Shark Bay is an extensive marine embayment located on the central coast of Western Australia that is recognised as a World Heritage Property on the basis of the Outstanding Universal Value of the natural environment of the region. This thesis examines the history of science at Shark Bay between the arrival of the first European explorers in the seventeenth century through to the official recognition of Shark Bay as a World Heritage Area in 1991. Each of the seven chapters is devoted to a different period in the development of scientific investigations, beginning with Dutch and English mariners and naturalists, passing on to French scientific explorers and British surveyors naturalists, and explorers, continuing through a variety of investigations in marine science and research in biogeography and evolution carried out by foreign expeditions and Australian field-workers, and culminating in the transformation of scientific investigations as a result of the rise and development of modern ecological science in the second half of the twentieth century. This development of science at Shark Bay is considered in light of existing frameworks for the development or spread of science in Australia, and in relation to current literature concerning the development or emergence of ecology in Australia. After evaluating the history of science at Shark Bay relative to existing knowledge of the spread of science and the emergence of ecology, the thesis concludes by proposing a new framework for the development of science and the emergence of ecology based on the experience at Shark Bay and with wider application to the history of science in Western Australia.

<p>This thesis investigates how gynaecology was established as a medical speciality in Sweden in the 1860s and onwards. Gender, power, professionalisation and the production of scientific knowledge are central themes. While previous research has shown that gynaecology as a discipline depends upon notions of Woman as radically different from Man, I show how this was manifested within Swedish gynaecology, an initially all male environment. Of special interest is institutionalisation, early career-paths and the development of therapy methods and theory. I argue that gynaecology reproduced and contributed to notions of sex-difference and a gender complementary way of thinking. </p><p>While gynaecology was formed as a surgically interventionist speciality with strong manly connotations, an education reform aiming at opening higher education to women was simultaneously discussed and eventually carried out during the 1860s and 70s. The advocates of this reform portrayed women as especially fit for becoming teachers and physicians, particularly treating women and children. Thus, two opposing gendered professional ideals operated. By focusing an elite group of early women physicians, I outline how the gynaecological construction of womanliness related to women physicians and how women physicians engaged with this notion: what strategies they used to enter a profession as manly as gynaecology had become; and how women gynaecologists engaged with their men colleagues’ therapeutic methods and views on patients and women.</p>

This thesis investigates how gynaecology was established as a medical speciality in Sweden in the 1860s and onwards. Gender, power, professionalisation and the production of scientific knowledge are central themes. While previous research has shown that gynaecology as a discipline depends upon notions of Woman as radically different from Man, I show how this was manifested within Swedish gynaecology, an initially all male environment. Of special interest is institutionalisation, early career-paths and the development of therapy methods and theory. I argue that gynaecology reproduced and contributed to notions of sex-difference and a gender complementary way of thinking. While gynaecology was formed as a surgically interventionist speciality with strong manly connotations, an education reform aiming at opening higher education to women was simultaneously discussed and eventually carried out during the 1860s and 70s. The advocates of this reform portrayed women as especially fit for becoming teachers and physicians, particularly treating women and children. Thus, two opposing gendered professional ideals operated. By focusing an elite group of early women physicians, I outline how the gynaecological construction of womanliness related to women physicians and how women physicians engaged with this notion: what strategies they used to enter a profession as manly as gynaecology had become; and how women gynaecologists engaged with their men colleagues’ therapeutic methods and views on patients and women.

This thesis will explore the intersectional construction of the British asylum network in the nineteenth century. It will look at gender, race, and class as factors in the diagnostic process, in addition to the confinement and treatment of the insane.

In mid-eighteenth century Paris, two Benedictine monks from the Congregation of Saint-Maur – also known as the Maurists – started compiling a universal dictionary of arts, crafts, and sciences. The project was initiated simultaneously with what would become one of the most famous literary enterprises in Western intellectual history: the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. The latter started as an augmented translation of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, but it was constructed with another French dictionary as its ideological counterpart: the Jesuits’ Dictionnaire de Trévoux. While the Encyclopédie eventually turned into a controversial but successful best-seller, considered as the most important medium of Enlightenment thought, the Benedictines never finished or published their work. After a decade, the manuscripts were put aside in the monastery library, and were soon forgotten. For about two hundred and sixty years, the Maurists’ dictionary material has largely escaped the attention of researchers, and its history of production has been unknown.      This dissertation examines the history and characteristics of the Maurists’ enterprise. The manuscripts are compared to the Encyclopédie and the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, and the project situated within its monastic environment of production, the history of the encyclopedic dictionary, and the Enlightenment culture. The study has an interdisciplinary character and combines perspectives of History of Science and Ideas, History of Monasticism, History of Encyclopedism, and History of the Book. The research procedure is distinguished by a microhistorical approach, where the studied materials are analyzed in a detailed manner, and the research process included in the narrative.       The dissertation shows that the Maurists early found themselves in a rival situation with the embryonic Encyclopédie, and that the two projects had several common denominators that distinguished them from the predecessors within the genre. At the same time, the Maurists were making a dictionary unique in the eighteenth century, which assumed a third position in relation to the works of the encyclopédistes and the Jesuits. The study provides new perspectives on the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, the intellectual activities of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, as well as the editor in charge of the Maurist dictionary: Dom Antoine-Joseph Pernety, otherwise known for his alchemical writings.

The heterogeneous field of posthuman theory allows for an account of community under the convergence of late capitalism and high technology and its spread to a global scale. Spanning bioconservative fears of a potential loss of agency and a human ‘essence’ through advances in technology, ‘transhumanist’ hopes for a biological transformation that would fulfil liberal goals for human development, as well as postmodern, feminist interpretations of the posthuman as instantiating a liberating break with liberal ideology and patriarchal structures, theories of the posthuman offer a productive starting point for exploring the transformations in understandings of human subjectivity and community at the turn of the twenty-first century. Placing the concept of community against a background of past totalitarianism and a possible future of an uncontested globalised neoliberal regime that high technology risks intensifying, the present study enquires into the possibility of a community that would escape the metaphysical logic of mastery subtending both past and present models of community and suggests that problematizing representations of the creation of what a strand in contemporary philosophy terms a non-totalising ‘communauté désoeuvrée’ and implicit proposals not for the revival of community as a teleological ‘oeuvre’, but for its rewriting may be found in works by Maurice G. Dantec, Michel Houellebec, and Antoine Volodine, works which have been labelled posthuman themselves by virtue of their incorporation of posthuman themes or structures that come in the shape of representations and problematisations of high technology and its intersection with late capitalism and narrative structures that mimic or subvert conceptions of subjectivity that can loosely be termed posthuman. These novelists write in a context of an ideological, technological, and commercial constraint that hampers literary and political agency and which is problematized both implicitly and explicitly in the use these writers make of representations of violence and literary strategies such as irony, ambiguity, and hermeticism. These representations and strategies, it will be suggested, could be read as subtle attempts to bypass those constraints and restore the potential of literary production to comment on and even intervene in the creation of community in a posthuman age.

Science and technology is regularly featured on radio, in newspapers, and on television, but most people only get firsthand exposure to ‘cutting-edge’ technologies in museums and other exhibitions. During this period, the Science Museum was the only permanent national presentation of science and technology. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the Museum’s history and the socio-political framework in which it operated. Understanding the delays in the Museum’s physical development is critical, as is understanding the gradual changes in the Museum’s educational provision, audience, and purpose. While the Museum was the main national exhibition space, the Festival of Britain in 1951 also provided a platform for the presentation of science and technology and was a statement of Britain’s place within the new post-War world. Specifically, within its narrative, the Festival addressed the relationship between the arts and the sciences and the influence of science and technology on daily life. Another example of the presentation of science was the quest for a planetarium in London - a story that involves the Science Museum, entrepreneurs, and Madame Tussauds. Comparing the Museum’s efforts with successful planetarium schemes isolates several of the Museum’s weaknesses - for example, the lack of consistent leadership and the lack of administrative and financial freedom - that are touched on throughout the work. Since most of this history is unknown, this work provides a fundamental basis for understanding the Museum’s current position, for making connections and comparisons that can apply to similar problems at other institutions, and for learning lessons from the struggles that can, in turn, be applied to other institutions.

Richard Rorty's main thesis in his work Philosphy and the Mirror of Nature centers on a critique of representationalism in a fundamentally relativistic way. The aim of this disseration is to grasp Rorty's ideas in broader sense as a critique of inadequate interpretation of knowing- that and shift the attention to knowing-how as a key to new understanding the success of natural sciences. The fact that something is reproducibly possible for us to make in the surrounding world is not relative, and it is precisely in this way that technology (knowing- how) spreads so successfully even at multi-cultural level. In contrast, the explanatory function (knowing-that) of the natural sciences is relative, making sense only in the context of what is already known and accepted. Natural sciences are so successful because their experiments and only then take agreement of hypothesis with experimental practice (knowing-how) as the criterion of its acceptability. This dissertation offers, as a way out of Rortian relativism, the concept of "open authority" and proposes a new development in philosophic pragmatism based on it.

Asiatic cholera has been called the scourge of the nineteenth century, for it caused the untimely death of millions throughout the world. During its four visits to the United States, unknown thousands of Kentuckians fell victims to the disease. In attempting to prevent the dreaded scourge, Kentuckians became more conscious of the need for cleaner cities, pure water and adequate sewage disposal. Modern waterworks facilities, sewage treatment and disposal facilities have provided the means by which the United States has conquered this scourge of the nineteenth century, for with these facilities cholera is the easiest of all communicable diseases to prevent. But, as with the eradication of any disease, constant vigilance and continued use of modern scientific knowledge are necessary to prevent its return. The disease is presently ravaging India and the Far East, and with modern jet travel it could bypass quarantine stations and enter the United States undetected. The “seeds” of the pestilence could be sown across the nation within a few hours. The only safeguard is modern sanitation facilities, for no permanent inoculation or miraculous cure has been developed. Today many rural areas of Kentucky and other states use wells and old cisterns that are, or could easily become, contaminated by human fecal matter. A fifth visit from cholera should not be necessary to correct the ignorance and complacent attitudes concerning inadequate sanitation facilities that exist in these areas of the nation. This study attempts to show the horrors of cholera’s four visits to Kentucky, and how the fear of the disease stimulated interest in public health.

Esta pesquisa aborda o episódio histórico do grupo que institucionalizou a genética de populações com drosófilas no Brasil, a partir de 1943. Este grupo fez parte do Departamento de Biologia Geral da antiga Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras da Universidade de São Paulo (FFCL/USP), e teve como expoentes André Dreyfus (1897-1952) e Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975). O objetivo desta pesquisa é analisar este episódio mediante o cotejamento de uma síntese, fruto de estudos anteriores realizados por este autor (SIÃO, 2007; SIÃO 2008), com cinco entrevistas realizadas com docentes do atual Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva do Instituto de Biociências da USP, que tiveram contato direto ou indireto com os pesquisadores que atuaram no referido grupo, entre as décadas de 1940 e 1950. A opção metodológica adotada para as entrevistas foi a da História Oral conforme proposto por Meihy e Holanda (2010). Segundo essa abordagem, as entrevistas passam por um tratamento composto de três fases, a saber, transcrição, textualização e transcriação. Em seguida, é realizada a devolutiva social, que é a devolutiva da transcriação ao colaborador entrevistado para validá-la mediante carta de cessão e autorização de o que vem a constituir a apresentação pública do material e serve de subsídio para a elaboração da narrativa histórica da pesquisa. As entrevistas tiveram como objetivos analisar os seguintes aspectos: o percurso histórico dos docentes entrevistados no Departamento de Genética e Biologia Evolutiva; a percepção dos docentes entrevistados sobre o episódio da parceria entre Dobzhansky e Dreyfus para o desenvolvimento da genética no Instituto de Biociências da USP e no Brasil, nas décadas de 1940 e 1950; as contribuições específicas que o grupo teria realizado naquele período; o papel do ensino de genética de populações a alunos do ensino médio da educação básica; e, por fim, o papel da História da Ciência no Brasil na educação científica. Na análise das entrevistas pode-se constatar que os colaboradores, incluindo os que não tiveram contato direto com os pesquisadores da época, mostraram conhecimento do histórico do Departamento, apresentando detalhes que correspondem aos dados das fontes escritas. Ressaltaram a relevância da parceria entre Dreyfus e Dobzhansky à institucionalização da genética animal no Brasil, bem como, apresentaram outros temas de pesquisa desenvolvida à época que consideram terem sido importantes na consolidação do grupo. Entre as pesquisas, mencionaram os estudos de polimorfismo e preferência nutricional desenvolvidos por Antonio Brito da Cunha (1925-), os estudos com a Rhynchosciara realizados por Crodowaldo Pavan (1919-2009) e Martha Erps Breur (1902-1977), o envolvimento de alguns membros com a genética humana, como foi o caso de Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa (1917- 2010), Newton Freire-Maia (1918 -2003) e Francisco Mauro Salzano (1928-). Sobre o ensino, apontaram algumas dificuldades em trabalhar, por exemplo, o tema de genética de populações com alunos da Educação Básica. Todos os colaboradores disseram que a história da ciência tem papel relevante no ensino de ciências. Além dos resultados específicos, a pesquisa propiciou um recurso documental em história oral, as entrevistas, para ser utilizado por professores e pesquisadores como fonte às pesquisas em história da ciência no Brasil. / This research addresses the historical episode of the group which institutionalized the population genetics with Drosophila in Brazil, from 1943. This group was part of the Department of General Biology of the old Philosophy, Sciences and Letters Faculty of the University of São Paulo (FFCL/USP), and had as exponents André Dreyfus (1897-1952) and Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975). The objective of this research is to analyze this episode through the comparison of a synthesis, fruit of earlier studies accomplished by this author (SIÃO, 2007; SIÃO, 2008), and five interviews with professors of the current Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology of Biosciences Institute of USP, who had direct or indirect contact with those researchers who worked in the mentioned group between the decades of 1940s and 1950s. The methodology adopted for the interviews was the Oral History as proposed by Meihy and Holanda (2010). According to this approach, the interviews undergo a treatment which consists of three phases, namely, transcription, textualization and transcreation. Subsequently, the social feedback is done, which is the devolution of the transcreation to the interviewee for him to validate it by letter of cession and also an authorization of what can come to be the public presentation of the material, and serve as the preparation of the historical narrative of this research. The interviews had as objectives to analyze the following aspects: the historical background of the professors interviewed in the Department of Genetics and Evolutionary Biology; the professor\"s perception of the partnership between Dobzhansky and Dreyfus episode for the development of the genetics at Biosciences Institute of USP and in Brazil, in the decades of 1940s and 1950s; the specific contributions that the group should have made in that period; the role of the population genetics teaching to high school students of basic education; and, finally, the role of the History of Science in Brazil in scientific education. In the analysis of the interviews, it\"s evident that the contributors, including those who had no direct contact with the researchers of that time, showed knowledge of the history of the Department, presenting details that match the data of the written sources. The importance of the partnership between Dreyfus and Dobzhansky to the institutionalization of the animal genetics in Brazil was pointed out, as well as other research topics developed at that time, which were considered relevant to the consolidation of the group. Among the researches, some were mentioned: the studies with polymorphism and the nutritional preference developed by Antonio Brito da Cunha (1925-), the studies with Rhynchosciara conducted by Crodowaldo Pavan (1919-2009) and Martha Erps Breur (1902-1977), the engagement of some members with human genetics, such as the case of Oswaldo Frota-Pessoa (1917-2010), Newton Freire-Maia (1918 -2003) and Francisco Mauro Salzano (1928-). Concerning teaching, some difficulties in working were pointed out, for example, the issue of population genetics with basic education students. All contributors have said that the history of science has an important role in science teaching. Besides the specific results, the survey has provided a document resource on oral history, the interviews, to be used by teachers and researchers as a source to the research in the history of science in Brazil.