Historia scientiarum : international journal of the History of Science Society of Japan最新文献

In South Korea, the Green Revolution has been commonly understood as the development and dissemination of new rice varieties ('Tongil' rice) and the rapid increase of rice yield in the 1970s. However, revolutionary success in agriculture was not the only green revolution South Korea experienced; another green revolution lay in the success of reforestation projects. In the 1970s, South Korea's forest greening was closely related to its agricultural revolution in several ways. Therefore, South Korea's Green Revolution was an intrinsically linked double feature of agriculture and forestry. This two-pronged revolution was initiated by scientific research - yet accomplished by the strong administrative mobilization of President Park Chung Hee's regime. The process of setting goals and meeting them through a military-like strategy in a short time was made possible under the authoritarian regime, known as 'Yushin', though the administration failed to fully acknowledge scientific expertise in the process of pushing to achieve goals.

The generative relationship between text and image has long been established. Its structure evolved historically as a result of varying understandings of the functions of art and technology. Agriculture illustration, which emerged in China during the Song dynasty, is a prime example of this creative dialogue in which aspects of both disciplines were combined. Political, technological, and aesthetic concerns informed the reformulations of this new genre. This paper will address agricultural illustrations on nineteenth-century Korea, when notable changes occurred in the visualization of agricultural texts. It will explore changes in the understanding of the roles of agriculture, technology, and labor through an analysis of shifts in modes of illustration and the texts selected. The relationship between technology and visual representations during late Joseon Korea will be contextualized through an exploration of the evolution of technical drawing in East Asia. This paper will suggest that the recognition of imagery's ability to convey textual and technical information provided an important alternative paradigm for the presentation and use of knowledge.

In the 18th century, many outstanding translations of scientific texts were done by women. These women were important mediators of science. However, I would like to raise the issue that the 'selection,' which is the process by which intellectual women chose to conduct translation works, and those 'selections' made by male translators, would not be made at the same level. For example, Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749), the only French translator of Newton's "Principia," admitted her role as participating in important work, but, still, she was not perfectly satisfied with the position. For du Châtelet, the role as a translator was only an option under the current conditions that a female was denied the right to be a creator by society. In the case of Marie-Anne Lavoisier (1743-1794), like du Châtelet, we find an acute feeling in her mind that translation was not the work of creators. Because of her respect toward creative geniuses and her knowledge about the practical situation and concrete results of scientific studies, the translation works done by Marie-Anne Lavoisier were excellent. At the same time, the source of this excellence appears paradoxical at a glance: this excellence of translation was related closely with her low self-estimation in the field of science. Hence, we should not forget the gender problem that is behind such translations of scientific works done by women in that era. Such a possibility was a ray of light that was grasped by females, the sign of a gender that was eliminated from the center of scientific study due to social systems and norms and one of the few valuable opportunities to let people know of her own existence in the field of science.

Herophilus of Chalcedon (c. 330-250 BC) is famous as one of the leading figures in the development of medicine in Ptolemaic Alexandria around the first half of the third century BC. However, his medical science seems to have intrinsic continuity of thought with Hippocratic medicine. Herophilus followed the medical principle formulated in the Hippocratic treatise "On the Nature of Man," when he made his methodological pronouncement to the effect that primary parts of the human body should be perceptible by the senses. Herophilus rejected cardiocentrism, introduced by his teacher Praxagoras into the medical school of Cos, and returned to Hippocratic encephalocentrism, as represented by the author of the Hippocratic treatise "On the Sacred Disease." Herophilus differentiated between the faculties of the soul and the ones attributed to the nature. In his differentiation between these two faculties, Herophilus probably had in mind the Hippocratic conception of nature as specifically applied to the domain of the human body, as distinct from the soul. Herophilus' commitment to Hippocratic medicine is confirmed by his literary works on some of the Hippocratic texts. It is probable that Herophilus regarded himself as a more faithful successor than his teacher to the tradition of Hippocratic medicine. His anatomical research on the structure and function of the brain, motivated by his loyalty to the Hippocratic tradition, led him to innovative contributions to the development of medicine.

In the Edo period (c. 1600-1868), exposure to Western art, science and technology encouraged Japanese 'ukiyo-e' (pictures of the floating world) artists to experiment with Western perspective in woodblock prints and book illustrations. We can see its early influence in the work of Utagawa Hiroshige (1787-1858), as well as Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Unlike Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi lived to see the opening of the port of Yokohama to trade with the West in 1859. A whole genre of Yokohama prints emerged and one of the key artists was Utagawa Sadahide (1807-1873). In his illustrated books entitled 'Yokohama kaikō kenbunshi' (A Record of Things Seen and Heard in the Open Port of Yokohama) (1862), Sadahide plays with perspective in an effort to represent the dynamic changes that Japan was undergoing in its encounter with the West at the time. In the work of later artists such as Hiroshige III (1843-1894), Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915) and Inoue Yasuji (1864-1889), we can see growing efforts to depict light, shadow and depth, and a continuing fascination with the steam locomotive and the changes occurring in the Tokyo-Yokohama region as Japan entered the Meiji period (1868-1912).

This paper examines several pioneering genre paintings by the important scholar painter Yun Duseo (1668-1715), with its focus on their artistic sources which have not yet been explored so far. Painted on ramie, 'Women Picking Potherbs' is one of the most intriguing examples among Yun Duseo's oeuvre, which encompasses a broad variety of themes, including genre imagery, landscapes, portraits, dragons, and horses. Even among Yun Duseo's genre paintings, 'Women Picking Potherbs' is extraordinary, as recent scholarship regards it as the earliest independent representation of lower-class women in the history of Korean art. In particular, Yun Duseo painted two women who were working ourdoors to gather spring potherbs. In a conservative Confucian society, it was extraordinary women who were working outdoors. Hence, Yun Duseo occupies a highly important place in Korean painting. Furthermore, even though Yun Duseo came from the upper-class, he often painted images of lower class people working. It is possible that Yun Duseo was familiar with the book titled "Tian gong kai wu" (Exploitation of the Works of Nature) which was published in the 17th century. By identifying the probable body of his artistic sources in the book known as "Tian gong kai wu," it will be possible to assess the innovations and limitations found in 'Women Picking Potherbs'.

This paper examines how Gotō Shinpei (1857-1929) sought to develop imperial networks emanating out of Tokyo in the fields of public health, railways, and communications. These areas helped define colonial modernity in the Japanese empire. In public health, Gotō's friendship with the bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburō led to the establishment of an Institute of Infectious Diseases in Tokyo. Key scientists from the institute took up positions in colonial medical colleges, creating a public health network that serviced the empire. Much of the empire itself was linked by a network of railways. Gotō was the first president of the South Manchuria Railway company (SMR). Communication technologies, especially radio, helped to bring the empire closer. By 1925, the Tokyo Broadcasting Station had begun its public radio broadcasts. Broadcasting soon came under the umbrella of the new organization, the Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK). Gotō was NHK's first president. The empire would soon be linked by radio, and it was by radio that Emperor Hirohito announced to the nation in 1945 that the empire had been lost.

Recombinant DNA technology was developed in the United States in the early 1970s. Leading scientists held an international Asilomar Conference in 1975 to examine the self regulation of recombinant DNA technology, followed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health drafting the Recombinant DNA Research Guidelines in 1976. The result of this conference significantly affected many nations, including Japan. However, there have been few historical studies on the self-regulation of recombinant technologies conducted by scientists and government officials in Japan. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the Science Council of Japan, the Ministry of Education, Science adn Culture, and the Science and Technology Agency developed self-regulation policies for recombinant DNA technology in Japan in the 1970s. Groups of molecular biologist and geneticists played a key role in establishing guidelines in cooperation with government officials. Our findings suggest that self-regulation policies on recombinant DNA technology have influenced safety management for the life sciences and establishment of institutions for review in Japan.