obvious social changes that could be made to ameliorate poverty, stress and lack
of educational opportunity. This "smokescreen effect" has been one obvious outcome
of the widespread belief in the biological roots of human social problems.
C O N CL USION
The great successes enjoyed by mechanistic and reduction ist biology in the twenti-
eth century have come with a price. On the intellectual level that price has the rela-
tive inability of biologists until very recently to deal successfully with complex
systems, from the biology of the cell to that of the developing embryo, the physio-
logically functioning organism, the evolving population or the multi-dimensional
ecosystem. All of these complex entities consist of individual components whose
interaction is greater than the sum of their parts. Reductionism is taken for granted
as the only methodology available or at least worth pursuing. Thus, not surprisingly,
few experimental techniques or even conceptual frameworks exist for investigating
the emergent propert ies associated with complex, dynamic systems. On an opti-
mistic note, however, confronted with the marvelou s array of organisms and vital
processes that make up the living world, biologists cannot help but recognize the
shortcomings of the mechanistic approach as a means of answering the most funda-
mental questions in the field: the process of embryonic development, including of
course, cell differentiation, feedback control systems at the cellular and organismic
level, the process by which neurons become organized into functioning brains, the
nature of human consciousness, and the relation between micro- and macro evolu-
tion, to name only a few. The development of systems science aided by computers,
may well open the door, on a theoretical level at least, to methods of understanding
these sorts of complex interactions at all levels of the biological hierarchy. It will no
doubt be slow in coming, and involve a paradigm shift of major proportions for the
majority of biologists to begin looking at the world from a holistic perspective that
is at one and the same time rational. But I suspect it will come - indeed is coming.
Of more immediate concern are the practical problems we face in managing many
aspects of our modern society in which biology plays a major role: medicine, agri-
culture, conservation of natural resources, at both local and global levels. We have
already experienced major disasters in polluting our ecosystems, we have come close
to exhausting various natural resources, and still find ourselves victims of major epi-
demics (including AIDS, malaria and cholera). More important, despite all of our
medical and agricultural technology, in the highly atomized and mechanistic eco-
nomic and social system that we call the global free market, vast segments of the
human population are still starving or undern ourished, and cannot afford the basic
medical care necessary to live healthy and productive lives. One of the major costs
of our mechanistic world view is that science and society (including the study of
society through the social sciences) have been separated into distinct (and dis-
parately funded, I might add) pursuits. The allocation of a small part of the budget
of the human genome project in the United States to an examination of the social,
legal and ethical implications of genomic research, represents one of the few con-
scious efforts to bridge the gap between the social and natural sciences and to rec-
ognize that in any balanced society the two "cultures" must move in harmony with
each other. The irony of having the technical ability to ward off disease, and yet the
economic and social inability to make it available to all those who need it, is one of
modem society's most glaring contradictions. Given the central role of the life sci-
ences in both health care management and agriculture, the legacy of mechanistic
materialism casts a long shadow over twentieth century biology. Hopefully, that
shadow will be dispelled by a new economic and social sophistication in which a
more comprehensive philosophy will prevail.
NOTES
Oswei Temkin, " Materialism in French and German Physiology of the Early Nineteenth Century,"
Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 20 (1946) 322-327, especially 326 If.
2 Garland E. Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1978) ch. 2.
3 Peter Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories in the Decades
around 1900 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
4 Garland E. Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1978) ch. I.
5 Ibid., ch. 2.
6 Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science : Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm 1I to Hitler
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press , 1996) especially ch. I and ch. 2.
7 Donald Fleming, "Introduction" to The Mechanistic Conception of Life (Cambridge, MA : Harvard
University Press, 1964 [1912)) xxxii.
8 Robert Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (Chicago , IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1994).
9 Gregg Mitman, The State ofNature: Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought, 1900-1950
(Chicago , IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992); see also, Eugene Cittadino, Nature as the Laboratory:
Darwinian Plant Ecology in the German Empire, 1880-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1990), especially ch. 2 and 10; David Cox, Charles Elton and the emergence ofModern Ecology (Ph .D.
Dissertation, Washington University, SI. Louis, MO, 1979).
10 Sharon Kingsland, "The Battling Botanist: D.T. MacDougal, Mutation Theory and the Rise of
Experimental Evolutionary Biology in America, 1900-1912," Isis 82 (1991) 479-509.
I I T.H. Morgan, "Impressions of the Naple s Zoological Station ," Science 3 (1896) 16-18.
12 Fleming, "Introduction," 1964 (cit n. 7); Loeb even wrote a book titled, The Organism as a Wholefrom
a Physicochemical Viewpoint (New York: Putnam , 1916) indicating even his awareness that organisms
were complex, interacting systems. Nonetheless, he still felt that ultimately this complexity would be
understandable from a biochemical and molecular point of view.
13 Allen, Life Sciences, 1970 (cit n. 4).
14 Scott f. Gilbert and Sahotra Sarkar, "Embracing Complexity: Organicism for the 21st Century,"
Developmental Dynamics 219 (2000) 1-9.
15 Harrington, Reenchanted Science, 1996 (cit n. 6).
16 Viktor Hamburger, "Hans Spemann on Vitalism in Biology : Translation of a Portion of Spemann's
Autobiography," Journal ofthe History ofBiology 32 (1999) 231-243.
17 Garland E. Allen, "Dialectical Materialism in Modern Biology," Science and Nature No.3 (1980) 43-57.
18 Lily Kay, The Molecular Vision ofLife : Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise of the New
Biology (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1993); Pnina Abir-Am, "The Discourse of Physical
TH E C HANG I N G IMA GE OF BIOLOGY 83
Power and Biological Knowledge in the 1930s : A Reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundati on 's Policy'
in Mole cular Biology," Social Studies of Science 12 ( 1982) 341-382; also, Pnina Abir-Am , "The
Biotheoretical Gathering , Trans-disciplinary Authority and the Incipient Legitimation of Molecular
Biology in the 1930s: New Persp ective on the Historical socio logy of Science ," History of Science 25
( 1987) 1- 70.
19 Garland E. Allen , "The Reception of Mendelism in the United States , 1900--1930 ," Compte Rendu de
l 'Academie des Sciences. Sciences de la Vie (Paris) 323 (2000) 1081-1088.
20 Elof A. Carlson, The Unfi t: History of A Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory Press, 2001) ; Daniel 1. KevIes, In the Name ofEugenics (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1985);
Diane Paul , Controlling Human Heredity. 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highl and s, NJ : Hum anities Press,
1995) ; Garland E. Allen , "T he Eugen ics Record Office at Cold Sprin g Harb or: An Essay in Institutional
History," Osiris 2 (2nd Series, 1986) 225- 264.
2 \ Nancy Stepan , The Hour of Eugenics (Ithaca, NY: Corne ll University Press, 1991); a summary ver-
sion is also contained in Mark B. Adam s (ed.), The mel/born Science (New York, NY: Oxford University
Press, 1990) 110--152.
22 Kevles, In the Name ofEugenics (cit n. 20) .
23 Philip Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States
(Baltimore, MD : The John s Hopkin s University Pre ss, 1991).
24 Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1988).
25 Stefan Kiihl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism. and German National Socialism
(New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994).
26 Greta Jone s, Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1986); Pauline
Mazumd ar, Eugenics. Human Genetics and Human Failings (New York , NY: Routledge, 1992).
27 William Schneider, " Eugenics in France," in Mark B. Adam s (ed.), The WeI/born Science (New York,
NY: Oxford University Press, 1990) 69- 109; also, a more extended treatment is found in Schneider,
Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
ABRAHAM PAIS
THE IMAGE OF PHYSICS
I NTR OD U C TI O N BY TH E EDIT OR S
In the early twentieth century two great revolution s took place in physics. Einstein was
the hero of the first revolution, related to the introduction of relativity theory. Niels
Bohr played a major role in the second revolution, associat ed with the rise of quantum
mechanics. The impact of these two revolutions on physics itself was enormous.
In this chapter Abraham Pais discusses aspects of their influence on the "philosophi-
cal" self-image of physics. Sadly Pais passed away before the publication of the paper.
That is why the choice of the illustrations had to be ours. Our selection reflects an
attempt to capture a small part of the impact of the developments in twentieth century
physics on culture as a whole, in particular with respect to the highly remarkable case
ofAlbert Einstein. On the basis of Einstein's work in relativity theory he became per-
haps the most popular scientist of all times. He appeared in poems and inspired nov-
elists and artists. Usually, whether in cartoons, in comm ercials, on T-shirts or on ties
(Figure 3), his face represents intelligence. It is a reassuring and familiar image of
almost supernatural intelligence. Yet his face has been used to represent other things
as well. In the first half of the twentieth century for many intellectuals and artists
Einstein represented a revolutionary; someone prepared to challenge traditional val-
ues. Friedman and Donley have pointed out that in post-war newspapers Einstein
appeared as a tragic figure, as a modem Prome theus .I On the cover ofTime magazine
of July I, 1946, Einstein was assoc iated with nuclear weapons (Figure 2). Behind him
rises a mushroom cloud with in it the equation E = mc 2• Yet, in the end, the image of
the great physicist and the superior intelligence prevailed. In 1997 Einstein reappeared
on the cover ofTime Magazine. According to Friedman and Donley his face now radi-
ated cosmic humility, generosity and unselfishness.i In 2000 , Einstein was again on
the cover of Time Magaz ine, this time as man of the century.
INTR ODU CTIO N
The century which has j ust ended has been one of indis crim inant violen ce. It has
been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record.
85
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier; C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds), The Changing Image a/ the
Sciences. 85-103.
86 ABRAHAM PAIS
Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from
now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of
space began, the molecular basis of genetics was laid, the microchip was invented,
revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance,
transforming the world into a "global village", and relativity theory, quantum
mechanics, and the structure of the atom and its nucleus were discovered - in brief,
that this has been the century of science and technology.
That century has not ended well. Today we live in the midst of upheaval and cri-
sis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going.
Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or
the present, that in the late 1980s an era in world history has ended and a new one
has begun.
One striking difference between the present image of science and that of earlier
days is its current interest to the world at large, as the following example may
illustrate.
These days, announcements of Nobel awards make front page news. It was not
always like that. In 1922 Nobel prizes were awarded to both Albert Einstein and Niels
Bohr, the greatest physicists of the twentieth century. To find the first communication
of these prizes in the New York Times, turn to page 4, the middle of column 2,
of its November 10, 1922 edition, to find, in its entirety, the following item:
Nobel prize for Einstein

The Nobel Committee has awarded the physics prize for 1921 to Albert Einstein,
identified with the theory of relativity, and that for 1922 to Professor Neils [sic]
Bohr of Copenhagen.
Thus, without the flourishes so familiar from modern coverage, did the good citizens
of New York and elsewhere hear of the honors bestowed on two great men.'
Note also that the twentieth century was an era of transition between resistance
to and acceptance of scientific images that are now taught in high schools. Indeed,
in the nineteenth century the reality of atoms and molecules was still rejected
even among many scientists, as witness some revealing remarks by Alexander
Williamson, himself a convinced atomist. In his presidential address of 1869 to the
London Chemical Society, he said: "It sometimes happens that chemists of high
authority refer publicly to the atomic theory as something they would be glad to dis-
pense with, and which they are ashamed of using. They seem to look upon it as
something distinct from the general facts of chemistry, and something which the sci-
ence would gain by throwing off entirely ... On the other hand, a considerable num-
ber view it with mistrust, some with positive dislike. If the theory really is as
uncertain and unnecessary as they imagine it to be, let its defects be laid bare and
examined. Let them be remedied if possible, or let the theory be rejected, and some
other theory be used in its stead, if its defects are really as irremediable and as grave
as is implied by the sneers of its detractors."
Having now boxed in the twentieth century between its murky past and its
uncertain future, I turn to my main topic, the profound changes in the image of
TH E IMA G E O F PHYSI CS 87
Figure 1. Einstein , February 6, 1933. The photo was taken in Santa Barbara, California .
Courtes y of the Archives, California Institute ofTechnology, and the Albert Einstein Archives.
physics during the twentieth century. Two aspects deserve scrutiny: first, the public
understanding of science, or should I say lack thereof. To the average man in the
street, science produces magic, from super weapons to television or home comput-
ers - a fascinating subject but not mine today. Rather I shall confine myself to the
self-image of physics, that is, to aspects which may perhaps be called philosophical.
What is a philosopher? According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, philosophy is
a general term whose meaning and scope have varied very considerably according to
the usage of different authors and different ages. Reading the nine distinct definitions
of philosopher in the OEeD is edifying but not necessary for what follows, which is
devoted to comments on two novel twentieth-century concepts : relativity, due to
Einstein, and complementarity, due to Bohr. To begin with, I shall relate what these
two men had to say about philosophy in general.
88 ABRAHAM PAIS
EINSTEIN'S AND BOHR'S VIEWS ON PHILOSOPHY
"Se moquer de la philosophie

c'est vraiment philosopher."
[To ridicule philosophy is truly
philosophical] - Pascals
To introduce the two men, it may be of interest to note the great differences in their
backgrounds. Einstein hailed from a middle-class family, his mother was the domi-
nant parent, his father was a rather unsuccessful businessman. Einstein was the first
in his family to enter on an academic career. Bohr's family was upper class, his father
was the dominant parent. He belonged to a family with a long academic tradition.
His great-grandfather had been a member of the Norwegian and the Swedish
Academies of Sciences, his father was at one time rector of the Copenhagen
University and was twice nominated for a Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.
Both men's impact on philosophy was strong, though they themselves never wrote
articles which may be called philosophical in a technical sense. Their thoughts about
philosophy need to be distinguished from their attitudes towards philosophers. Let
us see what these latter were.
Einstein has said : "Is not all of philosophy as if written in honey? It looks won-
derful when one contemplates it, but when one looks again it is all gone . Only mush
remains."
On April 6, 1922, the Societe Francaise de Philosophie convened for a discussion
of relativity theory. In the course of the discussions, Henri Bergson expressed his
admiration for Einstein's work: "I see [in this work] not only a new physics but also,
in certain respect, a new way of thinking."? Einstein came to know, like, and respect
Bergson. About the latter's ideas on relativity, he used to say "Gott verzeih ihm"
[God forgive him]. (In the presentation speech for Einstein's Nobel prize, Svante
Arrhenius said : "It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris
has challenged [relativity] theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it
wholeheartedly'")
I add a few comments by Einstein on topics related to philosophy. Einstein had
already read Kant while a schoolboy. Much later, when asked about a possible con-
nection between his ideas on relativity and Kant's concepts, he replied: "In regard to
Kant's philosophy, I believe that every philosopher has his own Kant .. . Arbitrary
concepts are necessary in order to construct science; as to whether these concepts are
given a priori or are arbitrary conventions, I can say nothing,"?
About science and philosophy: "1 was always interested in philosophy but only in
a secondary way. My interest in science was always mainly confined to issues of
principle. This serves best to understand my activities and my abstentions.'"?
On discovery : "Discovery is not effected by logical thought, even though the final
product is tied to a logical form ,"!'
On the scientific outlook: "The longing to behold . . . preestablished harmony .. .
[is an] emotional state ... similar to that of the religious person or the person in
love.,,12
TH E IMA GE OF PHYSICS 89
TilE
IME
WeeKLY NeWSMAGAZINe
Figure 2. Time Magazine cover for July I, 1946, by Erne st Tamlin Baker. Copyright Time Inc.
All rights reserved. Permi ssion from Time.
On simplicity in science: "In my opinion there is the correct path and ... it is in our
power to find it. Our experience up to date justifies us in feeling sure that in nature
is actualized the idea of mathematical simplicity."13
On scientific truth: "Concepts and propositions get 'meaning' , i.e., 'content', only
through their connection with sense-experiences. The connection of the latter with the
former is purely intuitive, not itself of a logical nature. The degree of certainty with
which this connection, i.e., intuitive combination, can be undertaken, and nothing
else, differentiates empty fantasy from scientific ' truth'. The system of concepts
90 ABRAHAM PAIS
is a creation of man together with the rules of syntax, which constitute the structure
of the conceptual systems . Although the conceptual systems are logically entirely
arbitrary, they are bound by the aim to permit the most nearly possible certain (intu-
itive) and complete co-ordination with the totality of sense-experiences; they aim at
greatest possible sparsity of their logically independent elements (basic concepts and
axioms), i.e., undefined concepts and underived (postulated) propositions. A propo-
sition is correct if, within a logical system, it is deduced according to the accepted
logical rules. A system has truth-content according to the certainty and completeness
of its coordination-possibility to the totality of experience. A correct proposition
borrows its 'truth' from the truth-content of the system to which it belongs ,"!'
On the aims ofscience : "Physical theory has two yearnings :
I. To encompass as much as possible all phenomena and their connections
(completeness); and
2. To achieve this on the basis of as few logically independent concepts and
arbitrarily assumed relations between these as possible (basics, laws,
axioms) ."
I will call this the aim of "logical uniformity". I can formulate this second desider-
atum, crudely but honestly. We do not only wish to know how Nature is (and how her
processes develop) but also, if possible, to arrive at the perhaps utopian and preten-
tious-seeming goal to know why Nature is as it is and not otherwise [Einstein's
italics]. In this domain lie the highest satisfactions of the scientist.,,15
On free will "Honestly I cannot understand what people mean when they talk
about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will some-
thing or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all.
I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the
idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of
willing? Schopenhauer once said: "Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht
wollen was er will." [Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he WillS.]16
Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense but would often invoke God
in his spoken words. Two examples:
In the autumn of 1919, in the course of a discussion with a student, Einstein - now
aged 40 - handed her a cable which had informed him that the bending of light by
the sun was in agreement with his general relativistic prediction . The student asked
what he would have said if there had been no confirmation. Einstein replied: "Da
konnt mir halt der liebe Gott leid tun ... Die Theorie stimmt doch" [Then I would
have to pity the dear Lord. The theory is correct anyway.]!"
Twoyears later, in May 1921, Einstein lectured at Princeton University. While there,
word reached him of an experimental result which, if true - it turned out not to be -
would contradict his theory. Upon hearing this rumor, he commented: "Raffiniert ist
der Herr Gott aber boshaft ist er nicht" [Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.] 18
I conclude these introductory remarks on Einstein's points of view with a personal
recollection .
It must have been around I950. I was accompanying Einstein on a walk in
Princeton, from the Institute for Advanced Study to his home, when he suddenly
THE IMAGE OF PHYSICS 91
stopped, turned to me, and asked if I really believed that the moon exists only if
I look at it. The nature of our conversation was not particularly metaphysical. Rather,
we were discussing the quantum theory, in particular what is doable and knowable
in the sense of physical observation . The twentieth-century physicist does not, of
course claim to have the definitive answer to this question. He does know, however,
that the answer given by his nineteenth-century ancestors will no longer do. They
were almost exactly right, to be sure, as far as conditions of everyday life are con-
cerned, but their answer cannot be extrapolated to things moving nearly as fast as
light, or to things that are as small as atoms, or - in some respects - to things that
are as heavy as stars. We now know better than before that what man can do under
the best of circumstances depends on a careful specification of what those circum-
stances are. That, in very broad terms, is the lesson of the theory of relativity, which
Einstein created, and of quantum mechanics, which he eventually accepted as (in his
words) the most successful theory of our period but which, he believed, was nonethe-
less only provisional in character.
We walked on and continued talking about the moon and the meaning of the
expression to exist as it refers to inanimate objects. When we reached his home at
lIZ Mercer Street, I wished him a pleasant lunch, then returned to the Institute. As
I walked back, I wondered once again about the question, why does this man, who
contributed so incomparably much to the creation of modern physics, remain so
attached to the nineteenth-century view of causality?
I tum next to Bohr's views on philosophy. "Many of us [including the speaker]

remember how Bohr told that as far back as he could remember he had liked 'to dream
of great interconnections.' "19 Philosophizing was, one might say,part ofBohr's nature
from boyhood on. "Bohr's first preoccupation with philosophical problems did not
arise from his physical investigations but from general epistemological considerations
about the function of language as a means of communicating experience . .. How to
avoid ambiguity .. . that was the problem that worried Bohr.,,2o Shortly before his
death Bohr spoke about his youthful philosophical considerations. When asked how
significant these were to him at that time, he replied: "It was, in a way, my life.,,2l
An important impetus to Bohr's early thinking - he often reminisced about it -
was the theory of the so-called Riemann surfaces with which he became acquainted
in a mathematics course at the university. Briefly, this theory deals with multivalued
functions, that is, functions that can take on various values at the same point in the
complex plane. The resulting ambiguities can be avoided by introducing "Riemann
sheets" , a set of superimposed complex planes arranged in such a way that the func-
tions take on unique values by specifying not just a "point" but rather "a point on a
given sheet". It struck Bohr that this way of dealing with ambiguities could be tran-
scribed to the use of "planes of objectivity" applied to everyday language in which
often one word can have multiple meanings.
So important to Bohr were these considerations that already as a student he con-
templated writing a book on the subject. However, "I did not write anything down,
but I spoke to the various people that came here.,,2o The only glimpse in writing we
have of these early thoughts is a line in a letter to his brother: "Sensations, like cog-
nition, must be analyzed in planes that cannot be compared/'P Some twenty years
92 ABRAHAM PAIS
Figure 3. Einstein on a tie. Copyright: TIEGUYS.COM. Permission from Tieguys.
later Bohr toyed with another such plan , to start a journal for the philosophical impli-
cations of quantum physics. Nothing came of that either.P
After Bohr had come up with his complementarity concept , his position toward
philosophy took a negative tum . For example, he has said in those later years: "There
are all kinds of people but I think it would be reasonable to say that no man who is
called a philosopher really understands what one means by the complementarity

description The relationship between scientists and philosophers was of a very
curious kind The difficulty is that it is hopeless to have any kind of understanding
between scientists and philosophers directly'v" As he once said to my friend Jens
Lindhard the day after he had attended a philosophers' meeting: "1 have made a great
discovery, a very great discovery: all that philosophers have ever written is pure
drivel [.. . er det rene vaas.]"
Bohr's own favorite definition of a philosopher goes as follows . What is the dif-
ference between an expert and a philosopher? An expert is someone who starts out
knowing something about some things, goes on to know more and more about less
and less, and ends up knowing everything about nothing. Whereas a philosopher is
someone who starts out knowing something about some things, goes on to know less
and less about more and more, and ends up knowing nothing about everything. 1 like
to think that Pascal's words at the head of this section, "to ridicule philosophy is truly
philosophical," might have appealed to him .
Among physicists, opinions about Bohr the philosopher range from a small
minority who do not buy complementarity at all to Heisenberg 's view that Bohr was
"primarily a philosopher, not a physicist."
Regarding Bohr's familiarity with the writings of other philosophers, my know-
ledge is flimsy. 1 know that he particularly adm ired William James: "1 thought he was
most wonderful .v" Note that already in 1891 James had introduced the term "com-
plementarity" to denote a quality of consciousness in schizophrenics." Since it is
not clear how much of James Bohr had read, nor when he did so, 1 do not know (but
regard it neither as probable nor as interesting) whether Bohr took over that term
from James. Once , when asked what kind of contributions he thought people like
Spinoza, Hume, and Kant had made, he replied evasively that that was difficult to
answer.F' As a Dan ish philosopher once put it to me : "He never studied philosophy:
I mean sitting at his desk reading Kant or some other." Bohr did refer with great
respect to Buddha and Lao Tse, however. In summary, there is no evidence of any
kind that philosophers played a role in Bohr's discovery of complementarity.
ON R ELATIVITY THEORY
The Special Theory
Relativity of motion had preoccupied philosophers since antiquity, from Aristotle to
Newton, Leibniz and Mach . Kant had raised the issue of relativity of simultaneity.
Einstein changed all such earlier thinking.
Einstein's new theory went through two distinct stages. The first, unveiled in 1905,
is the so-called special theory of relativity, where "special" refers to the restriction
to "inertial frames", defined as coordinate systems that move relative to each other
with rectilinear and con stant (time-independent) velocities. In the general theory of
relativity, which followed in 1916, these restrictions on relative motions are dropped.
1 begin with a survey of the special theory's main points.
Einstein's first paper on special relativity is axiomatic in structure; the whole edi-
fice is erected on new first principles. It is so perfectly written that what remained to
94 ABRAHAM PAIS
be done ever after was to work out further consequences of the Einstein postulates .
Not one word in the paper needs to be changed in the light of later developments.
These are his axioms.
I. The laws of physics take the same form in all inertial frames.
2. In a given inertial frame, the velocity of light is the same whether the
light is emitted by a body at rest or by a body in uniform motion.
Axiom 2 is the first instance of a fully developed twentieth-century concept that sur-
passes everyday experience. If you stand still on a platform and observe a man walking
on a train, then his velocity appears different to you depending on whether the train itself
stands still or is in motion. But if you replace the walking man by a light source, then
you will find that the light velocity is the same whether the train stands still or moves.
Special relativity leads to many more consequences that do not conform with daily
experiences. The length of a rod is measured to be shorter when moving relative to
the observer than when it is at rest relative to him. If two synchronous clocks start
out at the same position and one moves around a closed orbit, then upon return that
one will have run slower than the one that had not moved. That result, observed daily
with high energy accelerators, is sometimes given the misnomer "clock paradox" . It
was justly called a theorem by Einstein.
In general terms the great novelty was that the lessons of classical mechanics are
valid only for velocities very small compared to light velocity. In chemistry the spe-
cial relativity law E = mc 2 implies that Lavoisier's law of mass conservation and
Prout's rule of simple proportionate weights were only approximate but nevertheless
so good that no perceptible changes in conventional chemistry were called for. Thus,
relativity has turned Newtonian mechanics and classical chemistry into approximate
sciences, not diminished but better defined in the process. When I talked with
Einstein about those times of transition, he expressed himself in a curiously imper-
sonal way, referring to the birth of special relativity as "den Schritt", the step.
Special relativity has led to the description of natural phenomena in which the
evolution in space and time is unified in a four-dimensional manifold. It needs to be
stressed that this does not represent new physical concepts but rather an important
new mathematical tool. Nevertheless, spiritists and other crackpots have been
enchanted with the "fourth dimension".
The General Theory

Today the special theory seems harmless and is easy to teach. It is quite otherwise
with the general theory, the greatest single advance in twentieth-century physics,
which even today is not fully digested.
The starting point of this theory was Einstein's realization that the description of all
natural phenomena could smoothly be incorporated in the special theory except for
Newton slaw ofgravitational attraction ofbodies. This led him to understand the need
not only for the generalization of special relativity but also for a refinement of the the-
ory of gravitation. That search took him a decade until its successful completion.
THE IMAGE OF PHYSI CS 95
Figure 4. Bohr and Einstein in 1925. Probably in Ehrenfe st's home . Courtesy of the American
Institute of Physics Emilio Segre Visual Archive s and the Albert Einstein Archives .
Elsewhere I have written at length about the ups and downs of those ten years.28
Here I must content myself with a statement of the punchlines.
General relativity demands that the age-old description of space and time has to
be forfeited. That is, the geometry of the world is not Euclidian, in other words,
space is not flat. Rather it is warped, the amount of curvature in a given area being
determined by the amount of gravitational mass present there. Space is like a tram-
poline, curved when a jumper comes down on it, flat when he goes up. Thus, gravi-
tation determines the geometry of the physical world, or put differently, gravitation
is geometrized . Why don't we notice this curvature in everyday life? Because there
96 ABRAHAM PAIS
we deal with small masses, a jumping ant does not noticeably bend a trampoline.
Even the earth 's mass is small in this context.
By 1919 Einstein's new theory could claim experimental confirmation of three
major new predictions: an anomaly in the motion of the planet Mercury, known since
1859; the shift of frequencies toward the red when light passes through a gravita-
tional field; and the bending of light when it passes the sun. That last discovery
propelled Einstein into the prophet of a new order in the eyes of everyman.
In that same period, Einstein also pioneered other applications of general relativ-
ity, such as, his papers on gravitational waves and on cosmology. It was only after
his death, however, that general relativity truly began to flourish as the result of the
discoveries of pulsars, neutron stars, quasars, and, perhaps, of black holes , the time
when "cooperative efforts of radio and optical astronomers [had begun] to reveal a
great many strange new things in the sky.,,29 The future will no doubt bring more
exciting news in this domain .
ON COMPL EMENTARITY
Once upon a time, the year was 1900, Max Planck, a professor at the University
of Berlin, introduced a new parameter in physics which he called the quantum of
action. Its purpose was to codify the puzzling experimental behavior of electromag-
netic radiation enclosed in a reflecting cavity, so-called blackbody radiation . During
the following few years he worked hard at finding an interpretation of his quantum
in term s of classical physics , the body of knowledge then believed to explain all
physical laws. All those efforts failed .
Thus, began the period, lasting until 1925, which is now known as the time of the
old quantum theory. Those were the most unusual years in all the history of physics.
More and more experimental facts showed that quantum physics had to be taken
most seriously, even though it violated the fundamental logic on which the physics
of those days rested.
A prime example of this bizarre state of affairs is Niels Bohr's work, beginning in
1913, which for the first time made atomic structure into a subject of scientific
inquiry. How new that development was, can be appreciated by recalling the situa-
tion at the tum of the century, as described by one prominent physicist: "It is perhaps
not unfair to say that for the average physicist at the time , speculations about atomic
structure were someth ing like speculations about life on Mars - very interesting for
those who like this kind of thing but without much hope of support from convincing
scientific evidence and without much bearing on scientific thought and develop -
ment.,,30 Bohr's work rested on one of the most audacious new postulates ever intro-
duced in science : electrons circling around the atomic nucleus are capable of a
discrete set of orbits only, in contravention to class ical physics , which demands that
this set be a continuum.
The best characterization of Bohr's activities during those years was given in 1949
by the seventy-years old Einstein: "That this insecure and contradictory foundation
was sufficient to enable a man of Bohr 's unique instinct and tact to discover the major
laws of the spectral lines appeared to me as a miracle - and appears to me as a mir-
acle even today. This is the highest sphere of musicality in the sphere of thought.Y'
TH E IM A G E OF PHY SI C S 97
Figure 5. Bohr at Caltech, June 29, 1959. Courtesy of the Archives, California Institute of
Technology.
Note that Einstein hirnselfwas another major contributor to the old quantum the-
ory. In 1905 he had remarked that, under certain circumstances, light beams behave
like a stream of part icles, photon s - in sharp conflict to the prevailing view of that
time that light always consisted of waves. In 1906 he had been the first to apply quan-
tum concepts to solid state physics. In 1909 he was the first to anticipate that a new
theory was needed in which wave and part icle physics are fused. In 1916 he realized
that when an excited atom emits a photon, the theory can neither predict the time at
which nor the direction in which the photon is emitted. That is to say, the theory had
to violate the classical principle of causal ity, according to which if at a given time
an isolated system is in a fully specified state, then one should be able to predict
rigorou sly its state at any later time.
98 ABRAHAM PAIS
The preceding glimpses of the old quantum theory must suffice to illustrate that it
was not a theory at all, ifby a theory is meant a structure logically built on axioms, first
principles. Here, on the other hand, one deals with patchwork, classical principles on
which ad hoc rules are superimposed whenever experiment so demanded - never mind
that most of these rules violated classical principles. One must admire the courage and
the taste with which leading physicists of that period operated - all this in anticipation
of a new logic. The need for which became ever more pressing as time went by.
That new era, baptized quantum mechanics even before it had arrived, started
in July 1925 with Heisenberg's completion of his first paper on matrix mechanics.
A second version, Schroedinger's wave mechanics, appeared in January 1926.
Heisenberg said much later in an interview:
"The trouble was, that to begin with, say in October or November [of 1926] .. . we
were not able always to give the right answer because the thing was not worked out
well enough .. . In spite of having a mathematical scheme both from Schroedinger's
side and from the matrix side, and in spite of seeing that these mathematical schemes
are equivalent and consistent and so on, nobody could know an answer to the ques-
tion: is an electron now a wave or is it a particle, and how does it behave if I do this
and that and so on. [These] paradoxes became so much more pronounced in that time.
That again was a gradual process. You couldn 't pick out a definite time and say 'from
then on the paradoxes were so important.' But only by coming nearer and nearer to
the real thing to see that the paradoxes by no means disappeared, but on the contrary got
worse and worse because they turn out more clearly - that was the exciting thing ...
Like a chemist who tries to concentrate his poison more and more from some kind of
solution, we tried to concentrate the poison of the paradox ... [Bohr's] strongest
impressions were the paradoxes, these hopeless paradoxes which so far nobody [had]
been able to answer. These paradoxes were so in the center of his mind that he just
couldn't imagine that anybody could find an answer to the paradoxes, even having the
nicest mathematical scheme in the world ... Bohr would say "Even the mathematical
scheme does not help. I first want to understand how nature actually avoids contra-
dictions" .. . To this fundamental problem it looked as if the new mathematical tools[s]
did give no clear answer yet. One just had no way of really talking about it. That was
the stage in the autumn of ' 26 ... We weren't so much worried about the experiment,
but we were more worried about the theory ... In '26 it was more or less clear that the
experiment would come out as the theoreticians knew exactly what to believe. That
was just the point: 'Do we know exactly what to predict?' ,,32
It was Heisenberg who made a major stride toward the interpretation of
quantum mechanics when, in March 1927, he discovered his uncertainty relations .
That happened in Copenhagen, so naturally he and Bohr had lengthy discussions in
which, however, they still had their differences on what quantum mechanics is about.
In 1963 Heisenberg explained'? what these differences were:
"The main point was that Bohr wanted to take this dualism between waves and
corpuscles as the central point of the problem and to say: 'That is the center of the
whole story, and we have to start from that side of the story in order to understand
it.' I, in some way would say, 'well, we have a consistent mathematical scheme and
this consistent mathematical scheme tells us everything which can be observed .
THE IM A G E OF PHYSICS 99
Nothing is in nature which cannot be described by this mathematical scheme.' It was

a different way of looking at the problem because Bohr would not like to say that
nature imitates a mathematical scheme, that nature does only things which fit into a
mathematical scheme. While I would say, 'Well, waves and corpuscles are, certainly,
a way in which we talk and we do come to these concepts from classical physics .
Classic al physics has taught us to talk about particles and waves, but since classical
physics is not true there, why should we stick so much to these concepts? Why
should we not simply say that we cannot use these concepts with a very high preci-
sion, therefore the uncertainty relation s, and therefore we have to abandon these con-
cepts to a certain extent. When we get beyond this range of the classical theory, we
must realize that our words don 't fit. They don't really get a hold in the physical real-
ity and therefore a new mathematical scheme is just as good as anything because the
new mathematical scheme then tells what may be there and what may not be there .
Nature just in some way follows the scheme .' ,,33
Having talked countless hours with Bohr on compl ementarity, I could imagine
that to Heisenberg's "our words don't fit", Bohr would have replied, "Our words hav e
to fit, we have nothing else."
That is the complementarity point of view which Bohr first presented at a confer-
ence in Como, in September 1927. The key phrase of Bohr 's report is this one:
"Our interpretation of the experim ental material rests essentially upon the classical
concepts.v'" One may say that with the elaboration of that statement the logic of
quantum mechanics reached its closure.
I next enlarge on Bohr 's general statement on the classical interpretation of experi-
mental data. In the classical era one verified the validity of theories by comparing them
with experimental observations made with balances, thermometers, volt meters, etc.
The theories have been modified in the quantum era but - and that was Bohr's point -
their validity continues to be verified by the same readings of a balance's equilibrium
position, a thermometer's mercury column, a volt meter's needle, etc. The phenomena
may be novel, their modes of detection may have been modernized, but detectors should
be treated as classical objects; their readings continue to be described in classical terms.
"The situation thus created is of a peculiar nature," Bohr remarked." Consider, for
example, the question, can I not ask for the quantum mechan ical properties of a
detector, say a volt meter ? The answer is yes, I can. Next question : but should I then
not abandon the limited description of the volt meter as a classical object, and rather
treat it quantum mech anically? The answer is yes, I must. But, in order to register the
volt meter 's quantum properties I need anoth er piece of apparatus with which
I again make classical reading s. In Bohr's own rather cryptic words: "The concept of
observation is in so far arbitrary as it depends upon which objects are included in the
system to be observed. r' "
The language of science, more generally the ways in which we communicate - these
were the themes on which Bohr focused in the Como lecture and for the rest of his life.
Thus, he said (I paraphrase): The question - is an electron a particle or is it a wave? -
is a sensible question in the classical context where the relation between object ofstudy
and detector either needs no specification or else is a controllable relation. In quantum
mechanics that question is meaningless , however, there one should rather ask: does the
electron (or any other object) behave like a particle or like a wave? That question is
100 ABRA HAM PAI S
1\1 U-\INK 'iOU SHOULD ~ so»:

ExVLlC\T H~E. IN S\~P 'WOo ,\
Figure 6. Cartoon by Sidney Harris that can be seen as depicting the controversy between
Einstein and Bohr. Bohr simply accepted the miraculous nature of reality, while Einstein
wanted a deeper explanation. © 2002 by Sidney Harris. Permission from Sidney Harris.
answerable, but only if one specifies the experimental arrangement by means of which
"one looks" at the electron. That is what Bohr meant in Como when he said:
An independent reality in the ordinary [that is, classical] physical sense can ...
neither be ascribed to the phenomena nor to the agencies of observation."
To summarize, Bohr stressed that only by insisting on the description of observations
in classical terms can one avoid the logical paradoxes apparently posed by the dual-
ity of particles and waves, two terms themselves defined classically. Wave and
particle behavior mutually exclude each other. The classical physicist would say: if
two descriptions are mutually exclusive that at least one ofthem must be wrong. The
quantum physicist will say: whether an object behaves as a particle or as a wave
depends on your choice of experimental arrangement for looking at it. He will not
deny that particle and wave behavior are mutually exclusive but will assert that both
are necessary for the full understanding of the object's properties. Bohr coined the
TH E I M A G E O F PHY SI CS 101
term complementarity for describing this new situation. I quote from the Como
lecture , slightly modernizing Bohr's language:
The very nature of the quantum theory . .. forces us to regard particle behavior and
wave behavior, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as comple-
mentary but exclusi ve features of the description ... complementary pictures of
the phenomena ... only together offer a natural generalization of the classical
mode of description.P
Relativity has taught us new ways of relating the experi ences of one observer to
those of another one . Quantum mechanics has taught us anoth er kind of relativity,
new ways in which one given observer relate s one choice of experimental arrange-
ment with which he intend s to perform his experiments to another choice. Perhaps
Bohr had that parallel in mind when he said : "We find ourselves on the very path
taken by Einste in of adapting our mode s of perception borrowed from the sensations
to the gradually deepening knowledge of the laws of Natu re.,,39 These two kinds of
relativity are the great new "epistemological lesson s" (another of Bohr 's favorite
term s) of twentieth-century science.
Bohr's deep conc ern with the role of language in the appr opriate interpretation of
quantum mechanic s never ceased. In 1948 he put it as follows:
Phrases often found in the physical literature, as ' disturbance of phenomen a by

observation' or 'c reation of physical attributes of objects by measurem ents' ,
repre sent a use of words like ' phenomena' and ' observation' as well as ' attribute'
and ' measurement' which is hardly compatible with common usage and practical
definition and, therefore, is apt to cause confusion. As a more appropriate way of
expression, one may strongly advocate limitation of the use of the word phenom-
enon to refer exclusi vely to observations obtained under specified circumstances,
includ ing an account of the who le experiment.
Th is usage of phenomenon, the one to which nearly all physicists now subscribe, was
unacc eptable to Einstein. In contrast to the view that the concept of phenomenon
irrevocably includes the specifics of the experimental conditions of observation,
Einstein held that one should seek for a deeper-l ying theoretical frame work which
permits the description of phenomena independently of these conditions. That is
what he meant by the tenn objective reality. It was his almost solitary position that
quantum mechanics is logically consi stent but that it is an inclomplete man ifestation
of an underlying theory in which an objectively real description is possible. The best
expo sition of his point of view is found in a j oint paper with Podolsky and Rosen ,
often err oneou sly referred to as the EPR paradox. Actually the paper merely, and
clearly, demonstrates that complementarity and objecti ve reality are incomp atible .
To summarize my opinion regarding Bohr 's contributions, I consider him not only a
major figure in physics but also one of the most important twentieth-century philoso-
phers. As such he must be considered the successor to Kant, who had considered
causality as a "synthetic judgement a priori", not derivable from experience. Causali ty
is, in Kant's own words, "a rule according to which phenomena are sequentially
determined, Only by assuming that rule is it possible to speak of experience of
102 ABR AHAM PAIS
something that happens." This view must now be considered passe. Since Bohr the
very definition of what constitutes a phenomenon has undergone changes that, unfor-
tunately, have not yet sunk in sufficiently among professional philosophers .
Again, according to Kant constructive concepts are intrinsic attributes of the
"Ding an sich", a viewpoint desperately maintained by Einstein, but abandoned by
quantum physicists . In Bohr's words: "Our task is not to penetrate into the essence
of things, the meaning of which we don 't know anyway, but rather to develop
concepts which allow us to talk in a productive way about phenomena in nature.,,40
After Bohr's death Heisenberg wrote (as mentioned above) that Bohr was "primarily
a philosopher, not a physicist."! a judgement that is arguable yet particularly
significant if one recalls how greatly Heisenberg admired Bohr's physics. Bohr 's
own words, "It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature
is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature,',42 convey most succinctly his
everlasting concern - to be careful with language in describing physics.
SOME FINAL COMMENTS
1. Why would it be the early twentieth-century that marks basic modifica-

tion in the laws of physics? One crucial reason is that about that time
new physical tools opened up new regimes of physical information. That
holds true for special relativity and for quantum theory, but general rel-
ativity stands out in this respect as the grand exception. Gravitation
could have been geometrized more than a century earlier.
2. As already noted repeatedly, classical physics remains the valid tool for
understanding everyday phenomena.
3. What about the future, what novelty will the century that has just begun
bring? One can safely anticipate that the heavens will reveal more astro-
physical news and hope for a satisfactory answer to the most vexing
open fundamental question: the synthesis of general relativity with
quantum mechanics.
4. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, there were quite a few physi-
cists, some of them prominent, who believed that physical theory was
complete, that all which remained was to add more decimals to the accu-
racy with which physical quantities were known. With that profoundly
wrong prognosis in mind, I shall refrain from further prophesying what
will come next. Instead, I offer, to conclude , the words written in the fifth
century BC by Pindar in his Sixth Nemean ode:
Though we know not what the day will bring,

what course after nightfall
destiny has written that we must run to the end.
NOTES
I Alan 1. Friedman and Carol C. Donley, Einstein as Myth and Muse (Ca mbridge: Cambridge
Univers ity Pres s, 1985) 156.
Op. cit. 192.

For Einstein , see A. Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life ofAlbert Einstein (Oxford :
Clarendon Press, 1982) ch. 16. For Bohr, see A. Pais, Niels Bohr's Times, in Physics, Philosophy and
Polity (Oxford: Clarendon Press , 1991) ch. 12.
4 A.W Williamson, Journal ofthe Chemical Society 22 (1869) 328.
B. Pascal, Pensees Pt.VII no. 35.
I. Rosenthal-Schneider, Reality and scientific truth, discussions with Einstein, von Laue, and Planck
(Detroit: Wayne State University Press , 1980) 62.
7 H. Bergson , Bull. Soc. Franc. Philos. 22 (1922) 102.
December 10,1922 Les Prix Nobel 192/ -/922 (Stockholm: Imprimerie Royale, 1923).
H. Bergson , Bull. Soc. Franc. Philos. 22 (1922) 91.
10 A. Einstein, 30.X. 1924, in A. Einstein, Lettres a Maurice Solovine , (Paris : Gauthiers- Villars, 1956)
48,49.
11 C. Seelig (ed.) , in Helle Zeit, dunkl e Zeit, autobiographical sketch (Zurich : Europa Verlag, 1956).
12 A. Einstein, Ansprachen in der Deutschen physikalischen Gesellschaji (Karlsruhe: Muller , 1918) 29.
13 A, Einstein , On the method of theoretical physi cs (Oxford University Press, 1933, reprinted in
Philosophy ofScience I (1934) 162).
14 A. Einstein , "Autobiographical Notes" in P. Schilpp (cd.), Albert Einstein, philosoph er-scientist
(Evanston , Ill: The Library of living philosophers, 1949) 12, 13.

15 A. Einstein in E. Honneger (ed.), Festschrift Prof Dr.A. Stodola (Zurich : Orel Fiissli Verlag, 1929) 126.
16 A. Einstein, Prologue to M. Planck, Where is science going? (New York: Norton , 1932, reprint
New York: AMS Press, 1977).
I7 I. Rosenthal -Schneider, Reality and scientific truth (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980) 74.
18 For more on this episode , see A. Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life ofAlbert Einstein
(Oxford : Clarendon Pres s, 1982) 113-114.
19 Jergen Kalckar, "A Glimpse of the Young Niels Bohr and his World ofThought," General Introduct ion
to volumes 6 and 7, m N. Bohr, Collected Works vol. 6 (Amsterdam , North-Holland, 1985) XIX .
20 L. Rosenfeld, Phys. Today October 16 (1963) 8.
2 1 N. Bohr, Interview by T.S. Kuhn, November 17 (1962) .
22 N. Bohr, letter to H. Bohr, June 26, 1910, Collected Works vol. I (Amsterdam, North-Holland, 1972)
512,513.
23 A. Petersen, Bull. At. Sci. September (1963) 8.
24 W James , The principles ofpsychology, 1890 (Dover, New York: 1950), vol. I 201.
25 N. Bohr, Interview by T.S. Kuhn, November 17 (1962) .
26 W James , The principles ofpsychology 1890 (dover, New York: 1950), vol. I 201.
27 N. Bohr, Interview by T.S. Kuhn, November 17 (1962).
28 A. Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life ofAlbert Einstein (Oxford : Clarendon Press,
1982) ch. 9-15.
29 S. Weinberg, Gravitation and Cosmology (New York: Wiley, 1972) 297.
30 E.N. da Costa Andrade, Proc. Roy. Soc. A,224 (1958) 437 .
31 A, Pais, Subtle is the Lord: The Science and the Life ofAlbert Einstein (Oxford : Clarendon Press,
1982) ch. 16.
32 W Heisenberg, interview by T.S. Kuhn, February 19 (1963) 25.
33 W, Heisenberg, interviewbyT.S. Kuhn, February 19 (1963) 25.
34 N. Bohr, Nature 121 Suppl. 1928580.
39 N. Bohr, letter to H.P.E. Hansen, July 20, 1955.
40 N. Bohr, letter to H.P.E. Hansen, July 20, 1955.
41 W Heisenberg, in S. Rozental (ed.), Niels Bohr (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., 1967) 95.
42 A. Petersen, Bull. At. Sci. September (1963) 8.
SALLY G RE GO RY KOHLST EDT AND DONALD L. OPITZ
RE-IMAG(IN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE : PROJECTING

IDENTITY AND NEGOTIATING GENDER IN SCIENCE l
I NTR OD UC TI O N
Women - and men - in science often need to imagine themsel ves in ways that do not
readily conform to the norm s prescribed by popular culture imagery? While pursu-
ing studies of the natural world, scientists construct private and public images of
themselves that affect how they navigate through and beyond the social conventions
of their time . As we examine historically the images of women scienti sts in particu-
lar, we see again how powerful the physical body is, at once the site of our most pri-
vate selves but also our very public present ation of self. The role of gender in science
is heavily dependent upon evolving discourses and experiences of mind and bod y,
dome stic and profe ssion al spheres oflife, and personal ide ntities. The self-images of
women scientists proved remarkabl y malleable, able to both compete with and yet
sometimes reinforce gendered public images ofwom en. In the process, image s could
sustain personal ambitions and sign ificant scientifi c work . Our emphasis on the
resiliency of the women studied here doe s not minimize the ir stru ggles , but as his-
torians we must mark as well the sometimes unconscious and sometimes consciously
strategic ways women negotiated gender norms, bringing their own agency to the
pur suit of their scientific aspirations.
Much of the historical and sociological research done on women in science has
concentrated on how their lives were played out in term s of external (and typic ally
limiting) factors: their struggles to gain access to knowledge and educ ation, their cir-
cum scribed acce ss to resources, and the undervaluation of their work . These theme s
are cru cial for understanding the experiences of women, and scholars have made
important progress in illuminating them . In her pioneering study of women, gender,
and science, Carol yn Merchant effectively used visual images among other sources
to argue in The Death ofNature that the increasingly emphatic gender lines between
men and women were drawn in ways that made science masculine and nature femi-
nine in the seventeenth century. Londa Schiebinger's The Mind Has No Sex ? demon-
strated the ways in which women's cont ributions to science in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were marginalized and showed how feminine iconography func-
tioned in the overwhelmingly masculine domain of science. Marcelle LaFollette
105
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier. C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences, 105-139.
106 SALLY GREGORY KOH LSTEDT AND DONALD L. OPITZ
looked at the images of women scientists in twentieth-century popular magazines

and found that women were most often portrayed in low status and supporting roles
such as laboratory technicians, adjunct faculty, and assistants.' These books , like
Margaret Rossiter's two volumes on women in science in the United State s and
numerous other studies," concentrate on the boundaries and barriers faced by nearly
every woman who attempted to do science and accounted for the ways that class and
specific sponsorship were essential to overcoming the barriers for the most success-
ful. Practical problems and negative images have been shown to be powerful influ-
ences on women's opportunities in science and the (under)valuation of women's
work in science, a result Margaret Rossiter has termed the "Mathilda effect.'"
It is important to examine more closely how the imaging of women enabled, sus-
tained, and sometimes limited their participation in science. Literary scholars use
diaries , autobiography, and fiction to explore women's search for self-identities and
discuss how this process gives women agency to pursue their writing." Art historians
examine how commissioned art works result from a negotiation between artist and
patron , demonstrating that portraiture may reveal the agency of the subject as well
as the artist. 7 Indeed the iconography of early portraits is rich, apparently because the
sitters exercised considerable influence, while later portraits - especially formal pho-
tographs - follow more narrow conventions. Using techn iques from literature and art
history as well as the history of science, this paper demonstrates how women in sci-
ence establish identities (sometimes using strong visual imagery) that allow them to
function socially even as they negotiate gendered expectations.t Our paper, while
acknowledging and sometimes specifically identifying the constraining factors for
women , emphasizes the ways in which women in science viewed and presented
themselves (often with deceptive, femininized modesty) as capable and talented his-
torical agents.
Women pursuing scientific inquiry were often in tension with recurring gender
constructions of their bodies with respect to science. Three specific themes emerge
in the scholarly literature. First , women in science confronted masculine images of
their male colleagues in whom a certain kind of abstract intellectualism was admired,
and important contemporary literature debates what some have styled a masculine
approach in science (itself an unstable con struct dependent on time and geography)."
Second, by the seventeenth century, when our account begins, rational methods chal-
lenged unsystematic empiricism, and the corollary was that women, often associated
with dexterity rather than intellect, were therefore viewed as limited in their capac-
ity for theoretical work by the very nature of their sex . 10 Those few who worked in
mathematics or in more abstract fields were typically viewed, like Mary Somerville,
as having a "special genius." Third, there was a continuing outlook that tended to
make women and the "v irgin" natural world synonymous. II Thu s, the images of sci-
ence as masculine, of women as unfit for science, and of women as synonymous with
nature have persistently positioned women with respect to science as the objects to
be studied rather than the subjects performing significant studies.
Against such prescriptive norm s, the representations of women scientists in por-
traits, engravings, and photographs, and in some instances autobiographical or other
self-expressions, reveal how various women contributed to or contested popularized
images of themselves and their work .P In privileging self-images captured visually
RE-IMAG(lN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 107
and in texts, we consider the diverse ways by which women practicing science
consciously invoked norms of femininity in their pursuits, sometimes representing
themselves as sympathetically conventional while at other times flamboyantly
unconventional - and in both cases forging identities that they hoped would benefit
their work. Our seven examples, chosen because their images are evocative and
sometimes deliberately provocative, suggest the diversity and historical specificity of
the lives of women in science while simultaneously capturing the inescapable
interplay of personal identities, projected selves, and social norms in the shaping of
their scientific experiences. Some have had significant attention paid to their
self-images and projected images in relationship to gender, while others have not.
Images provide a critical framework for us to interrogate a few selected women
from the seventeenth through the early twentieth centuries about their scientific
aspirations.
MARGARET CAVENDISH - D EFIANT NATURAL PHILO SOPH ER

WITH AN IND EPENDE NT VOI C E
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673),13 projected herself and her

ideas explicitly through her voluminous writing (thirteen books and many more edi-
tions by the time of her death at age fifty). She presented a personality that was often
noted by contemporaries and captured in a few portraits . Her publications elaborated
on, challenged, and popularized scientific work among her contemporaries and gen-
erated her own theory of nature. 14 She thought of herself as a learned lady, but some
of her writing carried the perhaps ironic apologies that mark women's writings into
the twentieth century with a sense oflimited education and deference to those of supe-
rior social or academic status. Her sometimes deferential stance, undoubtedly appro-
priate given that her limited education created a genuine insecurity, was also intended
to keep critics at bay. Her individual portrait from the mid-seventeenth century puts
her beside a desk with a ready pen while stylized cherubs hover nearby to provide
assistance, contributing a kind of religious aura (Figure 1).15 The portrait, with her
gaze almost directed at the viewer, is demure but also suggests a woman comfortably
alone with her thoughts . In her writing she was less relaxed, and could be defiant
toward egotistical male contemporaries who refused to take her seriously." Historian s
of science and ofliterature , especially in the last two decades , have focused on the way
in which she assertively challenged her peers and their conventions, and the subse-
quent hostility she experienced from the London intellectuals of the Royal Society? "
Portraits of Margaret Cavendish and the frontispieces commissioned for her
publications emphasize by dress and demeanor the aristocratic standing that she
enhanced through her marriage. Both she and her husband had the leisure to write
plays, poetry, letters , and natural philosophy. Although childless, she was stepmother
to her husband's children. A stylized family scene is set beside a roaring fire where
a bottom note says that the characters tell "tales of pleasure and of witt" (Figure 2).
Here, too, she appears thin and unimposing, a contrast to the rather bold intellectual
identity she established through her pen . The scene is a domestic one, a persistent
theme in representations of women in science , and juxtaposed as the frontispiece
to a book by a strong-minded woman . 18
108 SALLY GREGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L . OPITZ
Figure I. Margaret Cavendish wrote thirteen books, with multiple editions, that featured
poetry, prose, and natural history. This engraving, by Peter van Schuppen after Abraham van
Diepenbeke, is the frontispiece of The World s Olio (London, 167I) . British Library shelf mark
84007.h.i 1 Permission of the British Library.
What attracts so many scholars to study her work today also attracted her contem-
poraries. From a relatively shy young woman, Margaret Cavendish became a flamboy-
ant personage . Crowds followed her carriage when she was in London and her
personality inevitably caused comment in the diaries of her learned contemporaries.
She sometimes dressed in male attire and bowed rather than curtsied . When she arrived
at the one Royal Society meeting she was invited to attend, John Evelyn recorded in
RE-IMAG (IN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 109
Figure 2. Margaret Cavendish is in the front right with her husband, both wearing laurel
leaves, together with other members of the Cavendish family. This is the frontispiece from
Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Lift (London, 1656). Permission of the
Syndics of Cambridge University Library.
his diary that she looked "so like a CavalierlBut that she had no beard."? In a court
world of masks, of playacting, and of creating a public image, Margaret Cavendish
also established a persona - noting her own singularity in her brief autobiography -
through her life as well as her work. Unfortunately none of this gender drama is con-
veyed in the available portraits, where she is an evident aristocratic woman.
The life of Cavendish helps us to pose the fundamental questions for this paper:
How do women who wish to "study nature" see themselves? How do they present
110 SA LL Y GREGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L . OPITZ
themselves to their society? Which images do they draw upon and which do they
reject? By their scientific activity they are unconventional, yet they must live within
certain conventions (or perhaps be confined to the insane asylum at Bedlam, which
is where one contemporary thought Cavendish did belong). Cavendish toyed with
social conventions; she deliberately did not stay within the guarded conventions
of the natural philosophers and she was quite conscious of the subjectivity of what
she was writing . She challenged Royal Society colleagues in her utopian book The
Description of the New World, Called the Blazing World (1666). She argued that
philosophical members were too narrowly preoccupied with their microscopes and
that they refused to understand that they were inevitably subjective through their own
ways of constructing what they saw magnified . She pointed out that the concentra-
tion on the revelations of experiments and instruments by those very techniques
introduced significant distortions. Distrustful of the outcomes of experimental sci-
ence and weary of her peers in the new sciences, Cavendish sustained her independ-
ent ways of thinking about natural philosophy in the privacy of her estate outside of
London.
Her interest in and yet rejection of uncritical popular scientific enthusiasm for
instruments and material philosophy requires that we think again about women and
the scientific enterprise. Perhaps not surprisingly, contemporary male philosophers
did not acknowledge Cavendish 's critical voice. She commended her writing to
posterity - where it has found attention and vindication.P
MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN - INNOVATIVE ENTOMOLOGIST

WORKING WITHIN CONVENTIONS
In central Europe a generation later, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) originally

worked within many ofthe social norms expected of women. She found mechanisms
to break with convention by aligning with an open-minded religious group and
by embarking on travels that would benefit scientific colleagues as well as herself."
In the past decade both art historians and historians of science have rediscovered
Merian, a German artist whose interest in metamorphosis and studies of insects , and
especially her original work with specimens that she herself gathered in Surinam
(later known as Dutch Guiana), established her reputation among European collec-
tors and naturalists.P
Educated in a household of artists , Merian 's early efforts included plates with
flowers intended for embroidery patterns , certainly a womanly task in the seven-
teenth century. She married and had two daughters, later divorcing her husband
when she joined her brother in a religious non-conforming group of Labadists ; at
this point she slipped to the edges of social and religious convention . Her scientific
work evolved from an early interest in watching the metamorphosis of moths and
butterflies. She took part in an informal movement in natural history illustration in
the late seventeenth century where artists worked directly from living objects in an
effort to unite realism with a systematic understanding that highlighted significant
characteristics.P Figure 3 shows the attention that she gave to the metamorphosis
from caterpillar to adult and provides detail about the predation on the plant, also
represented in more than one stage of development, on which the larvae feed.
RE-IMAG(lN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE III
Figure 3. This plate, which portrays, with a combination of realism and scientific analysis,
both insect and plant specimens at various stages of development, is taken from Maria Sibylla
Menan, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Over de voortteeling en wonderbaerlyke
veranderingen der Surinaamsche insecten (1719), facing page 9. Permission of Wangensteen
Library, University of Minnesota.
In her preface Merian claimed that she began to watch insects closely while only
eleven or twelve years of age and determined to paint them "very exactly" on parch-
ment, something she continued for the rest of her life. 24 In 1691 she moved to
Amsterdam, where she visited the homes of merchants and intellectuals gathering
collections of plants and other natural specimens involved in global trade. They may
112 SALLY GREGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L. OPITZ
Figure 4. Maria Sibylla Menan is the small figure working on the ground in the center of the
window in this frontispiece for Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. Over de voort-
teeling en wonderbaerlyke veranderingen der Surinaamsche insecten (1719) . Permission of
Wangensteen Library, University of Minnesota.
have helped sponsor her trip to Surinam when she was fifty-two years old in order
to study insects in their environment and throughout their entire life cycle. In some
ways that trip marked her as an exotic woman traveler, an exoticism enhanced by the
landscape into which she ventured. Figure 4 places her in this context, the small cen-
tral figure seen through the window collecting specimens . While the earnest cherubs
suggest for Merian, as for Cavendish, the importance of inspiration, the open fields
suggest the difficult and sometimes dirty work involved in gathering and studying
insects. Although the heat and climate made her decide to return to Europe after two
years, she produced a superb study that was viewed as path breaking, and the plates
and texts have been reprinted several times in subsequent centuries.P Her detailed
RE-IMAG(lN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 113
Figure 5. The specimens brought from Surinam and illustrated by Merian were displayed at
the Town Hall in Amsterdam . The elderly Maria Sibylla Merian is pictured in an engraving by
Arnold Houbraken after Georg Gsell in Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa
Metamorphosis (1717). Permission of Entomology, Fisheries and Wildlife Library, University
of Minnesota .
illustrations of insects showed stages of life as well as environmental factors like

food, predators, and even the perhaps disconcerting effects of insects feeding on
leaves - complicated stories not previously found in nature illustration. Merian skill-
fully negotiated the artist's dilemma of being sufficiently talented and conventional
to meet viewer expectations while simultaneously doing something different and
better than contemporaries.
Scientific colleagues of Merian gave her access to their collections, encouraged
her work, and used her illustrations. The portrait in Figure 5, another frontispiece
that she commissioned, follows the eighteenth century convention of learned men
shown with their vocational or avocational tools." Here Merian is in an orderly
setting, displaying the coherence of scientific objects in a space that has clarity,
specificity and order.F' Over her life course she gained significant credibility and
an independence by following certain conventions (domestic illustrator, wife and
mother). Thus the representation of her unconventional explorations were purpose-
fully domesticated for her European readers so that her personal transformation or
metamorphosis was publicly obscured by her conventional appearance.
Cavendish and Merian actually did much of their work within domestic space,
where women could and did partner with fathers, brothers, and husbands, in a tradi-
tion that would persist into the twentieth century.P Elements of domesticity are
captured in portraits and in the images produced in written biography. Cavendish
received consistent significant support from her husband, while Merian practiced art
with her stepfather, brothers, and husband before setting off with just one of her
daughters, Dorothea Maria Graff, to the West Indies.
By the nineteenth century, the pathways for women who did science were chang-
ing, but the ways in which women positioned themselves in relationship to their
scientific interests also showed some remarkably persisting themes. The strategies of
Mary Somerville and Ada Lovelace are significantly different but also suggest how
these two early nineteenth century women shaped their private lives, used public per-
ceptions, and responded to social norms in ways that enabled their scientific work.
MARY SOM ERVILLE - QUEEN OF CELES TIAL

(AND DOMESTIC) S CIEN CE
Upon her death, an obituary writer dubbed Britain 's Mary Somerville (1780-1872)
"Queen of Nineteenth-Century Science.,,29 Somerville's crowning reveals a some-
what startling acceptance accorded her in both scientific circles and the broader pub-
lic. She was known to be modest if not "ever forgetful of self,"3o but nonetheless
prepared her Personal Recollections for publication near the end of her life. Here
the acknowledged "queen" presented a self-conscious and deliberately female role
model who balanced scientific and domestic tasks as a template for women readers
interested in pursuing higher learning. Thus, her memoir both sustains an idealized
image of "woman of science" and also deliberately contributed to a movement ded-
icated to overcoming women's barriers in educational and professional pursuits in
the last third of the nineteenth century."
As a woman coming of age in the early nineteenth century, Somerville faced a
myriad of stereotypes concerning the female intellect and women's capacities to pur-
sue science. Some ofthese norms were social ones governing women's proper places
in family affairs and society, and others were more philosophical ones emphasizing
presumed differences in mental capacities between men and women.V Somerville
demonstrated her capacity to understand higher mathematics - and a branch that
only a handful of British men of science had themselves understood - and to make
it intelligible to others with the completion of her The Mechanism of the Heavens,
an English rendition of Pierre-Simon de Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, in 1831. Her
accomplishment contradicted gender stereotypes and prompted reviewers to com-
ment not only on the quality of the book but also on how a woman could have
accomplished the feat that went beyond translation to an exposition of difficult ideas.
The overriding conclusion was that Somerville possessed a special genius that was
RE-IMAG(lN )I NG WOMEN IN SCIENCE 115
the exception to a presumed rule that women generally lacked the intellectual
capacity - if not physical strength - to pursue mathematical and scientific study.
Applauding the publication of The Mechanism of the Heavens, in 1832 the
Fellows of the Royal Society commissioned Somerville's visage to be permanently
preserved in marble (Figure 6). Busts carved in stone, like large portraits , tended to
be commissioned by the aristocracy (owing to the cost), and also signified a kind of
canonization for this remarkable woman. Ironically in Somerville's case, although
she could not join the ranks of the Royal Society in flesh and blood, that marble copy
of her head would be permanently installed in the Society's hall. Her sculpture,
which presents her image primarily from the shoulders up, characterizes the very
aspect of her person that men of science most appreciated - her intellect - and min-
imizes the effect of admitting the image ofa woman within an all-male space.P
There is, however, a more compelling way in which the image of Somerville suits
the Royal Society. Whereas the Society maintained a long tradition of male
Figure 6. The marble bust, done by her friend and sculptor, Sir Francis Chantrey, idealized
Somerville 's special genius in the all-male Royal Society. This photograph was taken by
Donald Opitz at the Royal Society of London. © Copyright of the Royal Society of London.
membership engaged in scientific pursuits, feminine imagery entered the Society's

iconography in a "classical" way. As elsewhere in scientific imagery, for example,
the frontispieces of eighteenth century works of natural philosophy, a goddess of
wisdom would have a welcome place in the Society's scientific spaces." In physique
and projected wisdom, Chantrey's bust of Somerville approaches goddess-like qual-
ities. The work for which the Society commemorated her, The Mechanism of the
Heavens, dealt explicitly with lofty subjects - such as astronomy - befitting of a god-
dess. Whereas the classical goddess would often serve as muse to men of science,
Somerville symbolical1y assumed this role with respect to the Royal Society in the
carving of her bust. 35
With other alternatives available, including a lovely portrait of Somervil1e por-
traying her in flattering aristocratic form (Figure 7), another marble bust, one com-
missioned by her friend Francis Power Cobbe, is the frontispiece in Somerville's
Figure 7. At the age of fifty four, Mary Somerville showed calm self assurance in this
conventional portrait by Thomas Phillips. Permission of Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
Edinburgh.
RE-IMAG(l N )I NG WOMEN IN S C I E N C E 117
Personal Recollections/" Written between 1869 and 1872, the critical years of the
women 's movement in higher education, Somerville's self-testament acquires greater
significance in light of the timing of its publication shortly after the establishment of
the women's colleges at Cambridge and the publication of John Stuart Mill 's The
Subje ction ofWomen (1869) . Against the assumptions of pure mathematical genius ,
sacrificing everything feminine for the sake of masculine intellect and forsaking per-
sonal happiness, Somerville offered an alternative: that of a gentlewoman happily
performing the balancing act of her domestic , family, and social responsibilities - as
a woman - alongside her pursuit of science . Her daughter thus introduces Personal
Recollections as "the life of a woman entirely devoted to her family and to scientific
pursuits." In her own words near the end of the work, Somerville states with tranquil
certainty, "I have every reason to be thankful that my intellect is still unimpaired, and
although my strength is weakness .. . that I am perfectly happy.,,3?The image she con-
structs is a dual one : the proper gentlewoman with an undying thirst for intellectual
activity"
Mary Somerville negotiated polite Victorian society gracefully. At the same time,
she worked daily at the breakfast table and in her bed in later life, translat ing and
writing the books for which she received accolades from those who conducted their
scientific work in more singly dedicated spaces , especially more formal public insti-
tutions. Her surprising autonomy in the midst of family responsibilities took place
as she negotiated a persona that was simultaneously public in her publications and
yet framed always in domestic space.
AD A LOVE LA C E - M ATH EM ATI CI AN CAL C UL ATI NG BODY IMA G E
Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) offered a far less conventional image and yet conformed
to some of the norms of the Victorian culture that she shared with Mary Somerville.
This gifted mathematician, actually a student of Somerville and of Augustus De
Morgan, was brought up studying science with tutors provided by her mother, Anne
Isabelle Milbanke, Lady Byron, who hoped to constrain any family taint of the girl's
father's poetic tendencies with an education that stressed logic and rigor. Ada
Lovelace seems to have relished the mathematics but rejected the moralizing by
hoping to do "poetic science/''" Her mathematical interest led to her friendship and
collaboration with Charles Babbage, resulting in work that has made her name famil-
iar to our computer generation. Several relatively recent biographies and books
discuss her life and work, revealing a complicated and more contentious public
response to her social and scientific images." Biographers agree that her translation
of Louis Menebrea's memoir on the analytical engine from French into English dur-
ing 1842 and 1843 and her extens ive appended note s provided an important exposi-
tion and elaboration ofthe possibilitie s of this device." Her detailed correspondence
with Charle s Babbage on his calculating machine led to her own claim that she
would soon be "really something of an analyst." By her definition the term analyst
implied being a master of mathematics but also a thinker of sufficient knowledge and
mental power to dissect formal systems into their constituent parts .42
Ada Lovelace fully participated in the aristocratic social life of early Victorian
England, as her sophisticated portrait suggests (Figure 8). She was simultaneously an
118 SALLY GR EGORY KOHLST EDT AND DONA LD L . OPITZ
Figure 8. Ada Lovelace could be readily portrayed the aristocratic lady even as she pursued
her mathematical interests. © Queen's Printer and Controller of HMSO, 5/912001. UK
Government Art Collection.
intellectual who systematically sought out others who enjoyed science and mathe-
matics. As she grew older, like Cavendish, she developed a public image that was
defiantly independent and incurred sharp censure from those who disapproved of her
absences from her children, her gambling and reportedly promiscuous lifestyle, as
well as her unusual intellectual aspirations. A dramatic pose in Spanish dress near
the end of her life suggests a certain provocativeness and perhaps defiance as she
directly faces the observer (Figure 9).
R E -I M A G (I N ) I N G WOMEN I N SC IENCE 119
Figure 9. This engraving of Ada Lovelace shows the direct look of a quietly defiant figure.
Engraving by W.H. More after A.E. Chalon, The Countess ofLovelace, 1839. Permission of
the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Lovelace also played with the nineteenth century Victorian norms that projected
women's bodies as the sites of pathology as various normal processes (menstruation,
child birth, and menopause) became objects of intense medical attention and ther-
apy. While men also were perhap s unusually attentive to health issues in the nine-
teenth century, many ofthem were nonetheless long-lived; women's health was often
precarious and Ada Lovelace, who only lived to be thirty-seven years old, was not an
exception. Historian Alison Winters documents that Lovelace indeed suffered from
various maladies, and it would apparently be cancer that killed her at such an early
age. Lovelace was warned that her strenuous mathematic al activities would debili-
tate her physically and, in fact, Lovelace herself correlated her weak body with inten-
sive mathematical inquiry. But Lovelace also believed that "her body's complaints
enhanced her mathematical powers" and that her "intellect [would keep] her alive
and healthy.''''3 Lovelace thus turned the Victorian "calculus of suffering" to her own
purposes, understanding social conventions and intensifying those that had the
120 SALLY GR EGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L . OPITZ
capacity to free her time and concentrate her energies on her mathematical work.
Known for her independent-mindedness, she exercised it in formulating a self-image
and a controversial public image that enhanced her capacity to pursue projects of
interest to herself.
A GNES POCK ELS - SURFACE CH EMIS T AND "HAUSFRAU"
Somerville's private work and cautious public persona in an era of strong gender
identities was a pattern played out a generation later in the life of the German
chemist, Agnes Luise Wilhelmine Pockels (1862-1935) . Characteristically, Pockels
taught herself higher subjects in science , made her professional debut through the
intervention of a supportive male scient ist, and received belated accolades for her
abilities and her work. She shied away from professional opportunities, feeling a
deep sense of duty for the care of her parents as the only unmarried daughter.
After a decade of experimentation, Pockels decided to communicate her results on
the surface tensions and thicknesses of contaminated water surfaces in a letter to
British physicist John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh. In the letter, Pockels
described a trough apparatus she used to conduct her experiments, enabling her to
change the thickness of liquid layers floating on the water and to measure them .
Evelyn Strutt, Lady Rayleigh, translated the German letter into English before her
husband Lord Rayleigh negotiated publication of Pockels's results in Nature in 1891.
Pockels subsequently published in German journals as well. Her work gained suffi-
cient recognition that she received an honorary doctorate in 1932.44
Without question, the context of Pockels' scientific work in the private confines of
her home both shaped its nature and made her discoveries possible in the first place .
During a time when few alternatives were available and original research gradually
depended on the resources available at new academic or industrial laboratories,
Pockels preferred to pursue her scientific education and experiments at home . She
decided against enrolling at the univers ity, respecting her parents' wishes for her to
remain with them and manage the household. Later, when offered laboratory space
at Gottingen, she declined. Consequently, Pockels' professional image embraced
her domestic situation, and as a result her scientific work became mythologized in
domesticated imagery.
The epitome of the domestic image of Pockels appeared in an entry on her in ABC
Geschichte der Chemie. There she was identified by full name, followed by the des-
ignator: " H ausfrau/ 'P Indeed, the dutiful "housewife" (regardless of her marital sta-
tus) captures succinctly Pockels ' public image . Her sister-in-law Elisabeth Pockels,
in a biographical sketch, gave an origins story about Agnes Pockels's discoveries that
helped contribute to the popular myth: " It is an actual fact, and no joke or exagger-
ation, that the thing which millions of housewives view daily with disgust and has-
ten to dispose of - greasy dishwater - stimulated this girl to observations and finally
to scientific investigation . . . .,,46 The headline of an article highlighting Pockels in
Chemical and Engineering News in 1983 reads, "Surface scientist did much of work
in kitchen ." Another later historical sketch, also insists on a gendered interpretation
("Agnes Pockels - Indeed a Lady") and is accompanied by a banner cartoon por-
traying the presumed kitchen scene (Figure 10).47
RE-IMAG(IN)ING WOMEN I N S CI E NCE 121
Agnes Pocl{ets-
Indeed a Lady
Figure 10. Agnes Pockels carried the caricature of a domestic chemist during and beyond her
lifetime. This illustration is reprinted, with permission, from Eleanor S. Elder, "Agnes Pockels-
Indeed a Lady." Chemistry 47 (January I974) ;joumal afterwards titled SciQuest. Published in
1974 by the American Chemical Society.
Contrasting with these external images of her sink-bound work, Pockels' own
diary recorded, "1880 or 81: Discovered the anomalous behavior of the water sur-
face." Later she elaborated, "In 1881, I made the first observations on surface cur-
rents during the immersion of solids into a liquid and discovered the changes in
surface tension caused by the current by means of the detachment of small buttons
which had been suspended from a light wooden beam balance.T'" She did her work
with instruments that she carefully constructed. Rather than simply the kitchen sink,
it was the carefully designed trough that served as the precise site of her experiments.
Recognition of the complexity and originality of her work was nearly obscured by
the casual yet powerful image of her domestic setting.
Lord Rayleigh had perhaps greater clarity on the image of Pockels working at
home. He prefaced her landmark letter to Nature accordingly: "I shall be obliged if
you can find space for the accompanying translation of an interesting letter which
I have received from a German lady, who with very homely appliances has arrived
at valuable results respecting the behavior of contaminated water surfaces." Rayleigh
himself was a scientist who worked in the confines of a private setting - a laboratory
constructed at his country house in England. In experiments he often utilized simple
devices available at home, including buttons and biscuit tins. Often seen as one of
the last of the "sealing-wax and string" amateur men of science, this very character
of his research likely encouraged him to value the potential significance of the
home-based researches of his colleagues and, in 1891, those of Agnes Pockets."
Consistent with the public image ofPockels as dutiful "housewife," she apparently
saw herself in similar terms without complaint. Her diary records the interruption of
her scientific work during periods that she cared for her ailing parents, and as the
sacrificing daughter she put her parents' care above her own needs - even at times
when she was ill herself; she wrote, "Like a soldier, I stand firm at my post caring
12 2 SAL LY G REGO RY KO HLS TE DT AN D D ON A LD L. O P ITZ
Figure II. The formal photograph of a serious Agnes Pockels in 1882 was painted by her
aunt, Caroline Pockels. Permission of the Pressestelle of the Technischen Universitat
Braunschweig.
for my aged parents.T" Her formal portrait captures this soldier-like quality (Figure II).
She sits erect, her face nearly expre ssionl ess. Her selfpres entation - akin to Florence
Nightingale on site in the Crimean War - thus reinforces the public repre sentations
of Pockel s as the dutiful "housewife," and one very much in charge of her domain.
As in our other cases, even the mo st potent images vie with altern ative images in
the publi c eye. There is also another side to Pockels, that of the cultured woman with
a carefully prescribed upb ring ing including proper mann ers, solid education, and
valued social skills. Her sister-in-law, despite emphasizing the kitchen-sink orig ins
of Pockels's scientific work, also sketched her as a proper gentlewoman. Th is rela-
tive fondly remembered Agn es Pockels in later life: "S he had many acquaintances,
and two puzzle-solving socie ties met in her home,'? ' Choosing to be so private kept
RE -IMAG (I N )ING WOM E N IN S CIENC E 123
critics and skeptics at bay, but the decision to remain largely within the social norms
also precluded other opportunities. Publication of her original work was apparently
sufficient public recognition and provided genuine self-satisfaction for Pockels herself.
JANTINA TAMMES - G EN ETI CIST DE FINING HER OW N

" W EA K CONSTIT UTION"
By the late nineteenth century some women embraced the new opportumties
in higher education. A key player during the period of early genetics and the
re-discovery of Mendel 's laws, was a Dutch woman, Jantina "Tine" Tammes
(1871-1947), shown in Figure 12 with a group of fellow students .52 For the most
part, Tammes followed a career - not unusual for exceptional women of science at
the turn of the century - marked by a combination of personal perseverance, support
by a key male mentor, and overcoming barriers based on gender discrimination.
Tine Tammes achieved first-rate professional standing in the young field of genet-
ics owing to her original contributions on plant morphology and the application of
Mendel 's laws to continuous variations. By 1911 she received an honorary doctorate
for her work, and in 1919 she became the second female professor and first genetics
professor in the Netherlands. Yet, despite her achievements, throughout her career,
Tammes declined opportunities, officially for reasons of poor health and privately for
reasons involving her sense of duty to her parents. In this respect she was not unlike
Figure 12. Jantina Tammes, featured in the middle of the above photograph, enjoyed the com-
pany of female colleague students . University Museum Groningen.
124 SA LLY G REG O RY K OH LS T EDT AN D DO N A LD L. OPIT Z
other women of an earlier generation (such as Agnes Pockels) - both on the

Continent and in Great Britain.P While the evidence is fragment ary, an essay by Ida
Stamhuis reveals a self-image projected by Tammes, albeit privately, of a strong
woman deeply committed to her sense of extended family responsibility while pur-
suing, with originality, her love of science. Just what constitutes the frailty and
"weak constitution" that appear in private letters, public announc ements, visual
images, and Tammes ' own explanations for particular choices?
An early contributor to the image of fragility was Hugo de Vries, the botanist in
Amsterdam under whom Tammes performed work leading to her monograph .
De Vries stereotyped Tammes as a weak, dependent woman, whose character was
therefore at odds with the requirement in science for personal strength and independ-
ence. Shortly after her arrival, de Vries wrote to her advisor that "[s]he is still feeling
very lonely." His doubts about Tarnmes' personal strength prevented him from rec-
ommending her for a position in the Phytopathological Laboratory at Amsterdam. The
official opinion at the time was that "it was unthinkable that a woman could fulfil an
advisory task." For de Vries, this translated to terms of physical weakness: "[A] lady
cannot be required to inspect the fields in all weathers; I did it once when the weather
was inclement, and it is dreadful work ... ." Tammes herself contributed to the image.
While she was passed over for the position in Amsterdam, within a year she received
three other offers. Yet, she declined each, officially for reasons of health. The first was
a scholarship awarded by the Dutch Academy of Sciences to fund travel and research
for four months in the Botanical Garden ofBuitenzorg in the Dutch East Indies, while
the other two were research opportun ities in Wageningen and a position at the Deep-
Sea Research Station at Den Helder. Later in 1911, she failed to attend the Fourth
International Genetics Conference in Paris, again officially for reasons of health.
Among the attendees were genetics researchers whose works gained a high profile
and continue to overshadow Tammes' own contributions despite her clear contribu-
tions and, as Stamhuis argues, superior work.54
Biographers and historians when discussing Tammes reproduced these account s
of her character that are consistent with the public image of her "weak constitution ."
A commemoration on her seventieth birthday called her "A woman of excessive
modesty." In Stamhuis's account , Tammes "was a student who had little self-
confidence .... She was afraid to come to the fore, and therefore tried to behave as
inconspicuously as possible ." Conforming to this modest self-presentation, the his-
torical record on early genetics tends to pass entirely over Tammes' contributions,
even when her contemporaries recognized their significance . The image ofher "weak
constitution" has thus persisted, even in recent reevaluations of her work.55
The textual construction of Tammes' "weak constitution" is reinforced by visual
images of her body. Of a small stature, she was often towered over by her colleagues
and students. In one photograph of her in the Botanical Garden at Groningen, she
appears engulfed by plants in the foreground and nearly enveloped by an umbrella,
with a male student standing nearby and towering over her (Figure 13). This pose
beneath the umbrella - in broad daylight - further contributes to an image of her as a
delicate creature easily susceptible to the natural elements - much like de Vries' view
on the inappropriateness of expecting a lady to "inspect the fields in all weathers."
Tammes was indeed a small woman, measuring only 1.5m in height. Thus, the visual
and textual combine in constructing a powerful image ofTammes' apparent fragility"
RE-IMAG(IN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 125
Figure 13. Protected by an umbrella, Tammes inspects plants in the Botanical Garden of
Groningen. University Museum Groningen.
Yet, this image was far from unitary and did not go uncontested. Other images
ofTammes challenge if not contradict the image of her "weak constitution." Despite
her humble origins and occasional reluctance to pursue professional opportunities,
there are many other instances when she appeared to rise above the occasion . Her
original work - substantiated by the conferral of an honorary doctorate, recognition
in publication and citations, and election to the first chair of genetics in her country -
is the single most significant factor disproving any hint of intellectual dependence or
inadequacy. This physically small woman served as the feature of an entire number
of Genetica upon her seventieth-birthday - a Festschrift in her honor traditionally
reserved for the most noteworthy contributors to scientific fields. Included in the vol-
ume is a full-page photograph of her showing a very different Tine than the little
woman posing in the garden . Figure 14 is a professional photograph, cropped so that
only her shoulders and head appear in the picture, filling the frame. She is poised
and formal, wearing dark attire. Her hair is pulled back. These aspects minimize her
femininity while eliminating any traces of "weak constitution.v?
Figure 14. Photograph is from "Tine Tammes: 1871- 23 Juni - 1941:' Genetica 22 (1940-1941)
1-4. Permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
RE -IMAG(IN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 127
Thus, as in our other cases, we find the overlapping of a multiplicity of powerful

images, from a public image of "weak constitution," competing with yet another
public image of genuine originality and intellectual boldness, to a private, self-image
of a woman successfully balancing career and family responsibility. Tammes herself
argued that her key strengths were a "love of science" and a determination to pursue
science "in the direction indicated by my own inclination.t''" Her gendered public
image offered a kind of protection that allowed Tammes to pursue her work as a
strong individual in Amsterdam and with fewer distractions and more opportunities
for pursuing her own agenda.
MARI E CURIE - INDEPEND ENT AND EMINENT COLLABORATOR
Marya Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934) has probably the highest name recognition of
any woman scientist - nearly as familiar as Albert Einstein - but hers is nearly
always linked with that of her husband Pierre, and sometimes with her daughter
Irene.59 As Helena Pycior has pointed out, Marie was noted by contemporaries as an
"eminent collaborator" and this perception remained even though Pierre died in
1906, just over a decade after they married.r'' Viewed as helpmates, "better halves,"
and other kinds of partners, women scientists have often been conveniently identi-
fied as collaborators rather than independently and individually creative scientists.
Marie Curie, described by her daughter as a "thinker-doer," grew up in an aca-
demic home in Russian-dominated Warsaw''! Her parents encouraged her to take on
significant challenges and thus early taught her the satisfaction of solving problems.
By her own account, Marie Curie had been a shy child, and her fatigue in studies dur-
ing adolescence led her to take a year in the country after completing her schooling.
Nonetheless, she facilitated what she described as her ongoing "solitary studies"
by doing experiments in a municipal laboratory run by her cousin.62 In the 1880s,
women were gaining access to higher education and even graduate studies, and
Marie went to the Sorbonne where outstanding examinations increased her confi-
dence in her scientific abilities and where she met Pierre . Within two years after her
marriage, she started a doctorate in physics, pursuing the characteristic of radioac-
tivity (a term that she coined) in a number of elements and discovering radium in the
process . There are a number of professional photographs from this early period, sev-
eral of them with Marie Curie in a somewhat ornamental dress that was perhaps a
feminine counterpart to the formal attire of men in suits. Also revealing are the for-
mal and informal photographs more common in the twentieth century that show her
with Pierre or her children ; these could be images of them as they worked together
in the laboratory (Figure 15). She also spent considerable time with her growing
family after Pierre's death (Figure 16). The public, however, often viewed her decade
of collaboration in a conventional way, with the little woman behind the man liter-
ally and figuratively, as suggested by this illustration from Vanity Fair, published in
December of 1904 (Figure 17).
From the outset, Marie projected an image of complementarity in their interests
and abilities - describing Pierre as a "thinker-dreamer" as a kind of counterpart to
her characterization as a "thinker-doer." The distinction allowed her specific contri-
butions to be recognized, despite the fact that Pierre was several years older and
128 SALLY GREGORY KOHLST EDT AND DONALD L . OPIT Z
Figure 15. In their early years together, Marie and Pierre collaborated in the laboratory in
ways that were complementary. Permission of ACJC - Archives Curie and Joliot-Curie.
more well-established in terms of his scientific reputation.P She wrote and talked
about the ways in which he relished escape from distractions while she could read-
ily accomplish several tasks at once at home and in the laboratory. She delighted in
her collaborative relationship with Pierre , but, while he typically published in con-
junction with others, by her third paper, Marie Curie was the sole author and that
visible achievement provided her with an independent record of scientific results .t"
Curie was a private, even shy person, but understood the importance of her public
image in relationship to her research and the public causes she undertook. Moreover,
an ongoing commentary about her fragility helped, in a curious way, to heighten the
heroic achievements of Curie, as did the health hazards of her subsequent work.
Recognition came from her accomplishments but also through her willingness to
have a limited public persona, despite this desire for privacy. She willingly con-
tributed both her expertise and her name recognition to the effort to encourage
radioactive methods for treatment of the wounded in World War I. Perhaps the most
challenging public engagement was her several months tour of the United States,
which highlighted women's capacity in science and was rewarded by a precious gram
of radium for Curie to continue her research (Figure 18).
RE-IMAG(IN)ING WOM EN IN SCIENCE 129
Figure 16. After Pierre's death, Marie Curie found time to take care of her two children as
well as carry on her professional responsibilities. Permission of ACJC - Archives Curie and
Joliot-Curie.
Health concerns recur in Curie's letters, as in the writings of Lovelace . Her fam-
ily suffered losses from tuberculosis, she had two difficult pregnancies, and radium
was indeed a health hazard. The record is also clear that Curie, especially in her early
years, performed truly heavy labor in the laboratory, wrote her bicycle regularly, and
enjoyed hiking. Her own intermittent ill health and family commitments seem rarely
to have limited her work but they did provide excuses for her to decline other kinds
of obligations. She chose her tasks to conform to personal preferences, and thus she
continued to teach at a women's college because she enjoyed the company of these
students and occasionally recruited a few to assist her in her laboratory (Figure 19).
Thus Marie Curie, too, was self-conscious and protective, presenting a public image
that was at once multi-dimensioned but private.65 Her image as an eminent collabora-
tor and concerned mother responded in part to public preferences, even as she pro-
jected more austere images of herself at work and also distanced herself as a
distinctively private person . Marie Curie concentrated her life in her science and simul-
taneously developed a public persona that revealed appropriately gendered elements of
her personal life as a protective wife, caring mother, and community contributor. These
were social norms that suited her, even as she projected them to a curious public.
Figure 17. Public representations of Pierre and Marie Curie often portrayed the latter as a
demure and deferential helpmeet. Vanity Fair (December 22, 1904).
CO NCL USIONS
What we have shown are representations of individual women in science that affirm
the connections between their intellectual work and the social and intellectual sur-
roundings that rarely ignored (or allowed them to ignore) their gender. The self-
representations of these women in science often underscore their individuality even
RE-IMAG(IN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENC E 131
Figure 18. On her visit to the United States, Marie Curie met with President Warren
G. Harding at the White House but was not invited to join the National Academy of Sciences.
Permission of ACJC - Archives Curie and Joliot-Curie.
132 SALLY GR E GORY KOHLSTEDT AND DO N ALD L. OPITZ
Figure 19. Despite significant other obligations, Marie Curie continued to teach at a normal
school for the preparation of teachers, where she enjoyed the contact with the serviennes
and recruited a few to work in her laboratory. Permission of ACJC - Archives Curie and
Joliot-Curie.
as they consciously engaged in activities that would connect them both to other
scholars and to significant and sustaining private lives. They did not "escape" gen-
der norms, but their lives involved negotiating ways to reframe those norms by sub-
tle and sometimes dramatic conformities and nonconformities. Their lives and work
demonstrated choices and decisions. Each of our subjects - Cavendish, Merian,
Somerville, Lovelace, Pockels, Tammes, and Curie - could project body images
relating to sexuality or health that were reinforced by the assumptions or reactions
of their peers. Cavendish and Lovelace took delight in a certain unconventionality.
Somerville and Pockels projected conventional images and found in their homes a
productive work space for writing and research. For much of her life Merian worked
in the context of family but often while on the move and including a dramatic trip
to Surinam, while Tammes relinquished travel opportunities to conduct genetics
research close to home. Despite quite different circumstances, some clearly
constraining, each woman found her intellectual work rewarding and profitable in
ways that were self-satisfying.
The examples for this paper indicate the diversity of images in which women
presented themselves in often unpredictable combinations that ranged from being
highly private, domestic, and physically weak to being defiantly public, socially
unconventional, and intellectually strong. What seldom wavered, however, for these
women remembered by history is that they were deeply committed to their work.
Gender was a social norm that could be both an imposition of external authority and a
mask used to create personal space for a woman to do things in her own way.66 Not sur-
prisingly, these women used gendered imagery, whether in visual images of their
persons captured in portraits, as well as in occasional self-descriptions that sometimes
conformed to social expectations and sometimes defied them. Undoubtedly the deci-
sions about portrait images, negotiated between sitter and artist, were bounded by social
and artistic conventions that changed over time, but we nonetheless attribute some
personal choice to the women scientists who are portrayed here. The portraits were to
be read by contemporaries whose views ofthe woman scientist were malleable and per-
haps influenced by each body image and its framework. In this paper we juxtaposed
portraits that might de-emphasize womanly attributes but also those that might do just
the reverse, namely emphasize the proper woman despite her practice of science.
The explanations for each portrayal are caught up in women's individual circumstances,
where the escape from an unhappy marriage might require travel and religious conver-
sion or the responsibilities ofa single daughter included the social responsibility of car-
ing for aging parents while creating personal space to pursue her intellectual interests.
Despite conventions, the women whose lives are recounted here actively pursued
science (and indeed their lives) often very consciously accommodating or escaping
various expectations . That their actions were deliberately tactful (and occasionally not)
makes it clear that they were aware of gender norms framed by a scientific culture of
maleness and a patriarchal society even as they shaped their own scientific aspirations.
Moreover, they could play on the ambiguity of gender norms to position themselves to
do their work in their homes and with their families. This point is undoubtedly true for
men pursuing science as well, although the assumption persists that men unilaterally
enjoyed unparalleled freedom from constraints in their pursuit of science."
When Margaret Cavendish claimed herself as philosopher of science several cen-
turies ago she projected the image of a lone individual, with opportunities largely
enhanced by family connections. Cavendish moved introspectively into her own
mental space, especially in her "inventive, wildly improbable, and self-referential
narrative " of The Blazing World.68 Successful women in science continue to encom-
pass the paradox, providing images of directed attention and of intelligence that
simultaneously appropriate social images of spaces and responsibilities assigned by
gender norms. Now, as in earlier periods women - and men - navigate these norms
as active agents in the making of their private and public identities.
NOT ES
The autho rs wish to thank friend s and colleagues who at variou s points offered comment s on oral or
written presentations of this work in progress , including Margot Iverson , Mark Jorgensen, and Mary
Thomas of the University of Minnesota, Bernard Lightman and Anne Shteir of York University, and the
editors of this volume .
2 Discussions of what it mean s to see, be seen, and represent are important but beyond the direct scope
of our investigation . For important early and recent approaches, see Michel Foucault , The Order of
Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage , 1973 [1966]) ; John Berger , Ways
of Seeing (London: Briti sh Broad casting System with Penguin Books, 1972); and E.H. Gombrich, Uses
ofImages: Studies in the Social Function ofArt and Visual Communication (London: Phaidon, 1999).
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology. and the Scientific Revolution (San
Francisco : Harper Collins, 1990 (1980)) ; Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Womenin the Origins
ofModern Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Marcelle C. LaFollette, "Eyes on the
Stars: Images ofWomen Scientists in Popular Magazines," Science, Technology & Human Values 13 (1988)
262-275; LaFollette, Making Science our Own: Images of Science, 1910-1955 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990). An analysis of the public image of Barbara McClintock sustains the argument that
women scientists who seemed not to conform to feminine norms were viewed as different , and sometimes
extremely so; see Jessica Nash, "Freak of Nature : Images of Barbara Mcf.lintock,' Studies in the History
and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 30 (1999) 21-43. Numerous other studies have
demonstrated that the typical scientists as viewed by current students are "mostly male ;" see the discussion
in Londa Schiebinger Has Feminism Changed Science? (Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1999)
72-80. The themes of struggle are also common in the essays in Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (ed.), History of
Women in the Sciences: Readings from ISIS (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
4 Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) and Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press , 1995). For some discussion of recent scholarship, see
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (ed.), "Introduction," History of Women in the Sciences 1-9. Biographical dic-
tionaries of women in science provide an overview of accomplishments as, for example, Marilyn Bailey
Ogilvie, Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988);
Mary R. S. Creese, Ladies in the Laboratory ? American and British Women in Science , 1800-1900: A
Survey oftheir Contributions to Research (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998); Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie
and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science : Pioneering Lives from
Ancient Times to the Mid-20th Century, 2 volumes (New York: Routledge, 2000) ; Catherine M. C. Haines
with Helen Stevens, International Women in Science : A Biographical Dictionary to 1950 (Oxford: ABC-
CLIO, 2001) .
5 Margaret W. Rossiter, "The [Matthew] Mathilda Effect in Science," Social Studies of Science 22
(1993) 325-341.
6 s
For some overview of these genres, see Carolyn B. Heilbrun, Writing Women Lives (New York:
Ballantine, 1988); and also Michael Shortland and Richard Yeo (eds), Telling Lives in Science : Essays on
Scientific Biography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
7 On the negotiation between artist and patron, see Nancy Wisely and Gary Allen Fine, "'Making
Faces:' Portraiture as a Negotiated Worker-Client Relationship," Work and Occupations 24 (May, 1997)
164-187. This theme is found in Barbara Maria Stafford, "An Image of One's Own: Design Discipline vs.
Visual Studies," Design Issues II (Spring, 1995) 66-70. Much ofthe work by art historians on gender has
emphasized the prevalent male gaze that positions women by prescriptive norms and images. See, for
example, Gill Perry (ed.), Gender and Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) and the discussion
of the male gaze found throughout Griselda Pollock (ed.), Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism,
and Histories ofArt (London: Routledge, 1988).
8 An application of this way of thinking about women naturalists in late nineteenth century Britain is
found in Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Revealing New Worlds: Three Women Victorian Naturalists (New
York: Routledge, 200 I). Sheffield explores in detail just how these women negotiated their pursuits in the
natural sciences and their self-representations while doing so.
9 See, for example, the work of Sharon Traweek, Beamtimes and Lifetimes : The World ofHigh Energy
Physicists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Among other things, Traweek documents the
way in which self-assurance, even haughty superiority, is a demeanor assumed by many male physicists .
A particularly good discussion of the relationship between mathematics and athleticism is found in
Andrew Warwick's "Exercising the Student Body : Mathematics and Athleticism in Victorian Cambridge,"
in Christopher Lawrence and Steven Shapin (eds), Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments ofNatural
Knowledge, (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998). Among other specific overlaps in activities,
Warwick also points to the use of interchangeable vocabulary such as exercises and training as well as the
competitive scoring implied by the Wrangler-making process . Male images alone are discussed in the
largely negative portrayals of scientists in literature found in Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to
Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994).
10 Stephen Shapin, "The Philosopher and the Chicken: On the Dietetics of Disembodied Knowledge," in
Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments of Natural Knowledge 21-50; Ludmilla Jordanova, Sexual
Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries
(Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1989), especially "Natural Facts: An Historical Perspective on Science
and Sexuality," 19-42; Ludmilla Jordanova, Nature Displayed: Gender, Science, and Medicine, 1760-1820
(London : Longman, 1999), especially "Feminine Figures: Nature Display'd," 21-47. The verdict on
women's intellectual abilities was by no means uniform. See Lieselotte Steinbrygge, The Moral Sex:
Woman" Nature in the French Enlightenment, translated by Pamela E. Selwyn (New York: Oxford, 1995).
II Merchant, Death ofNature, passim .
12 Ludmilla Jordanova, in Defining Features: Scientific and Medical Portraits, 1660-2000 (London :
National Portrait Gallery, 2000), emphasized that portraits typically serve as an effective tool for creating
public faces for people and institutions to assert their significance.
13 Margaret Lucas married William Cavendish, who later became the Duke of Newcastle; she routinely
signed her own name Margaret Newcastle - but common usage has us calling her Margaret Cavendish.
14 Sarah Hutton, "Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish, and Seventeenth-Century Thought," in Lynette
Hunter and Sarah Hutton (eds), Women, Science , and Medicine, 1500-1700 (Phoenix Mill: Sutton
Publishing Ltd, 1997) 218-234.
15 The cherub was a standard Baroque convention, an iconography discussed in Steven Shapin and
Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Lift (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1985), especially 334-335.
16 Her independent attitude seemed to grow stronger with age and in her more imaginative works, often
autobiographical, some of which have been edited for modem readers in Kate Lilley (ed.), Margaret
Cavendish , Duchess ofNewcastle: The Description ofa New World Called the Blazing Worldand Other
Writings (London: William Pickering, 1992). Other autobiographical work is in the imaginative conver-
sations on domestic relations found in James Fitzmaurice (ed.), Margaret Cavendish : Sociable Leiters
(New York: Garland, 1997), and her short autobiography "Margaret Cavendish," reprinted in Elspeth
Graham et al. (eds), Her Own Life: Autobiographical Writings by Seventeenth-Century Englishwomen
(London: Routledge, 1989) 87-100. Also see Sara Heller Mendelson , The Mental WorldofStuart Women
(Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1987) 12--{j1.
17 Carolyn Merchant interprets Margaret Cavendish as an independent and often contrarian natural
philosopher in The Death ofNature 270-272, and Londa Schiebinger discusses Cavendish's challenges to
the conventions that bound intellectual women of the period in The Mind Has No Sex? 51-53. Several
biographies, reprinted editions of books by Cavendish with introductory materials, and dissertations dis-
cuss her multifaceted scholarly and more popular books with particular attention to the ways in which
Cavendish defied some contemporary presumptions in her own independent interpretations . See, for
example, Anna Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind (Lexington : University of
Kentucky Press, 1998).
18 James Fitzmaurice indicates the choice Cavendish often exercised to include or exclude frontispieces
to her works in " Front Matter and the Physical Make-up of Natures Pictures," Women" Writing 4 (1997)
353-367. Art historian Linda Nochlin in Representing Women (London : Thames and Hudson , 1999) offers
a useful discussion of the "space of femininity" of American artist Mary Cassatt. Nochlin argues that by
appropriating maternal and domestic images but purposefully eliminating the sentimentality attached to
them, Cassatt created a more direct gaze between viewer and viewed. The presentations also established
a domain for individual women that typically demonstrated each with a very orderly "material mind"
managing her space.
19 Quoted in Battigelli , Margaret Cavendish 5. Cavendish wrote of her dress, "[By] reason I took great
delight in attiring, fine dressing and fashions , especially such fashions as I did invent myself, not taking
that pleasure in such fashions as was invented by others ." Margaret Cavendish, A True Relation of the
Birth, Wedding and Lift ofMargaret Cavendish, Duchess ofNewcastle, edited by Edgerton Bryges (Kent:
Johnson and Warwick, 1814) 31.
20 Clare College, Cambridge University, for example, hosts the Margaret Cavendish Society.
21 Women's travel is becoming an important category of historical research . Then and now women sci-
entific travelers need to be sufficiently within social conventions to move safely and gain access to spon-
sors while they simultaneously project their capacity to travel, often independently, for their work. For
136 SALLY GREGORY KOHLST EDT AND DONALD L . OP ITZ
examples and a bibliography see the University of Minnesota 's Internet site "Women's Travel Writing,
1830-1930" at http://etrc.lib .urnn.edulwomtrav.htm.
22 Greta Peterson kindly shared with Sally Gregor y Kohlstedt some of the materials that she used for her
undergraduate thesis at the University of Minnesota in April 2000 and also talked with her at length about
Merian. For recent accounts , see Florence F. J. M. Pieters, "Maria Sibylla Merian, Naturalist and Artist:
A Commemoration on the Occasion of the 350th Anniversary of her Birth," Archives of Natural History
26 (1999) 1-18; Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, "Metamorphoses of Perspective: 'Merian ' as a Subject of
Feminist Discourse ," in Kurt Wettengl (ed.), Maria Sibylla Merian (1646-1717): Artist and Naturalist.
translated from the German by John S. Southard (Ostfildern : Ger Hatje, 1998) 202-219; Sharon Valiant,
" Maria Sibylla Merian : Recovering an Eighteenth-Century Legend," Eighteenth-Century Studies 26
(1993) 467--479. Merian is also a primary subject in Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins : Three
Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge : Harvard University, 1995).
23 John Michael Montias, "Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam : An Analysis of Subject
and Attributions," in David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (eds), Art in History. History in Art : Studies in
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture (Santa Monica : Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities ,
1991) especially 383-387. S. Peter Dance In The Art of Natural History (New York: Arch Cape Press,
1978) uses a Merian print for his cover and argues that her volume on Surinam was "easily the most
magnificent work on insects so far produced " (50).
24 Quoted in Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex ? 70; from Maria Sibylla Merian, Metamorph osis
insectorum Surinam ensium (1705), edited by Helmut Decker (Leipzig, 1975) 36.
25 Metamorphosis insectorum Surinam ensium . Over de voortteeling en wonderba erlyke veranderingen
der Surinaamsche insecten (Amsterdam, 1719). Also see a more recent Catalogue of an Exhibition held at
the Historisches Museum Frankfurt am Main in Kurt Wettengl (ed.), Maria Sibylla Merian , i647-1717:
Artist and Naturalist, translated from the German by John S. Southard (Ostfildern: G Hatjej, 1998).
26 Paola Tinagli, Women in Italian Renaissan ce Arts: Gender, Representation. identity (Manchester:
Manchester University, 1997) outlines the themes of the earlier period, with attention to saints, nudes , and
idealized, even conventionalized portrait s that would yield to a new genre. Another useful overview is
provided by Gill Perry (ed.), Gender and Art. We thank Nancy Wisely for bringing these books to our
attention.
27 Barbara Stafford, Looking Good: Essays on the Virtues of Images (Cambridg e: MIT Press, 1997)
97-98.
28 Two important books of essays deal with domestic partnerships and lives: Pnina Abir-Am and Dorinda
Outram (eds), Uneasy Careers and intimate Lives: Women in Science. 1789-1979 (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1987), and Helena M. Pycior, Nancy G. Slack and Pnina G. Abir-Am (eds),
Creative Couples in the Sciences (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994).
29 Obituary Notice , The Morning Post (London: 2 December 1872). Kathryn A. Neeley 's recent biogra-
phy, Mary Somerville: Science. Illumination, and the Female Mind (Cambridge : Cambridge University
Press, 200 I) points out that this "idealized public image" posed a complicated problem for those who also
knew a woman of rather simple and ordinary style; see esp. 169-198.
30 Mary Somerville , Personal Recolle ctions from Early Life to Old Age of Mary Somerville, edited by
Martha C. Somerville (London : John Murray, 1873) I. On Somerville see also Elizabeth Chambers
Patterson, Mary Somerville and the Cultivation ofScience, 1814-1840 (Boston : Marinu s Nijhoff, 1983).
3I Paula Gould discusses Somerville as role model in her thesis, "Femininity and Physical Science in
Britain, 1870-1914" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1998) 184-187, 189-191.
32 For some discussion of the gender polarities presumed to be natural in the period, see Ludmilla
Jordanova, Nature Displayed.
33 The bust is located at the entrance of the Royal Society Library. The sculptor was the well-known Sir
Francis Chantrey, also a friend of Somerville. See A.J. Raymond, Life and Work of Sir Francis Chantrey
(London : A. & F. Denny, 1904); S. Dunkerley, Francis Chantrey. Sculptor : From Norton to Knighthood
(Sheffield: The Hallamshire Press, 1995).
34 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the AIr-Pump 32-35; Londa Schiebinger, "Female
Icons: The Face of Early Modem Science," Critica/lnquiry 14 (1988) 661--{j69; Schiebinger, The Mind
Has No Sex ? 119-159. Compare the bust of Sophie Germain (1776--1831), French mathematician in Teri
Perl, Math Equals : Biographies of Women Mathematicians (Menlo Park: Addison-Wesley, 1978) 62.
35 Another way in which Somerville becomes a muse of sorts is suggested in reviews of her second trea-
tise, On the Connexion of the Physical Scienc es. Very favorably received, this work prompted William
Whewell to argue for the need of bringing a splintering science together, with one recommendation being
the adoption of a new professional label, scientist. For discussion of this influence, see Robert K. Merton,
" DeGendering ' Man of Science: ' The Genesis and Epicene Character of the Word Scientist," and Gerald
Holton, "On Robert Merton, Mary Somerville and the Moral Authority of Science," in Kai Erikson (ed.),
Sociological Visions (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997). Compare Alison Winter, "A Calculus of
Suffering: Ada Lovelace and the Bodily Constraints on Women 's Knowledge in Early Victorian England,"
in Science Incarnat e 202-239.
36 The bust was presented by Somerville's friend, Francis Power Cobbe, to Girton College. The choice
for the frontispiece of Somerville's memoir further adds to the feminist meaning, as Cobbe was a well-
known advocate for women 's professional pursuits. Kate Perry, Girton College Archivist, kindly showed
the bust and Somerville's library to Donald Opitz.
37 Somerville, Personal Recolle ctions I and 374 .
38 The astronomer Maria Mitchell visited Somerville and remarked, " I could but admire Mrs . Somerville
as a woman. The ascent of the steep and rugged path of scienc e had not unfitted her for the drawing-room
circle; the hours of devotion to close study have not been incompatible with the duties ofwife and mother;
the mind that has turned to rigid demonstration has not thereby lost its faith in those truths which figures
will not prove." Quoted in Phoebe Mitchell Kendall , Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals (Boston :
Lee and Shepard, 1986) 653 .
39 Myra Stark, "The Princess of Parallelograms, or the Ca se of Lady Byron," Keats-Shelley Journal 3 I
(1982) 118-137.
40 The biog raphy by Dorothy Stein, Ada: A Life and Legacy (Cambridge: MIT Pre ss, 1984) was written
as a corrective to earlier exaggerated claims for the woman who some had claimed had invented the com -
puter, and its me ssage seems rather to suggest the problems and limitations of Ada Lovelace. A more
recent book by Betty Alexandra Toole , Ada : the Enchantress of Numb ers (M arin County, CA ., Strawberry
Pre ss, 1992) reproduces letters and offers a more sympathetic view. Also useful are Doris Langley Moore,
Ada: Countess of Lovelace (London: John Mur ray, 1977) ; and Benjamin Wooley, The Bride ofScience :
Romance, Reason , and Byron s Daughter (Ba singstoke: Macmillan, 1999) .
41 Joan Baum, The Calculating Passion ofAda Bryon (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1986) .
42 Winter, "A Calculus of Suffering," 227 and 203 .
43 Winter, "A Calculus of Suffering," 203 and 220 .
44 Sketches of the life and work of Agnes Pockels include Woo Ostwald, "Die Arbeiten von Agnes
Pockels tiber Grenzschichen und Filme," Kolloid-Zeitschrift53 (1932) 1-8; C.H . Giles and S.D. Forrester,
"The Origins of the Surface Film Balance: Studies in the Early History of Surface Chemistry, Part 3,"
Chemist ry and Industry (9 January 1971) 43-53 ; Eleanor S. Elder, "Agnes Pockels - Indeed a Lady,"
Chemistry 47 (19 74) 10-12; Gabriele Beisswanger, "Das Portrait: Agnes Pockels (1862-1935) und die
Oberflachenchemie,' Chemie in Unserer Zeit 25 (1991) 97-102; M . Elizabeth Der rick , "Agnes Pockels
(1862-1935)," in Louis S. Grinstein, Rose K. Rose and Miriam H. Rafailovich (eds) , Women in Chemistry
and Physics: A Biobibliographical Sourcebook (Westport: Greenwood Press , 1993) . Donald L. Opitz has
demonstrated that Evelyn, Lady Rayleigh, was herself skilled in science in "Science and Separate Spheres
in the Lives of the Balfour Family Circle, 1865-1897," a paper pre sented at the Conference-Workshop
of the Women 's Commission of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science,
Cambridge, 10-12 September 1999 .
45 Siegfried Engels and Rudiger Stolz, AB C Geschichte der Chemie (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag flir
Grundstoffindustrie, 1989) ; Beisswanger, " Das Portrait," 102 .
46 Quoted in Elder, "Agnes Pockels," 11, translated from Elisabeth Pockels, "Ein gelehrtes
Ge schwisterpaar Zur Erinnerung an Agnes Poekels (1862-1935)," Bericht der Oberhessischen
Gesellschaji fiir Natur und Heilkunde zu Gei}Jen, Naturwissenschaftliche Abteilung 24 (1949) 303-307,
on 304 .
47 K.M . Reese, "Surface Scientist Did Much of Work in Kitchen," Chemical and Engineering News 61
(1983) 48 ; Joan Dash, A Life ofOnes Own: Three Gifted Women and the Men They Married (New York:
Harper and Row, 1954) 249 . The quotation is from Elder, "Agnes Pockels," 10.
48 Quoted in Giles and Forrester, "The Origins," 4 7. The authors see her discovery within a tradition of
scientific discovery involving the kitchen sink, a place "peculiarly able to produce ideas " ; ibid. 48 .
49 Pockels, "Surface Tension," Nature 43 (1891) 437--439. The entire letter, with Rayleigh's preface, is
available on-line at http://www.physic s.ucla.edu/-cwp/articles/pockeIslpockeIs.html. While most authors
acknowledge Rayleigh 's generous and honorable character, none give a role to the affinity between his and
Pockel s's styles of research ; see John N. Howard, "Principal Contributions of John William Strutt, Third
Baron Rayleigh ; ' Rutherford Aris, H.T. Davis and Roger H. Stuewer (eds), Springs of Scientific
Creativity: Essays on the Founders of Modern Science (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1983). The argument is extended in "Male Mentoring, Women 's Work, and Gender Ideology in Victorian
Physics: The Careers of Agnes Pockels , Eleanor Sidgwick, and Hertha Ayrton,' a paper presented by
Donald L. Opit z at the Women and Science, Technolog y, and Medicin e Conference, St. Louis University,
12-15 October 2000 .
50 Giles and Forrester, "The Origins," 50.
5 1 Quoted in Giles and Forrester, "The Origins," 50.
52 Our discussion ofTammes is heavily dep endent on Ida H. Stamhuis, "A Female Contribution to Early
Genetic s: Tine Tammes and Mendel 's Laws for Continuous Characters," Journal of the History ofBiology
28 (1995) 495-531 ; and I.E. de Wilde , ' Jantina Tammes (1871 -1947): Nederlands eerste hoogleraar in de
erfelijkheidsleer,' in G.A. van Gernert, J. Schuller tot Peursum-Meijer and A.J. Vanderjagt (eds), Om niet
aan onwetendheid en barbarij te bezwijken , Groningse geleerden 16I 4- I 989 (Hilversum: Verioren , 1989)
187-206.
53 Tamme s published a monograph leading to her honorary doctorate: Tine Tammes , Die Periodicuiit
Morphologtscher Erscheinungen bei den Pflanzen. Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van
Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Second Section, vol. 9, no. 5 (1903). Both Somerville and Pockel s felt a
strong commitment to pursuing their scientific work without sacrificing their responsibilities to their fam -
ilies . Thi s " sense of duty" is discussed in Martha Vicinus , Independent Women: Work and Community
for Single Women, 1850-1920 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1985); and in Janet Oppenheim,
"A Mother's Role and a Daughter's Duty: Lady Blanche Balfour, Eleanor Sidgwick, and Feminist
Perspectives," Journal ofBritish Studies 34 (April 1995) 196-232.
54 Stamhuis, "A Female Contribution," 502-503 , 507, 528. As Stamhuis suggests, the 1911 international
conference seems pivotal in the fate of Tammes ' recognition .
55 W. Wijnaendts Francken-Dyserinck, "Prof. Dr. Tine Tammes Zeventig Jaar : Een Vrouw van
Overm atige Bescheidenheid," Nieuwe Rotterdams che Courant, June 22, 1941; Stamhuis, "A Female
Contribution," 507.
56 Ida Stamhuis kindly shared information on Tammes's height as wcll as the photograph in the
botanical garden .
57 "Tine Tammes : 1871 - 23 Juni - 1941," Genetica 22 (1940--41) 1--4. Schiebinger indicates the impact
of masculine professional stand ards on women's style of dress In Has Feminism Changed Science? 77-78.
58 Quoted in Stamhuis, "A Female Contribution," 531 .
59 More analytical accounts of Curie 's life attendant to the complexities of both the personal and profes-
sional dimensions include Susan QUinn's Marie Curie: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995); Helena
Pycior, "Marie Curie 's 'Anti-natural Path' : Time Only for Science and Family;' in Pnina G. Abir-Am and
Dorinda Outram (eds), Uneasy Careers and intimate Lives 39-56; Margaret Rossiter, Women Scientists in
America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940129-130. By Curie 's own reckoning, she had time only for "sci-
ence and family" but the Curie household was also social and accessible to scientific colleagues . Women of
science in the twentieth century knew of their prede cessors and might find supportive eolleague s in many
places . Yet the life of Marie Curie did not deviate so far from some of the patterns we have seen - the curios-
ity factor of the public with its attendant mythologies and sanctions required a self-conscious positioning .
Margaret Rossiter in fact has pointed to the limits of the " Madame Curie strategy" of adopting a less con-
frontational position of over qualification and personal stoicism and even acceptance of job inequality in
order to stay with the scientific work in WomenScientists in America: Struggles and Strategies 122-128.
60 Thoughtful discussions of the collaboration are found In Helena M. Pycior, "Pierre Curie and 'His
Eminent Collaborator Mme . Curie ' : Complementary Partners," in Creative Couples in the Sciences
39-56; and her "Reaping the Benefits of Collaboration While Avoiding Its Pitfalls: Mane Curie 's Rise to
Scientific Prominence; ' Social Studies ofScience 23 (1993) 301-323 . Curie has been interpreted in every
medium, including film; see Alberto Elena "Skirts in the Lab : 'Madame Curie ' and the Image of the
Woman Scientist in the Feature Film," in Public Understanding of Science 6 (1997) 269-278.
61 The most recent account of Marie Curie is Susan Quinn , Marie Curie, a Life and another less
well documented account is Rosalynd Pflaum, Grand Obsession: Marie Curie and Her World
(New York: Doubleday, 1989). Very useful is Marie Curie's biography of her husband, Pierre Curie,
translated by Charlotte and Vernon Kellogg (New York: Macmillan, 1932 [1930]) and their daughter Eve
RE -IMAG(lN)ING WOMEN IN SCIENCE 139
Curie's Madame Curie: A Biography (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1938). Mary Thomas kindly shared
her unpublished seminar paper, " ' Our Lady of Radium :' The Creation of Marie Curie's Image by the
American Popular Press," (University of Minnesota, 1996).
62 Helen Ferris (ed.), When I Was a Girl: The Stories oj Five Famous Women as Told by Themselve s
(New York: Macmillan Co., 1930) 143-161.
63 The designation "dreamer" was common in Marie Curie , Pierre Curie 33, passim.
64 Pflaum, Grand Obsession 81. Marie Curie also pursued independent research on magnets, as dis-
cussed by Graeme Gooday, "Irony and Magnetism: Marie Skodowska Curie and the Technologies of
Permanence," paper presented at the History and Philosophy of Science Department Seminar, University
of Cambridge, March 2001.
65 Ludmilla Jordanova, Defining Features 126. Jordanova points out that an austere appearance was a
significant part of the image stressed by Cune and her biographers and relates to qualities of self-disci-
pline and self-sacrifice for the cause of science .
66 See Marina Benjamin, "Elbow Room: Women Writers on Science , 1790-1840," in Science and
Sensibility: Gender and Scientific Inquiry, 1780-1945 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1991) 51-52.
67 For accounts that specificall y challenge this assumption by pointing to the roles of race and class , see
Kenneth Manning, Black Apollo : The Life ojErnest Everett Just (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1983);
Anne Secord, "Corresponding Interests : Artisans and Gentlemen in Ninete enth-Century Natural History,"
British Journal Jar the History ojSCIence 27 (1994) 383-408.
68 Battigelli , Margaret Cavendish and EXIles oJthe Mind 104.
DAVID CHRIST1AN
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF "BIG HISTORY"
I N TR OD UCTIO N
"Big History" tries to view the past on the largest possible scales. This paper argues
that the wide-angle vision of "Big History" suggests some interesting perspectives
on the nature of modern science. First, it suggests that modern science is more than
a bag of technological tricks. Within the modern scientific disciplines there lurks a
modern creation myth, a general account of origins that can help us better understand
our place in time and space. Second, the broad perspective encourages us to see what
the modern sciences share with many different kinds of "knowledge systems".
Knowledge systems consist of modifiable "maps of reality" that allow organisms to
adapt during their lifetime, rather than at the slower pace of genetic change. Human
knowledge systems are unique because language allows humans to construct their
maps of reality collectively. So human knowledge, unlike that of all other organisms,
can accumulate from generation to generation. That is why human knowledge sys-
tems have changed so greatly in the course of human history.
The earliest human knowledge systems were based on careful empirical testing.
What distinguishes them from modern scientific thought is not the absence of test-
ing, but the intertwining of social and referential knowledge and the small scale on
which they were tested. Many features of modern science, including its avoidance
of ethical and social assertions, and its astonishing manipulative power, reflect
the increasing breadth and intensity of human interaction networks. Increasing
exchanges of information subjected knowledge to more stringent truth-tests and
forced it to detach itself from the particular knowledge of local communities . As a
result, the modern knowledge systems we describe as "Science " became more gen-
eral in their application and more powerful.
However, as scientific thinking embeds itself deeper in popular thinking, it will be
harder to maintain the separation between description and pre-scription that many
see as one of its most distinctive features. The more authoritative science becomes
as a description of reality, the harder it will be to pose ethical questions outside the
scientific framework of knowledge, and the more people will have to seek ethical
principles within the scientific system of knowledge. Exploring the modern
141
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier; C. de Pater and A. van HeIden (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences. 141 -169 .
CD-
;=\oU BIg Bang
r-' R ~I~ .l s e o f b 'H l. y lOUIHJ cosmlc radi" IIiHl
oZ
"'. FirS!stars & galaxies
...
0'"
-< First supernovae & creat ion of ne w elements
m
1>
",-
",-
CD
..,
m
a
",-
...m
O
;to
m
'"
~IO
-t
o
>
-<
ot
Sun. Earth, Solar System formed
Earliest life on Earth?
O>cygen in atmosphere increasing
1st eukarvotlc organisms
I st mult i-cellular organisms
Dinosaurs extinct
Figure 1. The scale of the cosmos. The scale of "Big History".

SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF "BIG HISTORY" 143
"Creation Myth" embedded in "Big History" may be one way of raising popular
understanding of what is at stake in debates within modem science, and of encour-
aging more informed popular participation in these debates .
The essay concludes that modem science marks an acceleration, not a revolutionary
break, in the history of human knowledge systems. The most fundamental revolution
in the evolution ofknowledge systems occurred at the beginning ofhuman history, with
the appearance of symbolic language, and a knowledge system that could be shared
by many individuals, and could therefore be constructed by an entire species, not just
by isolated individuals. This is what accounts for the distinctive features of human his-
tory, and makes it so different from the histories of all other organisms that can learn.
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF "BIG HISTORY"
Science is the dominant form of knowledge in the modem world. Modem societies
cannot function without the sciences ; and they shape how most people think about
the world. But science's domination is very recent. Though its origins are often
traced to the seventeenth-century "Scientific Revolution" (a notion first formulated
clearly by Alexandre Koyre in 1940), or even earlier, not until the late twentieth cen-
tury did scientific knowledge begin to shape how most people think about the world.
But what distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms of knowledge?
Debating this question is what philosophers, sociologists and historians of science
do best. In this paper, I will argue that "Big History", with its very wide perspective
on the past, may have something novel to contribute to such discussions .
For most non-scientists, the prestige of the sciences derives from the daily mira-
cles they perform. Modem science offers a bag of tricks that let us manipulate mat-
ter and energy with astonishing virtuosity. Of course , practising scientists insist they
are not wizards ; and "realist" philosophers of science insist we should trust the sto-
ries scientists tell us precisely because they are not miraculous (the so-called "no
miracles" argument).' No matter. Those who don't understand the technicalities are
bound to treat many of science's achievements as a sort of wizardry because the
tricks are so difficult to master that, to the uninitiated, they seem deeply mysterious.
Sadly, the complex technicalities of modem scientific knowledge have created a new
intellectual apartheid. We teach apprentice scientists how to do some of the tricks.
But for most people it's not worth the effort, so they are left in the dark, where they
have to accept scientific findings with varying degrees of credulity or cynicism .
But modem science is much more than a bag of tricks. It also offers a story of how
our world works and of how we fit into that world. The story is not complete, ofcourse,
though it is fuller and more elaborate than it was just a generation ago. But the story
told within modem science is as coherent and majestic as the Creation stories of any
pre-modem culture. And though it is not commonly taught, this large story is much
more accessible than most of the technical details contained within the scientific dis-
ciplines. At its simplest level, it can be thought of, like all Creation Myths, as a story.
A highly condensed summary of that story is contained in the appendix to this article.
I will argue that it is important to tease out this larger story, to take it more seri-
ously, and to teach it more widely. For both scientists and non-scientists , it is the
story of modem science rather than its technical details that offers the best way of
144 DAVID CHRISTIAN
appreciating science 's deeper significance. Teaching this story can also help us grasp
more realistically the distinctive features of modem science, as well as the many
features science shares with pre-scientific accounts of our world.
"Big History" can help us see aspects of science that cannot be seen at the smaller
scales within which the history of science is normally considered . In defence ofwhat
some may think a hopelessly inflated project , I would like to quote from the preface
ofH. Floris Cohen's recent study of the historiography of the Scientific Revolution:
I offer the present book as one contribution in the valiant struggle against the
dragon of ultraspecialization.. .. Empirically based efforts at recovering a sense of
the wholeness of things should ... be seen, I think, as adding an inherently valu-
able "plus" to our understanding of what the indispensable specialist has revealed,
with some measure of indulgence to be granted perhaps for the inevitable
"minuses". Variety can only be enjoyed to the full in my view when interspersed
with an accompanying awareness of overarching unity.2
BIG H I STORY
My own interest in the larger story contained within the scientific disciplines arises
from the teaching of a history course that surveys the past on the largest possible
scale. I started teaching this course because I became fascinated by a question that
all historians have to consider at some time: "what is the whole ofwhich particular
histories are parts?" The importance, as well as the difficulties, of pursuing this
question, were described well in the Preface to a famous series of lectures given by
the physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, almost 60 years ago.
We have inherited from our forefathers the keen longing for unified, all-
embracing knowledge. The very name given to the highest institutions of learning
reminds us, that from antiquity and throughout many centuries the universal
aspect has been the only one to be given full credit. But the spread, both in width
and depth, of the multifarious branches of knowledge during the last hundred odd
years has confronted us with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we are only
now beginning to acquire reliable material for welding together the sum total of
all that is known into a whole; but, on the other hand, it has become next to impos-
sible for a single mind fully to command more than a small specialized portion of
it. I can see no other escape from this dilemma (lest our true aim be lost for ever)
than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theo-
ries, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them - and at
the risking of making fools of ourselves.3
Looking for a "total past" soon forced me to move beyond the boundaries of what
is normally thought of as "History", beyond written records, and deep into the
Palaeolithic era, where our species first appears in the archaeological record. But to
understand what is distinctive about modem humans, you have to see them in their
biological setting, so you have to go even further back in time; you have to explore
Crealion of Sun, Earth, Solar Svslem
Earth melts down : differentiation
Moon formed
Earliest life on Earth?
Earliest fossils of organisms; stromarotltes
r.
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iil 1st reptiles
+ Superconlinent of Pangaea
Dlnosaurs flourish
o CretaciOus extinctions
Figure 2. The scale of the Earth, the biosphere, "GAIA",

146 DAVID CHRISTIAN
the history of life on earth and the history of the earth as a whole. Such questions
take you back very quickly to the history of the solar system, and of the entire
Universe. But here, the chase stops. According to modem "Big Bang Cosmology",
Time and Space were created in the moment of the Big Bang, about 13 billion years
ago. So this is as far as we can pursue our question. The "whole of which particular
histories are parts", turns out to be the history of the Universe and those parts of the
Universe that are most significant for modem humans.
In an article published in 1991, I called this approach, somewhat flippantly, "Big
History".4 The label is not satisfactory. Though catchy, it is over-blown and preten-
tious. But it seems likely to stick, so I will continue to use it to describe the project
of viewing the past on all possible scales, from those of a human lifetime up to that
of the Universe as a whole. "Big History" brings together many interlocking stories
about origins, all of which depend on a modem, scientific understanding of the past.
After teaching this course for over a decade, it now seems to me that the agenda of
"Big History" provides a good way of getting at the larger story behind the details
of modern scientific accounts of reality.
S CI EN CE AS CREATION MYTH
It is important to teach this larger story because it is the nearest thing we have to a
modern "Creation Myth".
We do not normally think of science as myth. Indeed, the word, "myth", is often
used as a synonym for "pre-scientific " or even "false". According to the 1964
edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a myth is a "Purely fictitious narrative usu-
ally involving supernatural persons etc. and embodying popular ideas on natural
phenomena etc.; allegory ... ; fictitious person or thing. So mythic(al) ...". But such
definitions, by setting up a simple dichotomy between truth and falsehood, imply a
naive understanding of truth. One of the most fundamental insights of the philoso-
phy of science is that there are no perfect descriptions of reality. The best we can ever
hope for is an account of reality that works most of the time, and therefore feels true.
And in this general sense, traditional creation myths were as true as the stories told
within modern science. W.H. McNeill captures well the overlap between myth and
modern scientific accounts of reality in the notion of "mythistory",
Eternal and universal Truth about human behaviour is an unattainable goal, how-
ever delectable as an ideal. Truths are what historians achieve when they bend
their minds as critically and carefully as they can to the task of making their
account of public affairs credible as well as intelligible to an audience that shares
enough of their particular outlook and assumptions to accept what they say. The
result might best be called mythistory perhaps ... , for the same words that consti-
tute truth for some are, and always will be, myth for others .. .. 5
Scientific accounts of reality are as true as they can be given modern ways of grasping
reality. But we can also be certain that they are not perfectly true, because they rest on
incomplete knowledge. So we can also be sure that in the not-so-distant future, many
of the details of contemporary scientific accounts of reality will appear naive, even
SCIENCE IN T H E MIRROR OF " B I G HISTORY" 147
foolish. That is the first sense in which the "stories" told by modem science can rea-
sonably be compared with those contained within traditional creation myths. Both are
imperfect. But they don't feel imperfect. The second similarity is that accounts of
reality, whether told within modem scientific disciplines or traditional creation
myths, cannot do their job unless they are authoritative, unless they feel true. They
will feel true if they are based on the best knowledge available in a given society and
if, for most important purposes, they work. A society's creation myths are simply the
best stories available. As the definition of myth in the Encyclopaedia Americana
points out: "a myth is understood in its own society as a true story. (It is only when
it is seen from outside its society that it has come to acquire the popular meaning of
a story that is untrue)". For modems, it is often hard to appreciate the vast amount
of hard-won empirical knowledge about the world that is contained within traditional
creation myths, or the extent to which they worked. The stories told in hunter gath-
erer societies had to be based on plenty of good, practically tested knowledge, how-
ever exotic the language in which they were expressed, for those societies could not
have survived otherwise. Modern pharmaceutical companies that research (and
sometimes patent) the botanical lore of contemporary hunter/gatherers show a better
appreciation of this fact than many modern scientists.
So modem scientific accounts of reality are similar to traditional creation myths
in so far as both contain complex and multi-layered accounts of reality that are
imperfect but as accurate as possible within a particular community. And both are
experienced as authoritative within their own realms. Two more similarities are less
obvious, mainly because we do not normally think of science as story. But they
become readily apparent within the context of "Big History", which does focus more
on the larger story of science than on its technical details .
A third similarity is that scientific accounts of reality can also be told as stories.
To tell these stories we must select those aspects of scientific knowledge that are
most accessible and relevant to non-scientists, and construct from them a coherent
narrative, written in language accessible to non-specialists. Particularly when it deals
with deep themes, this language will often be richly symbolic. But this, too, is charac-
teristic of creation myths of all kinds. Because they have to use symbolic language,
creation myths often seem bizarre to outsiders (sometimes to insiders, too). When the
French anthropologist, Marcel Griaule, questioned the Dogon wise man, Ogotemmeli,
about a mythic detail according to which vast numbers of animals were crowded
together onto a single, rather small, step (like the animals in Noah's ark),
Ogotemmeli replied: "All of this has to be said in words , but everything on the step
is a symbol .. . Any number of symbols could find room on a one-cubit step" . The
word translated here as "symbol" could also be translated as "word of this lower
world" ." The implicit reprimand directed at the anthropologist by the myth teller
reminds us of the danger of condescension towards myth. It reminds us that tradi-
tional myths, like some parts of modem scientific or historical knowledge (think of
"Quarks" or "Nationalism"), handle difficult concepts. To do so, they often have to
use complex, and potentially ambiguous or misleading metaphorical language.
Despite these difficulties, many contemporary scientists recognise the need to tell
the stories of science to non-scientists. The most successful recent example of this
genre has been Stephen Hawking 's, Brief History ofTime, but there are many other
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SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF " B I G HISTORY " 149
examples . And there is evidently a huge market for such books. But as yet, the mes-
sage they respond to - that there is a widespread need to understand the stories con-
tained within modem science without all the technical details - has not penetrated the
Universities, which continue to think of science teaching primarily in technical terms.
These stories can also be assembled into a larger story, a story of stories . And that
suggests the fourth important similarity between the modem sciences and traditional
creation myths . Both imply the existence of universal stories , coherent accounts of
how everything came to be. In the teaching of modem scientific knowledge , this
story remains for the most part, implicit, but it is one of the aims of "Big History "
to tease out this universal story and to make it accessible, and tellable.
Why does this matter? It matters because it is the universality of creation myths
that accounts for their peculiar power. By offering a coherent account of all origins ,
they describe the co-ordinates within which we exist, our place in time, space and
the flow of history. They offer a cosmic grid map, within which we can understand
ourselves and our communities. And in this way, they shape the sense of identity of
individuals and entire societies. The Encyclopaedia Britannica offers the following ,
useful definition . A "Creation Myth" (or "cosmogonic myth") is: "a symbolic narra-
tive of the beginning of the world as understood in a particular tradition and com-
mun ity. Creation myths are of central importance for the valuations of the world, the
orientation of man in the universe , and for the basic patterns of life and culture"."
Creation myths are to the details of history and science , what the world map is to the
city street directory. The large maps can offer a sense of universal, not just local ori-
entation, and that is a matter of great philosophical, even psychic, importance.
So, the "Big History" perspective suggests that the modem sciences can offer us
more than a bag of tricks ; they also contain the elements ofa modem creation myth.
Potentially, though not yet in actuality, modem science can help us find our bearings
within the Universe , just as traditional creation myths once did. But it will not be
able to do this until teachers of science begin to teach the larger stories that lie
beneath modem science , as well as its many technical tricks .
SYS T EMS OF KNOWL EDG E
Teaching about the sciences within the broad comparative perspective of "Big
History" also offers some interesting perspectives on the nature of the modem sci-
ences, and their relationship to other ways of knowing about the world.
All organisms that can learn use what we can call "systems of knowledge".
Systems of knowledge share two main features . First, they consist of internal maps
of the external world, that help organisms make their way in the world. These maps
are embedded within, and can be modified by, special structures in the nervous sys-
tem . (A Lockeian "tabula rasa" , without any internal structure at all, would have no
rules to guide the construction or modification of such maps.I) These internal maps
are important in the Darwinian sense that their adequacy affects the survival chance s
of the organism. This means that knowledge systems are "adaptive". They can be
fine-tuned by natural selection to ensure that they work reasonably well. In other
words, they evolve. But they can also evolve more rapidly than purely instinctual
ways of reacting to the environment. And this is their second main feature ." Unlike
150 DAVID CHRISTIAN
instinctual maps of reality, which are hard-wired into bodies, knowledge systems are
flexible and empirical, so they can adapt during the lifetime of an organism. Though
shaped by structures within the nervous system, they can be modified as external cir-
cumstances change . They allow organisms to track environmental changes that occur
on scales shorter than a single lifetime . This makes them peculiarly appropriate for
organisms living in unstable environments. "A static world can be behaviourally
adapted to by relatively fixed instincts. The reason why learning and intelligence ever
evolved at all was because instincts alone cannot provide effective adaptation to a
world where change is a constant feature' t.!?
Thinking of knowledge systems as "maps of reality" is a helpful way of capturing
their characteristic blend of accuracy, flexibility and usefulness. The analogy is a par-
ticularly usefu l way of teaching what scientific knowledge is, because it helps stu-
dents get beyond the simplistic idea that knowledge systems are either true or false .
Such a classification makes it difficult to understand the limits as well as the
strengths of knowledge systems of all kinds . For example, it invites the conclusion
that all pre-scientific knowledge systems were erroneous, and this makes it hard to
understand how societies that used them survived quite adequately and for long peri-
ods, often in harsh environments. Maps are never just "true" or "false". They differ
in function and type, as well as in precision and accurac y. Political maps are differ-
ent from topographical maps, just as large scale maps are different from street maps.
To describe systems of knowledge as maps of reality is to insist that they are both
(I) descriptions or models of reality, and (2) instruments that help organisms deal
with reality. The analogy is deliberately balanced at the borderline between instru-
mentalist and realist theories of knowledge. 11 Perfect descriptions of reality may be
unattainable, unnecessary and too costly for learning organisms, including humans.
But approximate descriptions are indispensable. And this is a reminder that the mod-
em sciences are not alone in their commitment to accuracy and testability. These are
characteristics of all systems of knowledge . To work, all maps must achieve a mini-
mum level of accuracy, but the precise level and type of detail required depends
on the particular functions each map is to fulfill.
PRE-H UM AN K NOWL EDG E SYST EMS
Thinking of knowledge systems as "maps of reality can help us see what is distinctive
about human knowledge systems in general, and scientific knowledge in particular".
In the 500 million years since rudimentary brains first evolved (probably in early
forms of flatworms), many organisms have constructed and used knowledge sys-
tems. Whether or not a particular lineage did so depended on a balance between the
potential value of a brain (determined largely by the unpredictability of the environ-
ment), and its costs. For brains and nervous systems are costly to maintain, and there
are situations in which dumping brain tissue may be the best evolutionary decision.
Daniel Dennett describes one of the more startling solutions to this evolutionary
quandary : "The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable
rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a
rudimentary nervous system . When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its
brain anymore, so it eats it!,,12
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Neande rthals extinct
Figure 4. The scale of human evolution.

152 DAVID CHRISTIAN
Note that knowledge systems do not require self-consciousness. Even very simple
organisms can track their environment, in so far as they exhibit behavioural plastic-
ity. They seem to try out several behaviours before settling for the one that proves
most advantageous. At a more complex level, there is what Daniel Dennett calls
"Popperian" learning, in which an animal can apparently try out possible behaviours
within a safe "inner environment" before facing the external world. This capacity to
"presort their behavioural options before striking out" can be found in many species,
including fish and even some invertebrates.P But there is no need to suppose that any
of these organisms are aware of using such representations of the external world."
Is it possible to identify long-term trends in the evolution of non-human systems
of knowledge? I know of only one: in some lineages, nervous systems became more
elaborate, and as they did so, it is a reasonable presumption that the maps of reality
they generated became more detailed, more flexible, and more elaborate . Darwinian
arms races may have encouraged the elaboration of knowledge systems as of other
organs. Carnivorous species tend to have larger brains than herbivores because they
prey on animals, and most animals, unlike plants, refuse to stand still. Complex
social environments may also favour more complex forms of modelling and
learning, particularly where enhanced political and social skills allow favoured
individuals to mate more frequently. Chimps, for example, appear to engage in
complex forms of politics, dominated by hierarchies of dominance within the
troop. Behaviour of this kind requires an ability to think through complex imaginary
scenarios.
But it is hard to identify anything in all this that counts as more than a quantita-
tive increase in the capacity and flexibility of knowledge systems in general. One
way of putting this is to take up Terence Deacon's distinction between three main
ways in which organisms can map the world. The simplest two depend on the capac-
ity of organisms to detect similarities ("icons") or correlations ("indices") between
events and things. IS Iconic similarities may allow organisms as simple as bacteria to
react in one way to all manifestations of warmth or light, and in another way to cold
or darkness. On the other hand, Pavlov's dogs learnt that there was a correlation
between eating and the sound of bells because the two regularly occurred together.
As a result, they linked the two phenomena despite the absence of any iconic simi-
larity. But both these ways of learning depend on one-to-one correspondences
between particular internal and particular external events. That means that the maps
they could generate had limited internal structure . Deacon's third way of represent-
ing the world, through symbolic systems, in which each symbol could stand for an
entire map which in tum could be linked to many other symbols, is nowhere present
before the appearance of modem humans .
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS OF THE PALAEOLITHIC
The large brains of modem humans gave them the capacity to construct far more
elaborate internal models of reality than any earlier species.!" But, along pathways
we still do not understand, modem humans also acquired the ability to communicate
abstract information, information about things that were not present and even about
things that might never be present such as pink elephants or gods. And they learnt to
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR O F "BIG HISTORY " 153
do so with a precision that no other species can match. Chimps can teach by imita-
tion but they cannot describe a pathway that is out of sight or a predator that only
they have seen. And this may be the critical function of symbolic modes of thought:
they allow humans to swap large portions of the internal maps that each individual
has constructed, and to do so with great precision . So, the distinguishing feature of
human knowledge systems may be not that they are so much more elaborate than
those of all other organisms ; but rather that they can be shared in great detail, which
means that they can be constructed and tested by the entire species, not just the indi-
vidual. Humans became the first organisms whose maps of reality were shared and
constructed by the entire species, rather than by single individuals.
A fundamental threshold was clearly crossed. Terence Deacon has explained well
what is distinctive about symbolic modes of thought. Whereas iconic and indexical
forms of representation are always concrete; symbolic forms of representation allow
for abstraction, which permits the storing and manipulation of much more informa-
tion about the environment and one's own community. Symbols make it possible to
generalise from particular examples, thereby creating new notions and forms of rep-
resentation . 17 They allow us to pack huge amounts of information into simple pack-
ages. And this allows us to move information rapidly and easily from brain to brain .
To understand the immense significance of these new, collective knowledge systems,
it is enough to try to imagine one's own life as it might be if one had to invent and
construct all the objects one used.
But symbolic thinking is not easy. It can be done only if iconic and indexical
forms of representation can be held, as it were, in the background, while other parts
of the mind practise operating at the higher level of generality made available by
symbols . "The problem for symbol discovery is to shift attention from the concrete
to the abstract; from separate indexical links between signs and objects to an
organized set of relations between signs. In order to bring the logic of token-token
relationships to the fore, a high degree of redundancy is important". 18 Deacon's argu-
ment helps explain the size of the hurdle that had to be crossed before symbolic
thinking became possible, and the importance to that task of a brain with lots of
spare computing capacity. And this helps explain why symbolic modes of represen-
tation are apparently confined to modem human beings. Symbolic languages require
very large brains, and evolving large brains is a risky and rare evolutionary gamble.
But the payout was huge. Symbolic language allows humans to create shared
maps of reality. Unlike all earlier knowledge systems, which were constructed by
lone individuals, human maps of reality are pieced together, maintained and repaired
like a huge patchwork quilt by millions of individuals, and the work continues from
generation to generation . Humans learn collectively, and this is why our species,
unlike all others, has a "history"; its behaviour and impact has changed significantly
within the lifetime of the species. Furthermore, the things humans learn collectively
have adaptive significance, like all learning . They affect the survival chances of all
the individuals who take part in this process of collective learning. Working together,
humans can "learn" about their environments with a virtuosity and persistence that
has no parallel amongst other species. All in all, "collective learning" counts as
a new adaptive mechanism , and one that works according to rules very different
from those of "natural selection", as well as on much shorter timescales . With the
154 DAVID CHRISTIAN
Figure 5. Adam and Eve in paradise. Ornamental first letter of the book Genesis, Fol I r or
A i', First edition of the fully annotated Dutch Authorised version of the Bible, 1637.
appearance of modem humans, an entirely new type of change becomes apparent in

the planet's history. 19
During the last 100,000 years, the power of these huge and rapidly evolving maps
of reality begins to show up in the increasing collective ability of our species to
manipulate different environments, to extract more resources, and to support larger
numbers of humans . In today's world, the potency of the knowledge systems that
humans share is self-evident. But even in the Palaeolithic era, the enhanced power,
range and flexibility of human knowledge systems allowed humans to occupy an
increasing variety of niches, sometimes displacing other large species as they did so.
(The displaced species probably included our last surviving hominid relatives.i")
The clearest sign of the power of Palaeolithic knowledge systems was the increasing
range and number ofhumans. 100,000 years ago, there is little reason to suppose that
human populations were greater than those of other great ape species; and modem
humans could be found only in Africa . By 10,000 years ago, humans could be found
on all the earth 's continents except Antarctica; they occupied environments from the
tropics to the Arctic; their numbers had reached anything from 4 to 10 millions ; and
in some areas, using techniques such as fire-stick farming or new strategies of
hunting, they even began to have a significant impact on the natural environment.
Like all knowledge systems, those of Palaeolithic humans were accurate and flex-
ible. But because they were constructed and maintained collect ively, they could
incorporate and store much more hard information than the knowledge systems of
other species. Analogies drawn from modem hunter gatherer societies give a power-
ful insight into the amount of hard-won empirical knowledge that accumulated
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF "BIG HISTORY " 155
within communities dependent on knowing in detail about migration patterns of

prey species, and the botany of their plant foods. As a result, Palaeolithic knowledge
systems were more elaborate than pre-human knowledge systems by orders of
magnitude." And the greater precision, flexibility and elaboration of human knowl-
edge systems gave our species a peculiarly powerful grip on their environment. In all
these ways, Palaeolithic systems of knowledge were much more "scientific" than
is often assumed, and the "scientific" aspects of Palaeolithic knowledge systems
accounted for much of their value in strict Darwinian terms .F Here is a superb
account of how some of these knowledge systems may have worked from a recent
account of how knowledge systems worked in Australia before colonization :
Working with a relatively simple tool kit, the basic element to subsistence was nei-
ther technology nor labour, but knowledge. Freely available to all adults within
their own country, knowledge consisted minimally of resource locations, water
sources, ecological processes, types of landforms, seasonable variability, animal
behaviour, cycles of growth, and types of plants and animals suitable as technical
items, foods, medicines and "tobacco". Much of the knowledge was coded in song
and story-not so much as maps to places unknown, but as condensed ecological
history, and as guides to understanding variation and stability.P
However, it is also true that Palaeolithic knowledge systems were very different from
modern scientific knowledge systems . Two differences are particularly important.
First, by the standards of modern science, Palaeolithic systems of knowledge were
parochial. Though collective, the collectivities that generated them were small, rarely
including more than a few tens or hundreds of people at anyone time, usually living
in highly dispersed communities. Regarded chronologically, of course, Palaeolithic
communities included many generations that all contributed to a shared body of
knowledge. Still, by modern standards, their maps of reality were used and tested by
very small numbers of people, with similar lifeways. Not surprisingly, such knowl-
edge systems often included hypotheses that appear ad hoc from the global perspec-
tive of a modern scientist. The second difference is that Palaeolithic maps of reality
were embedded in complex systems of social and ethical rules. They lacked the
characteristically modern distinction between descriptions of reality and rules of
behaviour.
The first feature is purely a matter of scale. Limited contacts between regional
communities ensured that, though Palaeolithic knowledge claims were based on
careful testing (it really mattered if certain plants were edible or not), these tests were
conducted within narrow limits and using small samples. It was the understanding of
a specific place that mattered, of this river (rather than rivers in general); of this type
of plant (rather than plants in generalj." And this explains the survival within such
communities of knowledge claims that fail in today's global information arena.
The parochialism of Palaeolithic knowledge systems may also explain another
distinctive feature: their commitment to animism. A belief in gods of any kind can
be thought of as a way of mapping natural forces symbolically. Animistic religions
(which assume the existence of numerous local spirits), and universal religions such
as Christianity (which assume the existence of fewer, but more powerful, religious
156 DAVID CHRISTIAN
entities), both adopt the same fundamental hypothesis to explain many complex phe-
nomena. They assume that the world of humans provides an appropriate model for
maps of the natural world. This suggests that the natural world is full of animate
beings with whom one can negotiate as if they were humans. The basic move of the
animistic hypothesis is to imagine the world as a Palaeolithic family, full of forces
that can be treated like people, that can be given gifts, fought with, wooed, even
rnarried.P This way of thinking underpinned the ethical and social aspects of the
Palaeolithic system of knowledge, for it ensured that the world as a whole was
thought of as embedded in networks of obligations . The indeterminacy of its predic-
tions (spirits, like people , are capricious; they may, or may not, do what you ask them
to do), made sense of an often unpredictable world. It also shielded animistic think-
ing from rational counter-arguments, for gods are expected to behave willfully.
The logic of animism is described well by William McNeill :
If, as animists believe, invisible spirits inhabiting objects of the natural world
resemble spirits inhabiting human bodies, the whole wide world turns into an
enlargement of what we know best - that is, the unstable to and fro of personal
interaction . Animism therefore becomes a very powerful worldview by making all
that happens both readily intelligible and understandably unpredictable.f
In some form or another, Animism has shaped most human maps of reality. For
example, Aristotelian physics assumed teleology. Entities such as earth and fire
moved downward or upward according to their own internal logic and purpose."
Animistic thinking survives even within the anthropomorphic metaphors of modem
scientific thought, such as the modem idea of the "selfish gene".28 Indeed, the find-
ings of modem evolutionary psychology suggest that such thinking may be more
than a set of plausible hypotheses ; it may be wired into our brains. For it is apparent
that young children learn extremely early to distinguish between things that are self-
driven and things that are not - in short , between animate and non-animate entities.i?
From the perspective of modem scientific thought , both the parochialism and
the anthropomorphism of Palaeolithic knowledge systems may seem like vices.
However, these qualities lent Palaeolithic knowledge systems an intimacy and famil-
iarity that gave them great power as sources of personal and social meaning. And this
leads us to the second distinctive feature of Palaeolithic knowledge systems. As
Ernest Gellner has argued, in small-scale communities, the "referential" aspect of
language (the use oflanguage to grasp reality) was often outweighed by its "social"
aspects, by the need to maintain and reinforce social relationships through ritual acts
and statements.l" Statements about reality were ways of dealing with society as well
as with the non-human environment; indeed, an animistic world view made it impos-
sible to draw the lines that modern science draws so confidently between the social
and natural worlds. To moderns, this blending of the social and the referential often
gives the knowledge systems of small communities a bizarre and illogical quality.
This is clearest where the demands of social cohesion required people to accept
statements which they knew were not true in a referential sense. Gellner himself
offers as a paradigm example, "the identification of bulls with cucumbers credited
in certain ritual contexts, to the Nilotic tribe of the Nuer", but similar examples can
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Figure 6. The scale of human history.

158 DAVID CHRISTIAN
easily be found within modem Christianity.'! Understanding the world also meant
understanding social rules (such as the need to fill in tax returns) , however bizarre
they might appear from a more naturalistic perspective. This characteristic of
Palaeolithic knowledge systems may also have been useful. After all, social cohesion
was itself crucial to the survival of small communities, and if, on occasion, ethical
and social assertions overruled common sense, this may often have enhanced the sur-
vival chances of entire groups . Empirical truth may not always have been the best
guide to appropriate action. (Even modem soldiers, when taught the value of self-
sacrifice in battle, face a conflict between the social and referential aspects of that
knowledge.)
SCIEN CE AS A SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE
The burden of the argument so far is that a strong commitment to accurate empiri-
cal knowledge is not a distinguishing feature of modem scientific thought. All
knowledge systems have to achieve a minimum level of empirical accuracy. Nor is
the sharing ofknowledge a distinguishing feature of modem science. This is a defin-
ing feature of all human systems of knowledge. What does distinguish modem sci-
entific accounts of reality is their determined effort to distinguish between referential
and social knowledge, and the scale on which they exchange and test information .
Many, perhaps most, of the differences between scientific and pre-scientific knowl-
edge systems can be explained as a result of the increasing scale over which knowl-
edge has been accumulated and tested. Exchanges of prestige goods, people, and
information could occur over large distances, even in Palaeolithic communities. (In
Australia before European colonisation, species of shells found only in north
Queensland travelled in relays of gift-giving as far as the coast of Western Australia.)
But most exchanges occurred within a much narrower cornpass.F The appearance of
agriculture from about 10,000 years ago allowed for the emergence of much larger
inter-connected populations, including cities and "civilizations" . Between 5000
and 3000 years ago, peoples in several different parts of the world (including
Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indian sub-continent, and parts of China and Mesoamerica)
began to live in communities that exchanged information, goods, and even bulk
goods between populations of many millions of people, living in many different
ways. Long-distance trading systems such as the Silk Roads (which may have car-
ried goods and information right across Eurasia from as early as 2000 BCE),
increased the scale and variety of exchanges still further. And the creation of a global
system of exchanges in the last 500 years has completed these processes . Exchanges
over increasing distances and between an increasing variety of communities were
made possible by new forms of communication. These included the domestication of
horses and camels and the use of wheeled transport, the invention of writing and then
printing, improvements in sea-transport and navigation, and the building of roads
and canals. Modem communications systems, from the steam engine to the car and
plane, from the telegraph to the radio and the internet, mark a sharp acceleration in
these ancient trends, which is why expanding networks of exchange have had so
marked an impact on knowledge systems in recent centuries.
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF " B I G HISTORY " 159
Slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, these changes exposed the
parochialism of traditional knowledge systems, by subjecting them to increasingly
stringent tests. Humans began constructing their maps of reality within communities
that were, literally, global in their reach. And the scale of these exchanges was of
immense importance. The knowledge that there were different ways of doing things,
or that local conditions did not prevail everywhere, could itself undermine traditional
beliefs ; military defeat at the hands of people with very different beliefs undermined
them even more powerfully. The weakening of traditional faiths in Mesoamerica after
the Spanish conquest is a powerful example. And, as Norbert Elias has argued, widen-
ing chains of interconnection forced local communities to become more conscious of
the need to co-ordinate or schedule their activities to the rhythms of other communi-
ties, and in this way, Time began to dethrone Place in traditional cosmologies.P
Of course , local belief systems were not always obliterated. Often, some of their
elements were incorporated within more capacious systems. A good illustration of
the impact of expanding exchange networks on traditional knowledge systems is the
emergence of universalistic religions in what Karl Jaspers called the "axial" age,
from the middle of the first millennium BCE. In this period, trans-Eurasian contacts
flourished as never before, and new bureaucratic and military technologies allowed
for the creation of larger polities than ever before , such as the Achaemenid empire.
As empires expanded by taking over the realms of local kings and chiefs, so did the
realms of imperial gods, who crushed or captured the local gods of conquered peoples .
The universal ising tendency of this era is also apparent in the emergence of forms of
non-religious knowledge with increasingly general or abstract content, such as early
forms of mathematics or astronomy. Under the general label of "Westernisation",
similar processes have occurred throughout the world since the creation of a global
system of exchanges in the sixteenth century.
Just as expanding trade networks could threaten local manufactures, so expanding
information networks threatened local knowledge, by creating new standards of
intelle ctual "best practice". The knowledge claims that survived were those that
passed the toughest and most varied tests in a contest with more and more competi-
tors. What is astonishing about Greek science, for example, is how many of its
core ideas survived, more or less unscathed, as they entered the Roman world, then
Islam, and then early modern Europe . Or perhaps it is not so surprising: after all, the
Greek city states traded widely, and knew as much of the world as any societies of
their time, as is apparent from the writings of authors such as Herodotus. Is it any
accident that societies with wide-ranging trade links, such as the Greeks, so often
produced the most durable science?
This argument suggests that the most distinctive features of modem science should
be thought of not so much as canny methodological choices taken by European sci-
entists from the sixteenth century, but rather as unavoidable consequences of the
accelerating globalization of information networks. Science reflects the impact of
larger and larger systems of exchange on systems of thought. Europe was strategic
mainly because it lay at the cross-roads of the new, global networks of exchange that
appeared so suddenly in the sixteenth century, so it became a sort of clearing house
for a vast mass of new information. As Andrew Sherratt has recently written in an
essay stressing the role of wide-spread exchanges in human history: '''Intellectual
160 DAVID C H R I S TI A N
Evolution' ... consists principally in the emergence of modes of thinking appropriate

for larger and larger human groupings . ... This transferability has been manifested in
the last five hundred years in the growth of science, with its striving for culture-free
criteria of acceptance .. . .".34As the arena of informational exchange expanded, and
the printing press circulated ideas faster, knowledge systems faced harsher and
harsher tests of their truth claims, and had to become less and less parochial. This is
the best available explanation for the radical scepticism about traditional accounts of
reality that lies at the heart of the modern scientific project, and first becomes appar-
ent in Europe in the sixteenth century. From the seventeenth century, European
"natural philosophers" were well aware of working with a vastly expanded body
of information, much of which undermined the credibility of traditional knowledge
systems. "Philosophical schemes based on restricted knowledge were likely to be
faulty for just that reason, and the expanded experience afforded, for example, by
the voyages of discovery to the New World was an important support for currents
of early modern skepticism about traditional philosophical systems't." Scepticism
about the very foundations of knowledge, and a search for increasingly universal
conclusions (of which Newton 's laws of gravity are the paradigm example), and
more rigorous testing procedures (such as those used by Galileo) can be seen, then,
as consequences of the changing scale within which knowledge systems were tested.
And it is no accident that this deep rethinking of traditional knowledge first became
apparent in Europe, for it was here, at the hub of the first global systems of
information exchange, that the volume and variety of new information proved most
corrosive of traditional systems of thought and government, and the task of con-
structing an alternative view of reality compatible with existing social and political
structures was most urgent.
The scale and variety of these information exchanges helps explain the astonish-
ing manipulative power of modern scientific knowledge . European natural philoso-
phers suddenly found they had front-row seats at a Popperian contest of ideas that
accepted entries from all regions of the planet, and they were therefore in an ideal
position to pick out the most promising survivors. The truth-claim s still standing at
the end of this gruelling global contest were those that could make large claims
about how things worked, and defend these claims against challenges from many dif-
ferent quarters . They incorporated the best knowledge of many different societies.
The sheer volume of information available to modern scientific disciplines, and the
scale and rigour of the tests to which it is subjected help explain science's most
astonishing feature: its unprecedented success in manipulating the material world.
The scale of modern information exchanges may also explain another distinctive
feature of modern science: its hostility to animistic accounts of reality. In 1605,
Kepler (1571-1630) described the alternative positions clearly. "My aim", he wrote,
"is to show that the machine of the universe is not similar to a divine animated being,
but similar to a clock".36 Knowledge testing on a global scale was acid to all ad hoc
truth claims. And as it emerged, modern scientific thought acquired a principled hos-
tility to ad hoccery of all kinds. This was expressed in the principle of Occam's razor:
Pluralitas non est pon enda sine necessitate, or explanatory hypotheses should be
kept to an absolute minimum . Not surprisingly, science was hostile to the multipli-
cation of gods that was characteristi c of animism, for, by adding new gods, or
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Figure 7. The scale of "Modern History".

162 DAVID C H R I S TI A N
redefining existing gods, it was all too easy to explain anything. The methodological
stinginess of early European science was not at first incompatible with belief in
a single , universal, Deity ; indeed it often sustained that belief. After all, monotheism
did set some limits to the multiplication of hypotheses. But the principle of Occam 's
razor did require scientists to try explaining reality, as much as possible , without
invoking the Deity. Nowhere was this distinct ion made more clearly than by the
seventeenth century English physicist , Robert Boyle, who wrote :
None is more willing [than myself] to acknowledge and venerate Divine

Omnipotence, [but] our controversy is not what God can do, but about what can
be done by natural agents, not elevated above the sphere of nature, .. . and in the
judgment of true philosophers, I suppose [the mechanical] hypothesis would need
no other advantage .. . than that in [it] things are explicated by the ordinary course
of nature, whereas in the other recourse must be had to miracle s.l?
In this way, hostility to ad hoccery drove a powerful wedge between the social and
referential claims that were so closely intertwined in most pre-scientific maps of
reality.
However, an almost total severance of descriptive from ethical knowledge became
possible only in the nineteenth century. Until then , the exquisite rationality of the
world could be used to prove the necessity of a God, through the famous "argument
from design". What Darwin showed was that exquisite design could be generated as
successfully by blind, mechanical, algorithmic processes as by any team of gods.38
SCI EN C E AN D TH E F U T UR E ?
In all these ways, the global knowledge system of modern science has undermined
the authority of pre-scientific knowledge systems . But it has done so in an oddly
unbalanced way. Though damaging to the referential claims of traditional knowledge
systems, scientific knowledge has had less impact on their ethical and social claims .
As a result, whereas pre-modern knowledge systems commonly made both referen-
tial and ethical statements, modern knowledge systems appear more specialised. In
effect, we have two different types of knowledge systems , one making statements
about the nature of reality (science), and the other about ethics (Religion).
Why is this so? Ernest Gellner has argued that such a split is inevitable: " logical
and social coherence are inversely related. The more you have of one, the less you
can hope to have of the other"." Gellner sees writing as the key to this deep split in
the knowledge systems of the modern world, for writing made it possible, even nec-
essary, to divorce knowledge from the specific personal and social context in which
knowledge statements are uttered . This made it possible to codify social norms, and
distinguish them from referential notions.t'' An alternative explanation may be that
the empirical testing of knowledge claims affected referential and ethical claims in
different ways. It may not be easy to abandon familiar claims about reality, such as
that the earth is flat. But it is far harder to abandon familiar claims about social and
ethical rules. This is partly because such claims are less vulnerable to empirical refu-
tation , partly because they are embedded in matrices of behaviour that reach deep
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR OF " B I G HISTORY" 163
into social networks and the psyche of individuals, and partly because scientific
knowledge has had little to offer in matters of ethics. This difference explains why,
over and over again, the social and ethical rules of traditional knowledge systems
have survived the destruction of many of their referential claims. This has proved
true, for example, of many indigenous religions in colonised societies, and it is also
true of most established religions today. The borderlands are always contestable, of
course, and religious systems may have been wounded in these battles, but most
modem Christian churches have managed to jettison Ptolemaic astronomy while
retaining the ethical and spiritual cores of their faith.
Will the ethical claims of traditional knowledge systems also succumb to the
assault of science, but at a slower pace than their referential claims? Is there any
prospect that modem science may eventually supplant traditional knowledge sys-
tems even in matters of ethics?
We can be sure that science has plenty of evolving still to do. This is simply
because it is so new. Some features of modem science can be traced back over two
thousand years, to the Greek commitment to Reason rather than Authority. But such
thinking was confined to a tiny minority of philosophers. The scientific ideas of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had a wider impact, but still affected only a nar-
row, elite world. The systematic application of scientific knowledge to production
began only in the nineteenth century. And it is only in the twentieth century, with the
emergence of systems of mass education, that science has begun to shape the out-
look of a majority of the population. As a system of popular knowledge science is
in its infancy, and this suggests that the uneasy relationship between science and
religion that exists today may prove to be a passing phenomenon.
Like an adolescent genius, modem science is keen to impress. But it is not alone
in this. Many other human knowledge systems (including Christianity) have tried in
their early days to win converts by performing miracles . Conflicts between rival reli-
gions have often been presented as conflicts over their manipulative powers, whether
in the performance of magical deeds, or in warfare. In staking its claims first as a
potent manipulator of reality, it may be that science is following a very familiar tra-
jectory. Any ethical system must build on a plausible account of the way things are.
Traditional religions had ethical force to the extent that they offered credible descrip-
tions of the Universe. To deny God's existence, as Nietzsche knew, was to deny the
ethical rules attributed to Him. If this is so, it surely implies that, as scientific knowl-
edge emerges in popular consciousness as an authoritative account of reality, it must
acquire increased ethical significance as well, particularly as its increasing factual
authority continues to erode the authority of more traditional maps of reality. This
does not mean that it will ever be possible to derive ethical rules unambiguously
from scientific conclusions . Rather, it means that debates about the ethical implica-
tions of scientific knowledge will become more and more important, and over time,
such discussion are bound to shape ethical thinking in general. As it enters popular
consciousness, scientific knowledge will increasingly provide the maps within which
ethical issues are discussed and understood. Current debates about genetic engi-
neering are merely one illustration of the potency of such debates.
If it is true that scientific knowledge will have increasing significance for ethical
debate, it becomes vitally important that people understand clearly what the scientific
164 DAVID CHRISTIAN
Figure 8. Humans moving into unfamiliar environments. In November 1969 astronaut

Charles Conrad made this photograph of his own reflection in the helmet of his colleague Alan
Bean. Courte sy of NASA.
account of reality says, even if they do not always grasp the technical details. And
this takes us back to the beginning of this essay. In all societies, creation myths have
been powerful sources of meaning , for they have given people a sense of their ori-
entation within a wider universe. Esoteric knowledge , knowledge that remains the
preserve of specialists, cannot play this role. And at present , science is taught too
often as a system of esoteric knowledge . But if the larger stories implicit within
modem science begin to be taught more widely, then science will begin to acquire
some of the significance of a traditional creation myth, for creation myths can
translate some of the secret lore of specialists into the public knowledge of whole
societies. And doing that is surely one of education's most important tasks.
CON C L USION
At the beginning of this essay, I asked: "What distinguishes scientific knowledge from
other forms of knowledge?" The answer implicit in this paper is that scientific knowl-
edge may not be as different from earlier human knowledge systems as is often sup-
posed. It may even be acquiring some of the ethical significance that is often thought of
as a distinctive feature of pre-scientific knowledge systems. A more fundamental break
in the evolution of knowledge systems in general occurred at the very start of human
history, with the appearance of symbolic language. This allowed the construction of
collective maps of reality that could share, store and accumulate knowledge of all
kinds at the level of the species, not just the individual. Collective learning allowed
humans collectively to adapt to the natural world much more rapidly than other
species, which evolved at the slower pace of natural selection. In other words, it intro-
duced a new principle of change within the biosphere. Modern science is the form
assumed by collective learning in the global era, in which information is exchanged
throughout the world as easily and swiftly as it once was within the small communi-
ties of the Palaeolithic world. The adaptive and ecological power of modern science is
a function of scale, not a sign of qualitative difference, and the rise of modern science
marks an acceleration in processes of change that began deep in the Palaeolithic era.
ApPENDIX : A MODERN CREATION STORY
Thirteen billion (13,000,000,000) years ago there was nothing. There wasn't even
emptiness. Time did not exist. Nor did Space. In this Nothing, there occurred an explo-
sion, and within a split second, something did exist. The early Universe was fantasti-
cally hot, a searing cloud of energy and matter, much hotter than the interior of the Sun.
For a trillionth of a second it expanded faster than the speed of light, growing from the
size of an atom to the size of a galaxy. Then the rate of expansion slowed, but the
Universe has continued expanding to the present day. As the early Universe expanded,
the temperature dropped. After about 300,000 years, it was cool enough for atoms of
hydrogen and helium to form. After about one billion years, huge clouds of hydrogen
and helium began to gather and then collapse in on themselves under the pressure of
gravity. As the center ofthese clouds heated up, atoms fused together violently like vast
hydrogen bombs, and the first stars lit up. Hundreds of billions of stars appeared, gath-
ered in the huge communities we call "galaxies". The early Universe consisted of
little more than Hydrogen and Helium, but inside stars, and in the violent death ago-
nies of large stars, new elements were created. And over time, more complex elements
began to appear in interstellar space. Our own sun was formed about four and halfbil-
lion years ago from a cloud of gas and matter that contained many of these new ele-
ments, in addition to Hydrogen and Helium. The planets of our solar system, were
formed at the same time as the Sun, from the debris left over from the Sun's creation.
The early Earth was a hot and dangerous place, bombarded by meteorites and so
hot that much of it was molten . Over a billion years, however, it began to cool, and
as it did so, water rained down on its surface to create the first seas. By three and a
half billion years ago, complex chemical reactions, probably taking place around
deep-sea volcanoes, had created simple forms of life. Over the next three and a half
billion years, these simple, single-cell organisms became more and more diverse,
evolving through "natural selection". Quite early, some learnt to extract energy from
sunlight through the process of photosynthesis. As other organisms began to feed on
the photosynthesisers, sunlight became the main "battery" of life on earth. Powered
by the Sun, living organisms spread through the seas, and eventually over the land,
creating an interconnected web of Life that had a profound impact on the atmos-
phere, the land and the sea. From about 600 million years ago, there began to appear
larger organisms , each made up of billions of individual cells. A mere 250,000 years
ago, our own species appeared, having evolved from ape-like ancestors through the
same unpredictable processes of natural selection.
166 DAVID CHRISTIAN
Though they evolved in the same way as other animals, it turned out that humans
were peculiarly good at extracting resources from the environment. This was because
they could share information and ideas with a precision that no other animal could
match. And over time, this shared knowledge accumulated, allowing each generation
to build on the knowledge of earlier generations. The number of humans grew as
they learnt how to live in more and more diverse environments, first in Africa, then
in Eurasia, Australia , the Americas and eventually in the myriad islands of the
Pacific. These global migrations took many tens of thousands of years. Eventually,
from a mere ten thousand years ago, humans in some parts of the world began to
manipulate their environments so successfully that they could produce more and
more food from a given area of land. Using the technologies we refer to as agricul-
ture, they began to settle down in small village communities . As populations grew,
the number and size of villages grew until there appeared the first large cities, from
about 5000 years ago. These large, dense settlements required new and complex
forms of regulation to prevent disputes and coordinate the activities of many people
living at close quarters. In this way there appeared the first states, groups of power-
ful individuals capable of regulating the activities of the community as a whole.
Conflict appeared both within and between communities, as different groups com-
peted for resources and power. But communities also exchanged information so that
the technological resources available to humanity as a whole continued to accumu-
late. Over several thousand years, the size, the reach and the populations of societies
with states expanded until eventually, most humans lived within state based societies
with cities and some form of agriculture. As their numbers and technological skills
grew, so did their impact on the biosphere - the community of other organisms on
earth. In some regions, the impact of human activities such as irrigation or defor-
estation proved so damaging that the local environment could no longer support
large human populations, and entire civilizations collapsed.
As technologies of communication and transportation improved, more and more
communities came into contact with each other. About 500 years ago, for the first
time, these changes brought human communities in all parts of the world into con-
tact with each other. For many communities this coming together was disastrous ; it
brought conquest, disease and exploitation, sometimes of the most brutal kind. But
this merging of regional communities also helped trigger new technological break-
throughs that could now be shared throughout the world. In the last two centuries,
new technologies, beginning with the harnessing of steam power, have given human
societies access to the vast sources of energy locked up in fossil fuels such as coal
and oil. Human populat ions have grown faster than ever before, and the problems of
administering these huge communities, and coping with conflicts between them,
have demanded the creation of even more powerful and complex state systems.
Today, human numbers are so great, and the impact of humans on the biosphere is
so significant, that there is a real danger that we will do serious damage to the envi-
ronment that is our home. And this could lead to a global collapse of human civi-
lizations and have devastating impacts on other organisms as well. On the other hand,
the ability of humans to share knowledge is now greater than ever before, and it may
be that new technologies and new ways of organizing human societies will allow us
to avoid the dangers created by our ecological virtuosity.
SCIENCE IN THE MIRROR 0 F "BIG HISTORY" 167
NOTES
The classic formulation, by Hilary Putnam, reads : "The positive argument for realism is that it is the
only philosophy that does not make the success of science a miracle." Stathis Psillos, Scientific Realism :
How Science Tracks Truth (London: Routledge, 1999) 71. The argument is that: "unless the theoretical
entities employed by scientific theories actually existed and the theories themselves were at least approx-
imately true of the world at large, the evident success of science (in terms of its applications and predic-
tions) would surely be a miracle." Arthur Fine, "Scientific Realism and Antirealism", in Edward Craig
(ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy 10 volumes (London : Routledge, 1998) vol. 8 581-4, from
581. In other words, if a system of knowledge works, the simplest explanation may be that it does so
because it offers a reasonably good description of reality.
2 H. Floris Cohen , The Scientific Revolution: A Histor iographical Inquiry (Chicago & London : Chicago
University Press, 1994) 13; however, my own position on the rise of modem science is very different from
that of Cohen ; in particular, I am less impressed by the distinctiveness of modem science, and less
inclined to see it as an outgrowth of "Western" or European culture.
3 Erwin Schrodinger, What is Life? (Cambridge: CUp, 2000) I [1st publ. 19441.
David Christian, "The Case for 'Big History '," The Journal ofWorld History 2 (Fall 1991) 2 223-38;
reprinted in Ross E. Dunn and David Vigilante (eds), Bring History Alive! A Sourcebook for Teaching
World History (LA : National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA , 1996) 21-30; in Ross E. Dunn
(ed.), The New World History: A Teacher's Companion (Boston and New York: Bedford Books , 2000)
575-87; see also Fred Spier, The Structure ofBig History ; From the Big Bang until Today (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 1996); hints ofa growing interest in the very large scale can be found within
the booming field of "World History" (see Dunn , The New World History) and in many other fields; three
more or less random examples are Stephen Hawking , A BriefHistory ofTime: From the Big Bang to Black
Holes (London : Bantam, 1988); Johan Goudsblom, E.L. Jones and Stephen Mennell, Human History and
Social Process (Exeter : Univers ity of Exeter Press , 1989); Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: the Unity of
Knowledge (London: Abacu s, 1998).
5 McNeill , "Mythistory", in My thistory and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985)
3-22, from 19.
6 Barbara Sproul , Primal Myths : Creation Myths around the World (San Francisco : Harper Collins,
1991) 15.
7 "Creation Myths" , Britannica CD 98" Multimedia Edition © 1994-1997; strictly speaking, we should
refer to "Cosmogenic Myths", a phrase which includes all Myths of origin , even those which do not posit
a Creator, but the phrase, "Creation Myth" , has such wide currency that it would be pedantic not to use it.
8 This is the basic insight of the "modular" theory of the mind, inspired by the work of Chomsky and
developed in the work of Jerry Fodor; for a summary, see Henry Plotkin , Evolution in Mind: An
Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology (London : Penguin, 1997) ch. 4; S. Mithen, The Prehistory ofthe
Mind (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996) discusses how it may apply to the evolution of the human mind.
9 "The new, neuronic problem solving worked not by Darwinian methods ... , [but] by means ofbehav-
iour modification. Instead of being stored in DNA, the variable behaviour and selective reinfo rcement
from the environment was stored in selective interactions among excitable cells or neurons, which respond
directly to the environment." Lynn Marguli s and Dorion Sagan, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of
Microbial Evolution (London : Allen & Unwin, 1987) 233.
10 Plotkin 172.
II For a difficult, but up-to-date account of the instrumentalist/realist debate within the Philosophy of
science , see Psillos, pa ssim , which tracks the borderline between the two approaches, while ultimately
opting for a realist position .
12 Daniel C. Dennett , Consciousness Explain ed (London: Penguin, 1993) 177; in an aside that all aca-
demics will recognize , he adds that this transition is "rather like getting tenure" ; much of the original
research on sea squirts was carried out by the late Emperor Hirohito.
13 Daniel C. Dennett, Kinds of Minds : Towards an Understanding of Consciousness (London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson , 1996) 93.
14 Though Nicholas Humphrey has come close to arguing just this: "To be conscious is essentially to
have sensations: that is, to have affect-laden mental representations of someth ing happening here and now
to me." Nicholas Humphrey, A History ofthe Mind (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992) 97.
16 8 D AVID C H R I S T IAN
15 "Icons are mediated by a similarity between sign and obj ect, indices are mediated by some physical
or temporal connection between sign and objec t, and symbols are mediated by some formal or merely
agreed upon link irrespective of any physical characteristics of either sign or object." Terence Deacon, The
Symbolic Species: The Coevolution ofLanguage and the Brain (Harrnondsworth: Penguin, 1997) 70.
16 The crucial measure here is not the absolute size of the brain, but the relationship between brain size
and body size, or "encephelization". And in this respect, primates as a whole are unusual, and modem
humans are remarkable, having brains about three times the size of typical primate brains , while primates
in general have brains about twice the size of typical mammal brains. Deacon 169 and 344.
17 Deacon 423.
18 Deacon 402.
19 This is why the mechanisms of Darwinian natural selection provide an inadequate model for histori-
cal explanation. The time scales are normally too short for genetic change to count; transmission of cul-
tural information does not depend on genetic inheritance; and if collective knowledge itself is a significant
force for change, it follows that we cannot follow the Darwinian model of explaining long-term changes
in the species as the result of changes in the statistical distribution of the features of individuals. Of
course, human history is "emb edded" in natural history, just as natural history is embedded in chemical
history, but the rules of the domain in which it is embedded cannot help explain the distinctive properties
of human history, ju st as chemical rules cannot explain the distinctive features of living organisms. For a
powerful critique of attempts to model human history too closely on natural selection, see Joseph Fracchia
and R.C. Lewontin, "Does Culture Evolve?," History and Theory 38 (1999) 452-78.
20 Richard G. Klein, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999) 395, on the possible survival of hominids distinct from modem
humans in Java as late as 53-27,000 BP; and see 477 ff. on the survival of Neanderthals in W. Europe to
perhaps 30,000 BP; two articles in Science , in June 200 I, offer powerful support for the notion that early
humans were largely responsible for the extinction of many species of large mammals, by dating the
extinction events more precisely; in Australia, it now seems, all land species over 220 pounds disappeared
about 46,000 years ago, soon after the best dates for the arrival of humans.
21 E. Szathmary and 1. Maynard Smith have argued that the emergence of human culture counts as one
of the great thresholds in the history of the biosphere, as significant in its way as the emergence of sex-
ual reproduction or multicellularity; Maynard Smith and E. Szathmary, The Origins of Life: From the
Birth ofLife to the Origins ofLanguage (Oxford: OUp, 1999) ch. 13.
22 In a recent history of technology and science, James McClellan and Harold Dorn have drawn a sharp
distinction between technology and science; here, I deliberately blur the distinction to argue that
Palaeolithic knowledge was like modem science in so far as it combined general ideas about reality with
considerable empirical rigour; see J.E. McClellan III and H. Dorn, Science and Technology in World
History (Baltimore:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 13.
23 Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo Makes us Human: Life and Land in an Australian Aboriginal Culture
(Cambridge: CUP, 2000) 5.
24 In a fascinating study of Aborigi nal Australian cosmologies, Tony Swain has argued that the sense of
locality and place ("ubiety") was more fundamental than the sense of time; Tony Swain, A Place fo r
Strangers: Towards a History ofAustralian Aborigina l Being (Cambridge: CUP, 1993).
25 This is clear from modem studies of shamanism. There is a good popular account in Piers Vitebsky,
The Shaman (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995) and a classic account by Mircea Eliade, Shamanism,
Archaic Techniques ofEcstasy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); the best general survey of
the literature on Siberian shamanism is Caroline Humphrey, "Theories of North Asian Shamanism" in
E. Gellner (ed.), Soviet and Western Anthropology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980) 243- 54.
26 McNeill, "History and the Scientific Worldview,' I.
27 Steven Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996) 29.
28 The classic account is: Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene 2nd ed. (Oxford: OUP, 1989). Animistic
or, more properly, "anthropomorphic" language, seems hardest 10 escape in biological thinking, which is
why so many people have difficulty grasping the logic of natural selection.
29 Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 1997) 321-7 discusses some of the evidence
for such a "ment al organ".
30 Ernest Gellner, Plough. Swo rd and Book: The Struc ture of Human History (London: Paladin,
1991) ch. 2.
31 Gellner 40 .
32 Recently, Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas Hall have offered an extremely valuable typology of
human exchange networks, distinguishing between exchanges of information, prestige-goods, politi-
cal/military exchanges , and bulk-goods; here, the important point is that information and prestige-goods
networks tended to be much more extensive much earlier in human history because information and
prestige-goods usually combine light weight and high value; Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Thomas D.
Hall, Rise and Demise: Comparing WorldSystems (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1997).
33 Elias, Norbert , Time: An Essay (Oxford : Blackwell, 1992); Tony Swain has argued that Aboriginal
Australian cosmologies shifted in similar ways when exposed to wider networks of exchange; Swain,
A Place for Strangers, passim.
34 Andrew Sherratt, "Reviving the Grand Narrative : Archaeology and Long-term Change," Journal of
European Archaeology (1995) 3.1 1-32, cited from 25.
35 Shapin, 79-80; Margaret Jacob writes of the huge travel literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, that "the cumulative effect of that literature had been to call into question the absolute validity
of religious customs long regarded, especially by the clergy, as paramount." The Cultural Meaning ofthe
Scientific Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988) 109.
36 Cited in Shapin 33.
37 Cited in Shapin 105.
38 This is the central argument of Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the
Meaning ofLife (London: Allen Lane, 1995).
39 Gellner 61.
40 Gellner 74.
STEVE FULLER
THE CHANGING IMAGES OF UNITY AND

DISUNITY IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
THE MISR ECOGNITION OF UNITY IN REC ENT HISTORY AND

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
"The unity of science" has been a traditional rallying point for both philosophers and
scientists. However, in the last quarter-century, this image of unified science has lost
its previously compelling nature. Yet there are very good reasons to defend a con-
structivist version of unificationism and reject the fashionable image of science
depicted by the realist disunificationists. Specifically, realist disunificationists align
"the natural" and "the normative" in such a way as to allow scientists to avoid their
social responsibilities. The sections of this chapter are divided to explain how the
image of disunity has come to eclipse that of unity and then to suggest some ways
out ofthat predicament: (1) The unificationist project is described by its opponents,
who are often also its historians. In this context, the leading images of unity are
misrecognized and sometimes perversely interpreted . (2) The problem of unifying
the sciences is nowadays displaced by other philosophical debates - especially
realism versus constructivism - that are considered to be more fundamental.
(3) Unificationism has been generally more persuasive as a program for the refor-
mation than the legitimation of the sciences. We live in a period when philosophers
happily "underlabor" for the sciences, a role too modest for the legislative ambitions
of the various calls for unity. Finally, in section (4), I discuss some ways of turning
the tide back toward unificationism.
The Gospel According to the Disunificationists

History is full of cases in which something is defined by its opponents. The unity of
science is no exception. Consider one recent influential attempt to motivate the
appeal that the image of a unified science had for the logical positivists:
Unity. The very term has always evoked emotions. As a political call to arms, it
rouses countries to civil strife, revolution, and international war. The theme of
unity is written into the history of the United States, the (former) Soviet Union,
171
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier; C. de Pater and A. van He/den (eds), The Changing Image ofthe
Sciences, 171-194.
© 2002 K/uw er Academic Publishers. Pr inted in Great Britain.
172 ST EV E FULLER
and the European nation-states as deeply as any slogan can be. So, one should
immediately add, are its antitheses - independence and autonomy. Little surprise,
then, if the unification of the sciences, or the autonomy of the sciences, partici-
pates in larger cultural debates. In the interwar period, faced with the rise of
fascism, the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire, and the growing tensions
between states, a movement grew up under the banner of the Unity of Science. Its
roots were various; the motives of its supporters, diverse. But somehow, behind a
thinly veiled facade of pure science, there lay a hope and an optimism that the
fruits of modernity - the technical wonders of telephone, radio, airplane ; the grids
of power and railroads; and the scientific spectacles of relativity, quantum physics,
and astronomy - could somehow avert calamity. Those who preached the Unity of
Science saw inscribed in the new and modern Lebensform a rationality that, they
hoped, would guard the world against the tide of fanaticism . I
Although Peter Galison paints a pretty picture of the positivists' motives, it is a

trompe I'oeil. Notice what he takes to be the opposite of unity, namely, independence
and autonomy. However, the positivists, being good Kantians (at least in this
respect), would have regarded the unity of the sciences as a precondition for sci-
ence's independence and autonomy. Clearly, Galison, an historian living today, has
an understanding of what the previous century was about that differs from the posi-
tivists who lived through most of it. In particular, Galison sees the impulse behind
nation-building - unificationism's political model - mainly in terms of suppressing
local differences to produce a whole that aspires to be greater than the sum of the
parts. He supposes that without state intervention, local regions would be normally
self-governing. By analogy, then, the question for Galison is whether unification
really adds value to sciences that already function well separately.
However, the positivists saw matters in quite the reverse. For them, autonomy
emerged from the integration of local regions under a strong national constitution ;
otherwise, the regions would regress into what Kant first called "heteronomy,"
whereby they become mere pawns in the hands of larger political and economic
forces. Analogously, for the positivists, science must be unified to prevent it from
descending into a babble of incommensurable expertises open to the highest (or
strongest) bidder. It is no accident that the major modern theorist of international law
and architect of Austria's republican constitution, Hans Kelsen, regularly attended
the meetings of the Vienna Circle.
Moreover, this difference in the image of the unity of science is not merely of his-
torical interest. A version of the same difference arises in contemporary discussions
of science policy? Here the positivist viewpoint is represented by those who argue
that a specific institutional setting - typically the university - is needed to protect the
autonomy and independence of science so that it can develop in ways that are both
true to its own ends and genuinely serve the public good. This requires, so to speak,
a "protected market" in which the sciences are encouraged to interact with each
other (through cross-validation checks, interdisciplinary projects, etc.) before facing
the larger society. In contrast, Galison 's view is represented by those who believe that
the sciences are so internally diverse - partly because they already engage society in
so many different ways - that any attempt to govern them under a common academic
THE CHANGING IMAGES OF UNITY AND DISUNITY 173
framework is bound to be more coercive than productive. Consequently, the auton-

omy and independence of the sciences is maintained by allowing them to gravitate
to their own "natural markets" or "ecological niches." This latter view, which sup-
ports a "disunified" image of the sciences, is often associated with postmodemism,
the most influential formulation of which' was expressly written against the viabil-
ity of the university as a site for knowledge production."
Reducing (Away) the Philosophical Compon ent ofReductionism

Contemporary defences of the disunity of science like Galison's draw their inspira-
tion from the work of the ph ilosopher, Ian Hacking. Hacking came to the disunity
thesis as an early Anglophone interpreter of Michel Foucault. ' From the standpoint
of traditional distinction between the " natural" and the "human" sciences, Foucault
dealt with practices of institutionalized medicine that straddled the distinction: Does
"mental illness" refer to a real physiological condition or merely a diagnostic cate-
gory? The answer turns out to be both, though the condition and category sit together
uncomfortably. But Hacking drew a larger lesson. If a discipline's phenomena could
be reliably produced without prior commitment to a particular theoretical discourse,
the more clo sely it approximated the practices ofthe physical sciences." On the other
hand, the more reliability depended on a prior theoretical commitment, the more the
discipline approximated the practices of the human sciences."
Hacking'' traces modem discussions of the unity of science to the research strategy
of reductionism . The strategy may be interpreted in two radically different ways,
which capture the appeal that it has had for philosophers and scientists , respectively.
In my book on Thomas Kuhn ,9 Ernst Mach and Max Planck are contrasted
as early twentieth century exemplars of these pos itions . In terms of Hacking's
Foucaultian dualism, philosophers would reduce all sciences to human sciences,
whereas scientists would have them reduced to natural sciences. Philosophical inter-
est in reductionism has been spurred by the prospect of a unified language of science,
usually the application of logic to elementary observations. This was certainly the
program oflogical positivism. Here reductionism aimed to level differences in disci-
plinary discourses that had been misleadingly magnified into ontological ones by
experts operating in the public domain. In contrast, scientific interest in reductionism
has been less focused on constructing a lingua franca for science than a recipe for
arriving at the ultimate constituents of real ity. Indeed, the results of this version of
reductionism would be expressed in an esoteric language that may even - as in the
case of particle physics - refer to objects whose properties defy commonsense.
Hacking clearly prefers the scientific to the philosophical attitude to reductionism.
Here he claims to follow Leibniz, who identified the quest for the unity of science
with fathoming the Divine Plan . Hacking rightly observes that Leibniz was by no
means idiosyncratic in his orientation, as the idea of unified science historically
descends from a "Book of Nature" presumably written (or dictated) in one language
by its author, a.k.a . the God of the monotheistic religions. (It should come as no sur-
prise that the strongest scientific support today for Intelligent Design Theory - that
is, "Creationism 2.0" - comes from chemists and engineers, who find it easy to
imagine God as a big version of themselves!) At least, this preoccupation with unity
174 STEVE FULLER
cannot be found in areas dominated by the other world religions, including India and
China, where many particular scientific and technological advances were made -
typically before they appeared in Europe - but without any compulsion to place them
under a common theoretical rubric.l ?
However, in favoring the scientific over the philosophical attitude to reductionism,
Hacking overlooks a salient feature of the Divine Plan that brings the philosophical
attitude back into play: Ifhumans have been created to fathom the Divine Plan, then
should it not be expressible in a language that all humans can understand and apply?
Put in sectarian Christian terms , by siding with the scientists over the philosophers
on reductionism, Hacking sounds like a Catholic rather than a Protestant. He seems
happy to presume that the Book of Nature is written in a language - advanced math-
ematics and technical jargon - that only scientific experts can understand because
they alone have been schooled in the techniques and privied to the sites where the
cosmic mysteries are regularly revealed . For the scientific reductionist, so it would
seem, the laboratories have become the new seminaries .
These echoes of the religious divisions of the Reformation have shadowed the pol-
itics of reductionism since its formal inception in the third quarter of the nineteenth
century. 11 The original reductionists were German scientists who wanted to salvage
the unifying spirit of Hegelianism once Hegel's philosophy fell into disrepute for
its failure to keep up with French and British developments in the natural sciences.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this first generation ofreductionists - including Hermann von
Helmholtz, Emil DuBois-Reymond, RudolfVirchow, and Ernst Haeckel - worked in
the life sciences, which even in the mid-nineteenth century were still classed among
the "sciences of the spirit," the Geisteswissenschafien, and hence well within philo-
sophical jurisdiction. In today's disciplinary histories, these early reductionists are
usually remembered for having introduced specific laboratory or quantitative tech-
niques that helped transform what had been previously "natural history" into a proper
experimental science. What is often neglected is the metatheoretical gloss they gave
to these techniques. To adopt the techniques of physics was not necessarily to reduce
one's science to physics. On the contrary, the early reductionists tended to identify the
fundamental ontology of science with "energy," an entity with an obvious physical
and phenomenological component , rather than "atoms," ultimate units of matter that
were theorized as existing below the threshold of human perception.
In Hacking's scheme, Helmholtz, DuBois-Reymond, Virchow, and Haeckel would
have to be classed as more philosophical than scientific reductioni sts. Like the logi-
cal positivists a half-century later, they campaigned for an international language of
science - and indeed, for science as the basis for an international language of human-
ity. They regarded the emergence of specialized disciplinary discourses as barriers to
the free flow of information and made it their business to promote the public under-
standing of science. A model for their activities was the Zollverein, the customs
union that in their lifetime organized the German principalities into a protected mar-
ket, which in tum removed the economic barriers to Germany's political unification.
In this context, reductionism was associated with a certain sense of the "democrati-
zation of expertise," namely, the subordination of all scientific authority to the same
broad-based standards of evidence and reasoning . Moreover, since the original
reductioni sts themselves came from modest backgrounds and were political liberals
(and sometimes even socialists), they also championed entrance examinations in

order to open university admissions to a wider range of the population.
Interestingly, among the opponents to their attempt to disseminate the scientific
mentality was the physics community itself, which did not appreciate its character-
istic methods being applied, and otherwise made available, to all manner of inquiries
and inquirers. Indeed, the long-standing hostility of physicists to philosophical
reductionism, or its ideological twin "positivism," is one of the most unnoticed fea-
tures in the modem history of the philosophy of science . Perhaps this is because
the anti-positivism of physicists has often corresponded to what philosophers call
"scientific realism," which is almost identical to Hacking's scientific reductionism.F
The renegade physicist Ernst Mach was the key transition figure from the original
German reductionists to the logical positivists.P He was a contemporary of the for-
mer and an inspiration for the latter. Unfortunately, the import of Mach's contribu-
tion is often lost because, courtesy of Bertrand Russell, his views were too easily
assimilated to those of David Hume and the British empiricist tradition. To be sure,
Mach was a kind of empiricist, but he did not share Russell's preoccupation with dis-
covering the "logical atoms" of perception. On the contrary, Mach's own work in
experimental psychology studied the construction of meaningful perceptual gestalts
from disparate physical stimuli . Mach's focus on the level at which human percep-
tion normally occurs was carried over into logical positivism. Even when the posi-
tivists spoke of "physicalism," they did not mean the reduction of appearances to
their physical constituents, such as the motions of atoms. (That way lay Arthur
Eddington's notorious paradox of the "two tables" - that is, how the same table can
appear solid yet consist mostly of empty space .) Rather, they meant the phenome-
nology of medium-sized objects , discussion of which could be coordinated through
a public language."
For Rudolf Camap and Otto Neurath, two positivists who differed on many other
points, "physical" was invoked to oppose the solipsistic form of empiricism that
Russell himself had peddled as "the problem of the external world," which continues
to be the central problem of anglophone epistemology. A closer analogue to the pos-
itivists' sense of physicalism was the "operationalism" of thermodynamicist Percy
Bridgman, who embraced the positivists ' unity of science movement when it relo-
cated from Vienna to Harvard during World War 11. 15 Nevertheless, the marginaliza-
tion of philosophical reduct ionism from recent history and philosophy of science has
been so thorough that it has become difficult even to express the position in an
unmisleading fashion . In particular, we have come to associate artificial languages
with the displacement of commonsense perception to more esoteric forms of empir-
ical detection, so that the positivist project of a unified language for science appears
as more elitist than democratic. Yet, for the positiv ists, elitism came from supposing
that there was one ultimate way articulating reality that required unconditional
deference, be it associated with scientific experts or native speakers of a "natural
language ."
In other words, the positivists' natural enemy was anyone who believed, following
Nietzsche, that "ontology recapitulates philology." This included both Martin
Heidegger's "jargon of authenticity" and the Oxford school of linguistic analysis
that flourished in postwar Britain .!" The real issue that exercised the logical
176 STEVE FULLER
positivists - say, distinguishing Camap from Neurath - was whether there had to be
any authenticating experiences that corresponded to a statement in the unified lan-
guage of science or merely a commitment to test the statement in a publicly acces-
sible manner. Gradually, the positivists drifted toward the latter position, which had
been always held by a junior and peripheral member of the Vienna Circle, Karl
Popper. However, one consequence of this drift was the severance of any connection
between the pursuit of science and the adherence to particular beliefs. Science was
no longer a vocation but a game. To be sure, this "conventionalism" made science
eminently universal, open to anyone - regardless of background beliefs - who is
willing to abide by its rules. At the same time, however, it seemed to reduce science
to a formal exercise with no psychological purchase on those pursuing it. This led to
the two great strands of postwar positivism, represented by Camap and Popper,
to move in directions that undermined its original democratic aims: respectively,
technical specialization and epistemological skepticism.
The Root Image ofDisunity as Intercalation

The long-term effect of the misrecognition of philosophical reductionism has been a
certain skew in the narrative told about how the history and philosophy of science got
to be as it is today. Galison'" presents three images that capture the highlights
of this narrative, which is allegedly about the search for "foundations" to science
[Figure 1].According to the narrative, the positivists originally envisaged foundations
Theory,
I Theory2
I Theory,
I Theory,
Observation
Time~
The positivist image of the history of science
Observation 1 Observation, Observatlon, Observation,
Theory, Theory2 Theory, Theory,

Time ~
The anti positivist image of the history of science
Instrument, I lnstrument; I Instrument,

Theory, Theory2
Experiment,
I Experiment, Experiment,
I Experiment,
Time ~
The intercalated image of the history of science
Figure 1. Images of the three moments in the modern history of the philosophy of science
(after Galison 1999).
as the incontrovertible factual basis on which a succession of theoretical

edifices could be built. The antipositivists - represented by the historicist and rela-
tivist tum associated with Kuhn!8 - are then seen as having destabilized this image
by stressing that each theoretical edifice (a.k.a. paradigm) generates its own unique
set of facts. Finally, rather than seeing science as either always stable or always
changing, today's historians and philosophers of science plump for an image of sci-
ence as "intercalated," a metaphor drawn from masonry that is meant to capture the
idea that science is not one thing but a set of traditions - of theory, experiment, and
instrument - that mutually support each other by undergoing change at different
rates. Once this image is granted, then attention turns to the research sites that enable
this mutual support through the creation of "trading zones" from which a hybrid
language, or "pidgin," emerges.
A sign of the misrecognition conveyed in this account is that Galison's narrative
ends just where the positivists would have it begin, since a unified language for
science is itself usefully seen as a pidgin developed by inquirers whose various inter-
ests intersect in the need to constitute a common reality. Indeed, linguists have
identified a process ("creolization") by which pidgins evolve into free-standing lan-
guages - such as Latin, Arabic, and Swahili - that eventually supersede the lan-
guages used to constitute it.!9And, as I earlier indicated, what ultimately mattered in
the positivist quest for a "neutral observation language" was that it could function as
a vehicle of communication (of evidence), not representation (of experience).
However, whether pidgins evolve into proper languages depends on the removal of
barriers to the free intercourse of variously interested scientists. In that case, the
incommensurability of paradigms - partly retained by Galison as traditions of
scientific practice - is not a mark of cultural identity but a sign of arrested develop-
ment. My own "social epistemology" starts at this point, namely, that radical con-
ceptual difference is caused by sustained communication breakdown.i?
Moreover, Galison's intercalation model of science recovers an especially perni-
cious feature of the appeal to traditions in historiography more generally. The clear-
est precedent in historiographic imagery is the timeline, in which a series of
geographically distinct cultures are treated in parallel with respect to time. The first
notable appearance of the timeline was in the second edition of Encyclopaedia
Britannica (1780) , in a newly expanded article on "History" by the Scottish
Enlightenment philosopher, Adam Ferguson, an early purveyor of the idea that soci-
eties are self-organizing systems. Ferguson's timeline was organized orthogonally to
Galison's. Thus, the multiple layers of traditions appeared as a series of adjoining
columns, and time was marked by a horizontal, rather than a vertical, line that cut
across all the traditions. (Interestingly, Ferguson's timeline began at 4004 BC, the
origin of Creation implied by the ages of the Biblical patriarchs.) [Figure 2].
To his credit, Ferguson recognized the implications of the image, namely, that
"revolutions" (his term) are caused by the interaction of peoples with inherently dif-
ferent characters. Ferguson did not mean to cast doubts on this interaction, but sim-
ply to explain its tendency to be catalytic. Here he was informed by a viewpoint that
by the next generation would be called "Lamarckian," namely the communicability
of acquired traits to the next generation, which "evolves" by building on their col-
lective intelligence. This patterned sequence of organisms constitutes that bio-social
178 STEVE FULLER
Figure 2. Adam Ferguson's "Timeline of History" in the Second Edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica (1780). (It should be understood as organized orthogonally to Figure I.)
TH E CHANGING IMAGES OF UNITY AND DISUNITY 179
duplex known as "culture" or "race." Writing a century before the rise of modem,
Mendelian genetics , Ferguson was more inclined to stress the emergent features
of this duplex than their composition from traits that could be combined with others,
in the right environment, to form different cultures or races. In today's shorthand,
we would say that Ferguson "essentialized" the divisions presented by the history
of humanity. So too, though with less explosive political consequences, Galison
essentializes the different traditions of science. Thus, whereas Ferguson neglected
the role of diffusion and migration , Galison occludes the overlap in the people who
have contributed to the various intercalated traditions.
U NITY AN D D IS UNIT Y A S E XPR E SSIO N S OF

CO NS TR U CTI VI SM AN D RE ALISM
The fact that disunificationists define the terms for discussing the unity of science
implies that the issue has lost much of its centrality in contemporary philosophy of sci-
ence. In this section, I relate the dormant unity-disunity distinction to the much more
active debate between realism and constructivism. However, this debate bears a rather
complex relationship to the previous one. Generally speaking, the unificationsts dis-
cussed so far (i.e. the positivists or philosophical reductionists) introduce a distinctly
normative perspective on knowledge that is designed to counteract knowledge's natu-
ral tendencies, primarily by recognizing the constructed character of the distinction
between evaluating and applying knowledge claims. In that respect, the unity of
science is clearly a "project" that requires much deliberate effort. I elaborate this point
by considering in sequence the natural-normative and the evaluation-application
distinctions: Unificationists have tended to accentuate the former and blur the latter.
The Natural and the Normative: Aligned or Opposed?

Hacking's contrast between scientific and philosophical forms of reductionism
is a version of a distinction that contemporary philosophers of science officially
find more significant: realism versus constructivism. Generally speaking, scientific
reductionism is a form of realism, philosophical reductionism a form of construc-
tivism. For our purpo ses, it is important to note that this distinction is orthogonal to
the difference between unity and disunity. Thus, it would be a mistake to assume that,
say, most unificationists have been realists or vice versa. Of course, some unifica-
tionists have been realists." But insofar as the unity of science has been something
that philosophers have proposed as a program for organizing the sciences, the
assumption has been that, left to their own devices, the sciences tend toward disper-
sion and fragmentation, which is to say, disunity.22 In other words, unless explicit
efforts are taken to realign the sciences, the force of some "extern al reality" on them
is not sufficient to ensure their ultimate unification. The logical positivists are thus
probably best seen, on balance, as constructivist unificationists who were keen on
bringing order to natural disorder. In contrast, much of today's anti-positivist senti-
ment is motivated by a realist disunificationism, which owes equally to Kuhn's
paradigm-based relativism and Lyotard's narrative-based postmodernism: It would
permit, so to speak, the thousand flowers that have always already been blooming.
180 ST E V E F ULLER
When considering the relationship between the unity-disunity and the realism-
constructivism distinctions , a key background distinction is between the natural and
the normative, specifically, whether these two categories are supposed to be aligned
or opposed. The ideal case of alignment is where one claims to infer what is norma-
tive from what is natural (or "what ought to be" from "what is"). This view is com-
mon to a wide range of views including both attempts to derive a "revealed history
of humanity" and an "evolutionary ethics." The ideal case of opposition is where one
defines the normative as explicit resistance to the natural. Once again, a diverse
range of views would fall under this rubric, ranging from existentialist assertions of
human freedom to legal sanctions designed to alter citizens' default behaviors. In the
two contexts, "natural" has somewhat different connotation s. "The natural" that is
aligned to the normat ive usually implies a foundation in some underlying reality,
whereas "the natural" that is opposed by the normative is a statistical regularity that
is itself an incomplete or distorted expression of reality's potential.
Thus, realist disunificationists take the natural and the normative to be aligned and
constructivist unificationists take them to be opposed. This difference is most clearly
reflected in attitudes toward the work of philosophy. Realist disunificationists see no
role for philosophy as an independent discipline lording over the sciences. It is here
that the later Wittgenstein's calls for philosophy to "leave the world alone" make the
most sense. In contrast, constructivist unificationists see a large role for philosophy
in manufacturing metalanguages and other cross-disciplinary bridges.
Evaluation and Application: Clear or Blurred?

However, matters tum out to be more complicated because realism and construc-
tivism as general epistemologies differ substantially in their views about the hard-
ness of the line that separates what may be alternatively called "subject versus
object," "signifier versus signified," "mind versus world." The realist draws a sharp,
and the constructivist a blurred, line between the two sides of each of these binaries.
In practice this means that compared with constructivists, realists have a much
clearer sense of the situations in which science is and is not being done. Thus, "real-
ist disunificationism" presupposes, as we saw in Galison's political image, that the
individual sciences are already self-governing entities, each assigned to its domain
of reality. In that sense, "realists" do not normally resort to "common sense" for their
sense of reality; rather, they are much closer in spirit to Platonism, Cartesianism , and
other philosophies that presuppose a stratified view of reality.
To be sure, realists vary over the best way to characterize and access the "surface"
and "depth" of reality - and some recent disunificationists like Hacking envisage a
more horizontally arranged ontological space that presupposes a metaphorical dis-
tinction between "core" and "periphery." Nevertheless, the "deep " or "core" end of
reality - or "fundamental ontology" - is invariably a restricted realm that requires
special methods and training. From the realist point-of-view, the constructivist
appears to confuse surface and depth, appearance and reality, belief and knowledge,
verification and truth, etc. This is because constructivists hold that what counts as
the "surface" or "depth" of reality is itself a construction of the knowledge system,
not a representation of something that exists outside the system. In that sense, the
constructivist collapses the distinction between the philosophical disciplines of

epistemology and ontology, which the realist holds sacrosanct.
For their part, "constructivists" are often mischaracterized as relativists and even
nihilists who believe that each culture (or person) is entitled to their own truth .
In this misreading , the verb "to construct" means "to make up out of nothing," as
if constructivists were arguing for a view of reality that has no basis outside itself.
A more correct interpretation of "to construct" is "to make up out of something,"
a phrase that brings out better reality's processual character as the past provides the
raw material out of which the future is made. Consequently, constructivists blur
philosophical distinctions that realists want sharpened . In particular, realists draw
a strong distinction between the contexts of evaluating and applying knowledge
claims, whereas constructivists treat the two contexts as the same, often under the
rubric of knowledge production.
The basic idea here is that realists hold that knowledge claims first need to pass
a quality control check in a cloistered expert setting - which may be a laboratory,
a circle of peers, or even one's own secure mental space - before those claims are
unleashed on the world. Only in the expert setting can one identify the salient vari-
ables, underlying causes, intuited essences , etc. The real is thereby made apparent.
However, if the world ends up worse as a result of applying knowledge of this real-
ity, then that will be blamed on the low intellects or corrupt morals of the appliers.
In contrast , constructivists do not sharply distinguish between how professional sci-
entists and the rest of humanity access reality. Such public spaces as the agora, the
battlefield, or the hospital are equally good as sites to manifest knowledge claims as
more cloistered settings. Thus, evaluation and application collapse into each other,
and one is never really sure (nor perhaps should one be) whether a given outcome
reflects human will or objective reality. "Knowledge" here turns out to be an irre-
ducible mixture of the two.
At one level, realism may function ideologically to absolve scientists from respon-
sibility for the consequences of actions taken on the basis of their authority but with-
out their involvement. The realist holds that the responsibility of scientists ends with
the consequence s logically entailed by their theories and empirically predicted in
their laboratories. However, to avoid the moral quandary in this way is to conflate the
difference between the intended and anticipated consequence s of one's actions. For
example, Einstein and Bohr may not have intended for their physics to result in the
atomic bomb. But at some point in the history of the atomic physics they could have
anticipated that the theory would be put to that use: may be not in 1910, but certainly
by 1945, when the US dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. Once some disturbing
precedents are set, there is little excuse to allow those precedents to become normal
practice.
Unfortunately, the history is not so philosoph ically straightforward, since Einstein
actually urged Franklin Roosevelt to start the US atomic bomb project. Of course,
Einstein and other atomic physicists eventually took responsibil ity by campaigning
against nuclear weapons research. Those who saw this activity as part of their
responsibility as scientists would be classed as constructivists. In contrast, realists
tend to make the idea of "unintended consequences" do too much work, as if we
could only learn from our mistakes in our cloistered settings but never in the world
182 ST E VE FU L LE R
outside the cloister. Accordingly, from a constructivist standpoint, scientists are often
irresponsible because they pretend to know much less than they do - or could know,
if they devoted as much effort to understanding the potential applications of their
research as with how their peers will evaluate it. However, realism may discourage
precisely this moral impulse because of its strong distinction between the contexts
of evaluating and applying knowledge claims.
One of the most historically sustained examples of the realist-constructivist sensi-
bility is the difference between biomedical researchers and practicing physicians. To
be sure, this difference is obscured by the emotively charged question : "Would you
allow a realist or a constructivist treat you for cancer?" Yet, a realist engaged in
biomedical research would probably resist making any substantial interventions
until the underlying causes are established beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, the
rhetoric surrounding the people who doubt the connection between cigarettes and
lung cancer, HIV and AIDS, and other such attempts to link to cause and effect,
is usually very "high realist." In complete accuracy, if not always sincerity, these
people warn that we should not mistake correlation for causation. Thus, an excuse
is provided for protracting basic research programs and perhaps even multiplying
the avenues of research pursued, without doing anything for the people currently
suffering from lung cancer or AIDS.
In contrast, practicing physicians who advocate a substantial invasion of people's
bodies do not usually think like a pure realist. They are more inclined to blur the con-
texts of testing and applying knowledge claims. If the patient lives after, say, having
undergone chemotherapy, then chemotherapy is "constructed" as the decisive cause;
if the patient dies, then the cancer is constructed as the cause that resisted the treat-
ment. However, the outcome cannot be predicted with certainty because there is
no necessary causal grounding for it. It is by going through the treatment that the
knowledge claim in question ("chemotherapy cures cancer") is simultaneously tested
and applied. In this sense, physicians are practicing constructivists, which is why so
much of what they do is tied up with legal and moral issues.
In the history of the West, realism has been a revanchist move that recurs periodi-
cally whenever constructivist-inspired activities have had palpably bad effects on
society, and society has responded by threatening to curtail free inquiry altogether. In
psychoanalytic terms, realism is the "defense mechanism" of the "once burnt, twice
shy" inquirer. Put somewhat less charitably, realists try to have their cake and eat it by
taking responsibility for the good consequences of their research but refusing respon-
sibility for the bad ones. From that standpoint, constructivists can at least claim the
virtue of symmetry, a willingness to take responsibility for everything they do.
Thus, an encapsulated history of Western knowledge production would start
by noting that Plato's founding of the Academy in the outskirts of Athens was
an explicit attempt to shelter inquiry from the politically destabilizing effects of
the public exercise of reason by the Sophists, which had culminated in the
Peloponnesian Wars. This resulted in the creation of an environment fit for contem-
plating the ultimate forms of reality. Two thousand years later, "The Thirty Years
War" in Europe over alternative interpretations of the Bible resulted in such seminal
scientific institutions as the Royal Society of London and L' Academie des Sciences,
which were chartered as ideologically neutral zones for the pursuit of knowledge.
Another three centuries later, the various idealistic and positivistic schemes for insu-
lating the development of knowledge from other societal developments - Hegel's
and Comte's most notably - were once again attempts to contain and channel
"Enlightenment" impulses which had originally ended in the bloodshed of the
French Revolution. This pattern continued in the twentieth century, with logical pos-
itivism and Kuhn's paradigm-based theory of scientific change featuring as increas-
ingly sophisticated attempts to protect science from external interference, especially
given, on the one hand, the Weimar backlash against science following Germany's
defeat in World War I and, on the other, increasing public concern in the US about
the application of scientific research in the wake of Hiroshima.
HISTORI CAL CONDITIONS FOR TH E UNITY AND DISUNITY OF SCIEN CE
I have so far argued that there are two broadly different ways of conceptualizing the
historical conditions for unifying knowledge. One presupposes that integration is a
natural development of scientific inquiry, while the other supposes that it is added
artificially to inquiry 's inherently divergent tendencies . Moreover, within each posi-
tion, a further distinction can be made. Natural unificationists may be either deduc-
tive or inductive in orientation , whereas those who see unification as artificial may
regard it as a perversion or an improvement of the natural course of inquiry. More
space is devoted to the artificialist perspective, since that provides the more instruc-
tive example for contemporary attempts at unification.
The Unity a/Science as Natural: Deductive and Inductive Versions

When unification is seen as a natural development of knowledge, it is usually con-
ceptualized in one of two ways, both of which were developed in Western Europe in
the second quarter of the nineteenth century. The deductive version is associated
with Auguste Comte's understanding of positivism, whereas the inductive version is
associated with William Whewell's vision of science as what he called "consilience,"
According to the deductive orientation, unification occurs by the most progressive
discipline serving as the methodological and theoretical template for expediting the
development of more backward disciplines . This strategy has historically relied on
Newtonian mechanics as the template. In contrast, the inductivist imagines that uni-
fication is an emergent feature of several strands of inquiry flowing into a common
trajectory, much as tributaries flow into a major river. (I shall return to this image in
the conclusion .) Here too Newtonian mechanics serves as the paradigm case, but less
as an exportable model than as the synthesis of several prior and often countervail-
ing tendencies, as in Newton's unification of Baconian empiricism and Cartesian
rationalism. The Neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1940s may be similarly portrayed
as having brought together the natural history and experimental genetics traditions
in biology, which represent, respectively, conservationist and interventionist atti-
tudes toward the physical environment.
The different roles that Newton 's work plays in the deductive and inductive orien-
tations reflects an underlying difference in the institutional location of the people
who laid claim to unifying the sciences. From today's standpoint, deductivists are
184 STEVE FULLER
best seen as self-styled "knowledge managers" who took it upon themselves to

instruct and encourage inquirers in the backward disciplines to approximate
Newtonian standards. The leading nineteenth century positivists - Comte, John
Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer - were free-lance writers more warmly received by
chemists, biologists, and social scientists than by the professional physicists whose
practices they wanted their readers to imitate. In contrast, inductivists have tended
to be ensconced academics who used the classroom as the medium for bringing
together disparate strands of thought, much as Newton himself did at Cambridge.
Whereas the deductivists pitched their arguments for integration to mature knowl-
edge producers, the inductivists held that unification was always a project best left
for the next generation of disciplinary practitioners, since the value of unification
would lie in the fertile ground it lay for future research, as opposed to the legitima-
tion of current research.
It should be noted that the natural approach recognizes that the unification of
the sciences may be artificially blocked by various means, including disciplinary
parochialism and ideological opposition , as well as the fact that genuinely new dis-
coveries and inventions are difficult to assimilate into the collective body of human
knowledge. Despite being subjected to severe criticism for his own sociobiological
commitments , E.O. Wilsorr'? has been exceptionally sensitive to all these blockages.
He suggests that the very development of the social sciences as autonomous fields
of inquiry has constituted one such long-term blockage. Before Emile Durkheim's
1895 declaration that social facts are "s ui generis" the social sciences had routinely
sought a systematic understand ing of human nature, in which biological considera-
tions informed at least the foundational principles . This train of thought connected
Aristotle, Montesquieu , and Adam Smith with Marx and Wilhelm Dilthey, both of
whom embraced Darwin's theory of evolution as underwriting the unity of homo
sapiens as, respectively, producers and interpreters of their life conditions .
To be sure, the autonomy of the social from the biological sciences has been also
spurred by the rediscovery and continuation of Gregor Mendel's original work in
genetic inheritance, against which social scientists often defined their research in the
twentieth century, via the "nature versus nurture" controversy. Before the rediscovery
of Mendel's work in 1900, the germ plasm was seen as susceptible to environmental
(and hence, social) influence. But with the rise of an autonomous science of genetics,
biological and social factors have been increasingly seen as trading off against each
other, perhaps via some "epigenetic" process whereby the environment triggers pre-
ordained patterns ofbehavior. Consequently, sociobiologists hold that social scientists
provide much data, but little theory, that is of use to the overall synthesis of human
knowledge because social scientists willfully ignore the biological bases of human
life. For their part, social scientists respond that the institutional and political cost of
the sociobiological synthesis is much too high, namely, an elimination of the modes
of intersubjectivity that precisely distinguish humans from other animals.
The Unity ofScience as Artificial

To say that the unification of the sciences is "artificial" is to admit that inquiry nat-
urally tends toward dispersion and fragmentation, unless specific measures are taken
TH E CH A NGI N G IMAG ES OF UNITY AND DIS U NITY 185
to alter that tendency. The historical intuition behind this vision is that the special
sciences have successively spun off from their original basis in philosophy by "dis-
ciplining" inquiries that had been previously subject to unresolvable metaphysical or
ideological disputes . On this view, the most advanced sciences are the ones that left
philosophy first, whereas the least advanced sciences retain a strong philosophical
residue. This distinct ion is epitomized in Kuhn 's idea of "paradigm," a model for
inquiry in the physical sciences that is generally lacking in the social sciences, in
which the most popular theoret ical frameworks (Marxism, Freudianism, behavior-
ism, cognitivism, sociologism - not to mention capitalism) also happen to be the
ones over which there is the most disagreement.
Like the natural approach to unity, the artificial one is also largely a product of a
nineteenth century vision of European intellectual history, but one bred in the fourth
quarter of the century, once academi c philosophy began to formally acknowledge the
devolution of its inquirie s to specialized departments. Artificialists who treat unifi-
cation as an improvement on the natural course of inquiry have generally envisaged
the university as an agency for consolidating the power of the nation-state;
whereas those who treat unification as a perversion of inquiry have envisaged the
university's agency in more politically modest terms that have often afforded the
easy appropriation of academic knowledge for non-academic ends. In the case of
"pro-unificationists," the open question is whether an intellectually consolidated
nation-state encoura ges more inclusive or more discriminatory policie s toward its
own residents. In the case of "anti-unificationists," the open question is whether the
appropriators represent the entire public or merely private interests.
Pro- Unity: From Sublation to Reduction

The idea that the unification of the sciences requires deliberate effort in the face of nat-
ural dispersion is traceable to the role that the great synthetic idealist philosophies ofthe
early nineteenth century played in reinventing the university as the founding institution
of German national unity. The figures behind these philosophies - Fichte, SchelJing, and
Hegel - were all prominent civil servants. Common to their quest for synthesis was a
beliefthat humanity had suffered a "fall" comparable to the expulsion ofAdam and Eve
from the Garden of Eden. The Tower of Babel - though referring to a later episode in
Biblical history - became the symbol of this decline. The idea of "pristine wisdom"
(prisca sap ientia) available to the ancients but lost to the modem s had motivated the
Italian Renaissance's recovery of the founding languages of Indo-European culture,
which culminated with the rise ofphilology as the intellectual-cum-ideological basis for
Europe's primordial Aryan identity in the late eighteenth century.
However, even the most zealous unifiers of the sciences have rarely believed in a
return to an original holist ic state of inquiry. Indeed, unification always comes at a
cost. For example , the principal Hegelian mechan ism of integration, Aujh ebung -
translated in English as "sublation" or "sublimation " - implies that disparate bodies
of knowledge must lose some of their distinctiveness to become absorbed into a
greater synthesis. By the end of the nineteenth century, Aujhebung itself had come
to be sublated into a more generalized concept of reduction. What was usually
claimed to be lost in "reduced" sciences were the marks of their spatia-temporal
186 STEVE FULLER
origins, which had restricted the range of eligible contributors and validators of
knowledge claims. For this reason, reductionism has tended to be championed by
anti-establishment, often younger, inquirers with relatively little investment in the
current epistemic orthodoxy. This pattern fits not only the major idealist and materi-
alist movements ofthe nineteenth century, but also the most famous pro-unity move-
ment of the twentieth century, logical positivism.
Perhaps the most interesting recent attempt to justify the reductionist approach to
knowledge integration is due to the philosopher of science Alexander Rosenberg."
who argues that a combination of human cognitive limitations and instrumental
interests renders reductionism an inevitable feature of any form of knowledge that
aspires to understanding stable patterns of phenomena. However, from the stand-
point of the history of science, what ultimately tends to be "reduced" is the need for
an exact physical specification of the phenomena in question. Thus, the fundamental
categories of the non-physical sciences in the strict sense - that is, the biological and
social sciences - are typically defined by the functions they serve in a larger system,
not by properties intrinsically possessed by the individuals falling under these
categories. For example, a species in biology is defined in terms of organisms that
can conjoin to produce fertile offspring, regardless of the organisms' exact physical
constitution. This means that in principle homo sapiens could be perpetuated by
individuals with very different physical make-ups . Of course, naturally occurring
tendencies in genetic variation and considerable inter- and intra-species genetic over-
lap make this unlikely - that is, just as long as biotechnology can do no more than
enhance or diminish tendencies already present in the gene pool. But once that tech-
nical barrier is surmounted, the biological definition of species would seem to allow
certain high-grade androids to pass as humans.
It would seem to follow that the reductionist imperative ultimately renders the dis-
tinction between idealism and materialism itself immaterial. Inquirers ' interests in
adopting a particular theoretical system ultimately override the difficulties in speci-
fying all the physical parameters needed to identify entities in that system. In short,
physicalism turns into functionalism. More precisely, micro-reduction eventually
yields to macro-reduction as the preferred unification strategy. This, in turn carries
profound normative implications. Consider, by way of illustration, the history of
systemic attempts to understand the nature of (I) mind and (2) society .
(1) Systemic attempts to understand the mind began as a battle between

those who wanted to reduce mind to matter and those who held that
mind transcends matter. In a nutshell, achievements in the former
research program eventually rendered the latter program less plausible.
But ultimately, difficulties in specifying all ofthe mind's physical param-
eters have led inquirers to think in more functionalist, sometimes even
reified, terms." Increasingly, then, mental life is defined "formally" so
as to be indifferent to whether it transpires in carbon-based brains,
silicon-based computers, or some combination of the twO. 26
(2) Similarly, systemic studies of society began as a dispute between those
who would reduce society to the physical circumstances of its members
and those who held that society's existence transcends those circum-
stances. The "naturalistic" tradition leading from Aristotle and Ibn-
Khaldun through the Enlightenment to Marx and Darwin has cast
significant doubts on the idea of societal transcendence . Yet, this tradi-
tion's own shortcomings have encouraged the notorious philosopher of
"animal liberation," Peter Singer." to redraw the boundaries ofthe social
order so that some (sentient) non-humans are included, while some (dis-
abled, deranged) humans are excluded.
Thus, just as a brain is now neither necessary nor sufficient to constitute a mind, so
too humans are neither necessary nor sufficient to constitute a society.
Anti-Unity: From Kant to Kuhn

Those who regard unification as a perversion of the natural course of inquiry gener-
ally object to unification's historical tendency to reduce differences in bodies of
knowledge to differences in how one accesses and/or expresses a common reality.
This is another way of saying that unificationists tend to collapse ontology into epis-
temology. Three contrasts capture what has been at stake in the opposition to unifica-
tionism. First, whereas unificationists have aspired to one ultimate court of epistemic
appeal - say, by reducing all knowledge claims to statements about sensory experi-
ence or physical evidence - disunificationists have celebrated the proliferation of
local knowledges. Second, whereas unificationists have been keen to remove barri-
ers to epistemic access associated with jargon and related mystifications, disunifica-
tionists have aimed to protect spaces for different epistemic communities to flourish
autonomously. And third, whereas unificationists have sought to provide a common
direction to disparate bodies of knowledge, disunificationists have demythologized
historical narratives that promote just this sense of teleology, so as to enable differ-
ent fields to follow the path of inquiry wherever it leads.
When disunificationism was first articulated as Neo-Kantianism in Germany
in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, the idea of a unified sense of reality
was criticized on the grounds that it was, in Kant's original term, "noumenal,"
which is to say, knowable only through its appearances and not in itself,28 For
the Neo-Kantians, these various appearances were systematically comprehended by
the academic disciplines that had begun to spin off from philosophy and establish
themselves as university departments. The spirit of this argument may be captured
by the slogan: Scientific epistemology recapitulates academic bureaucracy.
However, as we saw earlier in this article, disunificationists nowadays take a some-
what different tack. They normally suppose that reality is indeed knowable, but it
happens to be diverse in nature. Following Kuhn,29they regard the history of science
as the natural history of human knowledge . Thus, the fact that scientific paradigms
operate on self-contained domains of objects that are accessed by unique sets of con-
cepts and techniques implies the existence of multiple incommensurable realities. A
slogan that captures the spirit of this perspective is: Scientific ontology recapitulates
laboratory technology. Another important difference between the Neo-Kantian and
Neo-Kuhnian versions of disunificationism is that whereas the Neo-Kantians tended
188 STEV E FULLER
to envisage disciplinary specialization as akin to the "functional differentiation" of

organs in the maturing embryo, the Neo-Kuhnians appeal to a biological metaphor
that renders knowledge production irreversible but completely purposeless, namely,
Neo-Darwinian speciation, which is, in Kuhn's terms , a "progress from" that is not
a "progress to."
Neo-Kantianism arose in response to philosophy's loss of authority as the inter-
face between the university and its state sponsors.'? This is usually traced to the
politically divisive consequences of the ideological uses made of Hegel 's unified
vision of reality by his followers in the l840s ranging from the theologian David
Friedrich Strauss to the political economist Karl Marx . Thus, instead of discussing
the larger societal ends of knowledge, as Hegel had seemed to encourage, the Neo-
Kantians confined the normative purview of academics to the "peer review" of their
own disciplines, the results of which then could be appropriated as the state saw fit.3 l
Even philosophers were reduced to "underlaborers" for the special sciences who
spent their time disentangling disciplinary foundations, streamlining disciplinary
histories, and adjudicating discipl inary boundary disputes - again, all in the aid of
making academic knowledge more accessible to non-academic audiences.V Not
surprisingly, Neo-Kantianism is the source of the ongoing debates over the sorts of
knowledge that the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities make possible.
Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber, and Ernst Cassirer are figures from this movement
whose work in this vein continues to have currency.P
However, the fact that Germany lost World War I, despite its high scientific stand-
ing, generated an irrationalist backlash, which was crystallized in Oswald Spengler's
popular The Decline ofthe West. The Neo-Kantians had no effective response to this
backlash, since they had divided the forces of "Reason" and "Truth" into specialized
"reasons" and "truths" that together evaded Spengler's looming question, namely,
what precisely gives world-historic meaning and direction to the pursuit of knowl-
edge . They became captive to their relativism. In contrast, the followers of logical
positivism, critical theory, and existential phenomenology tried to tackle this prob-
lem in their own distinctive ways, leading thinkers as different as Karl Popper,
Theodor Adorno, and Martin Heidegger to trawl through the history of philosophy
to find lost insights into the unity of inquiry, fully realiz ing that they might appear
"reductive" to those who treated the current array of academic disciplines as nor-
matively acceptable. In effect , they stripped modern science of its diversity and tech-
nical virtuosity and brought it back to basics. Thus, Popper and Adorno returned the
sciences to their original unity with Socratic dialectic in the spirit of critical inquiry,
while Heidegger sought an ultimate sense of "Being" that is presupposed by the
various "beings" studied by the sciences.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, recent disunificationists have cast this return to unity as a
big mistake, as evidenced by the dogmatic confrontations between "analytic" and
"continental" schools of philosophy that marked the second half of the twentieth
century. However, the most plausible alternative trajectory recommended by the dis-
unificationists would involve following the lead of the last Neo-Kantian, Ernst
Cassirer." Unfortunately, not only did Heidegger handily usurp the mantle of Kant
from Cassirer at their famous confrontation in Davos , Switzerland, in 1929, but
more decisively Moritz Schlick - the convenor of the Vienna Circle - questioned the
THE CHANGING IMAGES OF UNITY AND DIS UNITY 189
wisdom of a philosophical position like Cassirer's that endlessly adjusted itself sim-
ply to conform to the latest scientific developments: Is justice done to either Kant or
Einstein, if Einstein's counterintuitive physical theories are assimilated to Kant's
rather commonsensical epistemology? In short, Neo-Kantianism was dealt lethal
blows from philosophical radicals on, so to speak, the "right and "left ." While
Heidegger wondered where is the place of authentic being in an epistemic regime
that enables anything to be studied by any means, Schlick wondered at what point
does philosophy's logical relationship to science become so attenuated as to be arbi-
trary and hence merely ideological.
It may not be long before Neo-Kuhnian disunification is subject to a similar
backlash. Creationism, Ecologism, Sociobiology, Feminism, Post-colonialism, and
Computationalism are very different contemporary science-oriented socio-intellectual
movements that have, with varying degrees of success, criticized the disciplinary
structure of universities for evading matters of "ultimate concern" that come from
explicit recognition that a variety of people and things inhabit a common reality.
CO NCL USION : B EYOND MISRECOGNIZING TO REDISCOVERING

TH E UNITY OF SCIENCE
We live in the time when the long discredited project of unifying the sciences is
being given a "decent burial" by those who regard it as a misguided precursor of
what they are now themselves doing. Whereas Quine liked to speak of a "principle
of charity" that underwrites our understanding of other times and places, this chari-
table gesture is a backhanded compliment that deserves its own name: the principle
ofmagnanimity, whereby our ability to excuse those who differ from us is taken as
an indirect measure of just how successful we are. Thus, the logical positivists are
nowadays praised, not for their unificationist ambitions but for their honest recogni-
tion of the plurality of scientific disciplines that continually confounded those ambi-
tions. Their honesty matters because "we" are now disunificationists.P To be sure,
such an interpretive stance would have provided cold comfort to the positivists, but
at least it has led to a renewed interest in fathoming their original motives. However,
lost in this particular transaction between past and present are the terms of reference
for unifying the sciences . Unification is simply no longer a going concern.
In the first section, we saw how contemporary historians and philosophers mis-
recognize the motives and metaphors behind unificationism . A final striking case of
this misrecognition is the image of the Swiss Army Knife that Rudolf Carnap origi-
nally introduced as a model of the human mind." [Figure 3] He did this to motivate
the positivist search for a unified inductive logic that would codify the principles of
empirical reasoning . However, inductive inference is inherently fallible because it
attempts to anticipate the future based on data from the past, which are themselves
often imperfect, due to a variety of constraints on our mental and physical resources.
Nevertheless, we do rather well overall with this faulty logic, much like a Swiss
Army Knife whose blades are suboptimal for each of its tasks but good enough for
all of them.
In recent years, this image has been turned on its head by evolutionary psycholo-
gists, who may be understood as interested in reading the disunificationist image of
190 STEVE FULLER
Figure 3. Swiss Army Knife: Contested Image of Unity and Disunity. Courtesy of
Victorinox.
science into the structure of the human brain as an adaptive feature of natural selec-
tion. Accordingly, now the brain is supposed to be like a Swiss Army Knife because
it consists of separate domain-specific modules (e.g. a part or process of the brain
devoted to perceiving certain shapes), which are like the blades that do each of its
jobs well with little more in common than physical co-location in the same piece of
metal." The question then becomes how the brain's modularity could be a product
of evolution rather than design (as in the case of the Swiss Army Knife). I would
speculate that these two radically different interpretations of the same image is made
possible because the positivists considered the Swiss Army Knife as a functioning
tool, whereas the evolutionary psychologists regard it an idealized object.
In any case, how might we reverse the dominance that the disunificationists exert
over the interpretation of the unity of science project? First, I would draw attention
to the historical resonance ofthe word "encyclopedia" that figured so prominently in
logical positivist projects . While today's disunificationists have been keen to stress
the positivist interest in building cross-disciplinary bridges through systematic
cross-referencing, they have downplayed the key Enlightenment feature of the
encyclopedia that made it so appropriate for the positivists' unifying impulses.
Specifically, the cross-referenced articles in Diderot's original L'Encyclopedie
often contradicted each other, forcing readers - typically non-specialists in any of the
TH E CHANGING IMAGES OF UNITY AND DISU NITY 191
NilE RIVER BASIN

BA 551N DU Nil
s.. t< *
o :sa:I.EOED <:Ines:I Vllf$
NAn"",ALcI>PI'Als I <:ArrALEIS N<trJONAlOS
- - MAJN ROAt6I AJ(fS .. OI.mu s 1>JNC)?MJX
UBYA
CHAO
1!1<
,..... .-:.t,..,-..
. ,~
~.V
CENTRAL
AFRICAN
REPUBU:
. ..
Figure 4. The River Nile Displaying Delta (in the North) and Tributaries (in the South).
Courtesy of the Nile Basin Initiative (http ://www.nilebasin.orgl) .
192 STEVE FULLER
referenced fields - to resolve the different authorities for themselves . Indeed, it was
just this open display of expert disagreement that had made L'Encyclopedie such a
controversial commercial venture: Suddenly, received wisdom had been turned into
fodder for public debate and perhaps even an opportunity for a higher-order dialec-
tical synthesis that would supplant the old expert categories. (This was, of course,
the attraction of the encyclopedia format to the German idealists, most notably
Hegel.) Similarly, the encyclopedism of the logical positivists was not meant to fos-
ter the temporary cross-disciplinary collaborations favored by today's disunification-
ists, but rather an ongoing collective effort to transcend the barriers that result
whenever knowledge is concentrated as a source of power.
This brings me to my second and final proposal for reviving unity's fortunes. In a
previous sectiorr" I mentioned that a popular inductivist approach to unifying the
sciences has been to imagine separate disciplines as tributaries flowing into one river
that then gives them a common focus and direction . The positivists used this image
not only for the unification of the sciences but the unification of individual discov-
eries under one science. Here the distinction between contexts of discovery and jus-
tification was introduced .'? However, this use of the fluvial image - a river and its
tributaries - makes the unification of science appear to be an attempt to homogenize
differences and consolidate power. As we saw in the opening quote from Galison,
HEYDAY OF THE IMAGE 19th-20th CENTURY 20th-21 st CENTURY?

METAPHOR GUIDING Tributaries flowing into A major river flowing
THE DISTINCTION a major river into a delta
PRIMA FACIE STATUS Disadvantage (because Advantage (because of
OF DISCOVERY of unexpected origins) expected origins)
ULTIMATE ROLE OF Concentrate knowledge Distribute knowledge
JUSTIFICATION through logical through local
assimilation accommodation
BACKGROUND Discoveries challenge Discoveries reinforce
ASSUMPTION the dominant paradigm the dominant paradigm
unless they are unless they are
assimilated to it accommodated to
local contexts
POINT OF THE Turn knowledge into Divest knowledge of
DISTINCTION power (Magnify power (Diminish
cumulative advantage) cumulative advantage)
NATURE OF Esoteric Exoteric
REDUCTION LANGUAGE
TEXTUAL IMAGE OF Single-authored Book Multi-authored
NATURE Encyclopaedia
Figure 5. Alternative images of the unity of science.

THE C HANG ING IM AG ES OF U N IT Y A ND DI S U NI TY 193
this in turn provides an easy rhetorical opening for endorsing the natural disunity of
the sciences. However, a river may also have a delta that forms as its waters empty
into a larger body of water. [Figure 4] The image of the delta, with its focus on the
distribution of the river's waters to sustain a variety of shifting and intersecting life
activities, is the image of unification worth promoting, and one more within the orig-
inal encyclopedic ambitions of the logical positivists who made unity such a vivid
image for twentieth century philosophy of science . Some of the implications of that
image for the issues raised in this paper are provided in Figure 5.
N OT ES
P. Galison, "Introduction: The Context of Disunity," in P. Galison and D. Stump (cds), The Disunity of
Science (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996) I.
2 M. Gibbons et aI., The New Production ofKnowledge (London : Sage, 1994).
3 1.-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
S. Fuller, "Making the University Fit for Critical Intellectuals : Recovering from the Ravages of the
Postmodern Condition," British Educa tional Research Journ al 25 (1999) 583- 95.
5 e.g. 1. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridg e UK: Cambridge University Press,
1975).
6 I. Hacking, Representing and Intervening (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
7 I. Hacking, "Five Parables," in R. Rorty et al. (eds), Philosophy in History (Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1984).
8 I. Hacking, "The Disunities of the Sciences," in P. Galison and D. Stump (eds), The Disunity of
Science (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996) 37- 74.
9 S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History fo r Our Times (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000) ch. 2.
10 S. Fuller, Science (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1997) ch. 6.
II E. Mendelsohn, "Explanation in Nineteenth Century Biology," in R. Cohen and M. Wartofsky (eds),
Boston Studies in the Philosophy ofScience vol. 2 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1964) 127- 50.
12 A contemporary example is S. Weinberg, Dreams ofa Final Theory (New York: Pantheon, 1992).
13 S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophi cal History fo r Our Times (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2000) ch. 2.
14 R. Creath, "The Unity of Science: Carnap, Neurath, and Beyond," in P. Galison and D. Stump (eds),
The Disunity of Science (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996) 158-69.
15 G. Holton, Science and Anti- Science (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993) ch. I.
16 S. Fuller, " Prolegomena to a Sociology of Philosophy in the 20th Century English-Speaking World,"
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32 (2002) 151-77.
17 P. Galison, "Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief," in M. Biagioli (ed.), The Science Studi es
Reader (London: Routledge, 1999) 137- 59, esp. 138-44.
18 T. Kuhn, The Structure ofScientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962 , 2nd ed.
1970).
19 S. Fuller, Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge (Madison : University of Wisconsin Press,
1993) 44-8.
20 S. Fuller, Socia l Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
21 e.g. E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity ofKnowledge (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998). This is dis-
cussed below in the section The unity ofscience as natural: deductive and inductive versions.
22 1. Dupre, The Disorder ofThings (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
23 E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity ofKnowledge (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1998).
24 A. Rosenberg, Instrumental Biology or the Disunity ofScience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994).
25 e.g, on "cognizers" as a natural kind: Z. Pylyshyn, Computation and Cognition (Cambridge MA: MIT
Press, 1984).
26 i.e. "cyborgs" : D. Haraway, Simians, Cyb orgs and Women (London: Free Association Books, 1990).
194 S T E VE FULL E R
27 P. Singer, A Darwin ian Left : Politics. Evolution and Cooperation. (Lo ndon: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1999).
28 H. Schnaede1bach, Philosophy in Germany. J831- J933 (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press,
1984).
29 T. Kuhn, The Structure ofScientific Revolution (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1962 , 2nd ed.
1970).
30 R. Collins, The Sociology ofPhilosophies (Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press, 1998) ch. 13.
31 R. Proctor, Value-Free Science? Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge (Cambridge MA : Harvard
University Press, 1991) part 2.
32 S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosop hical History fo r Our Times (Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 2000) ch. 6.
33 1. Haberm as, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 197 1).
34 M. Friedman, A Parting ofthe Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger (Chicago : Open Court Press,
2000).
35 J. Cat, N. Cartwri ght and H. Chang, "Otto Neurath: Polit ics and the Unity of Science", in P. Galison
and D. Stump (eds), The Disunity of Science (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1996) 347-69.
36 A. Margalit, "The Past of an Illusion", in E. Ullman-Margal it (ed.), The Kaleidoscope of Science
(Dordreeht: D. Reidel, 1986) 89-94; S. Fuller, Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents (New York:
Guilford Press, 1993 ) 142.
37 L. Cosmides and 1. Tooby, "Beyond Intuition and Instinct Blindness: Towards an Evolutionarily
Rigorou s Cognitive Science" , Cognitio n 50 (1994) 60.
38 The section entitled The unity ofscien ce as natural: deductive and inductive versions.
39 S. Fuller, Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (Chicago : University of Chicago
Press, 2000) ch. I.
AUTHORS AND EDITORS
Garland Allen (1936), professor of biology at Washington University at St. Louis

(USA), wrote Life Science in the Twentieth Century (1975), and Thomas Hunt
Morgan. The Man and His Science (1978). Recent publications are: (co-authored
with Jeffrey Baker), Biology: Scientific Process and Social Issues (Bethesda,
Fitzgerald Scientific Press, 2001); (co-edited with Roy MacLeod), Science, History
and Social Activism: A Tribute to Everett Mendelsohn (Kluwer, 2002); and Modern
Biological Determinism: The Violence Initiative, the Human Genome Project, and
the New Eugenics. In 2002 he was a fellow of the Dibner Institute, MIT, Boston
(USA). He is one of the editors of the Journal ofthe History ofBiology.
Address: G.E. Allen, Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis,
Campus Box 1137, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA, tel. +1 314935 6808; allen@
biology.wustl.edu
Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent (1949) teaches history and philosophy of science in
the Department of Philosophy at the University of Paris X (France) and published
many books and articles. She wrote a biography on Lavoisier. In 1997 she won the
Dexter Award for the history of chemistry by the American Chemical Society. Other
titles: A History ofChemistry (together with Isabelle Stengers, 1996); Communicating
Chemistry. Textbooks and Their Audiences, 1789-1839 (together with Anders
Lundgren, 1996); Lavoisier in European Context: Negotiating a New Language for
Chemistry (edition 1995).
Address: B. Bensaude-Vincent, Department of Philosophy, Universite Paris X,
200 Avenue de la Republique, 92001 Nanterre, France, tel. +33 1 47 32 31 83;
bensaude@u-parisIO~r
David Christian (1946), former associate professor of modem history, Macquarie

University, Sydney (Australia), and now professor of history at San Diego State
University (California), has published books and articles on the history of Russia
and Central Asia. He also pioneered successfully in teaching of"Big History", which
attempts to explore the past on the largest possible scales. His book, "This Fleeting
World": An Introduction to "Big History" , will be published by the University of
California Press in 2003.
195
I.H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier, C. de Pater and A. van Heiden (eds), The Changing Image of the
Sciences, 195-198 .
© 2002 Kluwer Academ ic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain.
196 A UTHORS AND EDITORS
Address: D.G. Christian, Department of History, San Diego State University,

5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182, USA, tel. + 1619 594 2821;
dgchrist@mail.sdsu.edu
Steve Fuller (1959) is professor of sociology at the University of Warwick (UK).

Originally trained in the history and philosophy of science, he is the founder of the
research program of social epistemology. It is the name of a quarterly journal he
founded in 1987, as well as the first of his seven books : Social Epistemology (Indiana
University Press, 1988, 2nd edition 2002); Philosophy ofScience and Its Discontents
(1989, 2nd edition Guilford Press, 1993); Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of
Knowledge (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Science (Open University Press
and University of Minnesota Press, 1997); The Governance ofScience: Ideology and
the Future of the Open Society (Open University Press, 2000); Thomas Kuhn: A
Philosophical History for Our Times (University of Chicago Press, 2000); Knowledge
Management Foundations (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001) . Fuller has organized
two global cyberconferences for the UK's Economic and Social Research Council :
one on public understanding of science (1998), and another on peer review in the
social sciences (1999). He has spoken in over 25 countries , often keynoting profes-
sional academic conferences, and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
since 1995.
Address : S. Fuller, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4
7AL, UK, tel. +442476523940; s.wfuller@warwick.ac.uk
Albert van Heiden (1943), until May 2001 Lynette S. Autrey professor of history at
Rice University, Houston, Texas (USA) and currently professor of history of science
at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands), published on the history of astronomy
and astronomical instruments . His publications include The Invention ofthe Telescope
(Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. vol. 67, 1977); Measuring the Universe. Cosmic Dimensions
from Aristarchus to Halley (University of Chicago Press, 1985); Sidereus Nuncius or
the Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei (University of Chicago Press, 1989);
Julian Huxley, Biologist and Statesman of Science (Rice University Press, 1993,
edited with C.K. Waters); Scientific Instruments (Osiris vol. 9, 1994, edited with T.L.
Hankins) ; The History ofScience in the Netherlands : Survey, Themes and Reference
(Leiden : Brill, 1999, edited with K. van Berkel and L.C. Palm) . At Rice, he devel-
oped an internet project on Galileo : www.rice.edu/Galileo . Van Heiden is
a former president of the History of Science Society and a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Address : A. van HeIden, Institute for the History and Foundations of Science,
Faculty of Sciences, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, tel. + 31 30 2532841;
a.vanhelden@phys.uu.nl
Teun Koetsier (1946) teaches history and philosophy of mathematics at the Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He has a particular interest in the his-
tory of kinematics of mechanisms. He wrote Lakatos' Philosophy of Mathematics,
a Historical Approach (Elsevier Science Publishers , 1991). With Luc Bergmans
(University ofTours, France) he is currently editing the volume Mathematics and the
AUTHORS AND EDITORS 197
Divine, a historical study in the various relations between mathematics, on the one
hand, and metaphysics, theology, religion and mysticism, on the other hand. The
book will be published by Elsevier Science Publishers in 2003.
Teun Koetsier was chairman of the Commission for History of IFToMM
(International Federation for the Theory of Machines and Mechanisms) from
1990-1997. He is chairman of the Dutch Association for the History and Social
Function of Mathematics.
Address: T. Koetsier, Division of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of
Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1083, 1081 HV Amsterdam,
The Netherlands, tel. +31 204447684; teun@cs.vu.nl
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (1943) is professor of the history of science at the

University of Minnesota (USA). Her work includes studies of women, gender and
science, and she has recently edited, with Helen Longino, Women, Gender, and
Science : New Directions, Osiris 12 (1998) and edited Women in Science: An Isis
Reader (1999). She also writes on the institutional history of science in American
culture, including numerous articles on science in higher education, natural history
museums, and early professional organizations. Most recently she wrote, with
Michael Sokal and Bruce Lewenstein, The Establishment of Science in America :
150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement ofScience (1999). She
is past President of the History of Science Society and recently served on the Board
of the AAAS. She is currently a member of the Editorial Board for Minerva and
on the Advisory Board of Editors for Isis; and, with David Knight, she edits a series
on scientific biography for Cambridge University Press.
Address : S.G. Kohlstedt, Program in the History of Science and Technology,
University of Minnesota, 108 Pillsbury Hall, 131 Pillsbury Drive, S.E., Minneapolis,
MN 55406, USA, tel. + 1 6127293155; sgk@umn.edu
Michael S. Mahoney (1939), professor of history at Princeton University (USA) is

the author of The Mathematical Career ofPierre de Fermat, 1601-1665 (1994, sec-
ond revised edition); a series of monographs on the mathematics of Rene Descartes,
Isaac Barrow, Christiaan Huygens, and Isaac Newton; and a variety of articles on
the history of computing. His current research focuses on the development of theo-
retical computer science as a mathematical discipline and on the effort to establish
software engineering as an engineering discipline.
Address : Michael S. Mahoney, Program in History of Science, Princeton University,
Princeton, NJ 08540, USA, tel. + 1 6092584157; mike@princeton.edu
Donald Opitz (1969) is a Ph.D. candidate in history of science and technology at the
University of Minnesota (USA). He is completing a dissertation titled The Country
House as Laboratory: Science and the Aristocracy in Late- Victorian and Edwardian
Britain. He is author of an essay on country-house science forthcoming in Sidelined
Sciences? Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking, co-edited by
David Clifford, Elisabeth Wadge, Alex Warwick, and Martin Willis. He is also a con-
tributor to American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 1999) and its
first supplement (2002). His research focuses on the roles of class and gender in the
198 AUTHORS AND EDITORS
professionalization of science, women in science , and the recent history of women

in higher education in the United States.
Address : Donald L. Opitz, M.A ., Program in History of Science and Technology,
Tate Laboratory of Physics, University of Minnesota , 116 Church Street SE,
Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA, opit0002@umn.edu
Abraham Pais (1918-2000), previous professor of physics at Rockefeller

University, New York (USA), cooperated with Bohr. He published very succesful
books : Subtle is The Lord: The Science and Life ofAlbert Einstein (1982); Inward
Bound: OfMatter and Forces in the Physical World (1986); Niels Bohr s Times: In
Physics , Philosophy and Polity (1991); Einstein lived here (1995) .
Cornelis de Pater (1943) teaches history of science at the Vrije Universiteit

Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht (both in The Netherlands). He wrote
a thesis about the eighteenth-century Dutch newtonian physicist Petrus van
Musschenbroek. In 1986-1987 he was a fellow of the Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Studies (NIAS) at Wassenaar (The Netherlands). There he wrote a book
about the Dutch Newtonian, Willem Jacob 's Gravesande. He published about Dutch
newtonianism, which is still his main topic. He is a former member of the board of
GeWiNa, the Dutch History of Science Society.
Address: C. de Pater, Department of the History and Social Aspects of Science,
Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, tel. +31 20 4447723; fax +31 20 4447988;
c.de.pater@nat.vu.nl, and Institute for the History and Foundations of Science,
P.O. Box 80.000, NL-3508 TA, Utrecht, The Netherlands, tel. + 31 30 2538040 ;
fax +31 302536313; c.depater@phys.uu.nl
Ida Stamhuis (1952) teaches history of science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
(The Netherlands) and publishes on the history of statistics (thesis 1989), genetics,
and on women in science. In 1996 she won the History of Women in Science Prize
of the American History of Science Society. Together with Paul Klep she edited the
volume The Statistical Mind in a Pre-Statistical Era. The Netherlands 1750-1850
(Amsterdam: Aksant , 2002). She was a member of the board of GeWiNa, the Dutch
History of Science Society, and of the editorial board of its journal Gewina. She is
associate editor of the International Statistical Review . Since 1997 she is President
of the Commission on Women in Science of the Division of the History of Science
of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science.
Address: I.H. Stamhuis, Department of the History and Social Aspects of Science,
Faculty of Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081, 1081 HV
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, tel. + 31 204447983; stamhuis@nat.vu.nl
INDEX
r; Academie des Sciences 182 legislative - for the calls of unity in science
Academy of Sciences 88 I71
Dutch - 24 of nineteenth-century chemists 39
of Lagad o 5 personal - of women scientists sustained by
National - 131 images 105
Norwegian - 88 of synthetic chemists 39
Swedish - 88 unificationi st - 189
Academy (of Plato) 182 American Museum of Natural History 74
Achaemenid Emp ire 159 American Breeders' Association 72
acid(s) Americas, the 166
deoxyribonucle ic - (DNA) 61 Amsterdam ix, II I , 113, 124, 127
formic - 3 1 Town Hall 113
organic - 30 analysis 126n
sulphuric - 29 cytological - 51
acidity (of the blood) 65 of data - 75
Adam (and Eve) 154, 185 genetic - 81
Adorno, Theodor 188 linguistic - 175
Africa 154 of mean differences 79
age pedigree (method of) - 75, 79
atomic - 9 replaced by (computer) simulation 2 1
axia l - 159 scientific - III
computer - 9 semantic - 18
of exploration of space 86 animism 155, 156, 160
industrial - 71 anomaly in the motion of Mars 96
Informat ion - 9 Antarcti ca 154
machine - 71 anti-unity 187
new - 37 application(s) 22
Agriculture (US Department of - ) 62 civil - 37
Alberta 80 evaluation- - distinction s 179
Algol 17,18 of fertilization 72
Allee, w.e. 68 of general relativit y 96
Allen of logic 173
Garland E. 5, 6, 43, 46, 6 I of mechani stic and reductionist
Paul 19 thinking 70
Alta ir (computer) 19 of Mende l's laws 123
ambition(s) of plastics with fibers 37
encyclopedic - of the logical positivists 193 of principl es of scientific agriculture 72
199
200 INDEX
application(s) contd. artificialist(s)

of rational principles of genetics 80 perspective (of unification in science) 183
of rational, scientific management 75 and the university I85
of science 141, 167n artificiality
of scientific approaches to the fishing New-Age cult of plasticity and - 37
industry 72 as supreme value 34
of scientific knowledge 163 valued by the proliferation of plastics 35
of scientific research 183 astronomy 1, 21,11 6,159,163,172
of scientific theories 180-1 82 Athens 182
software - 14, 19, 26n atom(s) 71,91, 165
of thinking 134 arrangement of - 30
Archimedes 2, 3 excited - 97
Archives Curie and Joliot-Curie 128, 129, fusion of - 165
131,132 of helium 165
argument(s) 158,159, 177n, 184 as a heuristic device 53
about costs of new medicines 5 of hydrogen 165
of Deacon 153 logical - of perception 175
of Dennett 169n motion of - 175
from design 162 path of- 57
holistic - 62 reality of - 86
no miracles - 143 structure of - 86
nature-nurture - 70 substitution of - 30
rational - in distinction from animistic ultimate units of matter 174
thinking 156 atomic
for realism 167n age 9
in relation to the criticism of the idea of a bomb 2, 181
unified sense of reality 187 nucleus 96
in relation to gender and science I34n , I38n physicists 181
in relation to the application of eugenics 75, physics 181
78, 87 power 9
in relation to the success of science 167n radiation 73
how to study changing images of the structure 37, 96
sciences 7 theory 86
Aristotle 65, 93, 184, 187 atomist (Alexander Williamson as an - ) 86
arithmetic (control and - units) I I attraction
Arrhenius, Svante 88 of the encyclopedia format 192
artificial gravitational - 94
breeding 47 Australia 155, 158, 166
composite materials at first glance - 37 Austria 172
culture of the - in chemistry 37 axiom(s) 90
integration/unification in science as - 183, first principles of a theory 98
184,185 of special relativity 94
intelligence (AI) 22 axiomatic (structure of special relativity) 93
languages 175
life (AL) 22 Babbage, Charles 117
man (Golem) I Bacon, Francis 3
man-made products 29 Baconian
perfection of the - 35 empiricism and Cartesian rationalism unified
substitute 32 by Newton 183
synthesis as an - creation 3 I program of the Royal Society 4
things and superficiality 36 Baker
unification of the science Bly Ernest Tamlin 89
blocked 184 Jeffrey, J.W 46
artificial life Bakker, Ben L.G. 6
see artificial Barthes, Roland 34
INDEX 201
Bateson, William 53 (of the) cell 60-61 ,81

Bean, Alan 164 changing face of - 47, 55, 57
Bedlam (insane asylum of -) 110 closely tied to field experience 44
behavior(s) 80,81 defective - 73, 80
of electromagnetic radiation 96 definition of - 43
human - 73, 180, 184 evolutionary - 67
particle - and wave - as experimental - 6, 58
complementary 101 experimental aspects of - 62
particle and wave - mutually exclusive, but general - 43, 47
necessary 100 graduate - programs 73
social - 73, 80 holistic - 6, 53, 65
of the water surface 121 image(s) of - 6,43-44, 57
behaviorism 185 late nineteenth century - 62
Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette 5, 29 of marine resources 72
Bergson, Henri 88 mechanistic - 53, 8I
Berlin 47 modern - 44, 70
University of 96 molecular - 6I
Bernard, Claude 30, 39, 47 62 "new" - 51,53,61 ,70,72
Berthelot, Marcellin 29-31 ,39 reductionist - 6, 8I
Berzelius, Jons Jakob 30 twentieth-century - 82
Bhopal 36 biomass 55
Big Brother 9 biomimetism 39
Big History see history biominerals 39
biochemistry 22, 69 biotechnology 7I, 186
biological black holes 96
chemistry 57 black body radiation 96
circles 55 Bohr, Niels 6,85-88,91-93,95-102, 181
considerations 184 black-white marriages 75
in contrast to 'chemical' 36 Bonneville, Mary A. 60
definition of species 186 botanical
difficulties faced by the Darwinian theory from Garden at Groningen 124, 138n
the - side 48 Garden of Buitenzorg in the Dutch East Indies
domain (as problem solver for modern 124,125
chemists) 39 institutions 43
factor 67, 184 lore of contemporary hunter/gatherers 147
hierarchy 8I Bowler, Peter 48
-Iy important molecules 57 Boyle, Robert 162
inquiry 47 brain(s) 23,81, 150, 152, 153, 156, 168n, 186,
marine - laboratory 44,47,63,72 187,190
mechanisms 36 Brazil 76
metaphor of Neo-Kuhnians 188 Bridges, C.B. 54, 56
modern humans in their setting 144 Bridgman, Percy Williams 175
problems 5 I, 79 Britain 53,73,76, 78, 114, 134n, 175
processes 44, 57 Great - 36,124
research 55,57, 72 British Colombia 80
roots of human social problems 8 I Brooke, John Hedley 30
sciences 43, 184, 186 Briicke, Emil 47
spin-off ofthe physical sciences 5 I Buck vs. Bell (Supreme Court case of - ) 79
strategies 39 Buck (family) 79
system 44, 57, 64, 70 Buddha 93
thinking 168n Buitenzorg (Botanical Garden of - )
work (dominated by morphology) 47 124,125
biology 5-6,39,43,44,47-48,51,57,62,70, Bush, Vannevar 19,26n
72,73,81, 183, 186 Butler, Samuel 4
areas of - 55, 71 Byron, Lady see Milbanke, Anne Isabelle
202 INDEX
calculate/calculating mammalian nerve - body 58

body image (Lovelace) 117 molecular composition of - 57
complex problems by models 5 movement 50
modeling beyond - numbers 21 new paradigms about - function 59
machine of Babbage 117 pancreatic exocrine - of the bat 60
power of computers 5 reductionistic view of the - 59
calculator (modern electronic -c-} 26n simple picture of - "as bag of enzymes" 59
Caltech (California Institute ofTechnology) 97 single- - organisms 165
Cambridge (Great Britain) 61,117,184 study of - biology 60
Cannon ultra-structure of 57, 60
Cornelia 64 ultrastructure of - 60
Walter Bradford 62, 64 cellular (components) 57
capitalism 185 Central Europe 110
industrial - 71 Chalon, A.E. 119
mercantile - 71 Changeaux, Jean -Pierre 69
reductionist biology encouraged by Chantrey, Francis, 115, 116
industrial - 6 chemistry 5,6,29,30,32,34-37,47,52 ,53,70,
utility of reductionism to industrial - 57 86,94
Carnap, Rudolf 175,176,189 agricultural - 72
Carothers, Wallace 32 analytical - 36
Cartesian animal and plant - 72
nomogram 65 biological - 57
rationalism vs . Baconian empiricism 183 classical - 94
Cartesianism 180 conventional - 94
Cassirer, Ernst 188, 189 modern - 39
causality synthetic - 5, 37
classical principle of - 97 Chicago 67
nineteenth-century view of - 91 Child, C .M. 53
as a "synthetic judgement a priori " 101 chimp(anzee)s 152, 153
Cavendish China 158,174
Laboratory see laboratory Christian, David 7, 141
Margaret 6,107-110,112,114,118,132, circumstance(s)
133, 135n environmental- 75
Margaret (as Duchess of Newcastle) 107 intellectual work of women and -
Margaret (as Margaret Lucas) 135n 132,133
Margaret (as Margaret New Castle) 135n knowledge systems and external - 150
William 135n light behave like particles, under
cell(s) 69 which - 97
- biology laboratories 61 society and physical - 186, 187
blastomeres as daughter - 51 "software", under which - the term appeared
chromosomes as visible - structures 54 26n
as compartmentalized units 59 specification of - 91
as a complex system 62 specified - and observations 101
concentration of enzyme's substrate in the - Clarke, Arthur C. 23
69 Clements, Frederic Edward 66, 68
differentiation 81 clock paradox see paradox
division 52 Cobbe, Francis Power, 116, 137n
division 50 code 14,23-25
excitable - (neurons) 167 - d in song and story 155
general view of - and the ultra structure cognition (as a sensation) 91
of- 57 Cohen, H. Floris 144,167n
and genome 23 Cold Spring Harbor (NY) 73, 74
individual - 165 Como 99-101
and individual components 57 conference 99, 100
- "lineage" 50 lecture (of Bohr) 99, 101
INDEX 203
company birth - 79
Du Pont - 32 feedback - systems 81
offemale colleague students (Tammes) 123 genetic - of molecules (biochemistry) 57
of students (Curie) 129 homeostatic temperature - in mammals 64
telephone - 19 of human reproduction 74
complementarity, complementary of medicine 76
as a concept of Bohr 87,92,93, 96,99, 101 of migrations of large segments of human
of the interests of the Curies 127, 128 population 80
complex planes (superimposed - ) 91 over nature 71
complex(ity) population - 73
of a computer program 14 of the process (offorming biominerals by
of computers II nature) 39
of integrated circuits 12 quality - check (knowledge systems) 181
of morphology of biominerals 38,39 social - (as the organized - oflarge
of scientific problems 5, 6 populations) 71,72,73,80
of a social web of computing 15 over society 9
of the story of the Big Bang 7 spirit of scientific - 32
of the structure of wood 38 temperature - (image of the computer) 5
composite(s), composite material 37,38, 40n Copenhagen 86,98
computation II , 13, 15 University 88
computers, - separated from 17, 26n cosmology
image of- 20 "Big Bang -" 146
laws of - 25 papers on (Einstein) 96
life as generated by - 22 Cowles, Henry Chandler 55, 66, 68
nature of - 15 creation(s)
theory of - 18 see also creation story/myth
Turing's machine, not a mechanism, but a - 25 composite materials as unique - 37
computational(ly) 21 of computational models 23
models 22-23 emphasis in chemistry no longer on - 32
process 23, 26n "Engines of - " 39
computationalism 189 of an environment for contemplating
computer(s) 5,9-26,37,44,81 ,87, 137n ultimate forms of reality (by Plato's
age 9 Academy) 182
generation 117 modem - 25
image of - 5, II , 13, 18, 19,20,23 of modem physics 91
and mental life 186 origin of - 177
as a public utility 19 of physical attributes 101
simulation 39 of polities 159
virtual - 18 of state systems 166
Comte, Auguste 183, 184 of the sun 165
Conrad, Charles 164 synthesis as an artificial - (Berthelot) 30, 31
consistent of a system of exchanges between communities
logically - (quantum mechanics) 101 158,159
mathematical schemes (of wave mechanics and system of scientific concepts a - of man 90
matrix mechanics) 98 of "trading zones" between scientific
with the public image (behavior of Pockels, traditions 177
Tammes) l21 , 124 use of the phrase - 167n
support (Cavendish) 114 creation story/myth (stories/myths)
constructivism definition of - 149
philosophical reductionism as a form of - 179 embedded in Big History 143, 149
realism vs. - 171,179,180 importance of - 149
Continent 124 modem - 165
control science as a - 7, 141, 143, 146
and arithmetic units II of a society 147
biochemical - processes 69 as sources of meaning 163
204 I ND E X
creation story/myth (stories/myths) con/d. Denmark 80

(stories told in) science compared with - 143, Dennett, Daniel 150, 152
146, 147, 149, 164 deoxyribonucleic acids (DNA) 6 1
symbolic language of - 147 Descartes, Rene 23
traditional - 147, 149, 164 description(s)
universality of - 149 classica l mode of - 10I
creationism with the complementarity concept 92
Intelligent Design Theory as ..- 2.0" 173 exclusive - 100
as a science-oriented movement 189 experimentation (biology) vs. - 46
Cressy Morriso n, A. 34, 35 of (natural) phenomen a 94, 10I
Crick, Francis 61 objec tively real - 10 1
Crimean War 122 of observations in classical terms 100
Curie of particl e behavior 10I
Irene - (Joliot -Curie) 127 of a particul ar computation II
Marya (Marie) Sklodowska - 127-132, and pre-scription 141
138n, 139n ofreality 141, 146, 150, 155, 167n
Pierre 127-130, 138n of space and time 95
cyberspace 19 of the universe 163
of the volt meter as a classical object 99
Darwin, Charles Robert 47, 50, 51, 162, 184, 187 design
Darwinian of Algol 17
arms races and knowledge systems 152 argument from - 162
methods 167n brain 's modularity as a product of - 190
model of explaining long term changes 168n brain's modularity as a product of - 190
natural selection 168n general - for a physical device I I
paradigm 47,48 generated by God/gods or by blind mechanical
sense 149 processes 162
terms 155 grand - of Berthelot 31
theory 48, 50, 5 1 intelligent - theory 173
data 18 nature teaches the chemist the - and repair of
analysis of - 75 materials 39
ecological - 69 rational - of drugs as provided by
empirica l - 47 chemistry 36
evolutionary - 69 designer II
experimental - 99 detector(s)
and instructions in the same memory I I, 15 as classica l objects (Bohr) 99
molecular and anatomical - 44 and object of study 99
from the past 189 Diderot, Denis 190
qualitative - 5 1 Dilthey, Wilhelm 184, 188
quantitative - 51 dimension(s)
of social scientists 184 analytical-reductionist - 55
testable - 47 fourth - and spiritists 94
database 14 of holism 65
Davenport, Charles r«, 73 personal and professional - of Marie Curie
Davos 188 138n
de Vries, Hugo 124 Ding an sich
de Morgan, Augustus 117 intrinsic attribut es of the - (viewpoint of Kant
Deacon, Terence 152, 153 and Einstein) 102
Deep-Sea Research Station 124 discovery/ies
Deity of bending of light in passing the sun 96
early European science and belief in a of Bohr about the writings of philosophers 93
universal - 160 Bohr's - of complemen tarity 93
explaining reality and invoking the - 162 as a challenging or reinforcing the dominant
demythologize 187 paradigm 192
Den Helder 124 the collective body of human knowledge and
see research station new - 184
IN DEX 205
contexts of - and justi fication 192 Elder, Eleanor S. 121

Einstein on - 88 electron (s) 35, 96
emphasis in chemistry on - 32 beam 60
ofenzyrneinduction 69 micrograph 44, 59
epoch- making - (Wohler's synthes is) 30 microscope 46, 57, 59, 60
of Pockels 120, 137n micro scopy 46,57,60
of pulsars etc. 96 transmission - micrograph 60
relating to geographic distribution (natural wave or particle 98, 99, 100
history) 43 elec tronic
scientific - 137n calc ulator 26n
status of - 192 digital computer 9
sym bo l - 153 medium 5
unificatio n of individual - in scie nce 192 Elias, Nor bert 159
voyages of - 160 Elton, Charles 55
of a new world by chem ists 32 embed(ded)
disunification comput ers - in the world as an
as a character of science 7 "i nterface" 23
Neo-Kuhn ian 189 fami liar claims in matrices of behaviour 162
disunificationism 179, 180, 187 hum an history - in natural history 168n
disunificationist(s) 171, 179,1 80, 187-1 90,1 92 ideas - in the physical sciences 53
disunity image of the computer - in our image of the
see also "unity" world 20
as an expressio n of realism 179 invisible computers - in systems 19
image of - as intercalatio n 176 maps of reality - in systems of socia l rules
image of - (in the philosophy of science) 171, 155
176, 190 maps (of knowledge systems) - in the nervous
of (the) science(s) 17 1, 173, 183,1 93 system 149
Dobzhansky, Theodosius 56 modem " Creation Myth" - in
Dohm , Anton 62, 63 "Big History" 143
Donley, Carol C. 85 natural history - in chemical history 168n
Driesch, Han s 51, 52, 53, 63, 65 scientific thinking - in popular thinking 141
Du Bois-Reymond, Emil 47 world - in networks of obligations 156
Du Pont 32 Emerson, A.E. 68
Company 32 encyclo p(a)edia
Duhem, Pierre 53 attraction of the - format 192
Durkheim, Emile 184 Enlig htenme nt feature of the - 190
Dutch historical resonance of the word - 190
Academy of Sciences 124 as an image of nature 192
East Indies 124 as a locus of debate 7
Guiana (Surinam) 110 Encyclopaedia
Americana 147
Eckert , Presper I I Britannica 87, 149, 177, 178
ecolog ist 55, 66, 67 encyclopedic (ambi tions of the logica l
eco logy 47, 5 1 positivists) 193
experimentally-oriented - 55 L'Encyc lopedie 190,1 92
field-orien ted - 55 encycl opedism (of the logical posit ivists) 192
interactionism as a part of - 66 Engelbart, Douglas 19
of marine food sources 72 England 72,73 ,76,79,80, 121
ecosystem(s) Enlightenment 177, 183, 187, 190
energy components of - 55 episteme (as forbidden know ledge)
mu lti-dimensional - as a complex system 81 episte mic
polluting - 8 1 barriers to - access 187
Eddingto n, Arthur 175 comm unities 187
Egypt 158 court of - appeal 187
Einstein, Albert 6, 85-88,90-93,95-97, 100, orthodoxy 186
101, 102, 127, 181, 189 regime 189
206 IND EX
epistemological as the rational management of the germ

considerations (Bohr) 91 plasm 76
lessons (as term of Bohr) 101 research 76
skepticism 176 sterilization laws (U.S. Germany, Scandinavia)
epistemology 78,79, 80
anglophone - 175 supported by wealthy elites 80
general - 180 Third International Congress of - 74
of Kant 189 Eugenics Record Office see ERO
and ontology 181, 187 Eurasia 158, 166
scientific - and academic bureaucracy 187 Europe 46,62,112,1 59,1 60,174
social - of Fuller 177 evaluation (of scientific theories) see application
EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox 101 Eve (Adam and -r-] 154, 185
ERO (Eugenics Record Office) 73 Evelyn, John 108
essence(s) evidence
intuited - 181 accounted for by phylogenies 51
of things 102 communication of - 177
eugenic(al) for interaction between environment and
concerns 76 genome 69
contests 75 for a "mental organ" 168
law 79 a role of philosophers in Bohr's
legislation (laws) 73, 79 complementarity, no - for 93
literature 75 scientific - for atomic structure 96
movies 75 standards of - in science 174
rationales: primarily economic arguments 77 statements about physical - 187
sterilization law 79 for Tammes as a strong woman 124
thinking 75, 80 evolution
eugenicist(s) 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80 brain's modularity as a product of - 190
AJnerican - 76, 80 Darwin's Theory of - and the unity of
British - 76, 79, 80 homo sapiens
Canadian - 79 of human behavior 73
French - 78, 79 of (human) knowledge systems 143, 164
Gennan - 78, 79, 80 of the human mind 167n
Latin American - 76 impossible without faithful as well as
Scandinavian - 78 unfaithful replication 67
eugenics intellectual - 159
aim of - 73, 80 of natural phenomena in space and
common features of social movements with the time 94
label of - 74, 75 of non-human knowledge systems 152
definition of - 73 organic - (as a part of the problem of
definition of positive - and of negative - 75 heredity) 53
as an example of mechanical and reductionist population genetics and the study
thinking 73, 80 of - 66
history of - 6 of populations 66
and immigration restriction (United States) relation between microB and macro - 81
73,74 scientific - (17th century) 70
international - congresses 74 "shifting balance" concept of - 69
issues of - with social and political impact 73 speculative theories on - in Haeckel 47
logo 74 of tools used by biologists 57
marriage laws (United States) 75 evolutionary 51, 153
movement(s) 73- 76, 80, 81 biology 67
national movements 73 data 69
national efficiency of - 75 decision 150
and the Papal Bull Casu Connubii 79 "- ethics" 180
positive vs. negative - 75 lineages 44
as a questionable science 55 paradigm 47
IN DEX 207
psycholog(y)(ist) 156, 189, 190 experimentalist

study 55 laboratory-bound - 55
theory 48, 71 stance of the "medical materialists" 47
"trees" 50 experimentally
experience(s) based biology 70
European - of biologists 62 oriented ecology 55
field - 44 recreating things 22
the idea of mathematical simplicity in nature separating the first two blastomeres (Roux and
and - 89 Driesch) 51
of marine laboratories (Naples, Woods Hole) experimentation 120
62 description vs. - and the changing image of
experiment(s) 98, 101, 110, 120, 121, 127, biology 46
176,1 77 at marine research stations 62
controlled - 57 as part of the hallmark of the "new" biology
with Drosophila 56 51
Mendel's pea - 54 expert(s)
quantitative - in biology 47 old - categories vs. - disagreement in
repetition and comparison of controlled - in L'Encyclopedie 192
the new biology 51 definition of an - by Bohr 93
of Roux and Driesch (embryological in the public domain (philosophy) 173
differentiation) 51,52, 63 scientific - 174, 175
station 62 scientific - for efficiency management in
of Wohler (synthesis of urea) and vital industry 75
force 30 setting (science) 181
experimental exploration
advancement of - biology 58 concerning the construction by women
arrangement and the look at the electron 100, scientists of their image 6
101 of space 86
aspects of biology 62 unconventional - of Merian 114
behavior of black body radiation 96
biology, central in the professionalization of the Faust(us) I, 2
sciences 6 feminine
a characteristic of genetics 53, 55 dress of Marie Curie as a - counterpart to the
combining observational and - work 63 attire of men 127
conditions of observation 10I iconography 105
confirmation 96 imagery (in the iconography of the Royal
embryologists 66 Society) 116
emphasis on - work in the new biology 53 nature - vs. science masculine 105
facts relating quantum mechanics 96 norms 134n
genetics traditions in biology 183 sacrificing everything - 117
(improved) - techniques 59, 81 femininity
introducing - methods to the biological minimized in a photograph of Tammes 126
sciences 43 norms of - (as invoked by women scientists)
methods of the "new" biology after Darwin 51 107
methods, disseminated into biology 44 "space of -" 135n
observations 99 femininized (modesty of women scientists) 106
psychology (Mach) 75 Ferguson, Adam 177- 179
result contradicting Einstein's theory 90 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 185
science 5, 43 field(s) 187,1 92
shift from descriptive to - work 55 of "behavioral genetics" 70
studies of embryological differentiation biology (1890s) closely tied to -
(Driesch and Roux) 51 experience 44
transforming "natural history" into an - of biology (shift in it) 55
science 174 the booming - of "World History" 167n
experimentalism 48 of chemistry (in the 1960s) 6
208 INDEX
field(s) contd. fundamental categories and the ir - in the

descriptive work in the field (biology) 55 non -physical sciences 186
differe nt - 187 oflanguage 91
disciplinary - (of chemistry) 39 logical - (Turing) II
fundamental questions in the - (biology) 81 mathematical - 21
gravitational - 96 molecular structure and - 70
important - of non-linear part ial differential multivalued - (complex plane) 91
equations 21 power of modern science is a - of scale 165
inspection of the - in all weathers (impossible structure and - (in biology) 43,46, 60
for women) 124 and type of "maps of reality" 150
interactionist - within the life sciences 67 variety of - of sea-urchin etc. 38
interactionist - (genetics, ecology, functionalism 186
evolut ionary biology) 66, 67
intertwining of disciplinary - today 39 Galilei, Galileo 160
both laboratory and - (included in modern Galison, Peter 172,173,176,177,179,180,192
biology) 43 Galt on, Franci s 79
mathematics or more abstract - 106 Garden of Eden 185
of materials scien ce 39 Gates, Bill 19
of physiology mo st similar to the physical Gellner, Ernest 156, 162
sciences 62 gender 130, 134n
reductionist treatment of the - of heredity 53 discrimination 123
referenced - in L'Encyclop edie 192 drama (Margaret Cavendish) 109
relevant - of academic and technological images of women scientists in relation to -
inquiry 39 107
scientific - 126 emphatic - lines between men and women 105
senior investigators in the - (biology) 51 norms 105,132, 133
social sciences as autonomous - polarities 136n
of inquiry 184 recurring - constructions 106
of specialization (biology) 62 role of - in science 105
taking experimental procedures to the - 55 as a social norm 133
of taxonomy, anatomy and embryology 51 stereotypes contradicted by Somerville 's
traditional - work (natural history) 6, 55 accomplishment 114
work in the open - (frontispiece of Merian's strong - identities 120
Metamorphosis) 112 women perceived as scientists despite their - 6
young - of genetics 123 women, - and science (studied by Carolyn
field-oriented Merchant) 105
areas as explicitly - as ecology and population genetic
genetics 55 basi s of social behaviors 80
organismic, - naturalists 55 "causes" of complex behavior 81
Fisher, Ronald Aylmer 66, 69 change 141,168n
Flak e, Gary William 22 control of biological important molecules 57
Foucault, Michel 173 defect and pre-natal diagno sis 80
France 40 , 72, 73, 76, 79 determinism 73,81
Frankenstein 2, 29 engineering 73, 163
Freiburg 66 factors 55
French Revolution 183 inheritance 168n, 184
Friedman, Alan 1. 85 overlap 186
Fuller, Steve 7, 171, 173 reliable - analysis 81
function(s) studi es (Drosophila ideal for - ) 56
basic - of all life and the nature of colloids supposed - deficiencie s of immigrants 76
(Loeb) 53 tendencies in - variation 186
bio chemical - of molecules 57 tendency of - material to repli cate itself 66
cell - 59 tran smission of traits 79
computability of - I I Genetica (a number of - , a Festschrift in honour
critical - of symbolic modes of thought 153 of Tine Tammes) 126
IN DEX 20 9
geneticist(s) trade III

Britain - 53 vill age 86
Germany - 53 globalization 159
holistic approac h of Germa n - 78 God
Mendelian - 53 auth or of the "book of nature" 173
popul ation - (Wright) 69 Einstein and - 88, 90
recognizing the interaction of genes 66 existence of - and ethical rules 163
Tamm es as a - 123 and the Intelligent Design Theory 173
U.S.A. - 53 and natu ral agents 162
underlying physics envy of - 55 god(s )
gene tics 25 argume nt from design and the necessity
as an autonomous science 184 ofa - 162
"behavioral - " 70 belief in - 155
dialectical interac tions surfaced in - 66 blind processes vs . a team of - 162
early - and Tammes 123, 124 local - 159
experimental - trad itions 183 presence of - 152
experimental - 55 realms of imperial - 159
first chair of - 126 ridiculed by Prometheus I
first - pro fessor (Tammes) 123 science hostile to the multipl ication
Fourth Intern ational - Confe rence 124 of - 160
hostility to - of U.S. medica l doctors 76 willful behavio r of the - is
interact ionism as a part of - 66 expectated 156
(mec hanistic) population - 66 , 69 goddess
Mendelian - 53, 66, 72, 73, 76, 179 classical - 118
mole cular bas is of - 86 - like qualities (Somerville) 16
paradigmatic as the epitome of the new subject befitting of a - 116
biology 53 of wisdom 116
population - (field-orient ed) 55 Godel, Kurt 13
(rational principles of) - applied by eugenics Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 2
73, 74, 80 Golden Fleece Award 5
resea rch 132 Golem (Jewish legend of the - ) 1, 4
researcher 124 Go ttingen 120
genome 69 Graff, Dorothea Maria 114
compa red with the tape of Turing machine 23 gravitation
human - initia tive 55 geometrized 95, 102
human - project 6, 70, 82 theory of - 94
project 16 gravitational
geome trized (gravitation) 95, 102 amou nt of - mass 95
geometry field 96
of the physical world as determin ed by Newt on's law of - attrac tion 94
gravity 95 papers of Einstein on - waves 96
of the world not Euclidia n 95 gravity
Germ any 53,72, 73,76,80, 174,183, 187,188 Newton's laws of - the paradigm
Giesse n 72 example 160
Gilbert, Walter 70 pressure of - 165
global 73,81 , 159, 160, 166 Grea t Britain see Britain
era 165 Greek science (and the surviva l of its
today 's - informa tion arena 155 core ideas) 159
know ledge syste m 162 Griaule, Marcel 147
mark et 81 Groeben, Chri stiane 63
migrations 166 Gron ingen
networks of exchange 159 Botanical Garde n at - 124
perspecti ve ISS University Museu m 123, 126
scale 160 Gsell, Georg 113
system of exchanges 158- 160 Guiana see Dutch
210 IND EX
Habsburg Empire 172 of humanity 179,

Hacking, Ian 173, 174, 175, 179, 180 images of the - science 176
Haeckel, Ernst 47,48, 50, 174 oflife sciences 47
Hamburger, V. 52 of life on earth 146
Harbor Laboratory Archives 74 modem - 161
Harding, Warren G. 131 modem "Creation Myth" in "Big - " 143
harmony 82 modem - of the philosophy science 175, 176
praeestablished - 88 natural - 6, 43, 44, 48,62, 108, 110, 168n,
Harrington, Anne 53, 65 174,1 83
Harris, Sidney 100 natural - of human knowledge 187
Harvard University 62, 64, 175 of philosophy 188
Hawking, Stephen 147 of physics 96
health recent - of science 171
care (management) 82 "revealed - of humanity" 180
chemistry and - 36 scale of "Big - " 142
images of women scientists relating to - 132 of science- ix, 106, 144, 168n, 175 (recent),
insurance 80 176, 186, 187
of Marie Curie 128, 129 of the solar system 146
precarious - of nineteenth-century women 119 of the (former) Soviet Union 171
public - 43, 72, 76, 79 of systemic attempts to understand the nature
social problems in - caused by the growth of of mind and society 186
industry 71 of technology 168n
ofTammes 124 of the United States 171
using nature for improving - 57 of the universe 7, 146
women scientists using the frailty of their - 7 of the West 182
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 174, 183, 185, Western - 85
188 of Western knowledge production 182
Heidegger, Martin 175, 188, 189 women remembered by - 133
Heisenberg, Werner 98, 99, 102 of the world 7,86, 167n
Henderson, Lawrence 1. 64, 65 Hoffinann
Heracles I Roald 31
Herodotus 159 Wilhelm August 29
Hiroshima 5, 183 homeostasis 6, 64
history 1, 144,163, 171, 181 Hooke, Robert 4
American Museum of Natural - 74 Houbraken, Arnold 113
art - 106 Hume, David 93, 175
article on - in the Encyclopaedia Britannica hunter gatherer(s) 147, 154
(1780) 177,178
of atomic physics 181 Ibn-Khaldun 187
Biblical - 185 icon(s)/iconic 5,14,1 9,152,153
"Big - " 141, 143, 144, 147, 149 iconography 105, 106, 116
"Big -v" , definition of 148 image(s) passim
of the biosphere 168n of an alliance between chemistry and
chemical - 168n biology 39
of the concept "life" 37n of biology 6,43,44, 57
details of - 149 of the biologist 46
of the (planet) earth as a whole 146, 154 changing imagers) IX, 1, 6,7, 29,43,44
ecological - ISS of a (synthetic) chemist 29,31
of eugenics in the twentieth century 6, 73 of (synthetic) chemistry 5, 29, 32, 36, 37, 43
European - I of computation 20
European intellectual - 185 of the computer 5, II , 13, 18, 19, 20, 23
of European nation-states 172 of a creator 31
flow of - 149 of Curie 127- 130, 139n
of human knowledge systems 143 of disunity of science 171, 173, 190
human - 141, 143, 157, 164, 168n, 169, 179 of disunity in the philosophy of science 171
INDEX 211
of Einstein 85 indices/indexical 152, 153

of frogs, etc. 43 inertial frame(s) 93,94
of the history of science 176 Information Age
of the life sciences 43 see age
of Lovelace 117-120 institute(s)
of McClintock 134n American - of Physics 95
of man 7 California - ofTechnology 87, 97
machine-age - 71 for medical research 47
male - 134n of universities - 62
masculine - (of science) 106 Princeton - for Advanced Study 90, 91
maternal 135n institution(s) 62, 72, 79
of women scientists 106,114 academic - 62
of a nuclear winter 9 botanical - 43
of physics 6, 85, 86-8 7 Carnegie - 's Desert Laboratory 55
ofPockels 120-124 formal public - 117
political - of the sciences 180 highest - of learning 144
projected - in relationship to gender portraits creating public faces for - 135
public - of chemistry 29, 37 of science 7
public images of scientists 105, 146n scientific - 182
public images of women 105, 109 university as the founding - of German
public images of Cavendish, Lovelace, Pockels, national unity 185
Tammes, Curie, McClintock and zoological - 43
Somerville 109-130, 144n, 146n institutional(ly)
of purity 36 changing image of biology driven by new -
the root structures 47
of (the) science(s) ix, x, 1,7, 106, 86, 171, cost of the sociobiological synthesis 184
173, 177 first - bases for a combination of
of science as intercalated 177 observational and experimental work 63
scientific - 86 imperative(s) 57,61
self-image of physics 85, 87 location and the unity of the sciences 183
self-images of women scientists 105, 107 physiology - housed in medical schools 43
self-image of Lovelace 120 segregation 75
self-image ofTammes 124, 127 specific - setting protecting the autonomy of
social - 133 science 172
of Somerville 115-117 institutionalization (of science) 61
of the Swiss Army Knife 189 institutionalized (practises of - medicine) 173
of synthetic materials 32 integrated circuit 12
on the screen 14 International Genetics Conference (Fourth - in
of the system 18 Paris) 124
of Tammes 125-1 27 interpretation(s)
textual - of nature 192 biased - of the synthesis of urea 30
of the unification is the - of the delta 193 Bohr on the - of complementarity 99
of unified science 171 Bohr and language in the - of quantum
of unity in the philosophy of science 171, 172 mechanics 10I
of unity of science 190, 192, 193 Bohr and the classical - of experimental
of vehicle of modernity 35 data 99
visual - 105, 106, 133 changing - of changing sciences 7
of women scientists 105, 106 different - of the Swiss Army Knife 190
of the world 20, 25 gendered - of the scientific work of
of a world created by the software 19, 20 Pockels 120
in written biography 114 Heisenberg and the - of quantum
inconsistent (to contrast "chemical" and mechanics 98
"organic") 36 independent - of Cavendish 135n
India 174 naive - of Mendelian genetics 73
Indiana 66, 79 Planck working to find an - of hISquantum 96
212 INDEX
interpretation(s) contd. scientific framework of - 141

possible holistic - of some approaches of sharing of - 158
Fischer 66 systems , see knowledge system(s)
"The Thirty Years War" and alternative - of sufficient - 117
the Bible 182 technical - I
of the unity of science project dominated by theories of - 150
disunificationists 190 traditional - 160
of the verb "to construct" 181 useless - 3, 5
various - of the experiments of Driesch and knowledge system(s) 141, 143, 149-162, 180
Roux 51 collective - 153
verbal - part of scientific models 21 human - 150-154, 158, 163, 164
Islam 159 non-human - 152
Italy 73 Palaeolithic - 154-158
pre-human - 150, 159
James, William 93 pre-scientific - 162-164
Japan 76, 181 traditional - 158-163
Jaspers, Karl 159 Koch, Robert 47
Joliot-Curie see Curie Kohler, Robert 55
Jupiter 23 Kohlsted, Sally Gregory 6, 105
Kolbe, Hermann 29
Kant, Immanuel 7,88,93,101 ,102,172, Koyre, Alexandre 143
187,189 Krausse, Erika 50
Kekule, August 30 Kubrick, Stanley 23
Kelsen, Hans 172 Kuhn, Thomas 173,177,179,183,185,187,188
Kepler, Johannes 160 Kwolek, Stephanie 38
Kessel, Richard 60
Kevlar (long high-modulus fibers such as Labadists 110
carbon or - ) 37 laboratory /ies
Khaldun see Ibn-Khaldun availability of resources at industrial - 120
knowledge (see also knowledge systems) biology in 1900 and - 43
academic - 185, 188 Carnegie Institution's Desert - 55
bod(y)(ies) of - 96, 185, 187 Cavendish - 61
claim(s) 155,179-182,186,187 Cold Spring Harbor - Archives 74
collective - a significant force for as a control check for knowledge claims 181
change 168n country house of Rayleigh with - 121
empirical - 147, 154, 158 creating through - operations 29
esotheric - 164 dichotomy/rivalry between - and nature 29, 39
ethical - 162 Drosophila easy to maintain in the - 55
forbidden - 1,2 not all ecologists - -bound experimentalists 55
foundations of - 160 as an endpoint of responsibilities of
general- I scientists 181
historical - 147 experiments of Curie in the - run by her
human - 141, 184, 187 cousin 127
integration 186 large mainframes in the scientific - 9
local - 158, 187 marine (research) - 47, 62, 63, 72
"- managers" 184 Marine Biological - in Woods Hole 44,63 ,72
modern - 162 modern biology includes - and field 43
non-religious - 159 modern biology research - 44, 47
normative perspective on - 179 molecular biology - 61
pre-modern - 162 nylon and Du Pont's - 32
power of - 12 Phytopathological - (at Amsterdam) 124
production 173,181 ,182,188 Pierre and Marie Curie working together in the
referential - 141 - 127, 128
scientific - 143, 147-150, 155, Plymouth Marine - 72
160-164 professional biologists and research - 6
INDEX 213
scient ific ontology and - technology 187 symbolic - require very large brains 153
scientific reductionists introducing specific - symbolic and metaphoric - in science and in
techniqu es 174 myths 147
as new seminaries for scientific "synthetic" vs. "natural" in popular - 29
reductionists 174 telling the history of the universe in plain - 7
shift from work in the field to work in the - a unified - of science 173, 175-177
(biology) 55 LaoTse 93
students and serviennes assisting Curie in her Laplace, Pierre-Simon de 114
- 129, 132 Latin America 75,76
supporting roles of women as - countries 73
technicians 106 Laughlin, Harry H. 73, 78, 79
useful products issued from the chemists's - 29 Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent 94
Villefranche - 72 law(s)
LaFollette, Marcelle 105 anti-miscegenation - 74
Lake Michigan 68 biogenetic - of Haeckel 48
Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste de 43 Bohr's discovery of the major - of the spectral
La Mettrie , Julian Offray de 47 lines 96
language(s) classical physics and physical - 96
Algol and programming - 17, 18, 26n eugenic(al) (legislation) - 73, 79
animistic or "anthropomorphic" - 168 involuntary/compulsory eugenical sterilization
appearance of symbolic - in human history - 79, 80
143,164 Lavoisier 's - of mass conservation 94
artificial - 175 Major modem theorist of international -
Bohr and multiple meanings of words in (Hans Kelsen) 172
everyday - 9 I marriage - 74, 75
Bohr's concern : careful with - in physics 102 of nature 101
"book of nature" written in one - 173, 174 Newton 's - of gravitational attraction of
campaign for an internat ional - of science and bodies 94
of humanity 174 Newton 's - of gravity 160
formal - 18 organisms and the - of physics and
found ing - of Indo-European culture 185 chemistry 47
free-standin g - 177 in physical theory 90
high-level or problem oriented - 17, 18 the - of physics (and inertial frames) 94, 102
of humans and maps of reality 14 1 special relativity - (E = mc 2) 94
hybrid - and the image of science as a set of state or federal - 80
traditions 177 sterilization - 79
knowledge and - in hunter gatherer Tammes and the re-discovery of
societie s 147 Mendel's - 123
the meaning of "physicalism" and of thermodynamics, informat ion and
public - 175 computation 25
as a means of communicating experience 9 I Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 93, 173
" natural" as the ultimate way articulating Licklider,lC.R. 19,26
reality 175 Liebig, Justus von 30, 72
nature of reduction - 192 life 91,99, 114, 118, 120, 122, 129,132, 137n,
" neutral observation .,, » 177 138n, 153, 184, 193
in ordinary - "nature" connotes an image of see also life science(s)
purity 36 aristocrati c social - of early Victorian
philosophy manufacturing meta - 180 England 117
programming - 16-18 ,21 artificial - (AL) 22
" referential" and "social" aspects of - 156 basic function of all - traceable to the nature
the role of - in the interpretation of quantum of colloid s (Loeb) 53
mechanics 10I biographie s discussing - and work of
the - of science in Bohr's Como lecture 99 Lovelace 117
scientific accounts told as stories in accessible biological bases of human - ignored by social
- 147 scientist s 184
2 14 INDEX
life contd. dominated by medical and public health issues

chemistry and modem - 34 in the twentieth century 72
and the chemistry of ions and molecule s 53 philosophy of the - 80
chemistry as "the key to -" 36 Lindhard, Jens 93
the com puter as a part of daily - 9 Little Broth ers 9
course of Merian 114 Loeb, Jac ques 53
creation myths important for the logic
pattern s of - 149 of animism 156
curvature of space not not iced in application of - to elementary
everyday - 95 observations 173
definition of mental - 186 education stressi ng - and rigor 117
histories of impo rtant marine food sources 72 fundame ntal - 96
history of - on earth 146 mathemat ical - II
nature as the creator of - 29 the motion of the aristote lian elements
nineteenth- century physics and the conditions accor ding to their own interna l - 156
of everyday - 9 1 of natural selection 168
organisms creating a web of - 165 physicists operated in anticipation of a
painting insects a whol e - (Me rian) I II, 112 new - 98
particular instanc e of a more genera l quantum mechanics vio lating the - on which
phenom enon 22 the physics rested 96
plastics and the superficiality of modem - 36 of quantum mechanics 99
proliferation of plastics in daily - 35 and social coherence 162
restricted to its car bon-base d form 23 the Swi ss Army Knife and the search for a
revived competi tion betwee n chemistry unified inductive - 189
and - 29 the - of token-token relationships 153
rock or hunk of coral as a home for - (sea Turing redu cing - to the acti ons of a
squirt) 150 machine 25
role of gender in scie nce and spheres of - 105 logical(ly) 90, 98, 18 1
science(s), see life science(s) assimi lation 192
simple forms of - created by chemical atoms 175
reactions 165 consistent 10 I
as a softw are 23 function II
of Somerville devoted to family and science independent 90
117 more complex I I
speculations about - on Mars 96 nature 89
stage s of - of insects painted by Merian 112 paradoxes 100
(structure and) the - histories of organisms philosophy's - relationship to science 189
43, 44 positivis(m)(ts) 171,1 75-1 79, 183, 186,
sunlig ht as the "battery" of - on earth 165 188- 193
sustai ned by high-performance struc tures in rules 90
nature 39 system 90
unconstrained by biochemi stry 22 thought 80
urea as a product of - 30 " - uniformity" 90
view of science as an esse ntia l part of - ix London 4, 74, 110
life scie nce(s) 29 Chemical Society 86
central role of the - in health care Los Ange les 33
ma nageme nt and agriculture Lovelace,Ada 114,11 7,11 9, 129,1 32
classical reductionist thinking and the - 70 Low, Judah (Rabbi) I
complexity (interacting) systems , an important Lyotard, Jean-Franc ois 179
theme in the - sciences 57, 64
evolutionary biology an interactionist field MacDougal, D.T. 55
in the - 67 Mach , Ernst 53,93,173 , 175
the history of - 47 machine(s) 16
image of the - 43 abstract - defined by a language 17
indus trial capitalism, mechanistic mat erialism big - and small networked ones 19
and the - 7 1 calculating - of Babbage 117
INDEX 215
central icon of the computer 5 Marx, Karl 184, 187, 188

chemistry producing fluids for masculine, masculinity
refrigerating - 35 approach in science 106
the computer as a - II femininity and - intellect 117
the genome compared with the tape of a images of science 106
Turing - 23 impact of - professional standards 138n
- age images and mechanistic materialism 71 perception of science as - , part of its negative
Kepler view of the - of the universe 160 image ix
logic and - 25 science - (and nature feminine) in
machina mundi , - of the world, as a the 17th century 105
metaphor 25 mass(es)
man replaced in the future by curvature of space and small - 96
"molecular - " 39 Europe as a clearing house for a - of
master programs as mediators between the - information 159
and its operators 18 gravitational - and curvature of space 95
molding - replaced by computers 35 Lavoisier's law of - conservation 94
the operating system as an abstract - 18 production of early composites 37
organisms as chemical - 47, 53 production of plastics 32
separating thinking from the "meat - " 22 systems of - education 163
sequence of - instructions 15, 16 materialism
superintelligent - (in The Matrix) 23 biology between mechanistic and
the thinking - included in the image of the holistic - 47
computer 23 dialectical - 46
Turing - 11,25 French - 47
users at varying distances from the - holistic - 46
(computer) 15 idealism vs. - 53, 186
virtual computers and the real - 18 mechanistic - 70, 71, 82
war - ofArchimedes 3 materialist(s)
macromolecule (the nature of the - ) 36 French - 47
magic "medical - " 47
cabbalistic - (and the Golem) I movements of the nineteenth century 186
chemi stry associated with - 29 materialistic (way of thinking) 65
public understanding of science as mathematical 22, 51
producing - 87 activity/work of Lovelace 119, 120
Mahoney, Michael S. 5, 9 astronomy I
mainframe(s) construct 21
early - 10 new - discipline of theoretical computer
large - (in the 1960s) 9 science 18
manifold (four-dimensional - of formulation of competitive exclusion
space and time) 94 (Volterra) 51
Mann, Stephen 39 function replaced by an analytical solution 21
map(s) genius (assumptions of) 117
function and type of "- of reality" 150 inquiry 119
mternal structure of - of the world generated interest 117, 118
by organisms 152 logic II
internal - of the external world 149 point of view 21
knowledge systems as - of reality 150 power 119
(of knowledge systems) embedded in the problem (of Archimedes) 3
nervous system 149 relations 21
of reality 141, 150-158, 162-164 scheme(s) and wave-particle duality 98,99
of reality embedded in systems of social science 5
rules 155 simplicity 89
Marine Biological Laboratory see laboratory structure 21
Marlowe, Christopher I, 2 new - tool and unification of space and time
Mars 96 94,98
Marvell, Andrew 13 mathematician 117
216 INDEX
mathematics atomistic - 71
abstract - 3 computational - 22, 23
advanced - and the Book of Nature 174 of enzyme activity 69, 70
course and Riemann surfaces (Bohr) 91 double helix - 61
current state of - 21 Galison's intercalation - 177
Lovelace and - 117,118 methodological - 6
physical model between nature and - 21 molecular - 46
relationship between - and athleticism 134n nature as a - engineer 39
understanding higher - (Somerville) 114 organism 55, 56
universal ising tendency and - 159 physical - 21, 71
use of - as a part of the methodology of the political - 172
physical sciences 51 of reality 150, 152
useful as a model 21 role - 70, 114
working in - and having a "special genius" 106 modeling 21, 157
Mathilda effect 106 modest 114,171,174,185
matrix self-representation (ofTammes) 124
fibers in a light ligneous - (wood) 38 self-representation (of women) 130, 134n
mechanics 98 women from - backgrounds 7
Matrix, The (recent film) 23-25 modesty
Mauchley, John II femininized 106
McNeill, William H. 146, 156 women of excessive - 124
mechanical 25,66,70,71 molecule(s) 34,53,57,60
algorithmic process 162 analytic chemistry and synthetic - 36
unit-character concept (minimizing arrangement of atoms within the - 30
interaction) 73 and!or atoms 71, 86
hypothesis 162 enzyme - 69, 70
philosophy 71 of genes (DNA) 57,61
quantum - 99 large 57
system 71 natural products ! - and synthetic - 36
thinking 80 replaced by electrons 35
mechanics structure of the benzene - 30
classical - 94 Monod, Jacques 69
matrix - 98 Monod, Francois 69
Newtonian - 94, 183 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron
quantum - 85,86,91,98-102 de 184
wave - 98 More, W.H. 119
Meikle, Jeffrey L. 34,40 Morgan, Thomas Hunt 54 -56, 58
memex (system for material storing) 19 Morgan, Isabel Mountain 56
Mendel , Gregor Johann 54,78,123 motion(s)
Menebrea, Louis 117 anomaly in the - of Mercury 96
Merchant, Carolyn 105 matter in - (mechanistic world view) 25,71
Mercury (anomaly in the motion of -s-] 96 reduction to - of atoms 175
Merian, Maria Sibylla 110, 111-114, 132 relativity of - 93
Mesoamerica 158, 159 uniform - (and the velocity oflight) 94
Mesopotamia 158 Mount Olympus I
metaphysics 23,25,53, 196 Mount Caucasus I
microbiology (and the "medical materialists") 47 movement (s)
microchip (invention of) 86 cell - in early embryogenesis 50
microstructure (of metals) 36 eugenics as social - 74, 75
Mikulcho-Maklai, Nikolai 48 holistic biology - 53
Milbanke, Anne Isabelle (Lady Byron) 117 idealist and materialist - 186
Mill, John Stuart 117, 184 "industrial efficiency - " (Taylorism) 75,80
Mitman, Gregg 67 informal - in natural history illustration 110
model(s) 5,16,21,22,25,32,33,53,70, 155, (inter)national eugenics - 73-76, 79, 80, 81
174,183,185,189 of molecules 60
American "- law" (sterilization) 78-80 of Neo-Kantianism 188
INDEX 217
parallel - of the mechanistic materialism 47 Neo-Darwinian

positivists' unity of science - 172, 175 synthesis 183
pro-unity - (logical positivism) 186 speciation 188
socio-intellectual - 189 Neo-Kantianism 187-189
vast - of large segments of human Netherlands 123
population 80 Neumann, John von I I, 12,21 ,26
to overcome women's barriers 114 Neurath, Otto 175, 176
women's - in higher education 117 neutron star 96
Muller, H.J. 54, 56 NewWorld 160
myth New York 74
of the chemist-creator 39 New Jersey 77
cosmogonic - 149,167n Newcastle 107
creation, see creation myth Newton, Isaac 93,94, 160, 183, 184
danger of condescension towards - 147 Nietzsche, Friedrich W. 163, 175
definition of - 146, 147 Nightingale, Florence 122
domestic images ofPockels as a - 120 Nilotic tribe of the Nuer 156
and modern scientific accounts 146 Noah 147
of origin 167n Nobel
science as a - 146 Awards 86
synonym for "pre-scientific" 146 Committee 86
of synthesis of urea as overthrowing a Prize 86,88
metaphysical dogma 30 non-experimental (Darwin's evolutionary
teller 147 theory - ) 50
traditional - 147 non-testable (Darwin 's evolutionary
mythistory 146 theory e-- ] 50
mythologized (scientific work ofPockels) norm 105
120 offemininity 107
mythology/ies gender - 106, 132, 133
attending the curiosity of the public 138 "norm of reaction" 66
surrounding plastics 34 philosophical - 114
prescriptive - 106
Naples 62, 63, 72 social - 107, 110, 114, 123, 129, 133, 162
Zoological Station 63 Victorian - 117, 119
Stazione Zoologica 62, 63, 72 normative 5, 179, 180, 188
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.) 131 distinction between the natural and the -
natural selection 149,153,165, 168n, 190 179,180
natural history implications 186
see history "the - " 171,179,180,188
naturalist(s) 43,47,48,62 perspective 179
European - 110 Norton, Marion S. 77
organismic, field-oriented - 55 Norway 80
women - 134n Norwegian Academy of Sciences
naturalistic see Academy of Sciences
perspective 156 nylon 32
tradition 187
nature 5,6,21 ,22,29-32,35-39,44,55,57, observation(s) 100,101,120,176,177
70,71,89,90,98-102, 105, 106, 109, 162, concept of - 99
187,192 description of - 100
"Book of nature" 173, 174 elementary - 173
"Death of Nature" 105 experimental conditions of - 101
illustration 112 experimental - 99
nature-nurture 70, 184 and experimentation 62, 63
philosophy of 71 microscopical - 56, 58
theory of 107 physical - 91
Nature (journal) 120, 121 on surface currents 121
Nebraska 66 Wilson's careful microscopic - 58
218 IND EX
observational in nature 102

details 61 physical theory and - 90
images of biology 57 stable patterns of - 186
skills 43 use of the word - 10I
techniques 59 phenomenon
Occam's razor 160, 162 see also phenomena
Odum, Howard T. 55, 66 changes of the definition of the word - 102
Ogotemmeli 147 concept of - 10 1
ontology 181 general - 22
operating systems see system(s) generated by computation 22
Opitz, Donald 6, 105, 115 "isomerism" 30
Oppenheimer, 1. Robert 2 of the low number of women in science ix
Oxford 175 uneasy relationship between science and
religion, a passing - 163
Pacific (myriad islands of the - ) 166 use of the word " -" (Bohr) 101
Pais, Abraham 6, 85 Phillips, Thomas 116
Palaeolithic (era) 144,152, 154, 165 philosopher( s)
communitie s 155, 158, 165 Bohr as a physicist and a - 10I
humans 154 Cavendish as a natural - 135n
image of the world as a - family 156 Cavendish as a - of science 133
knowledge 168n Cavendish and contemporary male - 110
knowledge systems/claims 154-1 56, 158 commitm ent of Greek - to Reason 163
maps of reality 155 and complementarity 93
Palm, Inc. 11 contemporary - and unificationism 189
paradox 34 contemporary - of science distingui sh between
clock - 94 realism and constructivism 179
encompassed by women in science 133 conventions of the natural - 110
EPR - 101 debates between physicists and - 53
logical - (duality of particles and defiant natural - (Cavendish) 107
waves) 100 and the definition of phenomenon 102
in quantum mechanics 98 definition of - in OEC D
of the "two tables" (solid vs. empty) 175 and different forms of knowledge 143
Paris 88, 124 Einstein's and Bohr 's attitude to - 88, 93
Park European " natural - " 160
Orlando 68 Ferguson as an Enlightenment - 177
Thomas 67,68 French - (Barthes) 34
particle(s) Ian Hacking as a - 173
interaction of neighborin g - 2 1 and Kant 88
organism as a mosaic of hereditary - 53 mechanical - 71
Pascal, Blaise 88, 93 opinions about Bohr as a - 93, 102
Pasteur, Louis 47 pre-socratic - 7
Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich 152 "realist" - of science 143
Pearson, Karl 79 and reductionism 173, 174
phenomena 99, 100 relationship between scientists and -
see also phenomenon (Bohr) 93
causality and - 10I and relativity of motion 93
complementary picture s of - 10I and relativity theory 88
complex - 155 Rosenberg as a - of science 186
a discipline's - 173 and "scientific realism" 175
disturbance of - by observation 101 and scientists/science 171
everyday - 102 Singer as a - of "animal liberation" 187
linking two - (Pavlov's dogs) 152 today's - of science and the image of science
model and observed - 21 as "intercalated" 177
models matching the - 21 true - and the mechanical hypothesis
natural - 94 (and specia l relativity), 146 (Boyle) 162
[N DEX 2 19
as "underlaborers" of the special sciences 188 production

unity of scie nce as a program for organizing, mass - of early com posi tes 37
proposed by - 179 mass - of plastics 32
philosoph y ix, 82, 87, 88, 9 1-93, 180, 185-1 89 professionalization (of scie nce) 6, 61
econom ic - 80 program(s)
Hegel's - 174 ambitio us - (of progr essive
history of - 188 syntheses) 30, 31
of the life sciences 80 Baco nian - 4
material - 110 instructions or - 13
mechanistic - 71 complex - 14
modem history of the - of science 176 eugeruc principles and - 74
natura l - 107, 110, 116 virtua l box of - 14
of nature 71 for specific mac hines and purposes 15
of science 7,1 71,1 75,176,1 79,1 93 educational - 75
synth etic idealist - 185 graduate biology - 76
photon(s) 97 master - 18
physical ism 175, 186 mechani stic - 73
physical science(s ) see scie nce( s) of logical positivism 173
physics 6-47,52-55,70,85- 103, 127, of the Third International Congress of
174,18 1 Eugenics 74
Aristotelian - 156 for orga nizi ng the scie nces 179
atomic - 18 1 political - 73
community 175 research - 47, 48, 53, 75, 182, 186
particle - 173 unificationism as a - for the reform ation of
solid state - 97 science 171
Phytopathological Laboratory at Amste rdam running - 16, 19
see laboratory socia l action - 74, 75, 79
Pindar 102 unification - 7
Planck, Max 96, 173 programmer 16
Plato 182 prog ramm mg 14, 16, 18, [9, 26n
Plymouth Mari ne Laboratory see research languages 16-1 8, 21
station(s) Prom etheus I , 2, 85
Pockels Pro ut, Wilham 94
Agnes Luise Wilhelmine 120-122, Prox mire, William 5
124,132 pulsar 96
Caroline 122 Pycior, Helena 127
Elisabe th 120
Podol sky, Bori s (see para dox ) 101 quantum
Popper, Kar l 176, 188 of action 96
Popp erian 152, 160 era 99
population genetics see genetics mecharnct sjia l) 85,86,9 1,98- 102
Porter, K.R. 60 old - theory 96-98
portraiture (revea ls the agency of the subject and phys ics 92, 96, 172
the artist) 106 physicist 100, 102
positivism 175, 176, 183, 186, 188 propert ies 99
Co mte's understanding of - 183 theory 9 1,96-98, 101, 102
logical - 173,1 75, 183, 186, 188 quasar 96
Prague I Quine , Willard Van Orman 189
Pnnceton 90
Institute for Advanced Study 90-9 1 radiation
Univer sity 90 atomic 73
pro- and anti- unificationists 185 electromagnetic 96
pro-unity 185 radio 13, 158, 172
logical positivism as a - movement 186 radium 127- 129
Proctor, Robert 77, 78 Rayleigh, Lord see Stru tt, John William
220 I ND E X
Rayleigh, Evelyn see Strutt, Evelyn research station(s)

re-discovery (of Mendel's laws and original work) Deep-Sea - at Den Helder 124
123,1 84 Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods
realism Hole (Mass .), U,S,A. 63,72
debate between - and constructivism 171, 179 Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England 72
as a general epistemology 180 Stazione zoologica in Naples 62
natural history illustration and - 110 Villefranche Laboratory on the southern coast
plate (of Merian), combining - and scientific of France 72
analysis III Zoological Station in Rostock, Germany 72
positive argument for - 167n research agenda(s) 18, 19, 72
realism-constructivism distinctions 180 research laboratory/ies
and responsibility of scientists 181, 182 see also research station(s)
a revanchist move in the history of the government sponsored - 47
West 182 marine - 72
"scientific - " 175 modem biology - 44
reality 5,9,30,65,86, 100, 14 1, 146, 150, of professional biologists 6
156,1 60-163 ,173,1 75,177,1 80-1 82, research program, see program(s)
187,1 89 research strategy (of reductionism) 173
account of - 146, 147, 158, 160, 163 research 62, 120, 182- 184
external - 179 Air Force Office of Scientific - 26
maps of - 141, 150-158, 162-164 biological - 55, 57
models of - 150, 152 biomedical - 182
nature of - 100, 162 in the Botanical Garden of Buitenzorg 124
objective - 101,181 criticized by satirists 5
virtual - 23 of Curie 128, 139n
Redfield, Robert 67 eugen ics - 75, 76
rediscovering (the unity of science) 189 genetics - of Tammes 132
reductionism 6, 55,57,62,70,80,8 1, 173-1 76, genomic - 82
179,1 86 historical - of women 's travel 135n
and experimentalism 48 historical and sociologica l - on women in
and holism 6, 57 science 105
philosophical - 175, 176, 179 medical - 47
scientific - 175, 179 of modern pharmaceutical companies 147
reevaluations (ofTammes ' work) 124 into the nature of heredity 75
relativity 94, 10I, 172 nuclear weapons - 181
concept due to Einstein 87 of Pockels 132
general (theory of) - 93, 95, 96, 102 Pockels's styles of - 138n
ideas of Bergson on - 88 of Rayleigh and colleagues 121
ideas of Einstein on - 88 research program(s), see program(s)
two kinds of - 101 on sea squirts 167n
of motion 93 of Somerville 132
of simultaneity (Kant) 93 of women scientists 7
special - law (E = mc2 ) 94 research sites (of science, seen as
special (theory of) - 93, 94, 102 "intercalated") 177
theory 85,86, 88, 91 researcher 21
religion(s) 7,1 62,1 63,1 96 in artificial life 22
animistic - 155 biomedical - 182
indigenous - 163 established - 62
monotheistic - 173 genetic - 124
science and - 7, 163 physiological or genetic - 55
traditional - 163 revolution 85,86, 171, 177
universal - 155, 159 introduced by the electron microscope 57, 60
world - 174 French - 183
religious 88,90, 107, 110, 133, 155, 159, of knowledge systems 143
163,174 scientific - 55, 70, 143, 144
INDEX 221
silent - (plastics becoming composite limitations of - 21

materials) 37 love of - 124, 127
Riemann , Georg Friedrich Bernhard 9 I masculine 105, 106
sheet 91 materials - 39
surface 91 mathematical - 5
RiverNile 191 medical - 57
Rockefeller Foundation 70 model of - 177
Roosevelt , Franklin D. 18I modern - 141,143, 144, 146, 147, 149,
Rorres , Chris 3 150, 155, 156, 158-160, 162-165 , 167n,
Rosen 168n, 188
George, E. 58 nascent - of ecology 51
Nathan (see also paradox) 101 nascent - of statistics 51
Rosenberg, Alexander 186 natural - ix, 43, 134n, 173, 174, 188
Rossiter, Margaret 106 nature of (modern) - 52, 82,141
Rostock 72 new (branch of) - generated by the
Zoological Station in - 72 computer 5
Roux, Wilhelm 51,52 new - of biology 70
Royal Society of London 4, 107, 108, 110, 115, ontology of - 174
116,182 physical - 6, 48, 51, 53, 62, 173, 185
Russell, Bertrand 175 policy 172
Russia 73, 76 practice of - 133
prestige of - 143
Santa Barbara , California 87 professionalization of - 61
Scandinavia 73,76 public understanding of - 87, 174
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph 185 questionable - of eugenics 55
Schiebinger, Londa 105 reductionist - 65
schizophrenics/schizophrenia 73, 93 and religion 163
Schlick , Moritz 188, 189 social - 82, 184-186
Schmidt, K. 68 special - 185,188
Schneider, William 79 speculative - 50
Schopenhauer, Arthur 90 "- of the spirit" 174
Schriidinger/Schroedinger, Erwin 98, 144 as a story 147
science(s) passim systems - 81
see also history, image, life, philosopher, theoretical - 5
philosophy, unification , unity, woman and twentieth-century - 10I
related subject s view/vision of - 52, 183
aims of - 90 western - 47
amateur men of - 121 scientia (as forbidden knowledge)
Asian/African - 47 scientific revolution
autonomous - of genetics 184 of the seventeenth century 55,70, 143
biological - 43, 184, 186 historiography of the - 144
(British) men of - 114-116 self-presentation (modest - ofTammes)
celestial - 114 124
computer - 18 self-description (gendered imagery in - ) 133
as a Creation Myth 146 self-identities 106
European - 160 self-image
experimental - 5,43, 110, 174 of physic s 85, 87
gender in - 105 of women scientists 105-107,120,124,127
Greek - 159 sensation 91,101
historians of - 20, 107, 110, 143 sensationalism (Kantian - ) 65
historical - 30 Shelley. Mary 2, 29
human - 173 Sherratt, Andrew 159
institutionalization of - 61 Shih, Gene 60
interna tional - 80 Silent Spring 5
language of - 99, 173-177 Silk Rodes 158
222 INDEX
simplicity Stamhuis, Ida H. 124

mathematical 89 stares)
in science 89 communities of - ("galaxies") 165
simulation (computer - takes the place of death agonies oflarge - 165
analysis) 21 fate in the - vs, fate in the genes 70
Singer, Peter 187 first - 165
Smith, Adam 184 heavy as - 91
Societe Francaise de Philosophie 88 neutron - 96
sociobiological Stazione Zoologica see Naples
commitments (of Wilson) 184 Strauss , David Friedrich 188
synthesis 184 structure(s) 69
sociobiology 189 of the abstract device (computer) 17
software 13-15, 18, 19,23 adapt ive - in sea-shells and insects 37
Somerville, Mary 6, 106, 114, 115, 116, 117, of the atom and its nucleus 86
120,132 atomic - as a subject of scientific
Sorbonne 127 inquiry 96
South America 32 atomic - of surfaces and layers 37
Soviet Union 171 axiomatic - of Einste in's first paper 93
space(s) 47,183 of the benzene molecule (Kekule) 30
atoms moving in random - 71 biology as the study of - and function 43
description of - and time 95 cell - intimately related to function 59
empty - (paradox of the two tables) 175 chromosome - of Drosophila 56
for different epistemi c communities 187 complex - (wood, biominerals) 38,39
evolution (of natural phenomena) in - and of computers II
time unified 94 of the conceptual systems 90
exploration of - 86 (cor)relating - to function 46,60
"- offemininity" 135n defects in crystal - 36
image of a woman within an all-male - 115 detailed - of organelles 59
laborato ry - (for Pockels) 120 disciplinary - of universities 189
mental - 133, 181 efficient - 39
" a - Odyssey" 23 heterogeneous - of composite materials 37
ontological - 180 high-performance - of nature 39
personal - created by gender 133 of the human brain 190
our place in time and - 141, 149 institutional - 47
productive work - in the homes of Somervill e internal - of maps of the world generated by
and Pockels 132 organisms 152
public - (such as agora, battlefield, hospital) of mathematical relations 21
181 molecular - 70 (of DNA, of the gene) 57,61
scientific work in special - (male scientists) morphology as the study of - and its
and in domestic - (Somerville) 117 development 47
with scientific objects (portrait of Merian) 113 of nature 21
scient ific - 116 of organi sms 44, 48
small - (large numbers of Drosophila in it) 56 of physical models 21
socia l image of - and responsibilities 133 social and political - 160
time and - according to "Big Bang soil - 72
Cosmology" 146, 165 special - in the nervous system 149,150
like a trampoline (in relativ ity theory) 95 system data - 18
for translation (of a letter of Pockels) 121 theory as a - built on axioms 98
working in a domestic - (Cavendish and three-dimensional - of enzyme molecules 70
Merian) 114 visible cell - 54
Spemann , Hans 66 Strutt
Spencer, Herbert 184 Evelyn (Lady Rayleigh) 120, 137n
Spengler, Oswald 188 John William Third Baron Rayleigh
Spies, J. I (Lord Rayleigh) 120, 121, 137n
Spinoza , Baruch de 93 Sturtevant, A.H. 54, 56
INDEX 223
sub-cellular components 60 popular connection between " - " and

sublation/sublimation (Aujh ebung) 185 "artificial" 30, 37
Surinam 110, 112, 113, 132, 136n strategies of chemists 37
Sweden 80 synthetics (presented as agents of
Swedish Academy of Sciences see Academy democratizat ion) 32
Swift, Jonathan 4 Syracuse 2
Swiss Army Knife 189, 190 system(s) 19,21 ,22,55, 68, 90,99, 158, 159,
Switzerland 188 165, 180, 186
symbol(ic) 11, 21,32, 143, 147, 149, 152, 153, biological/living - 43, 44, 57, 64, 67, 70
155, 164, 185 blood buffer - 64
synthesis central - 19
Berthelot 's view of - as a creation 30 communication - 158
biased interpretation of Wohler's - 30 complex - 57, 62,64,70, 81, 155
chemical - 39 computational models of - 23
disparate bodies of knowledge absorbed into a of concepts /conceptual - 89, 90
greater - 185 control - 81
of facts and theories 144 coordinate - 93
following molecules from their point of - 60 dynamic - 81
as the fourth kingdom "Synthetica" 32 ecologica l -/eco - 55,66,67, 81
of general relativity and quantum mechanics economic - 7 1, 8 1
102 elements of - 21
genes controlling the - of an enzyme 69 ethical - 163
higher-order dialectical - 192 formal - 117
Neo-Darwin ian - 183 harmoniou s equipotential - 52
Newtonian mechanics - of prior and interactive - 44, 62, 64, 69
countervailing tendencies 183 isolated - and future state 97
overall - of human knowledge 184 logical - 90
public view of - 29 knowledge - 141-169, 180
quest for - of the idealist philosophers 185 mechanical - 7 1
sociobiological - 184 multi-variable - 66
by substitution of atoms or groups of nervous - 64, 150, 152
them 30 non-human - 152
of urea revealed isomerism 30 non-living - 47
of urea and the arrangement of atoms within of mass education - 163
the molecule 30 operating - 14, 16, 18, 19
of urea by Wohler 5, 30 personal - 19
of urea did not overthrow a metaphysical philosophical - 160
dogma 30 physiological - 65
synthetic religiouslbelief - 159, 163
became a synonym of "chemical" 29 scientist/science - 70, 81
change in the cultural meaning of - 37 self-organiz ing - 177
chemistry /chemists 5,29,37,39 self-regulating - 62
colors 34 social service support - 80
Darwin's theory was - 50 social - 67, 81
descriptive and - methods 47 state - 166
dyes 30 symbolic - 152
fibers 32,33 theoretical - 186
frame of mind (Haeckel) 48 trading - 158
general - method of Darwin 47 systemati c/unsystematic 110, 171-194
heroic image of the - chemist 31
idealist philosophies 185 Tamrnes, Jantina 123-1 27, 132
" - judgement a priori" 101 Taylor, Frederick Winslow 75
materials 32, 34 technology 1,35,46, 57, 86, 155
molecu les 36 agricultural - 8 1
polymers 32 laboratory - 187
224 I NDE X
telegraph 18, 158 one of the great triumphs of illusion 18

telephone(s) 5, 9, 18, 19, 172 notion of personal computer not entirely
television(s) 5,9, 13, 14, 19,87 compatible with - 19
Thales of Miletus 2 Timmerman, Henk 6
Thaves, Tom 23 Tower of Babel 187
theorem (the "clock paradox" called a - by transistor 12
Einstein) 94 part of the hardware of a modem electronic
theory/theories calculator 26n
atomic - 86 Tucson (Arizona, the Carnegie Institution's Desert
capitalistic economic - 71 Laboratory in - ) 55
chaos - 70 Tukey, John W 26
classical - 101 Turing
of computation 18 Alan Mathison II , 13, 25, 26n
counterintuitive physical - 189 machine II , 12, 23
Darwinian/evolutionary - 48, 50, 51, 71,1 84 Turkle, Sherry 13
general - 93, 94
"Gastraea -" of Haeckel 50 unification
of heredity 47,72 As an approach to science 7
Intelligent Design - 173 artificialist perspective of - 183
kinetic - of gases 66 of Baconian empiricism and Cartesian
of knowledge 150 rationalism 183
Kuhn's - 183 laying fertile ground for future research 184
Mendelian - 55, 79 Germany's political - 174
Mendelian-chromosome - 54 no longer a going concern 189
mosaic - of heredity 51 image of - 193
of natural selection 66 of individual discoveries 192
quantum - 91, 96, 98. 101, 102 as a perversion of inquiry 185, 187
relativity - 85, 86, 88, 91, 93 of the sciences 172,1 79,1 84,1 85,1 92
special (relativity) - 93, 94 strategy 186
validity of - 99 unificationism 171, 172,187, 189
thought(s) unificationist(s) 179, 180, 183, 187
anthropomorphic metaphors of modem United States 46, 53, 62, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76,
scientific - 156 78-80, 106,131 ,1 71,1 81
of Bohr and Einstein about philosophy 88 unity
Cavendish alone with her - 107 as an expression of constructivism 179
discovery not effected by logical - 88 German national - 185
disparate strands of - 184 of homo sapiens 184
distinguishing feature of modem - 158 image of - (in the philosophy of science) 171,
early - of Bohr 91 190, 202
as a form of information processing 23 of inquiry 188
mechanization of - 27n positivists' - of science movement 175
modern scientific - and earliest human proposal for reviving its fortune s 192
knowledge systems 141 of science as artificial 184, 185
modem scientific - hostile to ad hoccery 160 of science and reductionism 173
speculations about atomic structure and of science as natural 183, 184
scientific - 96 of science project 179, 184, 189, 190
sphere of - 96 of (the) science(s) 171-1 73, 179, 183,
symbolic modes of - 153 188-190
systems of - and systems of exchange 159 unity--<lisunity distinction 180
about the theme (changing image of the as a vivid image for twentieth-century
sciences) ix philosophy of science 193
traditional systems of - 160 universe
train of - 184 our bearings within the - and modem
time-sharing science/creation myths 149
full development of - and microcomputers 19 similar to a clock (according to Kepler) 160
INDEX 225
the clockwork - 25 Hermann 174

creation myths and the orientation of men in Ludwig 47
the - 149, 164
the early - 165 Wageningen 124
expanding - 165 Warsaw 127
history of the - 7, 146 Watson, James D. 61,70
history of significant parts of the - 146 wave(s) 97
religions offered credible descriptions of complementarity of - behavior and particle
the - 163 behavior 91
university ix dualism between - and corpuscles (particles)
academic disciplines as - departments 187 98-100
admissions 175 electron, - or particle 98-100
agency of the - 185 gravitational - 96
of Berlin 96 light consisting of - 97
Cambridge - (Great Britain) 135n matrix mechanics and - mechanics 98
of Chicago 53 mechanics (Schroedinger) 98
Columbia - 54, 56, 58 and particle physics 97
Copenhagen - 88,91 Weber, Max 188
departments and institutes 62 Wegener, Paul 4
founding institution of German national Weimar 183
unity 185 West Indies 114
as an institutional setting 172 Western
of Minnesota 136n Australia 158
Pockels decided against enrolling at the - 120 Europe 70, 73, 183
Princeton - 90 Whewell, William 183
as a site for knowledge production 173 White House 131
and its state sponsors 188 Williamson, Alexander 86
urea (synthesis of - ) 5, 30 Wilson
Uxekiill, Jacob von 65 E.B. 50,58
E.O. 184
validity Marie 33
the question of the absolute - of religious Winchester, A.M. 58
customs 169n Winters, Alison 119
of theories 99 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 180
Van Diepenbeke, Abraham 108 Wiihler, Friedrich 5, 30
Van Helden, Albert I Woitereck, Richard 66
Van Schuppen, Peter 108 woman/women
Vanity Fair 127 barrierslboundarie s to science faced by -
velocity of light 94 scientists 106, 114
Victorian England 117 - 's college(s) 117, 129
Vienna 175 cultured - 122
Circle 172, 176, 188 in defiance of social norms 110
view (multi-dimensional - of molecules) 57 dependent - 124
Villefranche Laboratory 72 domestic image of - 107, 117
Virchow, Rudolf 174 family responsibility of - 117,124,127
virtual gentieB 117,122
box of programs (computer) 14 health of - 7
computer vs. the real one 18 higher education of 127
interface with the - world 19 image/self-image/negative image
perception 25 105-139
reality 23 low number of - in science ix
virtuality (plasticity as a pure - of indefinite movement 117
transformations) 34 - 's movement in higher education 117
Volterra, Vito 51 negotiating gender norms 105
von Helmholtz and prescriptive norms 106, 134n
226 INDEX
woman/women contd. Zeus I

in/of science 105,106,107,114,123,130, Zoological
133, 134n, 138n institutions 43
and struggles to be in science 105 Naples - station 63
traveler(s) 112, 135n Station in Rostock 72
weak - 124
Woods Hole, MA 46, 63, 72
Wright, Sewall 69

The Changing Image of The Sciences

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THE CHANGING IMAGE OF THE SCIENCES

THE CHANGING IMAGE OF

SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC

ISBN 978-94-010-3937-6 ISBN 978-94-010-0587-6 (eBook)

Printed on acid-free paper

AII Rights Reserved

IDA H. STAMHUIS, TEUN KOETSIER, CORNELIS DE PATER

ALBERT VAN HELDEN / Introduction

MICHAEL S. MAHONEY / In Our Own Image: Creating the Computer 9

BERNADETTE BENSAUDE-VINCENT / Changing Images of Chemistry 29

GARLAND E. ALLEN / The Changing Image of

Differences Among Eugenics Activities in Different Countries 76

ABRAHAM PAIS / The Image of Physics 85

SALLYGREGORY KOHLSTEDT AND DONALD L. OPITZ /

DAVID CHRISTIAN / Science in the Mirror of "Big History" 141

STEVE FULLER / The Changing Images of Unity and Disunity in

Authors and Editors 195

Results of "Draw-A-Scientlst" Test

Male 92% A SCIENTIST AT WOR K

IN OUR OWN IMAGE: CREATING THE COMPUTER

FROM "GIANT BRAIN" TO INFORMATION ApPLIA NCE

Figure 1. Early mainframe UNIVAC.

Figure 2. Early mainframe lLLlAC.

Figure 3. Early mainframe IBM 704.

Figure 4. Palm" i705. Courtesy of PalmInc.

Figure 5. Turing machine .

John von Neumann et al., EOVAC Architecture

Figure 6. The basic elements of the von Neumann architecture .

Figure 7. Intel's Pentium®II chip - actual size, approximately I crrr' .

THE TRANSPARENCY OF SOFTWARE

Figure 8. The IBM Personal Computer, 1981.

. ' NetsCOD.: Mich." S. Mahoney - " II .

Be" F.. E.. V_ Go Men age Com.unlctlOr Holp II

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t owe r s(ndi s k - 1, f r om, h o ld , t o) ;

move (fr om, to);

to wers (n dis k - 1 , h o l d, to , fro m) ;

Figure I I. The solution of the Towers of Hanoi in a high-level language.

High-level, or problem-oriented, languages represented a fundamental shift in

THE WORLD OF THE COMPUTER

Gary William Flake

The Computational Beauty of Nature

CopyrightIe) 2000 by Thaves. Distributedfrom www.theoomics.com .

parts of an information process. While the laws of thermodynamics remain in force,

CHANGING IMAGES OF CHEMISTRY

pointed to Friedrich Wohler's synthesis of urea, an organic compound, from inor-

Figure I. Marcellin Berthelot. Reprinted with permission of the Agence Bridgeman

THE WO NDERFUL WORLD OF CHEMISTRY

THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

CENTER OF MODERN LIFE

THE WAYS BACK TO NAT URE

Along with intensive consumerism, plastics became a target of criticism in the

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