Argument

This paper examines the effort that was involved in sustaining the nineteenth-century middle-class ideological fabrication of the image of the working-class scientific autodidact. The construction and reception of Samuel Smiles’ biography of the Scottish cobbler and naturalist Thomas Edward provides a way to investigate this process in detail and to show how Smiles’ conception of the scientific persona related to the “politics of character” in mid-Victorian Britain. Edward’s own response to the biography offers an unusual opportunity to analyze the making of a Victorian scientific hero, who, in the process of being fitted to Smiles’ notion of a scientific persona, came to feel that he had been robbed of his life.

The conditions surrounding the re-publication of Isaac Newton's treatise on the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, under the editorship of Sir William Whitla in 1922, serve as a vehicle for examining how the writings of eminent scientists can be mobilized in the cause of local culture wars. After some reflections on the idea of the ‘geography of reading’, the paper turns to an analysis of Whitla's use of Newton's reputation as an apologetic device, and his staging of Newton's writings on eschatology in order to shore up Protestant values during the early days of the Northern Ireland state. This case study of the textual tactics of Whitla, the distinguished Ulster medical professor, Methodist layman and member of Parliament, draws attention to the significance of location in understanding the historical relations between science and religion.

Argument

In this paper I will argue that the scientific investigation of skulls and brains of geniuses went hand in hand with hagiographical celebrations of scientists. My analysis starts with late-eighteenth century anatomists and anthropologists who highlighted quantitative parameters such as the size and weight of the brain in order to explain intellectual differences between women and men and Europeans and non-Europeans, geniuses and ordinary persons. After 1800 these parameters were modified by phrenological inspections of the skull and brain. As the phrenological examination of the skulls of Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Heinse, Arthur Schopenhauer and others shows, the anthropometrical data was interpreted in light of biographical circumstances. The same pattern of interpretation can be found in non-phrenological contexts: Reports about extraordinary brains were part of biographical sketches, mainly delivered in celebratory obituaries. It was only in this context that moral reservations about dissecting the brains of geniuses could be overcome, which led to a more systematic investigation of brains of geniuses after 1860.

Argument

Contemporary debates around Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and the most common form of drug treatment, Ritalin, are rarely placed in the context of the social-scientific history of diagnosis and drug treatment. This is possibly due to the fact that brain talk and brain imagery have replaced earlier theories about children’s psychopathology that had mainly focused on the toxic effects of the mother. These theories and their psychoanalytic roots are considered somewhat embarrassing and certainly unscientific in a contemporary light, and modern biological psychiatry has worked hard to demonstrate that physiological and genetic factors underpin this contested disorder. Such theories have tended to make the history of ADHD and Ritalin seem irrelevant to scientific progress and understanding of disorder, as well as to public understanding and acceptance of disorder and drug treatment. Examining this history, however, clarifies the relation between social, cultural, and scientific values in constructing a need for medical intervention within the domestic realm. When Ritalin came on the United States market in 1955, neither psychiatric diagnosis of children’s behaviors, nor drug treatments for children’s behavior were commonplace. Mothers especially were located in the center of active political, moral, and scientific debates over boys’ normative behaviors. These debates helped codify an intimate association between a problem boy and his problematic mother in relation to ADHD diagnosis and Ritalin treatment. The story I tell here suggests that this association may have supported mothers’ acceptance of medical intervention and drug treatment for their boys’ troublesome, but arguably not pathological, behaviors. In the concluding sections I argue that the lack of attention to these social-scientific roots means that we miss seeing their potential relevance to the contemporary predicament of rising ADHD diagnoses and Ritalin use.

A patriot fiddler-composer of Luton

Wrote a funeral march which he played with the mute on,

To record, as he said, that a Jewish-Swiss-Teuton

Had partially scrapped the Principia of Newton.

Punch, 19 November 1919, p. 422

When the results of experiments performed during the British solar eclipse expeditions of 1919 were announced at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, they were celebrated in the next day's Times of London with the famous headline ‘Revolution in science’. This exemplified the general approbation with which A. S. Eddington and F. W. Dyson's results were received, the upshot of which was widespread approval for general relativity and worldwide fame for Albert Einstein. Perhaps because of Einstein's present reputation, there has been little historical analysis of why his theory should have been so celebrated on the basis of a single announcement of the results of one group's experiments. In this paper I argue that the remarkable public and professional success of the eclipse experiments was the direct result of a systematic and extended campaign by Eddington and Dyson and their associates to create interest in relativity theory, build an audience for the experiments, promote a favourable reception for the results and establish their work as a crucial experiment that would distinguish between the gravitation theories of Newton and Einstein. The campaign was motivated by Eddington's affection for Einstein's theory, and was successful largely because of Eddington's substantial credibility.

Argument

A recent comparative study of women in science has revealed that the situation in the Netherlands is worse than in other European countries. This raises the question whether there is a “Dutch case” concerning women’s standing in science. We argue that the cause is not to be found in a special brand of Dutch Protestantism, with its strong emphasis on motherhood and the family, and impact on labor patterns and social organization. Rather, we should take another look at religion, and especially at the specific Dutch segmentation of society along religious and political lines, called verzuiling, literally “pillarization.” From about 1880 until far into the 1950s the personal and social life of the Dutch (from schools to sports and ladies' organizations) was organized into four recognized pillars (a Protestant, Catholic, socialist and a liberal pillar), which at the top were represented in political parties. This article brings to light the often overlooked fact that between 1880 and 1945 state institutions, such as universities, were thoroughly pillarized, which strongly influenced recruitment and selection for those institutions. That is to say, no woman was appointed to the rank of full professor at any state university until after 1945. The Dutch case might also be explained by the many reorganizations and down-sizings of universities of more recent years that occurred simultaneous with the expansion of academic feminism. In addition, a newly configured “pillarization” has driven deep divides between gender studies scholars, equal opportunities officers, and women scientists.

But even in the long-industrialized European countries, the story has not been one of automatic growth and progress. Thus … in the Netherlands … there too the situation for women academics has deteriorated over the past two decades. Where in 1970 there were 2.7 per cent women professors, by 1980 this was down to 2.2 per cent and by 1988 to 2.1 per cent. (Rose 1994)