Dendrochronology, the science of assigning precise and accurate calendar dates to annual growth rings in trees, was the first independent dating technique available to prehistorians. Archaeological tree-ring dating came of age at a time when North American archaeologists concerned themselves primarily with time-space systematics, yet had no absolute and independent dating techniques available to guide their analyses. The history of archaeological tree-ring dating from 1914 through the end of World War II is often reduced to discussions of the discovery of specimen HH-39 on June 22, 1929 and considerations of the National Geographic Society Beam Expeditions of 1923, 1928, and 1929. The development and integration of archaeological tree-ring dating is in fact much more complex than these simplistic histories indicate. The "bridging of the gap," as symbolized by the discovery of HH-39, represents merely the culmination of an intense 15-year long research effort that included at least seven "beam expeditions" and a great deal of laboratory and brilliant archaeological research. By 1931, four Southwestern archaeological research institutions had hired dendrochronologists to conduct archaeological tree-ring dating in support of their various research interests. By 1936, dendrochronology was being applied in support archaeological research in the Mississippi Valley and Alaska. By 1942 however, Southwestern archaeological tree-ring dating once again became the exclusive domain of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, and by 1950 efforts to extend tree-ring dating to other parts of North America as well. A controlled analysis and comparison of tree-ring sample collection activity, correspondence, unpublished research records, and the publication record relevant to North American archaeological tree-ring dating from 1914 to 1945 provides a chronicle of important events in the development of archaeological dendrochronology, provides an understanding of the processes through which tree-ring dating became incorporated in increasingly sophisticated archaeological analyses and interpretations of Southwestern and indeed North American prehistory, serves as a case study for a proposed unilineal model of the development and incorporation of analytical techniques in archaeology, and lays the foundation for a body of theory regarding the development of ancillary chronometric and archaeometric techniques and their application to archaeological problems.

This thesis addresses two specific moments in the professional career of the French surgeon and anatomist Charles Nicholas Jenty (?-at least 1777) whose biography includes long residencies in both England and Spain. While generally being studied in the context of the illustrations included in his anatomical atlases Jenty's biography and the extent of his scientific activities are marked by notable gaps. This thesis focuses on Jenty's membership in The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and the chemical experiments he performed in London in 1761. It introduces for the first time in English an analysis of his surgical treaty published in 1766 in Spanish during his initial career in Spain. Finally, new biographical information is provided as a preliminary study for further investigation. / Le présent mémoire porte sur deux moments concrets dans la carrière professionnelle du chirurgien et l'anatomiste Charles Nicholas Jenty (?-au moins 1777) dont la biographie comprend de longs séjours et en Angleterre et en Espagne. Bien que la vie professionnelle de Jenty a été étudié dans le contexte des illustrations qui font partie de ses atlas anatomiques renommés, sa biographie et l'étendue de ses activités scientifiques se distinguent par des lacunes notables. Le mémoire se concentre sur l'adhésion de Jenty dans la Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, et la réalisation de ses expériences chimiques en 1761 lorsqu'il se trouvait à Londres. Le mémoire présente pour la première fois en langue anglaise l'analyse de son traité de chirurgie publié en 1766 en langue espagnole au moment où il a débuté sa carrière en Espagne. De nouvelles informations biographiques sont également présentées dans le cadre d'une étude préliminaire qui mènera éventuellement à une étude plus approfondie.

Book 3 of Jonathan Swift's Travels into the Remote Nations of the World offers a thorough critique of the eighteenth-century scientific world--a world marked by systematization, theoretical speculation, stories of "progress," and innovation, which people have commonly embraced and into which the "modern" mind had unresistingly and perhaps unconsciously placed itself. Because Book 3 appears to indulge in a transparent attack on some specific eighteenth-century events, ridicule seems to be the primary device used to undermine the practices of the scientific community. However closer inspection reveals that Swift's satire is not grounded in the topical particulars of the Eighteenth Century, but addresses such general problems, such as moral deficiency, intellectual arrogance, tyranny, which are common to human experience. Moreover, his attack, not dependent upon ridicule, involves complex rhetorical strategies, including some subversive reader-indicting techniques that challenge and ultimately compel readers to take an active role in resolving the dilemma (intellectual, philosophical, moral, etc.) into which he has placed them. Thus the process of reading Book 3 makes the reader both an active supporter and sympathetic critic of scientific practices. The resulting tension is a primary contributor to the textual problems that have troubled the critics of Book 3 since the Travels first came out, but it is also what makes scrupulous attention to the text worthwhile.

Locke was a sceptic about the possibility of scientific knowledge of corporeal substance. Scientific knowledge is knowledge which is certain, universal, and instructive. According to Locke, to have certain and instructive knowledge of natural kinds (universal knowledge about species of corporeal substances) requires knowledge of the real essence of natural kinds. Since a real essence is the foundation for the properties a thing has, it must be known before a deduction of the properties can be done. Locke did not believe that it was possible for humans to know the real essence of corporeal substances. In my thesis, I provide an explanation for why he held these views. As my work shows, knowledge of the real essence of a natural kind is an involved process that requires first knowing the nominal essence of the natural kind, and then knowing the inner constitution of each member of the kind, knowing which aspect of the inner constitution of each member correlates to the overlap of properties used to delineate the natural kind, and finally, knowing how that aspect, which is the real essence of the natural kind, produces the properties it does. Without knowledge of the mechanics of how the physical real essence produces the mental ideas we cannot know whether the connection between the real essence and the properties is a necessary connection or a mere correlation. Unless we know why there is a connection, we cannot know, with certainty, that the connection will hold in the future or for other like configurations. Locke relies on the mind-body problem to explain why we cannot know the mechanics behind the connections. The mind-body problem has not been given appropriate emphasis in Lockean study. And yet it is uniquely capable of handling the two claims Locke makes about natural science: (1) our knowledge of corporeal bodies can never qualify as scientific knowledge and (2) our knowledge of corporeal bodies can be improved in ways that are useful to human life.

This dissertation traces evidence of the competing epistemologies of the individual and the social through four Victorian novels and through the scientific, philosophical, and medical discourses that were emerging at the time that the novels were being written. Though the two types of epistemology are not necessarily inimical to each other, the heavily empirical and positivist climate of intellectual opinion between the years 1829--1876 fostered the notion that statistical observation was inherently superior to the study of individuals as individuals, a notion confronted by each of the studies my dissertation addresses. I describe how the discourses of medical statistics, natural history, physiology, and psychology inflected the narrative structures and styles of the industrial novel, sensation fiction, the high realist novel, debates about public health, and writings about the sciences themselves during a period of considerable scientific change, the years 1829--1876. The epistemological tensions I locate within the scientific discourses may better explain aspects of the novels that have been previously identified as thematic incoherences or confusions of genre. All of the chapters together provide a sense of both the Victorians' investment in and suspicion about the efficacy of empiricist claims of objectivity and certainty, particularly the suggestion that the intense empirical study of aggregate populations would necessarily lead to the identification of fixed laws of nature and social behavior. As my readings of both earlier and later novels indicate, some Victorians hoped to move from observable laws to an understanding of the unobservable and unpredictable, perhaps even to provide a language for those words and behaviors that could not be plainly spoken or readily classified. This dissertation shows, however, a conflicted philosophical and scientific vision produced in each of these novels as a result of their dual focus on individuals and aggregates, a double vision that for us brings into focus the Victorians' uncomfortable awareness of the limits of empiricist description.

Following World War II, new institutions were created to manage international health issues and assist developing nations in addressing their public health problems. Bilateral aid agencies and multilateral organizations designed, promoted, financed and implemented various programs to alleviate the burden of disease in the Third World, but also pursued political goals. In this dissertation, I analyze the development of international health activities of the Communicable Disease Center (CDC) from 1948 to 1972, from the first overseas assignment of a CDC officer until the end of major global public health campaigns at the beginning of the 1970s. My focus is on the role and motivations of CDC leaders and field epidemiologists who aimed and worked to transform the public health agency from a marginal international player into an important actor in the institutional constellation.In extending activities from the U.S. to the international arena, the CDC, as a national health agency, faced legal and political obstacles which limited its access to foreign localities where international health programs were being implemented. I argue that if expertise in field epidemiology existed in Atlanta and CDC leaders expressed a desire to see their agency take a more prominent role, the deployment of CDC personnel overseas remained problematic. To circumvent these obstacles, the CDC utilized development agencies, public health technologies and multilateral health organization as conduits to get access to foreign environments, procure international field experience to its epidemiologists and make an impact on the control of infectious diseases. As I show, it was especially during the 1960s that these three trajectories coalesced to ensure CDC's place as a public health actor of international reach and contributed in establishing its credibility. The exploration of the CDC's relationships with these international health actors and technologies also demonstrates the tensions deriving from the arrival of a new actor of international health, the limits of expertise when opposed by political considerations and the various tactics employed to secure a role in the design, implementation and management of public health programs abroad. / Après la Deuxième guerre mondiale, de nouvelles institutions sont créées afin de gérer les dossiers de la santé internationale et d'assister les nations en voie de développement dans la prise en charge de leurs problèmes de santé publique. Les agences d'aide bilatérale et les organisations multilatérales ont imaginé, promu, financé et implanté plusieurs programmes dans le but d'alléger le poids des maladies dans le Tiers monde, mais aussi à des fins de politique étrangère. Dans cette thèse, j'analyse la construction des activités de santé internationale du Communicable Disease Center (CDC) de 1948 à 1972, période correspondant à sa première mission outremer jusqu'à la fin d'importants programmes de santé internationale au début des années 1970. Je me concentre sur le rôle et les motivations des dirigeants du CDC et des épidémiologistes de terrain, qui visaient à transformer leur agence de santé publique, d'abord un acteur marginal, en un joueur important dans la constellation institutionnelle de la santé internationale. Dans l'expansion de leurs activités de la scène nationale à l'échelle internationale, le CDC, en tant qu'agence de santé nationale, a été confronté à des obstacles légaux et politiques limitant leur accès aux territoires étrangers où les programmes de santé internationale sont implantés. Je démontre que si le CDC disposait d'une expertise en épidémiologie de terrain et même si leurs dirigeants désiraient jouer un rôle international important, le déploiement des officiers du CDC à l'étranger demeurait problématique. Afin de contourner ces obstacles, le CDC utilisa les agences de développement international, les technologies de santé publique ainsi que les organisations multilatérales comme conduits afin d'accéder aux territoires d'outremer, donner une expérience internationale à ses épidémiologistes de terrain et modifier profondément les conventions sur le contrôle des maladies infectieuses. Tel que je le démontre, ces trois trajectoires fusionnent dans les années 1960 afin de confirmer le statut du CDC en tant qu'acteur de la santé internationale et contribuent à établir la crédibilité de l'institution. L'exploration des relations du CDC avec ces institutions et les technologies de santé publique permettent également de mettre en relief plusieurs éléments : les tensions découlant de l'arrivée d'un nouvel acteur institutionnel de la santé internationale, les limites de l'expertise qui est parfois en opposition avec des considérations politiques et les diverses tactiques utilisées pour s'assurer une place dans la mise sur pied, l'implantation et l'administration des programmes de santé publique à l'étranger.

Today, the perception of the Alps – and mountains in general - as an object or place of scientific and aesthetic value is an acknowledged element of Western culture. Before the eighteenth century, however, Europe possessed a markedly different mentality towards its mountain heart – one of fear and disdain toward the dangerous alpine desert. Yet the eighteenth century witnessed a reversal of this centuries-long prejudice as the cultivation of empirical methodology, coupled with the concomitant institutionalization of science and emergence of bourgeois culture paved the way for a transformation of Europe's alpine mentality. The pioneers of this change were Horace-Benedict de Saussure and Jean-André de Luc, natural philosophers of Swiss descent. Advocating meticulous observation, precision instrumentation and fieldwork, along with an implicit awareness of alpine aesthetics, Saussure and de Luc became the first to systematically study and appreciate the scientific and aesthetic value of the high Alps. Investigating the roles of Saussure and de Luc in transforming the perception of the Alps, this dissertation will focus on the core elements of their scientific methodology, demonstrating how the confluence of these components provided the catalytic force necessary to cast the Alps anew. / De nos jours, la façon de voir les Alpes et les montagnes en général, en tant qu'objet ou lieu qui a une valeur scientifique et esthétique, est tout à fait accepté par la Culture occidentale, Cependant, avant le XVIII ième siècle, l'Europe possédait une mentalité totalement différente à l'égard de son coeur montagnard, elle considérait ce désert alpin dangereux avec peur et mépris. Le XVIII ième siècle a vu un revirement de ce préjudice qui datait de centaines d'années. La culture de la méthodologie empirique à laquelle s'ajoutera l'institutionnalisation des Sciences et la naissance de la culture bourgeoise, ont ouvert la voie à une transformation de la mentalité alpine en Europe. Horace-Benedict de Saussure et Jean-André de Luc,tous deux physiciens d'origine Suisse, furent les pionniers de ce revirement. C'est en poussant à faire des observations méticuleuses, avec des instruments de précision et en faisant des recherches sur le terrain tout en ayant une sensibilisation absolue à propos des principes esthétiques alpins, c'est ainsi que Saussure et de Luc devinrent les premiers à en faire une étude systématique et à apprécier la valeur à la fois scientifique et esthétique des Hautes Alpes. Cette dissertation mettra l'accent sur les rôles de Saussure et de de Luc quant à la transformation de la perception des Alpes et se concentrera sur les éléments principaux de leur méthodologie scientifique, montrant comment la convergence de ces éléments fournit la force catalytique nécessaire pour présenter les Alpes dans un nouveau contexte. fr

<p> In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner began vaccinating individuals against small pox by using matter from the pustules of the cow pox. Though extremely controversial because of its discomforting mixture of animal and human, by the end of the Romantic period, vaccination was celebrated as the safest way to immunize the British population. Through the practice of vaccination, Britain found a way to save its body politic from a destructive epidemic while affirming the strong connection between individual health and collective well-being that writers of the period like Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley recognized in their works. From the beginning then, medical immunity was inherently connected to politics; at the same time that Jenner was experimenting with vaccination, writers were debating over the most effective way to stifle the "jacobin influenza" and the "French malady," the contagious revolutionary ideas migrating to England from France. </p><p> Importantly, the use of medical terms and concepts to define the political points to the already immunological process by which modern political subjects are born, a process explored by contemporary biopolitical theorists like Roberto Esposito and which my project grounds in the historical record of early modernity. In particular, I argue that the rupture in sovereignty caused by the French Revolution, resulted in a shift in the way that political subjectivity was conceived. Individuals, rather than being constituted in relation to a transcendental sovereign whom, according to Hobbes, they created to protect themselves, instead internalize sovereign power. In a sense, the modern political subject comes into being through an essential immunization. </p><p> The discourse of what I call "medico-politics" made its way into the literature of the period. In fact, literature distinctively influenced how the modern, medicalized political subject was imagined. Capital-L literature&mdash;itself an burgeoning kind of discipline&mdash;was drafted into the immunizing project of modern politics because of the way it disciplines readers' bodies and minds. While Saree Makdisi claims that there is a "uniquely Blakean slippage between political and biological language" during the period and other critics view the relationship between literature and medicine as unilateral and metaphorical, I argue that medical practices like inoculation not only influenced literature, but became a part of literature's own self-definition as a modern discipline. </p>

<p> This dissertation is a series of textual case studies on nontraditional sources for <i>li</i>[special characters omitted]"calendro-astronomy" circa 250 BCE - 250 CE: (1) the silk manuscript guide to military planetary astronomy/astrology <i>Wuxing zhan</i>[special chracters omitted] (168 BCE), (2) excavated calendars and state <i>li</i> manuals, and (3) the <i>Jin shu</i>'s [special characters omitted] record of the debate surrounding a failed attempt at li reform in 226 CE. This selection affords us a number of unique cross sections through the astral sciences. Balancing transmitted with excavated sources, I emphasize realia and their perspective on era technical knowledge, the formats in which it was produced and consumed, and its transmission and practice beyond an elite court-centered context. In addition to the three elements of <i>li</i>--calendrics, eclipses, and planetary astronomy--my selection draws together the broad array of astral sciences, exploring distinctions in genre, sociology, and epistemology between, for example, mathematical astronomy, hemerology, and omenology, and the (tortuous) processes by which knowledge moved between them. Each chapter also juxtaposes the normative descriptions of manual literature with products of practice&mdash;tables, calendars, and test results&mdash;to reflect upon the distance between them and, thus, the limitations of the former as historical testimony. Across these cross sections, my study focuses on the question of empiricism and progress. I foreground these topics <i>not</i> because they define twentieth-century notions of science but because, as I argue, they define early imperial notions of <i>li</i>&mdash;a point that our twenty-first-century aversion to positivism and Whig history tends to obscure. To this end, I catalog the conceptual vocabulary of observation and testing, submit empirical practices to mathematical and sociological analysis, and, most importantly, explore the formation and function of legend&mdash;the histories of science that early imperial actors wrote and recounted in their own day. </p><p> As it stands, the dissertation has four body chapters. Chapter 1 provides a history and sociology of the astral sciences in the Han, covering the sources, legend, and conceptual vocabulary of <i>li</i>, the history of Han li from the perspective of both ideas and institutional reforms, and a survey of participants' backgrounds, motivations, education, and epistemological contentions. Chapter 2 examines how the Wuxing zhan manuscript segregates and conflates distinct genres of planetary models, then sketches the subsequent history of these genres, showing how, despite seemingly opposite orientations to reality, actors gradually rewrote and reassessed (crude) hemerology-based omenological (<i>tianwen</i>[special characters omitted]) models through the lens of progress made in mathematical (<i>li</i>) ones. Chapter 3 explores a similar gulf that opened between astronomy and calendrics in this period, as well as the gulf between imperial ideology&mdash;within which the calendar was the premier symbol of cosmo-ritual dominion&mdash;and the actualities of the production, distribution, and use of calendars in a manuscript culture. Lastly, chapter 4 analyzes the two epistemic strategies at the center of (the <i>Jin shu</i>'s take on) the circa 226 CE court debate on <i>li</i>: the quantitative determination of "tightness" (accuracy) of lunisolar and planetary models through competitive testing, and the contestation of claims through the deployment of precedence from the history of the field.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-11, Section: A, page: 4868. Adviser: Jan Nederveen-Pieterse. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-315). Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.