Forks in the Road: Energy Policies in Canada and the US since the Shale Revolution

ABSTRACT

This article examines policy responses in Canada and the US to the shale revolution and changing North American oil and gas markets. We outline the effect of the shale revolution on North American oil and gas markets, and how the subsequent energy policy choices in each country changed the relationship between Canada and the US. In the US, increasing production, combined with the policy imperative of maintaining energy security, led to less support for Canadian supply and the subsequent on-off-on saga of the Keystone XL pipeline. In Canada, growing concern about the balance between the environment and the economy led to stalled pipeline development and reform of regulatory systems, problems exacerbated by the new policy direction in the US.     

Chemists,engineers and entrepreneurs the chemical institute of sarrià's impact on Spanish industry (1916–1992)

This paper analyzes the influence the Chemical Institute of Sarrià (IQS) ‐a private institution devoted both to the education of chemists and chemical engineers and to applied research‐ has had on Spain's chemical industry from 1916 onwards. The research reported is based upon three data sources (articles on industrial chemistry published by the IQS’ journal Afinidad and M. Se. theses; IQS graduates’ industrial activities; and technical services carried out by the Institute's staff for several companies). The main conclusion is that the IQS has had a remarkable impact on Catalan and Spanish industry. Although there are no other similar studies on Spanish scientific and technical institutions, the IQS case confirms that technical education and institutionalized research have a positive impact on the economic and industrial development of “latecomers” like Spain.     

Response to Langdon Gilkey's Inaugural Address at the Niebuhr Society, 22 November 2003 in Atlanta

Abstract

After applauding Professor Gilkey for focusing attention on Reinhold Niebuhr's book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, I framed my response by setting forth seven salient elements of Niebuhr's political theory. After affirming Gilkey's portrayal of the differences between our contemporary situation and that which Niebuhr addressed in the 1930s, I focused on a third characteristic of Niebuhr's thought that Gilkey neglected to mention, namely, the impact of his thought on African-American activists in their struggle for racial justice in the United States. That impact mainly pertained to his perceptive analysis of power conflicts among social groups and especially the societal power of racism. Niebuhr's sensitivity to that problem was heightened during his ministry in Detroit and thereafter. Thus, Martin Luther King, Jr, his protégé, Jesse Jackson and many others came to view Niebuhr as a major source of inspiration for their struggle. But, in spite of Niebuhr's appreciation of Gandhi and his support of King's non-violent resistance approach, they disagreed about the moral value of pacifism. Most importantly, I join with another African-American scholar in pointing out Niebuhr's uncritical paternalistic assumptions about African Americans and their struggle.     

Editorial

Abstract

In the United States of America, the National Science Foundation distributes over 600 million annually for scientific and technological research. The Director, Dr H. Guyford Stever, who is also President Ford's scienfific adviser, writes about the complex relationship between scientific research, technological development and their consequent economic, social and ethical effects. He exemplifies an American point of view in his discussion of a variety of NSF supported projects, ranging from the utilization of solar energy and enzyme catalyzed chemical processes to the development of better tunneling techniques. The problem of morality, law and international equity are recognized and Stever argues for the importance of scientific and technological research to ensure a better future for mankind.     

The Internationalism of German Castle Research: Bodo Ebhardt,His European Network,and the Construction of 'Castle Knowledge'

Abstract

Recent monographs and articles emphasize the strong impact of nationalism and racist thinking on archaeology. In contrast to the treatments which focus on single nation states and on archaeology as a politically legitimate science, this paper explores the tension between internationalism and racist premises in German castle research, and how it manifests itself in the construction of knowledge about medieval castles across national borders. I will focus on Bodo Ebhardt, Germany's most famous and influential castle researcher of the first half of the 20th century. The analysis of his scientific work, and of his personal contact with other European researchers as well as with German politicians and patrons, will shed light on the changes and continuities in his network, and in particular on his construction of the past that was influenced by the formation of this network, which, in turn, affected his assessment of medieval castles.     

Strategic R&D as an answer to the oil crisis. West and east German investment in coal refinement and the chemical industries, 1970–1990

Abstract

In reaction to the oil‐price shocks of 1973/4 and 1978/9 both of the German states reconsidered coal refinement as a technological answer to economic and political constraints. In the GDR the chemical industry in particular could not do without this technology, but the state did not undertake a major R&D programme, preferring rather to continue with existing plants and processes. The disastrous consequences of this policy were felt when the Soviet Union cut off oil supplies to the GDR in the early 1980s, so damaging irreversibly not only the chemical industry, but the entire East Germany economy too. In the FRG the chemical industry was an active interlocuter with the federal government but notwithstanding the offer of generous subsidies was always prudent about the need for a switch back to coal from oil, and believed that new R&D programmes in the coal refining area were not imperative given Western German leadership in the field. In the event it was sectors of the economy other than the chemical industry which benefitted from the federal government's concerns about the oil price rises in the 1970s.     

Science and society The natural–unnatural dualism

Abstract

Science provides knowledge that technology transforms into means of action. Their impact on society will depend on effective use being made of these means. The chemical and physical sciences have profoundly modified mankind's living conditions, chemistry in particular playing a central role. Its creative power has made available new materials and a range of new processes for transforming matter. As a result, the question of control of science by society has become more and more relevant. Effective control requires that the public and decision makers be provided with information for evaluating the potential impact of technology on society as well as for preserving the necessary freedom of scientific research and safeguarding the quest for knowledge.     

A thought style perspective on making decisions about technology

Abstract

Continuing with the many interdisciplinary activities of Benjamin Franklin, the Institute named after him more than 150 years ago embraces today two large research centers, one scientific press, a museum and far-flung international activities, including research at the South Pole. The Institute's important pioneering activities to establish American industry and technology are recalled and emphasis is placed on the Institute's present research work.     

Dancers in the Dark: Scientific Careers According to a Gender-Blind Model of Promotion

Abstract

The disparity between men and women in science is a hot topic in gender studies and a relevant target of scientific policies. The leaky pipeline metaphor illustrates the decreasing number of women along senior positions in academia; however many questions remain unanswered. What factors progressively diminish the number of women in scientific careers and why do they appear to be less successful than their male colleagues? In order to discover new insight, this work compares men’s and women’s career paths by taking into account academic and family milestones achieved throughout the life course. An innovative and interdisciplinary methodology (from bibliometrics, statistics, and sociology) has been constructed to examine men’s and women’s trajectories. Findings display gender differences in scientists’ trajectories. The evolution of scientists’ careers reveals linear careers for males, whilst women develop non-linear careers. Motherhood emerges as a problem for developing linear careers. And collegiate decisions of gatekeepers seem to systematically disfavour women scientists’ careers.     

THE BAYKAL-AMUR MAINLINE A MAJOR NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION PROJECT

A Soviet planning official discusses planning for the BAM project, a major new railroad to be completed by 1982 in East Siberia and the Soviet Far East. The construction of a well equipped rail line, supplied with specially designed tank-cars unit trains, was found to be more economical than the construction of an ordinary railroad, needed for resource development north of the present Trans-Siberian, and of a separate oil pipeline from West Siberia's oil fields across Siberia to Far Eastern refineries and tanker export terminals. Under the decision taken by the Soviet planning authorities, crude oil will move by pipeline from the West Siberian fields to Tayshet, where it will be trans-shipped to tank-car trains taking the oil to Urgal. There it will be transferred again to pipelines for transmission to refineries and port terminals. [See also Soviet Geography, November 1974, pp. 587–590; map, p. 588.]     

The Role of the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (1781–1792) in the History of Auroral Research

Abstract

The Societas Meteorologica Palatina, or Meteorological Society of Mannheim, was set up in 1781 to coordinate observations of the weather on an international scale. In addition to temperature, pressure and humidity, observers connected to the network were instructed to record various atmospheric phenomena, among these the aurora borealis. The 39 stations of the network reported about 1400 individual sightings of auroras during the Society's dozen years of existence. The reported sightings are subjected to a statistical analysis that brings out striking discrepancies between the number of auroras that one would expect and the number that was reported. The statistical analysis is supplemented by an analysis of the theoretical and phenomenological comments in the Society's annual reports. The study suggests that observers on the Continent considered themselves just as advantageously situated as observers further north when trying to solve the riddle of the northern lights. It also illustrates the variety of conflicting ideas about the aurora borealis that existed during the late Enlightenment, and how these might have influenced the number of reported auroras. This lack of consensus contributed to many anomalies in the data presented in the Society's reports. By combining linguistic and scientific competence it is possible to shed light on these anomalies and on the historical context that shaped them.     

Transatlantic Correspondence and ‘Mobile Knowledge’ in Alexander von Humboldt's Exploratory Travels to Hispanic America

Summary

This article focuses on the relevance of Alexander von Humboldt's correspondence in the formation of transatlantic scientific networks at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Apart from connecting Humboldt with scientists and scholars worldwide, his correspondence turned out to be a fundamental tool for assuring the material conditions and the social and scientific connections he needed to carry out his research on the Spanish colonies and to simultaneously diffuse his achievements on the European side of the Atlantic. His contact with Hispanic American scientists and with the local elites enabled him to build a broad social network, gaining access to key material, human and intellectual resources. The letters sent to scientists, scientific institutions and noblemen in Europe, for their part, kept Humboldt's European correspondents informed about his activities in Hispanic America, contributing to the validation of his work before the scientific community and the fulfilment of the duties resulting from the political and institutional support he received both before and during his travels. This stresses the importance of strategic social groups and their cooperation in the framework of exploratory travels as a means to gaining access to resources in the peripheries. It also reveals the scientist's dependence on all those who supported his research: kings, barons, botanical gardens, universities, and academies.     

Über Georges Canguilhems Was heißt eine wissenschaftliche Ideologie? und über deutsch‐französische Beiträge zum Thema Wissenschaft und Ideologie aus den letzten vierzig Jahren

On Georges Canguilhem's What does a Scientific Ideology mean? and on French‐German Contributions on Science and Ideology in the Last Fourty Years. This paper is based on Canguilhem's text on the concept of scientific ideology, which he introduced in 1969. We describe Canguilhem's attempts at designing a methodological framework for the history of science including the status of kinds of knowledge related to science, like scientific ideologies preceding particular scientific domains (like ideologies about inheritance before Mendel, or Spencer's universal evolutionary laws preceding Darwin). This attempt at picturing the relationships between science and ideology is compared with Jürgen Habermas's book Technology and Science as ‘Ideology’ in 1968. The philosphical issue of human normativity provides the framework of this discussion.     

The art of science at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory: The rhetoric of aesthetics and humanism in the national laboratory system in the late 1960s

This paper examines how rhetoric shaped the early history of the National Accelerator Laboratory. In a situation defined by a contentious site search and shrinking budgets for research, Robert Wilson crafted an institutional identity for the NAL that emphasized both aesthetic and scientific experience. The paper addresses the circumstances of the laboratory's founding, the "audiences" important to its success, and the ways in which the physical environment and management structure--framed by Wilson's vision of a scientific utopia--reorganized existing perceptions of physics within a humanistic framework intended to distinguish the NAL from its predecessors in the National Laboratory system.     

Urban law—I

In this essay, I aim to identify and analyze the influence of Cartesian dualism on Rembrandt's pictorial representations of the self. My thesis is that Descartes and Rembrandt share concerns about philosophy's exploration of human nature, concerns rooted in mind–body dualism. Descartes's corpus bears witness to a growing skepticism about the relation between matter and extension. Likewise, Rembrandt's anatomy lessons lead the viewer to question the value of treating humans as scientific objects. I suggest that by reexamining Rembrandt's work in light of the mind–body problem we generate a fuller understanding of Rembrandt's artistic critique and expression and Descartes's mature scientific thinking and abiding influence. My analysis centers on four Rembrandt paintings: The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp (1632); The Descent from the Cross (1632–1633); The Sacrifice of Abraham (1635); and The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Joan Deyman (1656).     

Invisible power,visible dispossession: The witchcraft of a subterranean pipeline

There has been a lack of attention to the role of la sorcellerie (witchcraft) and the occult in geographical work on extraction, power and resistance, despite the ways in which these epistemologies inform conceptions of power, wealth and violence. In two towns along the Chad–Cameroon Oil Pipeline, epistemologies of la sorcellerie frame understandings and critiques of the invisible actors and processes that effect the pipeline's uneven distributions of violence, wealth and risk. Far from expunging the experience(s) of extraction by erasing the pipeline's visible traces on the landscape, the oil consortium's infrastructural and discursive erasures serve to situate the pipeline within a knowledge system that associates invisible actors and materials with evil, wrongdoing, suspicion and distrust. This article addresses (i) how the production of dispersed extractive landscapes reinforce epistemologies of witchcraft by alienating the people who live within them from networks of power in ways that provoke a mistrust and jealousy that is absorbed within families and communities and (ii) the socio-political significance of this epistemological structuring of the pipeline as a logic of resistance against hydrocarbon capitalism.     

The two cultures and Renaissance humanism

Abstract

C. P. Snow's 'two cultures' distinction between scientific and humanistic thought is perennial. It may be said to correspond to empirical and metaphorical bents in human nature. Since antiquity, attempts have been made by some to bridge the gap. The natural bridge of scientific (in the broad sense) scholarship has been largely overlooked, but the development in the West of philological and historical methods by fifteenth and early sixteenth century humanists (in the technical sense) exhibits numerous criteria and examples of a scientific approach to the world around us, as does such scholarship today.     

Quantifying scarcity: deforestation in the Upper Volga region and early debates over climate change in nineteenth-century Russia

ABSTRACT

The paper examines the early history of environmental concerns in Russia. It focuses on a case study: the debates about a potentially detrimental impact of deforestation on water regimes, which took place in the 1830s–40s. It examines two sets of issues: the role of ideas about a growing scarcity of forest resources in Europe; and the actual state of forests in Russia that provided some evidentiary basis for these debates. It argues that these debates were possible at the convergence of several trends: an expanding role and objectives of the forest administration well-versed in European scientific debates of the age and at the same time a visible danger of deforestation in some regions of a strategic significance to the empire. The author also considers different expert cultures and evidentiary standards that could be observed during the debates.     

Unsociable Sociability and the Crisis of Natural Law: Michael Hissmann (1752–1784) on the State of Nature

Summary

This article studies the impact of the debate about human sociability on the crisis of natural law in the later eighteenth century examining the Untersuchungen über den Stand der Natur of 1780 by the Göttingen scholar Michael Hissmann. It makes the case that this crisis ensued from Rousseau's Discours sur l‘inégalité and a revival of neo-Epicurean trends in moral philosophy more generally. The sociability debate revolved around the question to what extent society was natural or artificial to man. This had important implications for the problem of whether distinctions between right and wrong or just and unjust were natural and inborn, or had developed at a much later stage of mankind's history, reflecting merely the respective needs and utility of different societies and cultures. Hissmann's essay summarises this European debate concisely. His point of departure is Rousseauian premises, yet his political conclusions turn Rousseau upside down. Here, Hissmann's essay opens up several questions regarding the allegedly radical political character of one-substance theories in philosophy.