This article focuses on a problematic character of communication in science. Two solutions are compared: paradigm-based science (the natural sciences model and its extension to the social sciences as represented by economics) and the semiotic solution developed in the arts and social sciences. There are several parallels between the latter approach and Marxist dialectics. A third, original, approach to solving communication problems is proposed; it can be labeled “transactional.” It represents a version of the semiotic solution with particular emphasis on interactions, both face-to-face and depersonalized, and the imperative of negotiating and finding compromises. Communication problems existing at two registers of interactions, face-to-face and depersonalized, are differentiated; freedom is interpreted as the capacity to change the registers at will. An in-depth case study of the Coase theorem in economic sciences and legal studies illustrates key points in the proposed analysis.

Many associations have recently been discovered between phenotypic variation and genetic loci, causing some to advocate what Robert Sinsheimer has called “a new eugenics” that would treat genetic “defects” in individuals prone to a disease. The first premise of this vision is that genetic association studies reveal the biological cause of the phenotypic variation. Once the responsible genes are known, the second premise is that we should focus upon changing “nature” rather than “nurture” by correcting the “defective” genes.

The first premise is flawed because associations between genetic markers and phenotypes can be spurious, as shown by an example. Moreover, it is shown that using non-causative but associated genetic markers one at a time (the normal practice) can lead to incorrect predictions of disease risk for many individuals. Going from association to causation is a non-trivial step scientifically that has rarely been done in much of the human genetic research.

Even when a particular locus does contribute to the phenotypic variation of interest, the first premise remains flawed because phenotypes in general arise from complex interactions among genes and between genes and environments as shown for genes associations with coronary artery disease (CAD). The ability of current molecular genetic tools to “fix” defective genotypes is extremely limited, but even if the technological problems could be overcome, the studies on CAD reveal no obvious “defective” gene to fix because the genetic effects are so context dependent (upon both other genes and environmental factors). Contrary to the second premise of the new eugenics, the more we learn about how different genotypes show variable responses to environments, the more important the environment becomes for individual treatment.

The paradigm of a “defective gene” may work for classical Mendelian genetic diseases that are due to loss-of-function mutations. However, such mutations affect only a small portion of humanity. When the focus is changed to common disease and behavioral phenotypes, the “defective gene” paradigm is biologically meaningless and often harmful when applied to individuals. Thus, even when genes clearly do influence common phenotypic variation, the premises of the “new eugenics” are biologically indefensible.

What are the aims of genetic services? Do any of these aims deserve to be labeled “eugenics”? Answers to these strenuously debated questions depend not just on the facts about genetic testing and screening but also on what is understood by “eugenics,” a term with multiple and contested meanings. This paper explores the impact of efforts to label genetic services “eugenics” and argues that attempts to protect against the charge have seriously distorted discussion about their purpose(s). Following Ruth Chadwick, I argue that the existence of genetic services presupposes that genetic disease is undesirable and that means should be offered to reduce it. I further argue that the economic cost of such disease is one reason why governments and health care providers deem such services worthwhile. The important question is not whether such cost considerations constitute “eugenics,” but whether they foster practices that are undesirable and, if so, what to do about them. The wielding of the term “eugenics” as a weapon in a war over the expansion of genetic services, conjoined with efforts to dissociate such services from the abortion controversy, has produced a rhetoric about the aims of these services that is increasingly divorced from reality. Candor about these aims is a sine qua non of any useful debate over the legitimacy of the methods used to advance them.

Carl Gottfried Neumann was born in Königsberg, Prussia, in 1832 and died in Leipzig in 1925. His father was the physicist Franz Neumann (1798–1895), notable for his contributions not only to the study of electricity and magnetism but also to the development of physics education in nineteenth-century Germany. Carl Neumann studied at the University of Königsberg and received his doctorate in 1855 with a work on the application of elliptic integrals to mechanics (Neumann 1856). In 1858 he became Privatdozent, and in 1863 Professor of Mathematics at Halle. Later that same year he moved to Basel, and in 1865 he became Ordinary Professor of Mathematics at Tübingen. Finally in 1868 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at Leipzig, a post he held until he retired in 1911; of the two mathematics professorships at Leipzig, this was the one formerly held by F. A. Möbius, and it was officially devoted to “the higher mathematics, especially physics” (quoted in Jungnickel and McCormmach 1986, 1:181). So Neumann's academic career, along with his role as one of the founding editors of the Mathematische Annalen beginning in 1869, can be seen as reflecting the enormous advance in mathematical sophistication that German physics underwent in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Argument

This article focuses on the scientific practice of a specific class of models in neuroscience and biology that approach biological systems as computational or information processing systems. This specific approach to biological systems has a long tradition that started with the information discourse in the 1940s. Borrowing concepts, methods, and techniques from cybernetics, information theory, and physics, these models are situated at the interface of different scientific disciplines. This article examines in detail the Hopfield model, a model of the specific brain function of auto-associative memory that is situated at the interface of neuroscience, theoretical physics, and engineering. By drawing analogies to a model of disordered magnetic systems in physics, John Hopfield constructed a model that was able to mimic auto-associative memory. The model became an active field of research in theoretical physics and in engineering but not in neuroscience. According to neuroscientists, in the process of construction the model had lost touch with the biological system and the function that it was supposed to model. How did this happen? As will be shown, the process of constructing the model was guided by conceptualizing the biological organism as a computational, information-processing device. This construction process gained its own momentum that involved an interrelated development of a computational concept and a redescription of the biological system or phenomenon for bringing the computational concept to work. We will see how physicists and engineers tried to get models in touch with biological systems by constructing “a synthetic model.”

The article examines the organizational patterns of nineteenth-century Swiss Alpine geology. It argues that early and middle nineteenth-century Swiss geognosy was shaped in genealogical terms and that the patterns of genealogical reasoning and practice worked as a vehicle of transmission toward the generalization of locally gained empirical knowledge. The case study is provided by the Zurich geologist Albert Heim, who, in the early 1870s, blended intellectual and patrilineal genealogies that connected two generations of fathers and sons: Hans Conrad and Arnold Escher, Albert and Arnold Heim. Two things were transmitted from one generation to the next, a domain of geognostic research, the Glarus Alps, and a research interest in an explanation of the massive geognostic anomalies observed there. The legacy found its embodiment in the Escher family archive. The genealogical logic became visible and then experienced a crisis when, later in the century, the focus of Alpine geology shifted from geognosy to tectonics. Tectonic research loosened the traditional link between the intimate knowledge of a territory and the generalization from empirical data.

The subject of the paper is the shift from an astrology-oriented astronomy towards an allegedly more objective, mathematically grounded approach to astronomy. This shift is illustrated through a close reading of Tycho Brahe's scientific development and the contemporaneous changes in his communicational strategies. Basing the argument on a substantial array of original sources it is claimed that the Danish astronomer developed a new astronomical discourse in pursuit of credibility, giving priority to observational astronomy and natural philosophical questions. The abandonment of astrology in public discourse is primarily explained by Tycho's social position and greater sensibility to controversial issues. Tycho's example suggests that the changes in rhetorical strategies regarding astrology (which happened earlier than changes in astrological belief) should be given more recognition in the history of astronomy.

This paper charts eighteenth-century chemistry's transition from its definition as an art to its proclaimed status as a science. Both the general concept of art and specific practices of eighteenth-century chemists are explored to account for this transition. As a disciplined activity, art orients practitioners' attention toward particular directions and away from others, providing a structured space of possibilities within which their discipline develops. Consequently, while chemists throughout the eighteenth century aspired to reveal nature's “true voice,” the path of their investigations was directed by and toward their laboratory manipulations. So long as the chemical community maintained an ethos of polite cooperation and eschewed theoretical wrangling, this point was hidden by a rhetoric of “matter of fact” reporting. But as “facts” mounted in the 1770s and 1780s, especially in pneumatic chemistry, cooperation gave way to contention as chemists sought to name and organize their findings without the guidance of a communally accepted “natural” system. Lavoisier and his fellow “new” chemists offered a forceful solution to this dilemma by introducing a revolutionary network of theories, nomenclature, and instruments that unabashedly fused the productive manipulation of their laboratory work with what they claimed as the structure and activity of nature.

In two articles published in 1881 and 1884, the young academics, Martin Klamroth and Johan L. Heiberg, engaged in a brief debate on the textual choices that should govern the publication of a new critical edition of Euclid's Elements. This short debate seemed to settle the problem in Heiberg's favor as to what should be taken as the definitive text of Euclid's Elements. But the issue ought to be considered once again for there are good reasons for the claim that Klamroth was right, and that Heiberg was wrong. If so, we have been consulting, and continue to consult, the wrong text in our efforts to interpret the Euclidean tradition. In order to substantiate this claim, the textual issue debated by Klamroth and Heiberg is rehearsed again, and the principal reasons brought forth by Heiberg against Klamroth's position are reconstructed. Specimens from three broad areas of evidence – structural, linguistic, and technical – will be considered. They reveal how the medieval tradition of the text advocated by Klamroth displays textual superiority to the Greek tradition promoted by Heiberg. Such a reorientation of the texts has the potential to change significantly our understanding of ancient mathematics.

The process of institutionalization of Political Science in Brazil was conditioned by the country’s position in the geopolitical scenario proper to the Cold War, strongly affected by the influence of the USA and, later on, by the military dictatorship experienced between 1964 and 1985. The first Brazilian professionalized political scientists were, during their youth, anti-Stalinist revolutionary militants. They had been financed by the Ford Foundation (FF) to pursue their PhDs in the USA. In this paper, I argue that the north-American model of ideological war included governmental and non-governmental institutions. Among the latter, the FF played a crucial role because it had a lot of credibility in state bureaucracy and was able to captivate the potential copartners, who would benefit from its grant, even the anti-American ones. The FF was able to do so because it was keeping a distance from the bellicose image of the USA. In this way, because Brazilian youngsters were leftist, the FF was interested in financing their studies. And, because they belonged to the anti-Stalinist left, they were more open than the communists and wouldn’t oppose to exchange with the USA.

Despite the fact that “empathy” is often simply used as a translation of Einfühlung, the two terms have distinct meanings and distinct disciplinary affiliations. This text considers the manner in which the moving image (whether within a film, video, or art installation) invites spatial forms of engagement akin to those described both by historical accounts of Einfühlung, a form of engagement that pertains not only to the activities of humans represented within images, but also to the aesthetic qualities of images in a more abstract sense and to the forms to be found there.

Between 1878 and 1880, Switzerland, Italy, and Japan initiated the world's first national earthquake commissions, but only the Swiss made ordinary citizens a vital part of this undertaking. This paper examines the texture of communication between Swiss scientists and lay observers and traces the development of a language for seismology that was simultaneously scientific and vernacular. This is the story of an aborted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk, an alternative abandoned on the way to the increasingly technical science of the twentieth century.

European ethology and North American comparative psychology have been the two most prominent approaches to the study of animal behavior through most of the twentieth century. In this paper I analyze sets of popular articles by ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and psychologist Frank Beach, in an effort to understand the contrasting rhetorical styles of the two. Among the numerous ways in which Tinbergen and Beach differed were with respect to expressing the joy of research, the kind of scientific approach adopted, their treatment of animals, their sense of history, and the types of illustrations they chose. In general, Tinbergen‘s articles placed him closer to nature and Beach‘s more in the tradition of dispassionate scientific inquiry. These differences in rhetoric may have been one factor in the greater success of ethology after World War II.

This paper argues that eighteenth-century Portuguese scientific policies promoted the inclusion of its main colony, Brazil, in the Enlightenment environment. This was accomplished by innovative initiatives, such as voyages to explore the colonial territory. Natural history activities, especially in mining, remained at the center of this political project and relied on co-opting groups of Portuguese in America. Based on the life of João da Silva Feijó, this article outlines the relevant connections between Feijó's scientific activities and the first Brazilian national expedition in the 1850s, which led to discussion about developing the Brazilian nation. This analysis is aimed toward the growing consensus in historiography of the sciences that scientific activities practiced outside European centers gave rise to complex interactions involving the processes of mondialization of sciences and the construction of a local scientific context.

This article focuses on the dialectic of metapsychology and hermeneutics in psychoanalysis. By combining the causal language of the former with the inten tional terminology of the latter, Freud's discourse continuously transgresses the narrowly conceived boundaries of scientific disciplines and places its stakes in both the humanities and the natural sciences. The argument is made that attempts to reduce psychoanalytic theory to either causal explanation or interpretation of meaning turn it into a closed thought system and rob it of its vitality. It is argued, moreover, that although Freud understood himself to be a scientist, by eschewing the dichotomous reductionism characteristic of both his orthodox followers and critics who tried and still try to turn psychoanalysis into either a natural-science- like discipline or a hermeneutics, Freud demonstrated that his self-understanding was far more sophisticated than admitted by either of these two groups. This argument is supported by a detailed discussion of Freud's epistemological pre mises, his conception of science and reality, and especially, the place he allocated to metapsychology in his interdisciplinary science. It is claimed that metapsy chology served Freud as a double-edged sword, both enabling creative and metaphorical thought about the mind's hidden reality and revealing the necessary incompleteness of hermeneutics. The article concludes with the claim that psy choanalysis needs metapsychology in order to pursue this dual task.

The procedure of Wertbestimmung played a vital role in the implementation of serum therapy and the standardization of mass-produced pharmaceuticals. In fin-de-siècle Germany, a legal framework was put in place to guarantee serum quality and safety and to minimize any associated public health risks. Because the sera were biological remedies, it was difficult to produce them in uniform quality and the procedure of Wertbestimmung, i.e. determining the potency of the serum based on an objective and comparable value, was extremely complex. Various agents such as bacteria cultures, serum hosts, or test animals had to be regulated. In the years after 1895, numerous efforts to stabilize the procedures of Wertbestimmung were undertaken by serum producers and members of the state-run survey institute responsible for overseeing serum production. Despite efforts to stabilize the framework and to generate a reliable reference system, the framework's environment and agents were in constant flux: new producers entered the market and procedures were expanded to include other biologicals as well. The article describes the dynamics involved in the sustained efforts to maintain a stable framework in the face of constant alterations between 1895 and the 1920s.

This article examines the conception of elements in the natural philosophy of Nicolaus Taurellus (1547–1606) and explores the theological motivation that stands behind this conception. By some of his early modern readers, Taurellus may have been understood as a proponent of material atoms. By contrast, I argue that considerations concerning the substantiality of the ultimate constituents of composites led Taurellus to an immaterialist ontology, according to which elements are immaterial forms that possess active and passive potencies as well as motion and extension. In Taurellus's view, immaterialism about elements provides support for the theological doctrine of creation ex nihilo. As he argues, the ontology of immaterial forms helps to explicate a sense in which creatures are substances, not accidents of the divine substance. In particular, he maintains that immaterial forms stand in suitable relations of ontological dependence to God: creation dependence (since forms would not exist without the divine act of creation), but neither subsistence dependence (since forms continue to exist without continued divine agency) nor activity dependence (since forms are active without requiring divine concurrence).

When introducing a collection of essays on Yiddish, Joseph Sherman asserted, among other things, that: Although the Nazi Holocaust effectively destroyed Yiddish together with the Jews of Eastern Europe for whom it was a lingua franca, the Yiddish language, its literature and culture have proven remarkably resilient. Against all odds, Yiddish has survived to become a focus of serious intellectual, artistic and scholarly activity in the sixty-odd years that have passed since the end of World War II. From linguistic and literary research in the leading universities of the world to the dedicated creativity of contemporary novelists and poets in Israel and America, from the adaptation of Yiddish words and phrases to the uses of daily newspapers in English to the elevation of Yiddish as a new loshn koydesh by Hasidic sects, from the publication of new writing to the translation of its established canonical works into modern European languages, Yiddish is continually reminding the world of its vibrancy, relevance and importance as a marker of Jewish identity and survival. (Sherman 2004, 9)

Argument

In Italy, only 2 per cent of the population consider scientists and experts to be society's leading personalities (Censis 2006). Scientists are classified among the “weak social groups” and more precisely as those who have little influence either because they lack representation in the media (the faculty), or because they lack resources. (Young researchers face the lowest percentage of GDP invested in research among the G8 countries.) This article contributes to the current debate on science policies in Europe and addresses the question of why science has such a low reputation in Italy. How did this situation emerge and what methods should be taken to tackle it beyond merely increasing financial resources? An historical overview of how Marcello Carapezza and Alberto Monroy created leading research centers in geochemistry and developmental biology in Palermo offers insight into the opportunities and threats posed by Italy's academic system. This brief analysis of the Italian academic system should interest international readers who want their country to evolve from a closed, corporative, centralized system into a country that can compete at an international level to attract talented students and resources and achieve a higher scientific reputation.

In this paper, the perception of mathematics by a nonspecialist, the Romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis), is investigated. The study is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between mathematics and the surrounding scientific culture in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century. In regard to the problem how the cultural reception of a theory can influence its conceptual development, I argue that the reaction of nonspecialists can be imagined as a sort of resonating body. Some aspects of a theory are stressed, others are ignored or even suppressed. In this way the value system of a theory and thereby the choice of problems and the style of argumentation can be influenced by groups of people who are not active scientists. In fact, the case at hand shows that a change of values has taken place. The original aim of the combinatorial school, whose mathematics Novalis studied, was the mechanization of symbolical calculations. But later, presumably under the influence of the general cultural climate in Germany, this same mathematics was interpreted as furthering — in modern words — a study of abstract structures.