{"title":"DNA translated: Friedrich Miescher's discovery of nuclein in its original context.","authors":"Kersten Hall, Neeraja Sankaran","doi":"10.1017/S000708742000062X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708742000062X","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1871, the Swiss physiological chemist Friedrich Miescher published the results of a detailed chemical analysis of pus cells, in which he showed that the nuclei of these cells contained a hitherto unknown phosphorus-rich chemical which he named 'nuclein' for its specific localisation. Published in German, 'Ueber Die Chemische Zusammensetzung Der Eiterzellen', [On the Chemical Composition of Pus Cells] Medicinisch-Chemische Untersuchungen (1871) 4: 441-60, was the first publication to describe DNA, and yet remains relatively obscure. We therefore undertook a translation of the paper into English, which, together with the original article, can be accessed via the following link https://doi.org/10.1017/S000708742000062X. In this paper, we offer some intellectual context for its publication and immediate reception.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"54 1","pages":"99-107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S000708742000062X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"25380492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Natural history in the physician's study: Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680), Steven Blankaart (1650-1705) and the 'paperwork' of observing insects.","authors":"Saskia Klerk","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000436","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>While some seventeenth-century scholars promoted natural history as the basis of natural philosophy, they continued to debate how it should be written, about what and by whom. This look into the studios of two Amsterdam physicians, Jan Swammerdam (1637-80) and Steven Blankaart (1650-1705), explores natural history as a project in the making during the second half of the seventeenth century. Swammerdam and Blankaart approached natural history very differently, with different objectives, and relying on different traditions of handling specimens and organizing knowledge on paper, especially with regard to the way that individual observations might be generalized. These traditions varied from collating individual dissections into histories, writing both general and particular histories of plants and animals, collecting medical observations and applying inductive reasoning. Swammerdam identified the essential changes that insects underwent during their life cycle, described four orders based on these 'general characteristics' and presented his findings in specific histories that exemplified the 'general rule' of each order. Blankaart looked to the collective observations of amateurs to support his reputation as a man of medicine, but this was not supposed to lead to any kind of generalization. Their work alerts us to the variety of observational practices that were available to them, and with what purposes they made these their own.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"497-525"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000436","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38637222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jemma Houghton, Alexander Longworth-Dunbar, Nicola Sugden
{"title":"'Research sharing' using social media: online conferencing and the experience of #BSHSGlobalHist.","authors":"Jemma Houghton, Alexander Longworth-Dunbar, Nicola Sugden","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000485","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In February 2020, the British Society for the History of Science hosted its first entirely digital conference via Twitter, with the dual goals of improving outreach and engagement with international historians of science, and exploring methods of reducing the carbon footprint of academic activities. In this article we discuss how we planned and organized this conference, and provide a summary of our experience of the conference itself. We also describe in greater detail the motivations behind its organization, and explore the good and bad dimensions of this relatively new kind of conferencing. As the climate crisis becomes more acute and, in turn, the pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of academic activities increases, we argue that digital conferences of this style will necessarily become more central to how academia operates. By sharing our own experiences of running such a conference, we seek to contribute to a rapidly growing body of knowledge on the subject that might be drawn on to improve our practices going forward. We also share some of our own ideas about how best to approach digital conference organization which helped us to make the most of this particular event.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"555-573"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000485","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38814615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'An attempt to trace illusions to their physical causes': atmospheric mirages and the performance of their demystification in the 1820s and 1830s.","authors":"Fiona Amery","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000369","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article suggests that, during the 1820s and 1830s, Britain experienced a mirage moment. A greater volume of material was published on the mirage in scientific journals, treatises, travel literature and novels during these two decades than had occurred before in British history. The phenomenon was examined at the confluence of discussions about the cultural importance of illusions, the nature of the eye and the imperial project to investigate the extra-European natural world. Explanations of the mirage were put forward by such scientists and explorers as Sir David Brewster, William Wollaston and General Sir James Abbott. Their demystification paralleled the performance of unmasking scientific and magical secrets in the gallery shows of London during the period. The practice of seeing involved in viewing unfathomable phenomena whilst simultaneously considering their rational basis underwrote these different circumstances. I use this unusual mode of visuality to explore the ways the mirage and other illusions were viewed and understood in the 1820s and 1830s. Ultimately, this paper argues that the mirage exhibited the fallibility of the eyes as a tool for veridical perception in a marvellous and striking way, with consequences for the perceived trustworthiness of ocular knowledge in the period.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"443-467"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000369","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38442813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The place of Edward Gresham's <i>Astrostereon</i> (1603) in the discussion on cosmology and the Bible in the early modern period.","authors":"Barbara Bienias","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000345","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article situates Edward Gresham's Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), a little-known English astronomical treatise, in the context of the cosmo-theological debate on the reconciliation of heliocentrism with the Bible, triggered by the publication of Nicholas Copernicus's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium in 1543. Covering the period from the appearance of the 'First Account' of Copernican views presented in Georg Joachim Rheticus's Narratio Prima (1540) to the composition of Astrostereon in 1603, this paper places Edward Gresham's commentary and exegesis against the background of the views expressed by his countrymen and the thinkers associated with the Wittenberg University - such as Philipp Melanchthon, Caspar Peucer, and Christoph Rothmann. Comparing the ways in which they employed certain biblical passages - either in favour of or against the Earth's mobility - the paper emphasizes Gresham's ingenious reading of the Hebrew version of the problematic excerpts, and his expansion of the accommodation principle.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"417-442"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000345","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38540403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Two BSHS online alternatives to conventional conferences.","authors":"Tim Boon, Charlotte Sleigh","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000473","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 2020, the BSHS hosted two major online events, the first of their kind in our collective experience. The first, a Twitter conference, was planned and accomplished before COVID-19 had quite been established as a serious global issue. The conference was planned, rather, as an innovation in travel-free conferencing, something that has been on the BSHS agenda since the IPCC report of 2018, calling for net-zero-carbon activity in all areas by 2050. As we discussed the Twitter conference, and watched the amazing energy, intellect and resourcefulness of its planners and hosts, we quickly saw that online delivery offered other advantages too - chiefly, wider participation. The pandemic offered the society a chance to take these lessons very boldly into the most important event of our scholarly calendar, which usually takes the form of an in-person annual conference, but this time was executed as an online festival.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"553-554"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000473","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38613451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The ciné-biologists: natural history film and the co-production of knowledge in interwar Britain.","authors":"Max Long","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000370","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000370","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article analyses the production and reception of the natural history film series Secrets of Nature (1919-33) and its sequel Secrets of Life (1934-47), exploring what these films reveal about the role of cinema in public discourses about science and nature in interwar Britain. The first part of the article introduces the Secrets using an 'intermedial' approach, linking the kinds of natural history that they displayed to contemporary trends in interwar popular science, from print publications to zoos. It examines how scientific knowledge was communicated in the series, especially the appeal to everyday experience as a vehicle to engage mass audiences with scientific subjects. The second part examines the Secrets series through the lens of knowledge co-production, detailing how a range of different figures, including academic scientists, nature photographers, producers and teachers, became entangled in making the films. Recovering the term 'ciné-biology', it argues that Secrets developed a unique style of filmmaking that generated cultural space for the life sciences in British popular culture. The third part analyses two interwar cinema experiments to explore how audiences, imagined and real, shaped the kinds of natural knowledge characterized by the Secrets films.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"527-551"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000370","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38485026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Voyaging towards the future: the brig <i>Rurik</i> in the North Pacific and the emerging science of the sea.","authors":"Alexandra Bekasova","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000448","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the networking activities of Count Nikolai Rumiantsev and Adam von Krusenstern, his close collaborator. The visionary Russian statesman and the celebrated navigator were deeply involved in northern exploration. They funded and organized a circumnavigating voyage by the brig Rurik in 1815-18, with the explicit goals of searching for a northern passage between Eurasia and North America and conducting a series of scientific investigations in the Bering Strait region. This private exploratory enterprise profoundly influenced the exchange of information and reconfigured both local and global networks of knowledge. Based on an analysis of private correspondence, printed accounts and journal articles related to the Rurik's expedition, this study sheds light on how this transnational network of actors emerged and functioned, and how it promoted a lively circulation of information about exploration in the Bering Strait region in the 1810s-1820s. I argue that a complex interplay of geopolitical and intellectual competition, with exchanges, collaborations and coordination among various actors (e.g. patrons, navigators, scholars, entrepreneurs and publishers), stimulated further research on the global ocean's northern spaces and laid the foundations of marine science.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"469-495"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000448","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38814616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sam Robinson, Megan Baumhammer, Lea Beiermann, Daniel Belteki, Amy C Chambers, Kelcey Gibbons, Edward Guimont, Kathryn Heffner, Emma-Louise Hill, Jemma Houghton, Daniella McCahey, Sarah Qidwai, Charlotte Sleigh, Nicola Sugden, James Sumner
{"title":"Innovation in a crisis: rethinking conferences and scholarship in a pandemic and climate emergency.","authors":"Sam Robinson, Megan Baumhammer, Lea Beiermann, Daniel Belteki, Amy C Chambers, Kelcey Gibbons, Edward Guimont, Kathryn Heffner, Emma-Louise Hill, Jemma Houghton, Daniella McCahey, Sarah Qidwai, Charlotte Sleigh, Nicola Sugden, James Sumner","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000497","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It is a cliché of self-help advice that there are no problems, only opportunities. The rationale and actions of the BSHS in creating its Global Digital History of Science Festival may be a rare genuine confirmation of this mantra. The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 meant that the society's usual annual conference - like everyone else's - had to be cancelled. Once the society decided to go digital, we had a hundred days to organize and deliver our first online festival. In the hope that this will help, inspire and warn colleagues around the world who are also trying to move online, we here detail the considerations, conversations and thinking behind the organizing team's decisions.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 4","pages":"575-590"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000497","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38612613","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Race before Darwin: Variation, adaptation and the natural history of man in post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790-1835.","authors":"Bill Jenkins","doi":"10.1017/S0007087420000217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087420000217","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper draws on material from the dissertation books of the University of Edinburgh's student societies and surviving lecture notes from the university's professors to shed new light on the debates on human variation, heredity and the origin of races between 1790 and 1835. That Edinburgh was the most important centre of medical education in the English-speaking world in this period makes this a particularly significant context. By around 1800 the fixed natural order of the eighteenth century was giving way to a more fluid conception of species and varieties. The dissolution of the 'Great Chain of Being' made interpretations of races as adaptive responses to local climates plausible. The evidence presented shows that human variation, inheritance and adaptation were being widely discussed in Edinburgh in the student circles around Charles Darwin when he was a medical student in Edinburgh in the 1820s. It is therefore no surprise to find these same themes recurring in similar form in the evolutionary speculations in his notebooks on the transmutation of species written in the late 1830s during the gestation of his theory of evolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":46655,"journal":{"name":"British Journal for the History of Science","volume":"53 3","pages":"333-350"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0007087420000217","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"38098543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}