Browsing by Author "Burian, Richard M."
Now showing 1 - 20 of 55
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- Arguing the Genome: A Topology of the Argumentation Behind the Construction of the Human Genome ProjectAllender-Hagedorn, Susan (Virginia Tech, 2001-04-10)The Human Genome Project (HGP), the name given to the scientific program to map and decode all of human genetic material, has been projected to revolutionize the conduct of biological science in the twenty-first century. For several years before its formation in 1990, a federally-funded, systematic study of the human genome was discussed first in the scientific arena and then in the public arena. The central thesis of this dissertation is that the arguments supporting or rejecting creation of the HGP and the rhetorical devices used to further those arguments had a major influence on the shape the HGP took in 1991. The argumentation used both for and against the creation of the HGP before the public as well as on the border between the public and scientific arenas is studied. The rhetorical devices such as metaphor, narrative, and selective word choices used to further these arguments are also examined. In particular, a rhetorical content analysis was performed on the 1986-1991 argumentation available to the most crucial audience for such persuasion: the members of Congress who ultimately voted for or against the program's funding and its establishment as a part of U.S. science policy. The proponents of the HGP, especially after the first year of public debate, presented their arguments in a wider arena of discussion and presented more and more varied arguments to advocate the project. The opposition raised questions that had for the most part been answered earlier in the debate. Often anti-HGP arguments focused on less effective audiences (scientists instead of members of Congress). Opposition to the project didn't become organized until near the end of the time frame studied, too late to have much of an impact on the outcome of the debate. The rhetorical devices studied served to magnify the impact of arguments used: in particular, the metaphor served as a boundary object to bridge discussions between the scientific and the public arenas. Ultimately the victory in the debate over the establishment of the HGP was awarded to the promulgators of the strongest underlying metaphor--the idealized excitement and profit of exploration of unknown territory--and the benefits to come from filling in and conquering the unknown areas of the human genetic map, territory the U.S. was eager to claim for its own.
- At the Margins of Modern Science: Leviathan and the Air-Pump as a Case Study for Meta-analysis of Contemporary Science and Technology StudiesGold, Anna Keller (Virginia Tech, 1999-05-03)In this thesis I will offer an extended discussion and critique of an important social constructivist book, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985), focusing on its reception and its standing in science and technology studies in the fifteen years since its publication. This work claims to be an "origins" story for the modern form of life that we now call the scientific community, and this claim has not itself been contested strongly by other scholars. Central to Shapin and Schaffer's argument for the socially constructed nature of scientific knowledge, is the contrast they find between the community orientation of Robert Boyle and the anti-community stance of Thomas Hobbes. In the course of this thesis, I question the validity not only of this contrast, but of the origins story itself. I suggest that while experimental, communally-practiced science and modernity did emerge together around the end of the seventeenth-century, the qualities of science that Shapin and Schaffer suggest are distinctive of modern science might more accurately be represented as distinctive of modern science. In other words, I suggest that the story of Leviathan and the Air-Pump is not so much an origins story for science as it is emblematic of the early influence of widespread European modernist culture on scientific practices. Leviathan and the Air-Pump is an important case to study in order to unravel the strands of science and modernity because it occupies simultaneously both the early and late margins of the modern period: first, by taking the contested but emergent modernism represented by Robert Boyle as its subject and, second, as a work of scholarship that sits on the far margins of the modern period. My method is to treat Shapin and Schaffer's work as a central primary source for understanding how contemporary science and technology studies scholarship deals with early modern science. A side product of this analysis is to suggest strongly that Shapin and Schaffer's account of the social construction of scientific knowledge is itself socially constructed: that is, it is highly selective in its presentation and interpretation of historical evidence. I also consider what the implications may be for separating modernity from science, and for thinking about how science might be practiced in the age that will follow -- perhaps is already following -- the modern period.
- Between Hull and a Hard Core: Varying Patterns in the Evolution of the Darwinian Research TraditionLowe, Mark (Virginia Tech, 2007-05-08)Focusing on Darwinism, David Hull argues that the protean character of conceptual systems is explained by their nature as historical entities which evolve. If they evolve as biological species do, Hull argues, then they cannot have an "essence" — a set of tenets that all and only instances of the conceptual system has throughout all time. There are no tenets a scientific research program must retain to count as an instance of a particular program. I advance two considerations against this view. First, research programs require a critical cohesiveness among their tenets to inspire and guide research. Second, it is the function of such programs to guide the search for answers to families of questions in a particular domain in a particular spirit. These factors dictate that conceptual systems must retain certain key tenets. This re-emergence of a sort of essentialism does not bar the evolution of conceptual systems, provided we recognize that there are patterns of evolution other than the one Hull considers (anagenesis). It also implies that conceptual systems simply evolve differently than species do. I defend this position by illustrating two episodes of conceptual evolution: the dispute between William Bateson and the British biometricians over discontinuous evolution, and the formation of Neo-Lamarckism in 19th century America.
- Carilion: A Corporate System of Managed Health CareHuston, Annette L. (Virginia Tech, 2001-11-14)In the late 20th century, the management of care came under the control of large health care conglomerates, like the Carilion Health System in Roanoke, Virginia. This study examines the evolution of Carilion from its beginning in 1988 to the present and analyzes Carilion as a complex system by using analytical tools drawn from a variety of STS scholars. Carilion's mission began with its hospitals. From 1954-1988, Carilion's predecessor, the Roanoke Hospital Association, developed a network for delivering care, training programs and management to small community hospitals throughout southwest Virginia. In 1988, the Roanoke Hospital Association was officially renamed the Carilion Health System. In its initial phase, 1988-1992, Carilion expanded its hospital network into as many communities as possible. The thesis of this work is that Carilion and communities came together to see if they could build a corporation to manage care and, at the same time, maintain local traditions of care. From 1992-1996, Carilion transformed itself from a hospital organization to a health care system and finally to a managed care system in order to compete with rival Columbia/HCA. This transformation required the creation of a physician management company and a health plans division. In 1995, Carilion's administrators began a reengineering program which redefined services and strategies for corporate growth. This included construction of a state-of-the-art facility situated between two competing Columbia/HCA hospitals in the New River Valley. In 1998-2000, Carilion engaged in a massive advertising blitz to garner additional market share from Columbia/HCA. Carilion's marketing strategies show that health care has changed dramatically under a business model, in spite of corporate America's assurances that it would not. This study gives voice to health care workers who describe exactly how their experiences have changed since corporations, such as Carilion, began managing their work. Drawing on interviews with Carilion physicians, hospital administrators, board members and medical staffs, the day-to-day activities taking place within hospitals and physician practices comes to life. The narrations describe how difficult it is for groups working within Carilion's facilities to carry out Carilion's growth strategies while at the same time maintaining communities' traditions of care. Since 1999, Carilion moved in three new directions: the creation of the Carilion Biomedical Institute incorporating biotechnology and biomedicine; the institution of a hospital partial-ownership program, which meant Carilion did not have to assume full ownership and expenses of some facilities; and the installation of an electronic medical records system in physician practices to manage patients' data, physicians' costs and physicians' productivity. These new directions illustrate how Carilion envisions a different paradigm of care delivery. While the study addresses how Carilion became a managed care organization, this work represents foremost an analysis of system building in America today. Like most corporate systems, Carilion exemplifies a mix of social, economic and technological components that have been assembled to form a corporate entity. This work explains how corporate systems come to manage traditions, values and resources within communities and for communities.
- The Common, the Contradictory and the Idiosyncratic: Signposts from a Qualitative Exploration into the Structural Factors Influencing Scientific Work in Tsukuba, Japan [1997-2002]Wilkins, John D. (Virginia Tech, 2003-12-08)From the socio-economic turmoil of the 20th century, Japan has repeatedly revealed its resilience. During these trying times, scientific work has been an important element in Japan's economic development. However, the 1990s revealed weaknesses in this “economic miracle.” During this period, several socio-structural factors have contributed to this social landscape. Future successes in Japanese socio-economic spheres will partially depend on scientific work. In this study, it is suggested that identifying structural factors in the Japanese “system” that contribute to its scientific organizations is key to ascertaining a more coherent assessment of scientific work in Japan. This assessment can lead to more in depth analyses of the interconnections between science and society. The focus of this study is on scientific institutes and their organizational structure. The social networks that interconnect these institutes and couple their scientific work with other elements of Japanese culture are essential in the analysis of Japan's scientific enterprise. In the present study, a qualitative case study methodology is used to explore socio-structural networks within the cultural field of scientific work in Tsukuba, Japan. The structure of scientific work in Japan is composed of several cultural and material elements which have been distilled into two themes for evaluative purposes. These themes include cultural factors and scientific production/economic affairs. Through a reflexive-thematic lens an analysis of scientific work is conducted. Central to the method used in this study is a series of structured and un-structured in-person interviews using a format of open-ended questions. Most informants in this study were chosen by administrators of the institutes involved. Although, I did participate in assuring diversity in the sample, there is possible bias inherent in management's choices of particular informants. These interviews were held during the month of October 2002 in five separate university and non-university institutes in Tsukuba, Japan. The findings in this study reveal common, contradictory and idiosyncratic aspects that have important cultural and scientific/economic effects across organizational types. Common attributes include the observation of universal “top-down” organizational hierarchies with networks of labor being accumulated through elite scientists. Generally, informants perceived little to no effect from the national economy on their particular institute's funding of science. Scientists spent an extraordinary amount of time at work and conducted highly specialized work tasks. The publishing activity concentrated among elite scientists while utilization of foreign scientists and contingent workers were segregated. Also, the use of tacit knowledge as a principal training tool was universally observed across institutes. Contradictory attributes include scientists' attitudes toward their work versus the city they live in, government policy versus actual laboratory work, and publishing versus conference presentations. The idiosyncratic attributes focus on levels of organizational formality across organizations. The organizational formality is related to the individual scientists' perceptions of what they enjoyed most about their work. Thus, scientists that enjoyed the 'processes' of their work tended to be located in more formal organizations whereas those scientists who enjoyed “discovery” were situated in less formal organizations. It is likely that the different levels of organizational formality observed in this study are associated with other elements of laboratory culture. Also, the composition of foreigners and women varied remarkably across institutes. Yet, their use in laboratories is relatively similar.
- Confronting the Tree of Life: Three Court Cases in Modern American HistoryGibson, Abraham Hill (Virginia Tech, 2008-04-28)Like few other concepts in the history of science, Darwinian evolution prompted humans to question their most basic assumptions about themselves. Among the theory's most controversial implications, the principle of common descent insisted that humans were kin to other species. As such, common descent challenged the previously unquestioned tradition of anthropocentrism, which held that humans were distinct from and superior to other species. In order to discern common descent's impact on anthropocentrism, I will examine three court cases from an eighty-year span of American history, where resistance to common descent was especially virulent. Courtrooms provided the nation's leading critics of common descent an arena in which to protest the theory's most egregious offenses. As common descent garnered increasing support from scientists and educators, however, anthropocentrists modified their position accordingly. Initially, they stigmatized monkeys and apes precisely because those animals were the most genealogically proximate to humans. As common descent became more accepted, however, this position became increasingly difficult to defend. Accordingly, many anthropocentrists abandoned their obsession with primates and instead engaged the entire tree of life, including its mysterious origin. By the turn of the millennium, even as some anthropocentrists increasingly accepted humanity's kinship to other species, many continued to cite human intelligence as legitimate grounds for anthropocentric behavior. Thus, while anthropocentrism survived the threat of common descent, it had to accommodate the Darwinian onslaught in order to do so.
- Coordinates of Control: Indigenous Peoples and Knowledges in Bioprospecting RhetoricTakeshita, Chikako (Virginia Tech, 1999-12-15)In this thesis, I draw attention to how representations of indigenous peoples and knowledges in the rhetoric of bioprospecting weave the people into multiple coordinates of discursive control. Bioprospecting, or the exploration of biological resources in search of valuable genetic and chemical material for commercial use, is portrayed by proponents as an ideal project which benefit all of its stakeholders. I challenge such perception by exposing the power relationships underlying bioprospecting proposals as well as the various interests built into their rhetoric. My particular interest lies in exploring the implications for indigenous peoples whose appearances in bioprospecting proposals are less than voluntary. I make three claims: (1) that the representation of indigenous peoples as stewards of the environment is a role assigned to them, which is then circulated and mobilized within the bioprospecting rhetoric in order to support its arguments concerning biodiversity conservation; (2) that indigenous knowledges of the environment, of medicinal plants in particular, are taken out of their original socio-cultural contexts, utilized, appropriated, and valorized by bioprospectors who construct the rhetoric; (3) that the visibility of indigenous peoples and knowledges, which was heightened as a result of the increased interest taken in controlling them, opens up new opportunities for the people to resist misappropriation and struggle for self-definition. In short, this project takes indigenous peoples and knowledges as the intersection of forces and interests comprising an intricate web of power relationships, within which any participant can attempt to empower oneself either by resisting or manipulating the control to which one is exposed.
- Creating Green Chemistry: Discursive Strategies of a Scientific MovementRoberts, Jody Alan (Virginia Tech, 2005-12-13)In this dissertation, I examine the evolution of the green chemistry movement from its inception in the early 1990s to the present day. I focus my study on the discursive strategies employed by leaders of the movement to establish green chemistry and to develop and institute changes in the practice of the chemical sciences. The study looks specifically at three different strategies. The first is the construction of a historical narrative. This history comes from the intersection of the chemical sciences with environmentalism in the United States retold to place chemistry in a central position for understanding global environmental health issues and green chemistry as the natural response to these problems. The second involves the attempts made to develop a concrete definition for green chemistry as well as a set of guiding principles for the practice of this alternative form of chemistry. The establishment of the definition and the principles, I argue, constitutes an important move in constituting the field as a very specific interdisciplinary group with a forged identity and the beginnings of a system for determining what properly "counts" as green chemistry. The third comes from the intersection of this history within the defining principles of the movement intersect to create a specific set of green chemistry practices, and how these practices manifest themselves in conference and pedagogical settings. Finally, I offer an overview of where the movement currently stands, offering a critical perspective on the future potential of the field. I argue that recent episodes indicate that the movement has not succeeded in accomplishing what it set out to do, and will continue to encounter problems unless a refashioning of the movement takes place. To offer perspective on green chemistry as a movement, I examine it through the lens of other (e.g., Frickel and Gross 2005) attempts to explore scientific movements as a special class of social movements.
- The Dilemma of Case Studies Resolved: The Virtues of Using Case Studies in the History and Philosophy of ScienceBurian, Richard M. (MIT Press, 2001-12)Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's ?dilemma of case studies?, and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put.
- Empirical Meaning and Incomplete PersonhoodMaas, Steven M. (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-08)Both intensional and extensional explanations of linguistic meaning involve notions -- linguistic roles and referential relations, respectively -- which are not perspicuous and seem to evade satisfactory explanations themselves. Following Sellars, I make a move away from semantic explanation of the designation relation and of linguistic roles toward an explanation which relates to the use of linguistic and perceptual signs (i.e., pragmatics). In doing so, concerns are raised that seem to be more closely associated with epistemology and phenomenology than with the philosophy of language or logic. In particular, experience is taken to be intentional, i.e., to have a propositional content which is irreducible to the causal order. Along with intentionality, certain essentially autobiographical conditions of experience are neglected in typical conceptions of the problem of meaning. They are reintroduced here. Further, I take as a presupposition the pragmatist notion that each of our conceptual schemes emerges from a community of persons, rather than from individuals. What follows from the preceding starting points is a picture of incomplete personhood in which persons are seen as being inclined both toward experiential wholes which have conceptual content and toward establishing and unifying beliefs which resolve doubts. Because of the conditions of experience constitutive of, and peculiar to, personhood and the necessity of the community for individual inquiry, the notion of incomplete personhood has a central position in my pragmatist conception of the problem of meaning. By emphasizing the pragmatistic conditions of experience and the active role of persons in finding objects and in continually reaching toward a final complete picture, the problems related to objectivity are found to be peripheral to a conception of meaning which captures the practice(s) of persons' living object-directed lives. The result is a new way of conceiving of the problem of meaning.
- "An essay concerning subjectivity and scientific realism: Some fancies on Sellarsian themes and onto-politics"Garnar, Andrew Wells (Virginia Tech, 2007-09-09)I develop a framework for making visible the impacts that science has on human subjectivity, along with demonstrating how these transformations support the existing social order. In order to develop this framework, I critique the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Sellars is one of the few analytic philosophers of science who directly addresses the connections between science and subjectivity. What makes Sellars particularly interesting is the way he sought to preserve a strong conception of normativity alongside a quasi-eliminativist scientific realism. I set the stage for my critique of Sellars by contrasting two different accounts of subjectivity, one Cartesian, the other pragmatic. I argue in favor of the pragmatic because it completely grounds the subject in the world (a point with which Sellars basically agrees). I begin my critique of Sellars by explaining his scientific realism. This is then connected to his vision of the interconnections between science and subjectivity. I then argue that Sellars' scientific realism is fundamentally incoherent, which leads his system into nihilism. From this I trace out the role that science can play with respect to subjectivity in a nihilistic world. To partially counter this nihilism, I articulate an alternative to scientific realism that is based, in part, on my pragmatic account of subjectivity. I conclude by re-appropriating elements of Sellars' philosophy, routed through my alternative scientific realism, in order to complete the framework discussed above.
- Evolutionary Psychology: The Academic DebateSuplizio, Jean (Virginia Tech, 2005-07-28)This dissertation examines the academic debate that surrounds the new field called "Evolutionary Psychology." Evolutionary psychology has emerged as the most popular successor theory to human sociobiology. Its proponents search for evolved psychological mechanisms and emphasize universal features of the human mind. My thesis is that in order to flourish evolutionary psychologists must engage other researchers on equal terms -- something they have not been doing. To show this, I examine the stances of practitioners from three other social science fields whose claims have been shortchanged by evolutionary psychology: Barbara King in biological anthropology, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in empirical linguistics and Annette Karmiloff-Smith in developmental psychology. These researchers are also involved in cognitive science investigations that bear on evolutionary psychology's key claims about the mind and how it works. Evolutionary psychologists make three key claims about the mind. The first (1) is that the mind is massively modular; the second (2) is that this massively modular mind has been shaped by the processes of natural selection over evolutionary time; and the third (3) is that it is adapted to the Pleistocene conditions of our past. Evolutionary psychologists seek to elevate these three claims to the status of meta-theoretical assumptions making them the starting place from which our deliberations about human cognition ought proceed. These claims would constitute the framework for a new paradigm in the ultimate sense. I argue that elevating these claims to such a status is not only premature, but also unwarranted on the available evidence. This result is justified by evidence produced outside evolutionary psychology by those disciplines from which evolutionary psychologists explicitly seek to distance themselves.
- Experience and Pictorial Representation: Wollheim's Seeing-in and Merleau-Ponty's Perceptual PhenomenologyGardner, Jason (Virginia Tech, 2005-05-13)Contemporary aesthetics includes a project directed at understanding the nature of pictorial representation. Three types of theories enjoy recent favor. One explains pictorial representation by way of resemblance or experienced resemblance between the picture and what it represents. A second employs interpretation: the spectator looks at a picture and interprets conventionally determined symbols found therein to mean what it represents. The third describes pictorial representation as a matter of experience. On this approach, when the spectator looks at a picture she has a visual experience of the thing represented. Key components of representation include the representation bearing artifact and the human activity that produces it. An adequate account of pictorial representation must neglect neither. Theories focusing on resemblance fail to account for the human role in representation so that a picture may represent only what it can resemble. Theories making interpretation of conventional symbols the key fail to account for the role visible properties play in grounding representation. Wollheim's experience based theory, however, unifies the visible properties of the artifact and the intentions of the artist in a single experience, called seeing-in, whereby a spectator sees in a picture what an artist intends to represent. Wollheim fails to specify just how visible properties of the artifact ground seeing-in. His account of seeing-in raises other curiosities as well. These issues can be dealt with if we apply phenomenological concepts developed by Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception to our experience of pictures as a method of enriching Wollheim's account of seeing-in.
- Experimental Knowledge in Cognitive Neuroscience: Evidence, Errors, and InferenceAktunc, Mahir Emrah (Virginia Tech, 2011-07-02)This is a work in the epistemology of functional neuroimaging (fNI) and it applies the error-statistical (ES) philosophy to inferential problems in fNI to formulate and address these problems. This gives us a clear, accurate, and more complete understanding of what we can learn from fNI and how we can learn it. I review the works in the epistemology of fNI which I group into two categories; the first category consists of discussions of the theoretical significance of fNI findings and the second category discusses methodological difficulties of fNI. Both types of works have shortcomings; the first category has been too theory-centered in its approach and the second category has implicitly or explicitly adopted the assumption that methodological difficulties of fNI cannot be satisfactorily addressed. In this dissertation, I address these shortcomings and show how and what kind of experimental knowledge fNI can reliably produce which would be theoretically significant. I take fMRI as a representative fNI procedure and discuss the history of its development. Two independent trajectories of research in physics and physiology eventually converge to give rise to fMRI. Thus, fMRI findings are laden in the theories of physics and physiology and I propose how this creates a kind of useful theory-ladenness which allows for the representation of and intervention in the constructs of cognitive neuroscience. Duhemian challenges and problems of underdetermination are often raised to argue that fNI is of little, if any, epistemic value for psychology. I show how the ES notions of severe tests and error probabilities can be applied in epistemological analyses of fMRI. The result is that hemodynamic hypotheses can be severely tested in fMRI experiments and I demonstrate how these hypotheses are theoretically significant and fuel the growth of experimental knowledge in cognitive neuroscience. Throughout this dissertation, I put the emphasis on the experimental knowledge we obtain from fNI and argue that this is the fruitful approach that enables us to see how fNI can contribute to psychology. In doing so, I offer an error-statistical epistemology of fNI, which hopefully will be a significant contribution to the philosophy of psychology.
- Gender, Politics, and Radioactivity Research in Vienna, 1910-1938Rentetzi, Maria (Virginia Tech, 2003-03-25)What could it mean to be a physicist specialized in radioactivity in the early 20th century Vienna? More specifically, what could it mean to be a woman experimenter in radioactivity during that time? This dissertation focuses on the lived experiences of the women experimenters of the Institut für Radiumforschung in Vienna between 1910 and 1938. As one of three leading European Institutes specializing in radioactivity, the Institute had a very strong staff. At a time when there were few women in physics, one third of the Institute's researchers were women. Furthermore, they were not just technicians but were independent researchers who published at about the same rate as their male colleagues. This study accounts for the exceptional constellation of factors that contributed to the unique position of women in Vienna as active experimenters. Three main threads structure this study. One is the role of the civic culture of Vienna and the spatial arrangements specific to the Mediziner-Viertel in establishing the context of the intellectual work of the physicists. A second concerns the ways the Institute's architecture helped to define the scientific activity in its laboratories and to establish the gendered identities of the physicists it housed. The third examines how the social conditions of the Institute influenced the deployment of instrumentation and experimental procedures especially during the Cambridge-Vienna controversy of the 1920s. These threads are unified by their relation to the changing political context during the three contrasting periods in which the story unfolds: a) from the end of the 19th century to the end of the First World War, when new movements, including feminism, Social Democracy, and Christian Socialism, shaped the Viennese political scene, b) the period of Red Vienna, 1919 to 1934, when Social Democrats had control of the City of Vienna, and c) the period from 1934 to the Anschluss in 1938, during which fascists and Nazis seized power in Austria. As I show, the careers of the Institute's women were shaped in good part by the shifting meanings, and the politics, that attached to being a "woman experimenter" in Vienna from 1910 to the beginning of the Second World War.
- Grass-counters, stock-feeders, and the dual orientation of applied science: the history of range science, 1895-1960Heyboer, Maarten (Virginia Tech, 1992-04-05)According to the predominant image, applied science is a linear, sequential process, the application of science. First scientists or applied scientists develop knowledge that satisfies the epistemic criteria of science, and applied scientists then find ways to use this certified knowledge to solve society's problems. There is, therefore, a sharp distinction between epistemic or scientific criteria and social criteria. The historical development of the applied ecological discipline called range science or range management demonstrates instead that applied science is a simultaneous process. Range science developed at a time when America increasingly looked to science to solve social, political, and economic problems in the hope that science's ability to predict could provide the basis for organization and rational management. The institutionalization of range science industrialized ranching. Ranchers appealed to a variety of traditional American values in response to this industrialization, but in the new context surrounding ranching those values had become illegitimate. From the outset, range science acquired a dual orientation toward both the epistemic criteria of science and the social criteria of society. That dual orientation introduced a tension into range science because it was not obvious how range scientists should satisfy both sets of criteria simultaneously. Researchers in different institutional contexts developed distinct resolutions to that tension. The most significant difference between the institutions were their political objectives and a difference in the power relations between range researchers and their audiences. Those institutional contexts defined the social criteria and provided the background to judge the acceptability of particular resolutions of the tension, in the process providing the motivation and justification for range science. Nevertheless, range science was not just politics by another means because range scientists also satisfied the epistemic criteria of science. The distinction between epistemic and social criteria therefore did not exist in the historical development of range science because range scientists simultaneously satisfied the epistemic criteria of science and the social criteria that flowed from different political objectives and different power relations between researchers and ranchers.
- Heredity and the Human Condition: A Study of 20th Century Genetic Accounts of AlcoholismRussell, Mark C. (Virginia Tech, 2002-11-22)This dissertation takes as its starting point some curious historical parallels in research on the heritability of alcoholism from opposite ends of the 20th century, and the underlying continuity in assumptions implicated by these parallels. Rather than review mainstream historical narratives on the origins of genetic research and alcoholism studies, I examine evidence and developments as yet unexplored by scholars. First I examine the origins of recent research models and diagnostic criteria that provide evidence for the hereditary nature of alcoholism. Then I consider the assumption of genetic determinism and its relationship to strategies of propaganda employed by the Eugenics movement early in the century. Using these historical "snapshots" I draw out conceptual and philosophical problems with the genetic explanation of alcoholism that continue to confront researchers today. These limitations suggest two possible avenues of resolution: either we develop finer-grained strategies for distinguishing social deviance from physical disorders, or we develop an integrated understanding of the complex interplay of human biological and cultural systems by extending the approach known as Developmental Systems Theory. In the conclusion, I explore these options and their potential ramifications for our understanding of alcoholism in hereditary and human contexts.
- Hyperadaptation - Another Missing Term in the Science of FormRudnick, David Jr. (Virginia Tech, 1997-04-28)In a 1982 paper, Gould and Vrba argue that a conflation of the two components of adaptation of a feature, historical development of the feature and present utility, has caused evolutionists to overlook a missing term in the science of form, which they call 'exaptation'. In the present project, I show that evolutionary biology still contains a confusion in the use of 'adaptation' due to an inappropriate perception of the interaction between the two components of adaptation. Because of the confusion, evolutionists have missed another term in the science of form. Evolutionary theory, specifically the treatment of adaptation, would profit from the introduction of a term referring to features that have a selective history which causes them to appear overly well adapted to their present function. I suggest we refer to these features as hyperadaptations, since they appear to be hyperbolized adaptations. By introducing hyperadaptation into the conceptual framework of adaptation, we can sharpen our understanding of related concepts (adaptation to function, exaptation, maladaptation, etc.) and remove or reduce some confusion regarding the interplay between analysis of historical pathways and ascriptions of (current) function in the diagnosis of adaptation. Furthermore, the improved framework should allow evolutionists to more adequately explain biological phenomena.
- Igniting The Light Elements: The Los Alamos Thermonuclear Weapon Project, 1942-1952Fitzpatrick, Anne (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-23)The American system of nuclear weapons research and development was conceived and developed not as a result of technological determinism, but by a number of individual architects who promoted the growth of this large technologically-based complex. While some of the technological artifacts of this system, such as the fission weapons used in World War II, have been the subject of many historical studies, their technical successors -- fusion (or hydrogen) devices -- are representative of the largely unstudied highly secret realms of nuclear weapons science and engineering. In the postwar period a small number of Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's staff and affiliates were responsible for theoretical work on fusion weapons, yet the program was subject to both the provisions and constraints of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission, of which Los Alamos was a part. The Commission leadership's struggle to establish a mission for its network of laboratories, least of all to keep them operating, affected Los Alamos's leaders' decisions as to the course of weapons design and development projects. Adapting Thomas P. Hughes's "large technological systems" thesis, I focus on the technical, social, political, and human problems that nuclear weapons scientists faced while pursuing the thermonuclear project, demonstrating why the early American thermonuclear bomb project was an immensely complicated scientific and technological undertaking. I concentrate mainly on Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory's Theoretical, or T, Division, and its members' attempts to complete an accurate mathematical treatment of the "Super" -- the most difficult problem in physics in the postwar period -- and other fusion weapon theories. Although tackling a theoretical problem, theoreticians had to address technical and engineering issues as well. I demonstrate the relative value and importance of H-bomb research over time in the postwar era to scientific, politician, and military participants in this project. I analyze how and when participants in the H-bomb project recognized both blatant and subtle problems facing the project, how scientists solved them, and the relationship this process had to official nuclear weapons policies. Consequently, I show how the practice of nuclear weapons science in the postwar period became an extremely complex, technologically-based endeavor.
- The Impacts of Owning Private Companies on University Faculty: The Experiences of Biotechnology Faculty and University Administrators in One UniversityMcArthur, Maureen . H. III (Virginia Tech, 1997-06-18)It has recently become rather common for life science faculty to own a private company related to university research, an extreme form of entrepreneurial activity. Yet our understanding of how this changes the experiences of the entrepreneurial scientists and administrators is limited. This thesis, based primarily on in-depth interviews with three entrepreneurial biotechnology faculty, their graduate students and employees, their department heads, and university-level administrators, reveals how scientists and administrators are responding to conflicts and others' perceptions of conflict arising from their entrepreneurial activity. The faculty and administrators organize these conflicts into five categories: issues which they consider to be genuine conflicts but do not act upon; issues which they consider to be genuine conflicts and do act upon; issues which they do not consider to pose genuine conflicts but which they act upon because others perceive those issues to be conflicts; issues which they consider to be conflicts but which none of the principals expect to be experienced at their particular university; and issues which they do not consider to raise genuine conflicts whether experienced at their university or elsewhere. This thesis also shows how entrepreneurial faculty are incorporating business into their teaching and are altering their interactions with academic peers and graduate students all due to their entrepreneurial activity.
- «
- 1 (current)
- 2
- 3
- »