Abstracts Archive

The study of plant phenomics in the field involves complex efforts of data collection and analysis. There are countless parameters of potential relevance ranging from the information about the soil, relevant microbiomes, plants at different stages of development, changing climatic conditions and so ...

Recent research has highlighted a flourishing of exchange between the musical and scientific fields of nineteenth-century Germany, with discussions of Hermann von Helmholtz’s writings on music and the psychophysics of listening featuring especially prominently (Jackson 2006; Steege 2012; Hui 2013)...

In the nineteenth century, the British government supported the creation of botanic gardens throughout the empire, with over one hundred in existence by the century’s end. Colonial garden superintendents were expected to identify and cultivate economically and medicinally valuable plants and take ...

This panel aims at shedding light on a relevant field of the history of science: botany. The study of plants remained generally immersed in collections of items or in the work of apothecaries, or displayed a secondary role in scientific knowledge. Although this picture has never been properly engage...

The key to understanding the response of liberal intellectuals to the constraints that faced them in the post-Origin of Species era lies in an examination of the world of Victorian periodicals.  Macmillan’s Magazine was one of several new monthlies that, beginning in the 1860s, altered the dynami...

This paper explores the culture of co-authorship in eighteenth-century botany, focusing on the practice of posthumous publishing and the publication trajectory of the papers and illustrations left by the French botanist Charles Plumier (1646-1704). In 1689 Plumier had travelled through Martinique a...

It has long been debated whether Newton's theory of color and, more generally, his optical investigations are mathematical, but Newton himself always insisted that his theory of color and that of the colors of thin plates are mathematical theories. He based his claim on his ability when utilizing th...

The start of the Cárdenas administration in 1934 is often seen as the moment when the promises of the Revolution were finally made real for the wide array of Mexicans who had fought in the decade-long conflict of the 1910s.  Mexican citizens were able to farm land communally, had access to sta...

As a self-described magus, Giovanni Battista della Porta (1535 – 1615) was convinced of his power to manipulate nature. Given proper conditions, the Neapolitan scholar believed that dogs could be made to degenerate from four-footed creatures to two-footed ones. Porta wrote that by amputating dogs ...

 This panel will explore three episodes of potential radiation exposure among indigenous group in the far north during the twentieth century. We aim to better understand Cold War anxieties about nuclear radiation and the relationship between outside experts and indigenous peoples living in contamin...

For all time or for the moment? This paper considers two opposed temporal “modes” or “idioms” in the work of turn-of-the-century philologists: one dismissing the clock (and the calendar) and orienting itself towards the eternal and unbounded, the other embracing the budget and deadline, cali...

This paper explores how physicists of the Laser-Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) attempted to locate their research on military sites, LIGO’s negotiations with the administrators of these sites such as the U.S. military, and LIGO’s response to claimed national security concer...

Shortly before his death in 2015, Oliver Sacks wrote about the mental life of plants. Charles Darwin contemplated a related set of questions before his own death in 1882, as he investigated the movement of climbing plants. Plant life, as shown in Darwin's books on the subject, is both active and int...

In the Seventeenth century medicine, botany does not restrict to the uses of simples and the fabrication of therapeutics, but also to the analogy between plants and animals. The study of plants work in the explanation of some specific living conditions, operations, and organs. In this paper, I espec...

Everyone is watched, but not everyone is monitored in the same way. Contagion and the threat of contagion elicits medical surveillance in port cities through monitoring, regulating, quarantining goods and people. In the late nineteenth century, Alexandria, Tripoli, and Tunis were commercial zones wh...

This paper explores the work of Scottish scientist James Croll (1821-1890), whose interest lay in explaining the underlying principles—not just the physical, geologic remains—of the Ice Ages. In 1875, Croll published Climate and Time in their Geologic Relations: A Theory of the Secular Changes o...

Early Cold War anxiety over nuclear conflict generated an unusually rapid speed of proving grounds, a site designated for military tests in technology, along the Florida coastline. Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex—a region historically occupied by the native Ais tribe and their “crude and flims...

The history of science is full of queer potential. Reassessing what’s considered natural, interrogating supposedly self-evident ontologies, challenging a split between knowledge and power—these are tasks and commitments often shared by history of science and queer scholars alike. Yet, specifical...

Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858-1937), India’s first plant physiologist, deviated boldly from mainstream botany by claiming that plants possess “nerves” and “pulsating cells” that function much like the nerve and heart cells of animals. In support of these ideas he recorded “plant autographs,...

In May 1993, a group of scientific experts and public officials from circumpolar nations gathered in Anchorage to assess the human and environmental legacies of the Cold War in the Far North. Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) opened the meeting by calling for action on the part of the participants ...

In Paris on September 21, 1827, Europe’s most famous philosopher and France’s first professional sinologist met to discuss the intellectual traditions of China. The sinologist, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat, lauded the “ancient oriental doctrine” of Daoism, which he claimed had been known to all...

In 1995, dental surgeon-turned-planetary scientist and terraforming expert Martyn J. Fogg authored the seminal “technical-level” book on the history, science, and prospects of “engineering planetary environments.” In this book published by the Society of Automotive Engineers, Fogg categorize...

This talk examines the work of British India’s chemical examiners (1879-1947) not only in detecting criminal poisoning, but also in identifying cases of fabricated evidence in which poison was planted by colonized subjects to frame adversaries. Colonial stereotypes about ‘native mendacity’ pow...

Most histories of photography, including social histories, make only passing reference to forensic photography or other police uses of the medium, if any mention at all. Art historian Alan Sekula called for a more expansive social history of photography that included police archives in his now class...

The Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) at Wakehurst place in West Sussex, England is the largest repository of plant genetics resources (PGRs) in the world. Founded in 2000, the MSB functions as a hub for a global partnership program between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and local partners from over 80 cou...

The only publication Joseph Banks (1743–1820) is remembered for is the Florilegium, a series of illustrations that represent the plants he and Daniel Solander (1733–1782) collected during the Endeavour voyage to the Pacific between 1768 and 1771, which remained unpublished until the 1980s. Howev...

Traditionally, barley was the second most important crop in the Korean Peninsula. When Japanese colonial authority in the early 20th century transplanted Japanese agricultural science and related discourses to Korea, it became the main agenda to increase production and consumption of barley, to spre...

In the heyday of the British Welfare State, in the decades immediately following World War II, people's worth was assigned and quantified along heteronormative, gendered lines. Electronic computers implemented the policies that created the Welfare State, leading to some of the first examples of algo...

The theories of light that were in circulation in the European universities of the thirteenth century are currently not well understood, partly because of the tremendous diversity among these theories and the wide range of sources that were drawn upon (for instance, Albert the Great, writing in 1242...

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8 – the American manned space mission that for the first time sent to Earth true photographic images of the planet. Scholars have argued that the images had a direct impact on the American environmental movement and helped to shape political culture i...