Readings

Question 1

Franklin, Promoting Useful Knowledge, 1743

Answer 1

• make science a utalitarian pursuit
• stems from enlightenment thinking
• science for practical use, not just the sake of discoveries
• share new scientific knowledge for “public advantage”

Question 2

Catesby, History of Islands, 1731

Answer 2

• collecting curiosities to prove colonies are valuable
• very specific illustrations that are of an individual
• colonial work with/for England

Question 3

Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, 1803

Answer 3

• instructions for the expedition and goals to create ethnography, geologic & geographic survey, natural survey, search for resources
• expanding westward to dominate trade & expand science and civilization for natives

Question 4

Slotten, Dilemmas of Science in US, 1993

Answer 4

• 1850s-1860s
• dilemma between science and democracy, different goals
• funding issues were helped by recent economic growth of the 1840s by the acquisition of CA & recovery from 30s deficit
• coast survey synthesized interests of science and constituencies
• Alexander Bache central in developing science in US because he was able to do the science and play social aspects
• to increase science amount, had to catch public’s eye, win over politicians, and convince people that it was worth the taxes
• turned Coast Survey into a central, scientific institution in the US that created a balance between “science, society, and state.”

Question 5

Leconte, Petition for Geological Suvey, 1850

Answer 5

• explaining why exploration is of highest importance: resources of state + natural history + info for miners & farmers
• push forward civilization by pushing forward knowledge

Question 6

Daniels, The Process of Professionalization in American Science, 1967

Answer 6

• covering 1820 - 1860
• transition from gentlemanly science to trained science
• sciences becomes institutionalized: preemption, institutionalization, legitimization, professional autonomy
• pre-emption = science becoming an exclusive profession that was not accessible without study, and less accessible to the “charlatan”
• institutionalization = formation and professionalization of societies of scientists and institutions, such as the Coast Survey, the American Journal of Sciences and Arts, the American Association for the advancement of Sciences
• legitimization= appeal to the public to gain support by promising the practical benefits of scientific exploration
• professional autonomy = finally split from this dependency on the public, justify science on only scientific terms

Question 7

Stone, Practice of Midwifery, 1737

Answer 7

• discusses the legitimacy of education vs practical knowledge in medicine
• men steal credit from women midwives, making them seem less legitimate than the male doctors

Question 8

Ulrich, Living Mother of Living Child, 1989

Answer 8

• evidence that Ballard as a midwife was more successful in deliveries than contemporary male doctors
• argues more women died in childbirth bc of scientific hubris of chaivinistic doctors
• challenges Ballard’s image of a folk hero of midwifery & presents her as a forerunner of medical science
• discusses the changes in medical sciences up to the 20th century, hospitals had still birth rates higher than Ballard’s

Question 9

Robert Boyle & Thomas Hobbes

Answer 9

• basic difference of scientific methods
• Hobbes had synthetic method that we find the cause of phemomena, then observe, then conclude
• Boyle makes observation, guesses probable causes, then analyzes cause to determine most appropriate

Question 10

Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859

Answer 10

• theory of natural selection, support for change over time, describes it as descent with modification
• states that organisms descended from one common, primordial ancestor
• balances his opinions with opposing views, discusses issues with his theory and possible doubts
• still had clear Christian links (especially in introduction)

Question 11

Rossiter, Women’s Work in Science, 1980

Answer 11

• 1880 - 1910
• gender segregation in scientific community
• 1880s and 90s, women begin getting work in scientific fields in significant numbers
• 1910 = women firmly established
• women got jobs for economic reasons (cheaper to hire women, and women more likely to take jobs men thought were below them)
• menial tasks such as data entry considered women’s work
• women did not get as much credit and work on jobs they were overqualified for
• in 1870s, there were no women’s fields bc there were no women, but by 1910s, certain areas of science became gendered (botany, astronomy, home ec)

Question 12

LeConte, Early Years in CA, 1903

Answer 12

• talks of moving to CA & his work
• Visiting Yosemite & the wonder of it & and how it influenced the papers he is writing
• wrote textbook elements of geology
• discusses necessity to organize the CA govt
• disorder allowed him to create a merit based system
• advocates interdisciplinary studies & concerned with specialization

Question 13

Flexner, Medical Education in US and Canada, 1910

Answer 13

• facilities in the Uni were small and inadequate, not to uni standards
• looked at how many doctors, equipment,
• CA had 4x more doctors than it could support –> will be a struggle for existence

Question 14

Muir to Roosevelt, 1907

Answer 14

• defending Yosemite Hetchy Valley from being turned into a dam
• discussed building up Yosemite to bring in more visitors instead of using it for its resources

Question 15

Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 1911

Answer 15

• First. the great loss which the whole country is suffering through inefficiency in almost all of our daily acts.
• Second. the remedy for this inefficiency lies in systematic management, rather than in searching for some unusual or extraordinary man. Put the system above man.
• Third. the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation.
• In the future, we will appreciate leaders that are born /and/ trained right.
• Currently - 50 different ways to do one thing; sci management will take general knowledge & classify, tabulate and turn knowledge into rules & formulae

Question 16

Hughes, Amerikanismus

Answer 16

• US after WW1 was the envy of the world
• Russia & Germany want to re-evolve their industry & were infatuated with Taylorism & Fordism
• 1920s had SU importing US means of production & using US consulting companies to set up industry
• 1928, Ford is bigger than Taylor in SU bc cheap mass-production was Russia’s sole goal
• 1920s, Tried importing American farmers to teach Soviets how to farm = very difficult
• in general, any attempt was stalled by Soviet lack of tech or training
• 1934-5 - shifts to focus on production of products in Russia
• 1920s Fordism take over Taylorism, said that it would repair the breach btwn labor and management
• Nazis preach that modernism was soulless, wanted sparks of genius like Edison, Ford

Question 17

James, “What is Emotion?”, 1884

Answer 17

• Feelings - byproduct of the changes in bodily behavior as a result of the mental facilities processing an external fact
• lots of different body parts used to create an emotion, and these specific movements cause the emotion (refuse to express an emotion, & it dies)
• used very specific language to give support to his argument –> linked cause and observations closely
• has very “traditional,” genderized statements as evidence

Question 18

Hughes, Introduction, A Gigantic Wave of Human Ingenuity, Choosing and Solving Problems

Answer 18

• America is a country of builders and formerly a country driven by improvement
• American tech & systems of production were the symbols of American achievement
• post Civil War period has huge output of US patents
• era of independent inventors starts with Bell in 1876, replaced with industrial labs post WW1
• rise of factory production & displacement of human skills & inventors who often disregarded scientists as useless for inventing
• independent inventors chose more radical problems to address than industrial scientists constrained to their company’s goals & often created their own systems
• inventors required own funds or investor funds for experiments = private funds, no democracy

Question 19

Small, The Meaning of Sociology, 1908

Answer 19

• Sociological movement “attempts to concentrate all our means of knowledge upon the task of interpreting human experience, its past, its present, its future, so far as past and present can project vision into the future
• Sociology as a “protest against scientific attention to every other big or little object of knowledge conceivable”
• Sociology teaches that men’s destiny is the most important purpose & the only universal point & can be believed/applied by any discipline

Question 20

Pauly, “The Development of High School Biology: New York City, 1900-1925”, 1991

Answer 20

• Between 1890 and 1910, high school enrollment grew 350% & 1890 had <4% of adolescents going into secondary school
• Between 1910-1928, student population doubled, general biology became standard subject & enrollment in smaller sections dropped sharply
• 1928 = 13.3% of students enrolled in bio, twice that of chem & physics
• Original bio classes were 9th grade with botany, zoology, physiology, usually taught by different teachers
• DeWitt Clinton High School→ all boys school that had one of first bio programs, for boys to be men. Bio was “value-laden” and somewhat training for high society life
• Bio classes were used to prepare students for being efficient citizens and ‘good animals’ in an urban environment (which had problems with nutrition, ventilation & sanitation); often preached abt use of drugs & importance of hygenie
• Bio was controversial because the discussion of evolution and sex

Question 21

Hughes, Brain Mill for the Military

Answer 21

• alliance between manufacturers and military is centuries old, but emerged prominently in 1880
• Naval armament war between GB & G near end of 19th century drove growth of “command economy” & growth of military industrial complex
• US looked to its independent inventors in the pre-WW1 armament race
• large issues with communication between military & academics led to heavier investments in industry-based research; also marked the end of inventors who couldn’t push out projects as cheaply as more established researchers (university or industrial alike) bc no theoretical knowledge
• Sperry-navy relationship of WW1 established main characteristics of modern military-contractor relationships
• WW1 became a war of “attrition, mass production, and scientific & technological innovation.”

Question 22

Moran, Scopes Trials: Intro, 2002

Answer 22

• Opposition to teaching Darwinism in school
• Butler Act 1925= prohibit teaching of evolution in public schools in Tennessee
• John Scopes was asked to partake in the court case
• William Jennings Bryan gave a weak testimony & Scopes was found guilty
• Darrow was the lawyer trying to prove Scopes guilty

Question 23

Boas, Commencement Address in Atlanta University, 1906

Answer 23

• “the silence and neglect of science can let truth utterly disappear and be unconsciously distorted”
• Negro race has contributed to the foundation of many early inventions, like smelting iron
• Realize that your failures as a black would be seen as a failure to the entire race, whereas a failure of a white male is the failure of an individual
• encourage audience to continue on the work of their prehistoric ancestors and “lead their race from achievement to achievement” in defiance of those saying their race is doomed to economic inferiority

Question 24

Skinner, Walden Two, Ch. 13 & 14, 1948

Answer 24

• “society attacks early and enslaves him”
• Walden 2 is an experiment to determine the best way to teach an individual how to act so only the fear of the group matters
• set up certain behavioral process which lead individual to design his own good conduct using studies of history for best methods to shape human behavior
• the children are able to “escape the petty emotions that eat out the heart of the unprepared” and teach them to triumph over nature, themselves, but not others

Question 25

Hughes, Tennesee Valley & Manhattan Engineer District

Answer 25

• technological transformation was seen as largely and rightly a private enterprise & spreading systems of production was the fruit of free-enterprise capitalism
• saw government planning of development in entire regions as democratic & an ideal democracy
• Tennessee Valley: development scheme to create one of the nation’s great industrial centers in a impoverished valley (originally Ford’s idea, but government picked it up and established TVA in 1933)
• wanted to create a model from TVA to apply universally (spoiler alert - doesn’t work) & TVA had to limit themselves to planning regional ed & health facilities & public-power development
• Manhattan Engineer District/Manhattan Project = a continuation of the growth of large production systems with thousands of workers, engineers, scientists & managers
• Manhattan Project was an industrial development-and-production undertaking dependent on scientific labs and req’d a centrally controlled & coordinated production system (was a committee based organizational system and inefficient)
• Tensions between scientists & engineers (independent academic minds v highly organized industrial managers) & issues with secrecy = organizing a mess
• basically 1930s-40s a government organizational focus period
• 1950s: a period of nuclear energy
• Eisenhower warns about military-industrial complex: “Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. …[W]e must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complx.

Question 26

Bancroft Library, Learning the Language of the Atom & Seedtime for ‘Big Science’

Answer 26

• Berkeley expanded its physics program in 1920s and 30s, hiring new prominent physicists & building a new physics building; marked a center of research in physics by 1928
• US lamented that Europe had written “the language of the atom”
• Physics department at Berkeley shaped campus personality with new faculty and large groups of student researchers
• Cyclotron & Lawrence - model built in 1929, 1942 had a 184” diameter cyclotron at Lawrence
• Oppenheimer huge part of Manhattan Project, leading Los Alamos & constructing a device that would cause explosion
• center of science, celebrity artists & writers visited as well as every mid-century US President

Question 27

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Before Hiroshima, 1946

Answer 27

• Committee on Social & Political Implications of bomb: use of bomb should be considered a fateful political decision, not just a military tactic as other countries begin developing and stockpiling their own arsenal against US once they determine how to invent their own (a few years difference at best)
• no great opposition to the use of the bomb has developed in the US or abroad
• reprinted the report, done after Germans left war
• scientists take responsibility for “the development of nuclear power [which] is fraught with infinitely greater dangers than were all the inventions of the past.”
• will be difficult to encourage abolishment of weapons after being the first to use them (related nukes to poison gas: using it could speed up war, but would have huge public disapproval)
• development of nuclear power is an addition to technological & military power, but also creates grave political & economic problems –> early, unnanounced attack on Japan inadvisable

Question 28

Goldberg, “Inventing a Climate of Opinion: Vannevar Bush and the Decision to Build the Bomb,” 1992

Answer 28

• Bush was the primary person who decided to build atomic bomb in 1941
• Bush had to get funding from the right people, knowing how to make advances and push your agenda to further science in a way
• Bush was able to organize and discipline the forces that favored proceeding with the bomb & made the creation of the bomb near certain
• Bush organized & inspired leading US science admins and industrialists to form NDRC
• bomb decision a bureaucratic miracle and proof that all decisions, regardless of what form of government they are, are political

Question 29

Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

Answer 29

• warned public about military-industrial complex
• must balance the temptation to believe that every costly and spectacular idea will solve all current difficulties
• spend more on military service than net income of all US corporations & we must guard against the unwarranted influence
• don’t let the weight of this combination endager our liberties or democratic process. this mesh requires alert citizens to balance military-industrial power with peaceful methods & goals
• don’t allow public policy to become captive of scientific-technological elite
• encourages disarmament, conservation, & peace with justice

Question 30

Ridenour, Should Scientists Resist Military Intrusion?

Answer 30

• Underlying military motivations are encroaching upon the nature and purpose of scientific research
• Big science needs big money→ comes from military money
• Ridenour argues for better support of “pure” science, that is to carry out research to learn about nature and not just for something political

Question 31

Kennedy, Address at Rice Uni on the Space Effort, 1962

Answer 31

• science is going at a breakneck pace & creates new ills as it dispels old
• science is a high risk and high cost, but has high rewards
• must continue this cost because we must stay ahead, space exploration will continue whether or not US is involved
• science has no morality of its own, and the US must be pre-eminent in order to ensure space is a place of peace (at least for the US)
• we are behind, but we do not intent to stay behind & this will cost money, but we must be bold
• different from Eisenhower bc we have a resonsibility, not a warning

Question 32

Lindsay, Costs and Choices, 1963

Answer 32

• greatest adventure or greatest threat to society?
• flight on the Faith 7 distracted from the integration problem in Birmingham and gave us an excuse to ignore our shortcomings on Earth
• man on the moon or solving problems with economic growth, development or urban renewal & education? one more glamorous than the other
• space gives us ways to spread peaceful activities with new tech & new tools for econ management, improvements in planning and use of resources, ways to inspect international agreements, & increase knowledge of space for the benefit of mankind
• do we really need to have people in space? probably not. too costly for no reason & the man in the moon is most costly single program undertaken by man
• diverts scientists from teaching & other professional careers
• military = haunting and necessary bc SU but also could upset delicate energy balance between earth & outer space (references Carson & greenhouse effects)
• must balance rockets, space & bombs with schools, hospitals, and consumer products & balance our successes in space with our failure to integrate and create equal opportunities for everyone

Question 33

Igo, Main Street to Mainstream, 2005

Answer 33

• “Provided a reassuringly familiar picture” of American identity in a tumultuous time of social, demographic, and economic developments
• Scientific realism persuaded America this was legit
• Intense class, racial, ethnic, and poltical conflicts of early 1920s had become to appear a monster, a perversion of American ideals and this ‘typical’ Midwest town, not an urban, troublesome pop was calming
• No longer a study of the ‘deprived, dependent, defective’ populations and called out against the idea that anthropology was only for the ‘savage’ populations

Question 34

Marchand, The Designers Go to the Fair II: Norman Bel Geddes, The General Motors ‘Futurama,’ and the Visit to the Factory Transformed, 1992

Answer 34

• General Motors brought model for the future of America in the late 1930s & away from from “the factory” of other company’s displays
• created a technological paradise created by GM
• Futurama exhibit at New York World’s Fair (GM won 39.4 pts from neutral survey, second place was Ford with 8.5pts)
• corporations had to merge their factory-oriented “educational” videos with entertainment and make consumers part of the company
• GM wanted to incorporate better public relations & subtle delivery of anti-New Deal political messages since mid-1930s
• Advance the agenda of General Motors, gaining control over their environment
• Science= control, influence, power, socially constructed

Question 35

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962

Answer 35

• previous environment shaped by animals, now humans are shaping environment and there is no time for the world to adjust to us
• chemicals are invading every human’s body
• Post War habits of mass production changed the path of America and technology & commented on danger of capitalism
• relates the battle between insects and pesticides like DDT to the nuclear war
• attacks DDT and many other chemicals with scientific descriptions of their effects & LD
• uses very sensationalist language to make facts seem even worse

Question 36

Hughes, Making Dollars Out of DNA: 1974-1980, 2001

Answer 36

• Cohen and Boyer discovery of recombinant DNA in 1973s & obtain first biotech patent in 1980
• Controversy of what could be patented- it was but it is still debated today, especially biotech patents bc who should be denied access to potential medical inventions
• academia very against patenting and the commercialization that patenting brought into colleges (colleges tend to get 1/3 of patent income)
• America was becoming consumerist
• what is the role of science? To make money or just for science? Who gets to have a role?

Question 37

Bell, Beyond the Data Deluge, 2009

Answer 37

• science is facing hundred- to thousand-fold increases in data volume & needs to determine the best way to organize and analysis this data
• Management, curation, and archivation of these digital data is increasingly burdensome to scientists
• Huge potential, but slow to develop bc of complexities of databases, schemes, and ontologies & a general lack of understanding of databases by scientific community
• change of science over time, need to find a way to accommodate the new technology
• also debates how big can we make these databases? how inclusive/exclusive? democratic addition of data into database?