Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.596
J. H. Fujimura, R. Rajagopalan
This paper examines how populations in a multiethnic cohort project used to study environmental causes of cancer in Hawai‘i have been reorganized in ways that have contributed to the racialization of the human genome. We examine the development of two central genomic data infrastructures, the multiethnic cohort (MEC) and a collection of reference DNA called the HapMap. The MEC study populations were initially designed to examine differences in nutrition as risk factors for disease, and then were repurposed to search for potential genomic risk factors for disease. The biomaterials collected from these populations became institutionalized in a data repository that later became a major source of “diverse” DNA for other studies of genomic risk factors for disease. We examine what happened when the MEC biorepository and dataset, organized by ethnic labels, came to be used, in conjunction with the data from the HapMap reference populations, to construct human population genetic categories. Developing theory on genomic racialization, we examine (1) how and why Hawai‘i became sited as a “virtual natural laboratory” for collecting and examining biomaterials from different ethnic groups, and the consequences of the transformation of those local Hawaiian ethnic groups into five racial and ethnic OMB categories meant to represent global continental groups for genomic studies. We then discuss (2) how this transformation, via the geneticists’ effort to standardize the study of genomic risk for disease around the globe, led to the construction of humans as statistical genetic resources and entities for genomic biomedicine and the human population genetics discipline. Through this transformation of populations and biorepositories, we argue (3) that the twenty-first century has seen the intertwining of “race,” “population,” and “genome” via large-scale genomic association studies. We show how “race” has become imbricated in human population genetics and genomic biomedicine. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.
{"title":"Race, Ethnicity, Ancestry, and Genomics in Hawai‘i","authors":"J. H. Fujimura, R. Rajagopalan","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.596","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.596","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how populations in a multiethnic cohort project used to study environmental causes of cancer in Hawai‘i have been reorganized in ways that have contributed to the racialization of the human genome. We examine the development of two central genomic data infrastructures, the multiethnic cohort (MEC) and a collection of reference DNA called the HapMap. The MEC study populations were initially designed to examine differences in nutrition as risk factors for disease, and then were repurposed to search for potential genomic risk factors for disease. The biomaterials collected from these populations became institutionalized in a data repository that later became a major source of “diverse” DNA for other studies of genomic risk factors for disease. We examine what happened when the MEC biorepository and dataset, organized by ethnic labels, came to be used, in conjunction with the data from the HapMap reference populations, to construct human population genetic categories.\u0000 Developing theory on genomic racialization, we examine (1) how and why Hawai‘i became sited as a “virtual natural laboratory” for collecting and examining biomaterials from different ethnic groups, and the consequences of the transformation of those local Hawaiian ethnic groups into five racial and ethnic OMB categories meant to represent global continental groups for genomic studies. We then discuss (2) how this transformation, via the geneticists’ effort to standardize the study of genomic risk for disease around the globe, led to the construction of humans as statistical genetic resources and entities for genomic biomedicine and the human population genetics discipline. Through this transformation of populations and biorepositories, we argue (3) that the twenty-first century has seen the intertwining of “race,” “population,” and “genome” via large-scale genomic association studies. We show how “race” has become imbricated in human population genetics and genomic biomedicine.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"120 1","pages":"596-623"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79246628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.498
Warwick Anderson
The mid-twentieth century Australian fieldwork of Joseph B. Birdsell illustrates, perhaps uniquely, the transition from typological structuring in physical anthropology before World War II to human biology’s increasing interest in the geographical or clinal patterning of genes and commitment to notions of drift and selection. It also shows that some morphological inquiries lingered into the postwar period, as did an attachment to theories of racial migration and hybridization. Birdsell’s intensive and long-term fieldwork among Aboriginal Australians eventually led him to criticize the settler colonialism and white racism that had made possible his expeditions and data collection. Yet he continued to regard Aboriginal communities as “island laboratories” and to treat Aboriginal people as convenient research subjects, distancing himself from their life worlds and experiences of dispossession and exploitation. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.
20世纪中期，约瑟夫·b·伯德塞尔(Joseph B. Birdsell)在澳大利亚的田野调查，或许是独一无二的，说明了从第二次世界大战前体质人类学的类型学结构，到人类生物学对基因的地理或临床模式越来越感兴趣，以及对漂变和选择概念的承诺的转变。它还表明，一些形态学研究一直延续到战后时期，对种族迁移和杂交理论的依恋也是如此。伯德塞尔在澳大利亚土著人中进行了密集而长期的田野调查，最终使他对移民殖民主义和白人种族主义提出了批评，正是这些殖民主义和种族主义使他的探险和数据收集成为可能。然而，他继续将土著社区视为“岛屿实验室”，并将土著居民视为方便的研究对象，使自己与他们的生活世界以及被剥夺和剥削的经历保持距离。这篇文章是沃里克·安德森和M.苏珊·林迪编辑的题为《太平洋生物学:人类是如何遗传的》特刊的一部分。
{"title":"From Racial Types to Aboriginal Clines","authors":"Warwick Anderson","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.498","url":null,"abstract":"The mid-twentieth century Australian fieldwork of Joseph B. Birdsell illustrates, perhaps uniquely, the transition from typological structuring in physical anthropology before World War II to human biology’s increasing interest in the geographical or clinal patterning of genes and commitment to notions of drift and selection. It also shows that some morphological inquiries lingered into the postwar period, as did an attachment to theories of racial migration and hybridization. Birdsell’s intensive and long-term fieldwork among Aboriginal Australians eventually led him to criticize the settler colonialism and white racism that had made possible his expeditions and data collection. Yet he continued to regard Aboriginal communities as “island laboratories” and to treat Aboriginal people as convenient research subjects, distancing himself from their life worlds and experiences of dispossession and exploitation.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"36 1","pages":"498-524"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73300222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.554
M. S. Lindee
In this article, I explore the history of biological materials that scientists and physicians collected from those who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Originally acquired beginning in 1946 to track the genetic effects of radiation in the offspring of atomic bomb survivors, these materials gradually became relevant to other kinds of biological and biomedical research. Many of the samples still held at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation are from individuals (approximately 65 percent) who are no longer alive. To scientists and others engaged with their management and use, these samples are uniquely valuable, timeless, a legacy for “all mankind.” Like materials taken from isolated populations around the world, the atomic bomb samples are both unique and universalized. They join other forms of Big Data in their seamless transition from dramatic specificity to general relevance. My paper explores what such legacies mean, and what they might teach us about the history of biology, the practices of biobanking, and the post-1945 Pacific world. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.
{"title":"First Peoples of the Atomic Age","authors":"M. S. Lindee","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.554","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.554","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I explore the history of biological materials that scientists and physicians collected from those who survived the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Originally acquired beginning in 1946 to track the genetic effects of radiation in the offspring of atomic bomb survivors, these materials gradually became relevant to other kinds of biological and biomedical research. Many of the samples still held at the Radiation Effects Research Foundation are from individuals (approximately 65 percent) who are no longer alive. To scientists and others engaged with their management and use, these samples are uniquely valuable, timeless, a legacy for “all mankind.” Like materials taken from isolated populations around the world, the atomic bomb samples are both unique and universalized. They join other forms of Big Data in their seamless transition from dramatic specificity to general relevance. My paper explores what such legacies mean, and what they might teach us about the history of biology, the practices of biobanking, and the post-1945 Pacific world.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"58 1","pages":"554-577"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82022838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.483
Warwick Anderson, M. S. Lindee
{"title":"Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic","authors":"Warwick Anderson, M. S. Lindee","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.483","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"70 5 PT.1 1","pages":"483-497"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77464578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.578
S. Chadarevian
This essay reflects on the tension between standardization and the search for variation in the human genome. The stabilization of the human chromosome count in the 1920s was based on the consensus that “Whites,” “Negroes,” and “Japanese,” as well as women and men, had the same number of chromosomes. Yet the idea that there might be chromosomal differences between various groups of people was never quite abandoned. When in the mid-1950s the human chromosome number was revised from 48 to 46, the new count was tested in populations around the world. The description of the “normal human karyotype” that was negotiated in the 1960s was driven by the search for a standard against which the genetic variation revealed by the flurry of testing could be measured. And although the human genome project in the 1990s promised to provide the genetic blueprint that all humans shared, it has in fact led to an increased focus on the genetic variation that distinguishes the history, identity, and health outcomes of various human populations. Following concrete examples, this essay investigates the historically contingent quests that have been driving the search for common standards and variation, and the role Pacific and Indigenous populations have played in these endeavors. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.
{"title":"Normalization and the Search for Variation in the Human Genome","authors":"S. Chadarevian","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.578","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reflects on the tension between standardization and the search for variation in the human genome. The stabilization of the human chromosome count in the 1920s was based on the consensus that “Whites,” “Negroes,” and “Japanese,” as well as women and men, had the same number of chromosomes. Yet the idea that there might be chromosomal differences between various groups of people was never quite abandoned. When in the mid-1950s the human chromosome number was revised from 48 to 46, the new count was tested in populations around the world. The description of the “normal human karyotype” that was negotiated in the 1960s was driven by the search for a standard against which the genetic variation revealed by the flurry of testing could be measured. And although the human genome project in the 1990s promised to provide the genetic blueprint that all humans shared, it has in fact led to an increased focus on the genetic variation that distinguishes the history, identity, and health outcomes of various human populations. Following concrete examples, this essay investigates the historically contingent quests that have been driving the search for common standards and variation, and the role Pacific and Indigenous populations have played in these endeavors.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"29 1","pages":"578-595"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77929648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.525
P. Mukharji
In 1952, a joint Indo-Australian team undertook one of the first genetic studies of the Chenchu people of southern India. Long thought of as one of the oldest populations on the subcontinent and a potential link between South Asian and Aboriginal Australian populations, the study hoped to illuminate the deeper demographic histories of both India and Australia. Coming as it did immediately on the heels of decolonization, it also signaled a new era of scientific collaborations after empire. But what exactly does “collaboration” entail? How far do agendas and imaginations actually cohere in such a “collaboration”? The various collaborating actors in the Chenchu project held very distinctive ideas and agendas. Keeping blood at the center, this article explores those distinctive “bloodworlds” that were mobilized in the course of the Chenchu study. The published text of the study was a potpourri of these different bloodworlds; equally important, however, was the bloodworld this potpourri could not accommodate: the bloodworlds of Chenchu wizards. Not a world engendered in some pure or isolated “tribal culture,” but a magical bloodworld created through historical interactions with Shaivism and Shi’ism. This was a bloodworld eminently recognizable by the Chenchu themselves, but incapable of accommodation in the published study on them. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.
{"title":"Bloodworlds","authors":"P. Mukharji","doi":"10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.525","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2020.50.5.525","url":null,"abstract":"In 1952, a joint Indo-Australian team undertook one of the first genetic studies of the Chenchu people of southern India. Long thought of as one of the oldest populations on the subcontinent and a potential link between South Asian and Aboriginal Australian populations, the study hoped to illuminate the deeper demographic histories of both India and Australia. Coming as it did immediately on the heels of decolonization, it also signaled a new era of scientific collaborations after empire. But what exactly does “collaboration” entail? How far do agendas and imaginations actually cohere in such a “collaboration”? The various collaborating actors in the Chenchu project held very distinctive ideas and agendas. Keeping blood at the center, this article explores those distinctive “bloodworlds” that were mobilized in the course of the Chenchu study. The published text of the study was a potpourri of these different bloodworlds; equally important, however, was the bloodworld this potpourri could not accommodate: the bloodworlds of Chenchu wizards. Not a world engendered in some pure or isolated “tribal culture,” but a magical bloodworld created through historical interactions with Shaivism and Shi’ism. This was a bloodworld eminently recognizable by the Chenchu themselves, but incapable of accommodation in the published study on them.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80069292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-23DOI: 10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.456
Giulia Rispoli, Doubravka Olšáková
In this article we discuss two phases in the evolution of global environmental programs, namely the Man and Biosphere Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, with the aim of showing their hidden diplomatic ambitions from both US and Soviet perspectives. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet views on the biosphere prevailed thanks to the influence of Soviet scientists in the International Council of Scientific Unions and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In the 1980s, the domination of this field by US scientists ushered in the establishment of Earth system science as a new research trend based on Earth observation technologies. We argue that despite the influence of Soviet ecologists in directing international coordination of research on the biosphere, Earth system science did not set in a trajectory of environmental cooperation. This outcome can be explained if we take the environmental and ecological turn that arose during the Cold War as being intertwined with political concerns and national interests in both the US and the USSR. Security, scientific diplomacy, and geopolitical issues limited East-West collaboration on the interdisciplinary study of the earth, which instead turned into a sort of cooperative antagonism. The transition from biosphere studies to Earth system science reveals a changing strategy toward environmental problems, which in turn reflects changes in Cold War policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.
{"title":"Science and Diplomacy around the Earth","authors":"Giulia Rispoli, Doubravka Olšáková","doi":"10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.456","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we discuss two phases in the evolution of global environmental programs, namely the Man and Biosphere Programme and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, with the aim of showing their hidden diplomatic ambitions from both US and Soviet perspectives. In the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet views on the biosphere prevailed thanks to the influence of Soviet scientists in the International Council of Scientific Unions and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In the 1980s, the domination of this field by US scientists ushered in the establishment of Earth system science as a new research trend based on Earth observation technologies. We argue that despite the influence of Soviet ecologists in directing international coordination of research on the biosphere, Earth system science did not set in a trajectory of environmental cooperation. This outcome can be explained if we take the environmental and ecological turn that arose during the Cold War as being intertwined with political concerns and national interests in both the US and the USSR. Security, scientific diplomacy, and geopolitical issues limited East-West collaboration on the interdisciplinary study of the earth, which instead turned into a sort of cooperative antagonism. The transition from biosphere studies to Earth system science reveals a changing strategy toward environmental problems, which in turn reflects changes in Cold War policy.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"10 1","pages":"456-481"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85183741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-23DOI: 10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.340
D. Aubin
In 1853, the director of the Belgium Royal Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet, welcomed delegates from several countries to two consecutive meetings that have acquired considerable reputation as the first international congresses of, respectively, meteorology and statistics. This paper examines the local context where several similar international congresses (on free trade, universal peace, prison reform, public hygiene, etc.) were organized in the same decade. It argues that the new Belgian state developed this new form of international conference in order to bolster its soft power in the Concert of Nations. It also discusses tensions between national interests and global beliefs in the efficiency of science, which arose from these congresses. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.
{"title":"Congress Mania in Brussels, 1846–1856","authors":"D. Aubin","doi":"10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.340","url":null,"abstract":"In 1853, the director of the Belgium Royal Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet, welcomed delegates from several countries to two consecutive meetings that have acquired considerable reputation as the first international congresses of, respectively, meteorology and statistics. This paper examines the local context where several similar international congresses (on free trade, universal peace, prison reform, public hygiene, etc.) were organized in the same decade. It argues that the new Belgian state developed this new form of international conference in order to bolster its soft power in the Concert of Nations. It also discusses tensions between national interests and global beliefs in the efficiency of science, which arose from these congresses. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"12 1","pages":"340-363"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85120777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-23DOI: 10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.364
G. Somsen
Unlike what is often presumed, scientific internationalism persisted through the First World War and its aftermath. Although many scientists aligned themselves with their belligerent nations after 1914, and although Germany and Austria were excluded from international meetings after 1919, the rhetoric celebrating the universally fraternizing nature of science continued as if no such ruptures existed. In this article I argue that this persistence was rooted in the war itself, and particularly in the massive mobilization of academics in wartime propaganda and diplomacy. In these activities they used internationalist arguments and their own supranational status as scientists to defend their countries’ war causes and defame those of the enemy. I illustrate this by following the diplomatic work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. From the start of the war Bergson presented himself as a neutral scientific arbiter, developing a philosophy of the war (based on his work on life and evolution) as a battle of German barbarity versus universal (not just French) civilization. His government took note and sent Bergson on several diplomatic tasks, most notably a secret mission to the United States, early 1917, where he was to speak to President Wilson to persuade him to enter the war on the French side. Bergson’s universalism and his stature as a philosopher should appeal to Wilson’s dislike of partisanship and craving for the moral high ground. After the war, Bergson-style universalism continued and was institutionalized in the League of Nations and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation—with Bergson as its president. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.
{"title":"The Philosopher and the Rooster","authors":"G. Somsen","doi":"10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/HSNS.2020.50.4.364","url":null,"abstract":"Unlike what is often presumed, scientific internationalism persisted through the First World War and its aftermath. Although many scientists aligned themselves with their belligerent nations after 1914, and although Germany and Austria were excluded from international meetings after 1919, the rhetoric celebrating the universally fraternizing nature of science continued as if no such ruptures existed. In this article I argue that this persistence was rooted in the war itself, and particularly in the massive mobilization of academics in wartime propaganda and diplomacy. In these activities they used internationalist arguments and their own supranational status as scientists to defend their countries’ war causes and defame those of the enemy. I illustrate this by following the diplomatic work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. From the start of the war Bergson presented himself as a neutral scientific arbiter, developing a philosophy of the war (based on his work on life and evolution) as a battle of German barbarity versus universal (not just French) civilization. His government took note and sent Bergson on several diplomatic tasks, most notably a secret mission to the United States, early 1917, where he was to speak to President Wilson to persuade him to enter the war on the French side. Bergson’s universalism and his stature as a philosopher should appeal to Wilson’s dislike of partisanship and craving for the moral high ground. After the war, Bergson-style universalism continued and was institutionalized in the League of Nations and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation—with Bergson as its president.\u0000 This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.","PeriodicalId":56130,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences","volume":"65 1","pages":"364-383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79971978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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