Abstract This paper examines the transnational exchanges associated with the emergence of racial blood group studies in Greece. It explores the overlap between anthropological and medical perspectives as well as the concurrences and tensions between national and transnational concerns. By following the work of the main Greek physical anthropologist of the interwar period, the paper asks how politics interpenetrates into this case study in a scientifically consequential way and conversely how innovation in research allows anthropologists to intervene with politically timely questions. It showcases how wartime mobilities generated anthropological data that weaved and strengthened the fabric of the Greek national narrative.
{"title":"Blood Affairs: Racial Blood Group Research and Nation Building in Greece, 1920s–1940s","authors":"Ageliki Lefkaditou","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00402","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the transnational exchanges associated with the emergence of racial blood group studies in Greece. It explores the overlap between anthropological and medical perspectives as well as the concurrences and tensions between national and transnational concerns. By following the work of the main Greek physical anthropologist of the interwar period, the paper asks how politics interpenetrates into this case study in a scientifically consequential way and conversely how innovation in research allows anthropologists to intervene with politically timely questions. It showcases how wartime mobilities generated anthropological data that weaved and strengthened the fabric of the Greek national narrative.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"240 1","pages":"48-76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73203504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article examines scientific transnationalism as an art of engagement with, and avoidance of, the threats and promises of what was foreign to the nation. Portuguese racial anthropologists experienced a tension between remaining imperial-nationalistic in character, and internationalist in their activities simultaneously. They struggled to exclude foreigners from colonial field sites; they aimed at nativist authority based on total control of colonial data. Yet, they eagerly sought connections with foreign experts to capitalize provincial scientific authority within Portugal’s colonies. The essay conceptualizes this mode of transnationalism as also a kind of isolationism, an inward oriented form of engaging with foreign sciences and scientists as ambivalently powerful and threatening strangers.
{"title":"Transnational Isolates: Portuguese Colonial Race Science and the Foreign World","authors":"Ricardo Roque","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00404","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00404","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines scientific transnationalism as an art of engagement with, and avoidance of, the threats and promises of what was foreign to the nation. Portuguese racial anthropologists experienced a tension between remaining imperial-nationalistic in character, and internationalist in their activities simultaneously. They struggled to exclude foreigners from colonial field sites; they aimed at nativist authority based on total control of colonial data. Yet, they eagerly sought connections with foreign experts to capitalize provincial scientific authority within Portugal’s colonies. The essay conceptualizes this mode of transnationalism as also a kind of isolationism, an inward oriented form of engaging with foreign sciences and scientists as ambivalently powerful and threatening strangers.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"51 1","pages":"108-136"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72514925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred Mjøen, was dismissed as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations.
挪威遗传研究协会在挪威遗传学作为一个研究领域的兴起中发挥了关键作用。它于1919年成立的直接背景是需要一个组织来澄清有关优生学的科学问题，并协调挪威在有组织的国际优生学运动中的代表。该协会从未承担过这一角色。相反，挪威在国际优生学运动中由所谓的挪威优生学咨询委员会(Norwegian Consultative eugenics Commission)代表，该委员会的领导人乔恩·阿尔弗雷德·默恩(Jon Alfred Mjøen)被挪威遗传学家斥为伪科学家。本文探讨了协会在定义和界定挪威遗传学和优生学领域的科学专家知识方面的作用。它展示了国家舞台上关于学术权威的斗争是如何与关于国际优生学运动中的代表性和影响的斗争交织在一起的，以及跨国科学网络是如何动员起来使北欧种族至上、种族混合和优生学绝育政治等概念合法化和非合法化的。
{"title":"The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research and the Organized International Eugenics Movement. Expertise, Authority, Transnational Networks and International Organization in Norwegian Genetics and Eugenics (1919–1934)","authors":"J. Kyllingstad","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00403","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research played a key role in the rise of genetics as a research field in Norway. The immediate background of its establishment in 1919 was the need for an organization that could clarify scientific issues regarding eugenics and coordinate Norwegian representation in the organized international eugenics movement. The Association never assumed this role. Instead, Norway was represented in the international eugenics movement by the so-called Norwegian Consultative Eugenics Commission, whose leader, Jon Alfred Mjøen, was dismissed as a pseudo-scientist by Norwegian geneticists. The paper explores the Association’s role in defining and delimiting scientific expert knowledge in the field of genetics and eugenics in Norway. It demonstrates how struggles about academic authority on the national arena were intertwined with struggles about representation and impact in the international eugenics movement and how transnational scientific networks where mobilized to legitimize and delegitimize notions about Nordic race supremacy, racial mixing and the politics of eugenic sterilizations.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"77-107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85422321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract By focusing on the emergence and integration of “hybrid children” (konketsuji) anthropology into the Human Adaptability section of the International Biological Program (HA-IBP) in Japan during the 1950s and 1970s, this paper presents how transnational dynamics and mechanisms played out in shaping and maintaining the racist aspects while simultaneously allowed them to be included in the HA-IBP framework. It argues that Japanese anthropologists operated a double play between their national and transnational spaces, that is, they attenuated racist aspects of their research in their international activities while authenticating race in their national work. This paper will conclude with reflections on the transnational nationalism of konketsuji anthropology.
{"title":"In the Name of Human Adaptation: Japanese American “Hybrid Children” and Racial Anthropology in Postwar Japan","authors":"Jaehwan Hyun","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00406","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00406","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract By focusing on the emergence and integration of “hybrid children” (konketsuji) anthropology into the Human Adaptability section of the International Biological Program (HA-IBP) in Japan during the 1950s and 1970s, this paper presents how transnational dynamics and mechanisms played out in shaping and maintaining the racist aspects while simultaneously allowed them to be included in the HA-IBP framework. It argues that Japanese anthropologists operated a double play between their national and transnational spaces, that is, they attenuated racist aspects of their research in their international activities while authenticating race in their national work. This paper will conclude with reflections on the transnational nationalism of konketsuji anthropology.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"127 1","pages":"167-193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79882896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Introduction The concept of form belongs—apparently—to an older stage of biological concept formation. Paradoxically, it is even the insistence on the reference to form that shows its very disappearance. The more the functionalization, systematization, and finally algorithmization of modern biology advances, in the sense of systems biology, synthetic biology and bioinformatics, the less audible the call for a rehabilitation of the concept of form becomes. This technomorphic tendency, to deal with living entities in terms of artifacts, increasingly brought the concept of transformation into the forefront— articulated, e.g., in the formal sense by differential equations and their combination on all “levels” of the biological organization of living entities. It also coincidentally furthered the skepticism concerning the fundamental difference between artifacts and living entities. By explicitly denying or overlooking the conceptual necessity of this difference, the sensitivity for the peculiarity of living entities also dwindled, which in turn even in the
{"title":"The Disappearance of Form? Some Methodological Considerations on a Lost Conceptual Dimension in Biology","authors":"M. Gutmann","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00389","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction The concept of form belongs—apparently—to an older stage of biological concept formation. Paradoxically, it is even the insistence on the reference to form that shows its very disappearance. The more the functionalization, systematization, and finally algorithmization of modern biology advances, in the sense of systems biology, synthetic biology and bioinformatics, the less audible the call for a rehabilitation of the concept of form becomes. This technomorphic tendency, to deal with living entities in terms of artifacts, increasingly brought the concept of transformation into the forefront— articulated, e.g., in the formal sense by differential equations and their combination on all “levels” of the biological organization of living entities. It also coincidentally furthered the skepticism concerning the fundamental difference between artifacts and living entities. By explicitly denying or overlooking the conceptual necessity of this difference, the sensitivity for the peculiarity of living entities also dwindled, which in turn even in the","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"28 1","pages":"666-680"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85077528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Whether “biomimetic” or “bioinspired,” the projects of bioengineering tend to refer their devices or inventions to the biological systems that provide models or originals for detachable functionalities. And yet, they do not satisfy the picturing relation of original and copy. They are mimetic or imitative in the sense of reenacting a function in a different setting with its own principles of composition or its own parameters that select for salience. The taking up of salient features for the purposes of producing a performance of functionality results not in the copy of an original but in its parody. Parodies are not judged for their veracity but for their effectiveness. They have a heuristic value in the context of design and for knowing the world through making and building. In somewhat experimental fashion, this paper seeks to develop a vocabulary for the parodistic qualities of Synthetic Biology, genome editing, or other bioengineering practices. In order to do so, it introduces categories from aesthetics to qualify modeling relations, one of these categories being the notion of “parody” itself.
{"title":"BioTechnology as BioParody – Strategies for Salience1","authors":"A. Nordmann","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00384","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Whether “biomimetic” or “bioinspired,” the projects of bioengineering tend to refer their devices or inventions to the biological systems that provide models or originals for detachable functionalities. And yet, they do not satisfy the picturing relation of original and copy. They are mimetic or imitative in the sense of reenacting a function in a different setting with its own principles of composition or its own parameters that select for salience. The taking up of salient features for the purposes of producing a performance of functionality results not in the copy of an original but in its parody. Parodies are not judged for their veracity but for their effectiveness. They have a heuristic value in the context of design and for knowing the world through making and building. In somewhat experimental fashion, this paper seeks to develop a vocabulary for the parodistic qualities of Synthetic Biology, genome editing, or other bioengineering practices. In order to do so, it introduces categories from aesthetics to qualify modeling relations, one of these categories being the notion of “parody” itself.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"34 1","pages":"568-582"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83093000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Since the emergence of digital design techniques in combination with so-called responsive materials, the concept of organic forms in architecture seems to be gaining a new quality. The resemblance to an organism should no longer apply only superficially but be inscribed in the materiality as well as in the history of origin and functioning. This article addresses these new transformative effects between architecture and biology. They are presented primarily in relation to the structural architecture of the 1960s and the computational architectural systems since the 1990s. One focus of architecture is on dynamic forms that adapt themselves to their environment by means of flexible materials and generative algorithms. Here, architecture as technically animated matter no longer involuntarily competes with creative nature but is seen as part of a reciprocal relationship. This reciprocal relationship is specified by recourse to various architectural models. The models’ approaches suggest that organic-looking forms are generated by simulated biological processes. The article examines this claim of the models from the perspective of the history of architecture and design. It shows how, since the mid-twentieth century, a renewal of architectural design practice has been sought by reformulating morphological questions at the intersection of biological and cybernetic discourses.
{"title":"Model Operations: Morphogenesis and the Design Process","authors":"Carolin Höfler","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00386","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the emergence of digital design techniques in combination with so-called responsive materials, the concept of organic forms in architecture seems to be gaining a new quality. The resemblance to an organism should no longer apply only superficially but be inscribed in the materiality as well as in the history of origin and functioning. This article addresses these new transformative effects between architecture and biology. They are presented primarily in relation to the structural architecture of the 1960s and the computational architectural systems since the 1990s. One focus of architecture is on dynamic forms that adapt themselves to their environment by means of flexible materials and generative algorithms. Here, architecture as technically animated matter no longer involuntarily competes with creative nature but is seen as part of a reciprocal relationship. This reciprocal relationship is specified by recourse to various architectural models. The models’ approaches suggest that organic-looking forms are generated by simulated biological processes. The article examines this claim of the models from the perspective of the history of architecture and design. It shows how, since the mid-twentieth century, a renewal of architectural design practice has been sought by reformulating morphological questions at the intersection of biological and cybernetic discourses.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"602-626"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81063072","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Over the past decades, the notions of organic form and morphology—a scientific field historically associated with the eighteenth century polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)—have stealthy re-assumed a central role in various scientific disciplines. Although the study of organic form was apparently excluded from the main stage of evolutionary theory and biological sciences during the second half of the twentieth century, since morphology was considered as a descriptive and ancillary science unable to contribute to the neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution, morphological concepts and approaches have now been re-brought onto the central stage of mainstream science. In fact, several interdisciplinary Clusters of Excellence have been for instance established in Germany to investigate the enigma and power of
{"title":"Morphogenesis – “The Riddles of Form” in Twenty-First Century Science","authors":"Marco Tamborini","doi":"10.1162/posc_e_00383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_e_00383","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past decades, the notions of organic form and morphology—a scientific field historically associated with the eighteenth century polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)—have stealthy re-assumed a central role in various scientific disciplines. Although the study of organic form was apparently excluded from the main stage of evolutionary theory and biological sciences during the second half of the twentieth century, since morphology was considered as a descriptive and ancillary science unable to contribute to the neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution, morphological concepts and approaches have now been re-brought onto the central stage of mainstream science. In fact, several interdisciplinary Clusters of Excellence have been for instance established in Germany to investigate the enigma and power of","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"72 1","pages":"559-567"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87078888","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time.
{"title":"The Material Turn in the Study of Form: From Bio-Inspired Robots to Robotics-Inspired Morphology","authors":"Marco Tamborini","doi":"10.1162/posc_a_00388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00388","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time.","PeriodicalId":19867,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science","volume":"39 1","pages":"643-665"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76001356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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