Administration for Scientific Research

Abstract

Stability and change are the poles of the field in which scientific research exists: Ideally stable – better: growing-resources for ever-changing scientific aims? The author deals first with the 'why' of science management and introduces some basic aspects from the point of view of the German lawyer as science administrator. Dealing next with the 'how' of science management, he gives examples of lines of action in personnel, finance, and procurement using the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum as a model. Finally, he sketches some character traits of a science administrator and a scientist: ideally not opponents, sitting on the poles of stability and change respectively, but partners working together for the enhancement of scientific research in their field.     

Oraculorum Sibyllinorum fragmentum Osloense 1

This article discusses some textual questions in Ajax leading to the following conclusions: I. 54 add ?τ?? after λε?α?. – II. 208 the emendation ?ρεμ?α? (“rest”, “quietude”) suggested by Thiersch. – III. 405a–b the proposal κρ?τη / μοι to fill the lacuna. – IV. 476 defence of the line as transmitted. – V. 546 τοσ?νδε to go with ??νον. – VI. 719 ?νδρε?, ??λον τι πρ?τον instead of ?νδρε? ??λοι, τ? πρ?τον. – VII. 869 instead of με write γε. – VIII. 951 ?σ?ν? ?χθο? as a reference to Tecmessa’s heavy burden of woe.     

Human Genetics As a Bridging Science

Abstract

The history of the biological sciences since 1900 shows that genetic theory has to act as a unifying principle bringing together various, and sometimes quite different, fields in the analysis of common problems. This historical process can be studied especially well in the development of human genetics – a branch of science that, mainly through hybridisation, first with biochemistry, then with cytogenetics, and recently with molecular biology, developed from an outsider's hobby into one of the most challenging fields of biological and medical research. Concepts and approaches derived from genetic theory are now influencing and, in part, determining the structure of an increasing number of scientific specialities – especially in medicine – leading to important practical applications. Genetic theory and methods might also become increasingly useful for analysis of brain function in relation to behaviour.     

ROMANO‐EGYPTIAN RED LEAD PIGMENT: A SUBSIDIARY COMMODITY OF SPANISH SILVER MINING AND REFINEMENT*

Samples of red pigment from a group of seven Roman‐period Egyptian mummies, known as red‐shroud mummies, are investigated. Elemental analysis by inductively coupled plasma time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (ICP–TOFMS) shows that the samples contain mostly Pb (83–92% by weight), along with 0.2–2.0% Sn. All of the samples are found to have similar trace element distributions when normalized to the continental crust, suggesting that they share a common geological origin. Lead isotope ratios are found to match the mixed lead sources typically associated with Rio Tinto, Spain – a site extensively mined for silver during the first century ad . Raman microspectroscopy identifies the major phase of each sample to be red lead (Pb₃O₄) with a minor phase of lead tin oxide (Pb₂SnO₄). Lead tin oxide does not occur naturally, and its incidental occurrence within the sample indicates that the material was heated under oxidative conditions at temperatures in excess of 650°C. In archaeological contexts, the high‐temperature oxidative treatment of lead is typically associated with metallurgical refinement processes such as cupellation. Based on this evidence, it is argued that the pigment was produced out of litharge associated with silver cupellation at the Rio Tinto site.     

The Gmelin Factual Databank A modern information source in chemistry and physics

Abstract

In chemistry especially, it is becoming increasingly difficult to survey the large amount of material published if poorly defined search strategies are employed – in 1991 and 1992, Chemical Abstracts cited over 500 000 publications, including reports and patents. Traditional comprehensive literature searches require a suitable perspective, a great deal of time and patience, and access to all relevant information sources. The Gmelin Factual Databank can offer improved search strategies for the scientific literature in the area of inorganic and organometallic chemistry.     

Translation as techné: female sexuality and the science of social progress in colonial India

Abstract

In this article, I analyze processes of translation that shaped the science of sex in eastern India between the 1880s and the 1930s. I trace the impact of translation – the rendering of words between the language of English and Bengali as well as the travel and transformation of concepts – through close textual analysis of influential Bengali-language medical and scientific textbooks on nymphomania, female sexual excesses, and the evolution of Indian society. The translation of sexual categories was a techné by which Bengali intellectuals produced categories of social behavior and identity as equivalent and homogenous. Through claims of equivalence in translation, Bengali scientists argued for the commensurability of Indian social practices with universalist schemes of social evolution and civilizational progress. This process of exchange pivoted on the figure of the sexually deviant woman, who became a key site of translation and categorical equivalence. In thinking translation through techné, I foreground how a semiotics of female sexuality produced ‘the social’ as an object of inquiry in colonial India.     

Comparative History and Ethnography in William Ellis’s Polynesian Researches

ABSTRACT

This article develops recent scholarly efforts to take seriously the scientific work of evangelical missionaries in the South Pacific. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us an insight into the broader issue of the way in which theological concepts could inform the framework of missionaries’ observations of the traditions, manners and functioning of human societies. Central to Ellis’s observations was the idea of idolatry. I argue that Ellis brought together a theological definition of idolatry – in which idolatry represented the sinful worship of created things rather than the creator God – with an Enlightenment idea that polytheistic idolatry was a universal stage in the historical development of civilization. Ellis’s Polynesian Researches gives us a point of entry into understanding some of the ways that European theological ideas were put to new uses in the South Pacific, against the backdrop of the increasingly global exchange of people, goods and ideas.     

Governing science before it governs us

Abstract

In this article I reflect on the motivation behind my latest book, ‘The governance of science: ideology and the future of the open society’, which is traceable to Karl Popper's dictum that scientists let their ideas die in their stead. I take this insight as the mark of our humanity more generally, even though we are on the verge of losing it. I argue that this is because, over the past century, the material and psychic investments in particular research trajectories have made it increasingly difficult to envisage what it would be like to pursue scientific inquiry in a substantially different way. I begin by discussing the historical significance of rhetoric in distinguishing between our privately held beliefs and publicly expressed theories, and then showing how this necessary – albeit morally ambivalent – distinction has been compromised with the onset of ‘big science’, first in physics and now in biology. We are thus saddled with a conception of scientific progress that threatens to render us, in evolutionary terms, overadapted to our environments. At the end of the article, I suggest some ways in which we may overcome the problem, at least in terms of the emerging ‘bioliberal’ regime.     

Scottish Common Sense,association of ideas and free will

ABSTRACT

The philosophical debates that unfolded in Enlightenment Britain left a deep mark on the mindset of future generations of thinkers. A clear echo of eighteenth-century disputes over the meaning of human liberty is heard in the subsequent confrontation between materialists and idealists. In more recent times, a number of arguments developed by compatibilist and incompatibilist philosophers still resemble more old-fashioned positions. However, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the differences between Joseph Priestley’s defence of “necessitarianism” and Thomas Reid’s elaboration of counterarguments to support “metaphysical liberty” – as the two doctrines were known in the late eighteenth century – on the background of their methodological assumptions and the different styles of their reasoning. I contend that a different adoption of the Newtonian scientific method, which they brought to bear on the study of the human mind, is key to understanding the way they endeavoured to defend necessity and liberty, respectively. I also argue that their interpretation of the nature of causality importantly shaped the arguments they put forth in attacking each other’s position.     

Developing an 'energy sustainability index' to evaluate energy policy

Abstract

Fishing industries should, at least in theory, be governed by the same sound business management principles-foresight, long-term future planning and sustained profitability – as any other industry. But, whenever or wherever man fished in Europe, salmon in the River Rhine, eel in Lake IJssel, brown shrimps sole and herring in the North Sea, greedy overfishing brought decline and near bankruptcy to the respective industries. In this interdisciplinary review, the author analyses this mismangement and concludes that the only hope is to follow sound scientific advice: give stocks of fish a chance to revive, if it is not already too late.     

Embalming methods and plants in Renaissance Italy: two artificial mummies from Siena (central Italy)

Knowledge of the embalming methods used in Renaissance Italy comes not only from the literary texts of physicians and surgeons of that period, but also from artificial mummies which have been found. In 1999 two mummified bodies, dated back to the end of 15^th and beginning of the 16^th century, were recovered in a crypt of the hospital chapel of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena (central Italy). The individuals were identified as Salimbene Capacci (1433–1497), Rector of the hospital, and his wife, Margherita Sozzini (?-1511). The mummies were submitted to autopsy and paleopathological examination, which included Computed Tomography. Palaeobotanical and palynological analyses were performed on the vegetable materials and plants used to fill the body cavities. This study was carried out with a multidisciplinary perspective, that allowed us to reconstruct the embalming techniques and substances used for mummification. The results are compared with the evidences provided by other mummies and embalming handbooks of that time.     

Letter to the Editor

Abstract

The last decade has seen an increasing awareness of the global impacts on our environment of modern technological civilization. To understand and deal with these impacts, we need to develop a science of the biosphere – a science that views life on the Earth from a planetary perspective. Recent scientific and technical advances make this science possible now. These advances include the development and testing of satellite remote sensing of Earth resources; advances in computer-based data acquisition, storage, analysis and dissemination; development of interdisciplinary efforts among scientists who recognize the need for this science; and the development of mathematical theory and computer simulation methods appropriate for the study of the biosphere. This review describes the basic needs for this new science and the advances which make the science possible.     

Northern Laboratories of Nature and the Quest for Scientific Honour in Early Modern Sweden

Abstract

This article studies the role of climate and geography in the scientific networks which were taking form in Europe in the early modern period. It seeks to contribute to an analysis of the meanings attributed to the North as a scientific environment or an object of study and, in particular, show the wider contextual motivations behind the research of the northern lights as well as phenomena related to physical cold. The analysis will concentrate on the learned discussions taking place between scholars in the Kingdom of Sweden and the Académie des Sciences in Paris. The great scholarly interest in the aurora borealis starting in the early eighteenth century emerged rapidly after the sudden appearance of this striking and enigmatic phenomenon across a large part of Europe during the first decades of the eighteenth century. In a similar manner, cold winters experienced all over Europe during the late seventeenth century had inspired the first scientific societies in Europe to carry out experiments that under ordinary circumstances could not have been pursued. These events underlined the dependency of early empiricists on nature's help when extending the scope of their scientific inquiries. The awareness of the constraints of empirical study, combined with a new ideological view of scientific societies as seats of a collective scientific effort, prompted a new kind of specialization in science. The idea was introduced that each scholar or country should take care of producing experiments and observations that were best attainable in their particular environment. The need became most obvious in research topics such as the cold which – unlike heat – could not be produced artificially. As a demand for observations that were specific to northern tracts emerged in Europe, northern scholars discovered in their expertise on the northern issues a niche to negotiate a new prestige in the European scientific networks. Traditional views had maintained that only the warm, southern climates offered a natural environment for civilisation and arts to flourish. New empirical sciences practised by the scientific societies seemed to provide a convenient break with this assumption.     

Industry,Science and Politics

Abstract

Today industry is much criticized for its lack of responsibility – for fast cars, for side-effects of drugs and for the dangers of nuclear power. However, industry means mass production and mass consumption, essential for the high standard of living enjoyed in Europe. To achieve progress in society, industry must show enlightenment in addition to using the results of scientific research. In this the media have an essential role to fulfil. At present the societal system is too specialised and interdisciplinary scientists must take the lead in bridge-building between industry, science and politics, as interdisciplinary engineers have done within BMW.     

HASMONAEAN MODIʽIN AND BYZANTINE MODITHA: A TOPOGRAPHICAL–HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The location of ancient Modi‘in, the hometown of the Hasmonaeans – as mentioned in 1 Maccabees and the writings of Josephus – has been in dispute ever since geographical–historical research on the site began. In this paper we explore the various possible locations for Modi‘in and propose a different geographical solution to the problem.     

Settlement Pattern Change in the Morea (Peloponnisos), c.A.D. 1700–1830

Abstract

The historiography of the Ottoman period (Tourkokratia) in what is now the state of Greece contains many untested propositions about both the nature and the consequences of Turkish rule (Hatzidimitriou 1982). Amongst these is the notion that during the Ottoman occupation the Christian population – or at least a sizeable proportion of it – was driven into the mountains. Our paper sets out to test the hypothesis – for such it is – using readily available published information on the settlements of the Morea (Peloponnisos) dating from c.1700 and c.1830. First, though, we specify the hypothesis and indicate the types of evidence which appear to give it support.     

From industrial change to historical inevitability: Annie Besant’s socialism and the philosophies of history

ABSTRACT

A leading figure of the British and Indian intellectual stage from the 1880s, Annie Besant (1847–1933) is chiefly remembered for her numerous and somewhat diverging commitments. This article seeks to account for her shift from socialism to theosophy by focusing on the latter as a system of thought and on the philosophical basis of her critique of capitalism. It is argued that the case for the common ownership of means of production that she makes throughout her socialist writings both results from her secularism and explains her eventual drift away from it. In an attempt to promote equality through democratic and pragmatic methods, Besant claimed to predicate her enterprise on the laws of evolution rather than on utopian schemes or revolutionary action. It is shown how this approach drew on philosophies of history: collectivism was deemed the necessary outcome of economic changes and the next stage of industrialization. It is also shown how Besant’s brand of socialism rested on a faith in progress, rather than on scientific reasoning. A secularized theology – her plea for socialism, it appears – was at odds with the philosophical foundations of democracy that she advocated throughout her life.     

The Metrical Structure of the Oral Decapentasyllable

Abstract

What Milman Parry saw as his ‘historical method’ in Homeric criticism has paradoxically relieved students of the Greek folk song from the obligation to approach their subject of study from an exclusively genetic or ‘etymological,’ – in a word, historical – viewpoint. Instead of having to search for – or rather to speculate about – the origins of Greek oral poetry in the mists of antiquity or to assess the extent to which a song can provide reliable historical evidence concerning past events, we are free to turn our attention, as scholars such as Roderick Beaton (1980) and Grigoris Sifakis (1988) have done, to a synchronic study of the folk-song tradition, concentrating as much on the rules that generate the songs as on the significance of actual samples collected in the field (or in the scholar's study or the recording studio).     

Wasteful Research in Pure and Applied Science

Abstract

Research may be considered wasteful if its objectives are intrinsically unattainable – as, for example, the alchemists' search for transmutation of base metals into gold. In our own times, despite lavish encouragement of research over many decades, cancer is still a biological mystery, an instance of how obstacles inherent in Nature can frustrate the attainment of a research objective. Human failings include repeating research work already described in the literature, lapse by neglect, bandwaggon research and politically motivated trendy research, best exemplified by Lysenko. Efforts at economic assessment of research effort, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry and in military research, are discussed. Machinations by a 'scientific estate' with vested interests call for vigilance.