Browsing by Author "Seltzer, Michael William"
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- Atomic testing and population genetics: the AEC and the classical/balance controversy, 1946-1957Seltzer, Michael William (Virginia Tech, 1993)The position of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in the 1950s on the genetic hazards of fallout and radiation was a distortion of the views of geneticists from both sides of the classical/balance controversy, an intrascientific dispute among geneticists. In their attempt to demonstrate the harmlessness of test fallout, AEC officials argued that low levels of radiation were at worst genetically insignificant, and at best genetically beneficial. These arguments ran counter to the prevailing views of geneticists and represented a misleading attempt to deflect public and scientific criticism of the AEC’s atomic testing policies. Among the factors contributing to the distortion of views on genetic effects among the general public and government officials were the AEC’s unwavering commitment to atmospheric atomic testing; the failure to include geneticists in policy-making positions within the AEC and governmental radiation policy committees; confusion over the genetic effects to populations, as opposed to individuals; and the sharp polarization within the genetics community that resulted from the theoretical disagreements embodied in the classical/balance controversy, a dispute over the nature of genetic variation and evolutionary natural selection.
- The Technological Infrastructure of ScienceSeltzer, Michael William (Virginia Tech, 2007-08-27)In this dissertation, I explore a selection of recent work in the philosophy and history of experiment, with an eye toward reformulating its focus and redirecting its future path. Specifically, I re-examine a traditional problem in the philosophy of experiment: how to make sense of scientists' attempts to separate experimental “signal” or “entity” from background “noise” or “artifact.” This aspect of the analysis of the practice of scientists—the day to day task of getting one's experimental equipment and techniques to give reliable results that will be accepted by prevailing scientific standards—requires modifications in order to be made compatible with an adequate notion of historiography and with a philosophically and historically tenable view of scientific epistemology. I show that the concept of historical narrative is a crucial, if not primary, construct in answering these questions about interpreting experimental practice. Particular historical narratives, and the historiographies that guide their construction, constitute the crucial evidence for any legitimate view of the epistemological and cultural significance of scientific experimentation. However, narrativity and historiography must be deconstructed before their conceptual significance for experimentation can be evaluated adequately. The metahistorical construct I implement in order to analyze questions concerning scientific experimentation is the technological infrastructure of science.Joseph Pitt's concept of the technological infrastructure of science, a material/cultural network of artifacts and structures that enables and sustains the mature sciences, provides the theoretical foundation for my analysis of experimentation. I extend and refine Pitt's concept of technological infrastructure in order to create a metahistorical tool that researchers in many fields, including Science and Technology Studies (STS), Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology, Cultural Studies (of Science and Technology), History of Science, and History of Technology, may utilize when analyzing experimentation. To this end, I develop the technological infrastructure as an incorporation, extension and/or replacement of, for example, Thomas Kuhn's “disciplinary matrix,” Bruno Latour's “network,” Peter Galison's “ short-, middle-, and long-term constraints,” Ian Hacking's “coherence of thought, action, materials, marks,” Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's “experimental system,” Andrew Pickering's “mangle of practice,” and Richard M. Burian's “interaction of mechanisms, of structures and functions, at a great many levels.”