The imperative for inclusion: A gender analysis of genetics

It has now been more than thirty years since Joan Wallach Scott (1986) argued that gender is a legitimate and necessary category of historical analysis that applies to all fields, including genetics. In the intervening years, a substantial body of work has appeared that adds women to the historiography of genetics. While this is a necessary component for including gender as a category of analysis in genetics, it is not sufficient. Gender analysis involves the broader goal of integrating gender into the interrogation of how social factors within research practices and institutional organization influence scientific work and knowledge production in genetics. This article argues for the imperative for inclusion—including both women and gender analysis—which, taken together, not only provide a more equitable and informative picture of the discipline's development, but also yield a historiography that more faithfully reflects the activity of doing science.     

自旋电子学功能材料进展

巨磁电阻效应的发现开拓了磁电子学的新学科,20世纪90年代,磁电子学得到迅速的发展,并在应用上取得显著的经济效益与巨大的社会效应,本世纪初,研究的重点已转移到半导体自旋电子学的新方向,并已取得重要的进展。本文将结合我们科研组的研究工作,概述从磁电子学到半导体自旋电子学材料的发展,重点介绍稀磁半导体材料研究的进展。     

Henry More and the development of absolute time

This paper explores the nature, development and influence of the first English account of absolute time, put forward in the mid-seventeenth century by the ‘Cambridge Platonist’ Henry More. Against claims in the literature that More does not have an account of time, this paper sets out More's evolving account and shows that it reveals the lasting influence of Plotinus. Further, this paper argues that More developed his views on time in response to his adoption of Descartes' vortex cosmology and cosmogony, providing new evidence of More's wider project to absorb Cartesian natural philosophy into his Platonic metaphysics. Finally, this paper argues that More should be added to the list of sources that later English thinkers – including Newton and Samuel Clarke – drew on in constructing their absolute accounts of time.     

Training captains of industry: The education of Matthew Robinson Boulton [1770–1842] and the younger James Watt [1769–1848]

The paper examines the structure of the mathematical instrument making trade in London from the mid-sixteenth century to the opening of the Hanoverian era. This analysis of the trade is primarily based on evidence drawn from contemporary advertising. A distinction between informal editorial recommendations and advertising per se is made. It is concluded that up to the mid-seventeenth century mathematical instrument makers worked in either wood or metal. After that date a growing number of workshops advertised that they manufactured in all media. Advertising was aimed at informing professional users from whom particular instruments could be purchased, but not on informing customers in specific terms of the range of instruments manufactured. It is concluded that until the early eighteenth century most mathematical instruments were commissioned. Only towards the end of the period is there evidence of over-the-counter sales, and advertising aimed at encouraging the growing consumer market to buy mathematical instruments for the practice of science as a social or recreational activity.     

Cultures of simulations vs. cultures of calculations? The development of simulation practices in meteorology and astrophysics

While the distinction between theory and experiment is often used to discuss the place of simulation from a philosophical viewpoint, other distinctions are possible from a sociological perspective. Turkle (1995) distinguishes between cultures of calculation and cultures of simulation and relates these cultures to the distinction between modernity and postmodernity, respectively. What can we understand about contemporary simulation practices in science by looking at them from the point of view of these two computer cultures? What new questions does such an analysis raise for further studies? On the basis of two case studies, the present paper compares and discusses simulation activities in astrophysics and meteorology. It argues that simulation practices manifest aspects of both of these cultures simultaneously, but in different situations. By employing the dichotomies surface/depth, play/seriousness, and extreme/reasonable to characterize and operationalize cultures of calculation and cultures of simulation as sensitizing concepts, the analysis shows how simulation code work shifts from development to use, the importance of but also resistance towards too much visualizations, and how simulation modelers play with extreme values, yet also try to achieve reasonable results compared to observations.     

Chemistry in the French tradition of philosophy of science: Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard

At first glance twentieth-century philosophy of science seems virtually to ignore chemistry. However this paper argues that a focus on chemistry helped shape the French philosophical reflections about the aims and foundations of scientific methods. Despite patent philosophical disagreements between Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard it is possible to identify the continuity of a tradition that is rooted in their common interest for chemistry. Two distinctive features of the French tradition originated in the attention to what was going on in chemistry.French philosophers of science, in stark contrast with analytic philosophers, considered history of science as the necessary basis for understanding how the human intellect or the scientific spirit tries to grasp the world. This constant reference to historical data was prompted by a fierce controversy about the chemical revolution, which brought the issue of the nature of scientific changes centre stage.A second striking—albeit largely unnoticed—feature of the French tradition is that matter theories are a favourite subject with which to characterize the ways of science. Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard developed most of their views about the methods and aims of science through a discussion of matter theories. Just as the concern with history was prompted by a controversy between chemists, the focus on matter was triggered by a scientific controversy about atomism in the late nineteenth-century.     

The unfolding of the historical style in modern cosmology: Emergence,evolution, entrenchment

This paper traces the emergence, evolution and subsequent entrenchment of the historical style in the shifting scene of modern cosmological inquiry. It argues that the historical style in cosmology was forged in the early decades of the 20^th century and continued to evolve in the century that followed. Over time, the scene of cosmological inquiry has gradually become dominated and entirely constituted by historicist explanations. Practices such as forwards and backwards temporal extrapolation (thinking about the past evolutionary history of the universe with different initial conditions and other parameters) are now commonplace. The non-static geometrization of the cosmos in the early 20th century led to inquires thinking about the cosmos in evolutionary terms. Drawing on the historical approach of Gamow (and contrasting this with the ahistorical approach of Bondi), the paper then argues that the historical style became a major force as inquirers began scouring the universe for fossils and other relics as a new form of scientific practice—cosmic palaeontology. By the 1970s the historical style became the bedrock of the discipline and the presupposition of new lines of inquiry. By the end of the 20th century, the historical style was pushed to its very limits as temporal reasoning began to occur beyond a linear historical narrative. With the atemporal ‘ensemble’ type multiverse proposals, a certain type of ahistorical reasoning has been reintroduced to cosmological discourse, which, in a sense, represents a radical de-historicization of the historical style in cosmology. Some are now even attempting to explain the laws of physics in terms of their historicity.     

Of the morphogenes that make a ring, a rod and a sphere in Escherichia coli

In 1993, William Donachie wrote "The success of molecular genetics in the study of bacterial cell division has been so great that we find ourselves, armed with much greater knowledge of detail, confronted once again with the same naive questions that we set to answer in the first place". Indeed, attempts to answer the apparently simple question of how a bacterial cell divides have led to a wealth of new knowledge, in particular over the past decade and a half. And while some questions have been answered to a great extent since the early reports of isolation of division mutants of Escherichia coli, some key pieces of the puzzle remain elusive. In addition to it being a fundamental process in bacteria that merits investigation in its own right, studying the process of cell division offers an abundance of new targets for the development of new antibacterial compounds that act directly against key division proteins and other components of the cytoskeleton, which are encoded by the morphogenes of E. coli. This review aims to present the reader with a snapshot summary of the key players in E. coli morphogenesis with emphasis on cell division and the rod to sphere transition.     

Associationism without associative links: Thomas Brown and the associationist project

There are two roles that association played in 18th–19th century associationism. The first dominates modern understanding of the history of the concept: association is a causal link posited to explain why ideas come in the sequence they do. The second has been ignored: association is merely regularity in the trains of thought, and the target of explanation. The view of association as regularity arose in several forms throughout the tradition, but Thomas Brown (1778–1820) makes the distinction explicit. He argues that there is no associative link, and association is mere sequence. I trace this view of association through the tradition, and consider its implications: Brown's views, in particular, motivate a rethinking of the associationist tradition in psychology. Associationism was a project united by a shared explanandum phenomenon, rather than a theory united by a shared theoretical posit.     

Actants and enframing: Heidegger and Latour on technology

A central issue in the philosophy of technology concerns the relationship between technology and the conditions under which technology develops. Traditionally, two main accounts are given of this relationship. The social constructivist approach considers technology to be largely determined by “social” factors (e.g. military interests, economic policy). By contrast, technological determinism describes technology as self-determinative, and as following its own independent aim of greater efficiency. This paper discusses two alternatives to these conceptions of technology, namely, the accounts offered by Bruno Latour and Martin Heidegger. It examines their common theses that our present misunderstanding of technology is due to a continued commitment to the subject–object distinction. The paper further compares their accounts, which attempt to overcome this distinction, and argues that ultimately both authors fail to find a role for human beings that is consistent with their contention that we need to develop a less anthropocentric understanding of the world.     

Nagel on reduction

This paper attempts a critical reappraisal of Nagel's (1961, 1970) model of reduction taking into account both traditional criticisms and recent defenses. This model treats reduction as a type of explanation in which a reduced theory is explained by a reducing theory after their relevant representational items have been suitably connected. In accordance with the deductive-nomological model, the explanation is supposed to consist of a logical deduction. Nagel was a pluralist about both the logical form of the connections between the reduced and reducing theories (which could be conditionals or biconditionals) and their epistemological status (as analytic connections, conventions, or synthetic claims). This paper defends Nagel's pluralism on both counts and, in the process, argues that the multiple realizability objection to reductionism is misplaced. It also argues that the Nagel model correctly characterizes reduction as a type of explanation. However, it notes that logical deduction must be replaced by a broader class of inferential techniques that allow for different types of approximation. Whereas Nagel (1970), in contrast to his earlier position (1961), recognized the relevance of approximation, he did not realize its full import for the model. Throughout the paper two case studies are used to illustrate the arguments: the putative reduction of classical thermodynamics to the kinetic theory of matter and that of classical genetics to molecular biology.     

Cardiovascular development: towards biomedical applicability

Research in animal models established that tinman, a key gene in Drosophila dorsal vessel development, is an orthologue of Nkx2-5, a key gene in vertebrate cardiac development. Similarities between the arthropod dorsal vessel and vertebrate hearts are interpreted in light of concepts such as homology or convergence. We discuss this controversy in the context of the evolution of animal circulatory pumps and propose the distinction between peristaltic and chambered pumps as a fundamental parameter for evolutionary comparisons between bilaterian pumps. Neither homology nor convergence is satisfactory to explain the origins of hearts and pumping organs. Instead, we propose that animal pumps derive from parallel improvements of an ancestral, peristaltic design represented by a layer of myocytes at the external walls of primitive vessels. This paradigm unifies disparate views, impacts our understanding of bilaterian evolution and may be helpful to interpret similarities between pumping organs of phylogenetically relevant species and emerging models.     

Fred Neufeld and pneumococcal serotypes: foundations for the discovery of the transforming principle

During the first decade of the twentieth century, the German bacteriologist Fred Neufeld, later Director of the Robert Koch-Institute in Berlin, first described the differentiation of pneumococci into serotypes on the basis of type-specific antisera. This finding was essential for subsequent research at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research (RIMR) in New York, and elsewhere, aiming for the conquest of human pneumococcal pneumonia, including antiserum therapy, the discovery that the type-specific antigens were carbohydrates, and the development of effective multivalent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines. Moreover, on the basis of pneumococcal serotypes Fred Griffith, in 1928 in London, discovered pneumococcal transformation, and Oswald T. Avery and coworkers, in 1944 at RIMR, identified DNA as the transforming substance. This sequence of events, leading to today’s knowledge that genes consist of DNA, was initiated by a farsighted move of Simon Flexner, first Director of the RIMR, who asked Neufeld to send his pneumococcal typing strains, thus setting the stage for pneumococcal research at RIMR. Here, we describe Fred Neufeld’s contributions in this development, which have remained largely unknown.     

21世纪加拿大人才开发战略与政策措施

从高中后教育、人才引进和保留、人才环境改善等方面概述加拿大21世纪人才开发战略和政策措施,并探讨何以加拿大能够在短短十年内成功遏制1990年代出现的加拿大高级人才大量流往美国的势头.     

Regulation of centriolar satellite integrity and its physiology

Centriolar satellites comprise cytoplasmic granules that are located around the centrosome. Their molecular identification was first reported more than a quarter of a century ago. These particles are not static in the cell but instead constantly move around the centrosome. Over the last decade, significant advances in their molecular compositions and biological functions have been achieved due to comprehensive proteomics and genomics, super-resolution microscopy analyses and elegant genetic manipulations. Centriolar satellites play pivotal roles in centrosome assembly and primary cilium formation through the delivery of centriolar/centrosomal components from the cytoplasm to the centrosome. Their importance is further underscored by the fact that mutations in genes encoding satellite components and regulators lead to various human disorders such as ciliopathies. Moreover, the most recent findings highlight dynamic structural remodelling in response to internal and external cues and unexpected positive feedback control that is exerted from the centrosome for centriolar satellite integrity.     

'Soup' vs. 'sparks': Alexander Forbes and the synaptic transmission controversy

During the twentieth century, a controversy raged over the role of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. Although the story of the 'main' participants is well documented, the story of 'lesser' known participants is seldom told. For example, Alexander Forbes, who was a prominent member of the axonologists, played an active role in the controversy and yet is seldom mentioned in standard accounts of the controversy. During the 1930s, Forbes incorporated chemical substances into his theory of synaptic transmission, advocating a complementarity model for the role of electrical forces and chemical substances. By focusing on Forbes and the axonologists, the controversy is simply more than a debate over 'soup' vs. 'sparks' but also involves the relative roles of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. The implications of this case study for the nature of scientific controversies are also discussed.     

Types of experiments and causal process tracing: What happened on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s

In a well-cited book chapter, ecologist Jared Diamond characterizes three main types of experiment performed in community ecology: laboratory experiment, field experiment, and natural experiment. Diamond argues that each form of experiment has strengths and weaknesses, with respect to, for example, realism or the ability to follow a causal trajectory. But does Diamond's typology exhaust the available kinds of cause-finding practices? Some social scientists have characterized something they call “causal process tracing.” Is this a fourth type of experiment or something else? I examine Diamond's typology and causal process tracing in the context of a case study concerning the dynamics of wolf and deer populations on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s, a case that has been used as a canonical example of a trophic cascade by ecologists but which has also been subject to controversy. I argue that ecologists have profitably deployed causal process tracing together with other types of experiment to help settle questions of causality in this case. It remains to be seen how widespread the use of causal process tracing outside of the social sciences is (or could be), but there are some potentially promising applications, particularly with respect to questions about specific causal sequences.     

Marcelin Berthelot's first publication in 1850, on the subjection of liquids to tension

The famous French chemist, Marcelin Berthelot, published his first scientific paper in 1850. However, reference to this paper has been largely ignored in the various accounts of his lasting contributions to chemistry. The probable reason for this is that this paper is concerned with a method of subjecting a liquid to tension, and it is more appropriate to regard it as a paper on physics rather than on chemistry. In the work described in this largely-forgotten paper, written whilst he was still a young research student, Berthelot showed that liquids contained in his ‘Berthelot tube’ could withstand a considerable tension; and he is the first person to have observed cavitation, a phenomenon which has been studied so widely this century. The next mention in the literature of the Berthelot tube method is at the turn of the present century, after which it again seems to have been forgotten until the 1940s; since then there has been considerable progress using the Berthelot tube technique. In this paper the work described in Berthelot's original paper is discussed in some detail, and the subsequent fruitful development of the method is also traced and assessed.     

‘Soup’ vs. ‘Sparks’: Alexander Forbes and the Synaptic Transmission Controversy

During the twentieth century, a controversy raged over the role of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. Although the story of the ‘main’ participants is well documented, the story of ‘lesser’ known participants is seldom told. For example, Alexander Forbes, who was a prominent member of the axonologists, played an active role in the controversy and yet is seldom mentioned in standard accounts of the controversy. During the 1930s, Forbes incorporated chemical substances into his theory of synaptic transmission, advocating a complementarity model for the role of electrical forces and chemical substances. By focusing on Forbes and the axonologists, the controversy is simply more than a debate over ‘soup’ vs. ‘sparks’ but also involves the relative roles of electrical forces and chemical substances in synaptic transmission. The implications of this case study for the nature of scientific controversies are also discussed.