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This dissertation looks at Aristotelian political thinkers of the later Middle Ages and argues that they meet all of the criteria of a mature Kuhnian science. Scholars of medieval Europe have spent decades arguing over exactly how one should define medieval Aristotelianism and which thinkers qualify as Aristotelian. I answer this question by turning to the philosophy of science literature. By using the criteria laid out by Thomas Kuhn- a common education, a shared technical language and general agreement on problem choice- I am able to parse out a group of political thinkers who qualify as a scientific community. My dissertation then goes on to illustrate how several different medieval thinkers were able to operate within this Aristotelian paradigm. This project gives scholars of the Middle Ages a more useful lens through which to view the phenomenon of medieval Aristotelianism. For those interested in political science more broadly, I demonstrate that our field has, in fact, experienced a period of maturity, in which scholars shared a unified paradigm and proceeded with their research in concert. I also show some of the benefits and limitations of a common research agenda in the study of politics.

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Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2009. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 47-06, page: 3510. Adviser: Elizabeth S. Watkins.

In the foundational scholarship on literature and evolution, there remains a tendency to focus on Darwinian evolution's influence on Victorian literature. Without ignoring Darwin's importance to both the late-19th century and our own time, this dissertation contributes to an emerging interest among historians and literary scholars in exploring the pre-Darwinian, transatlantic contexts of evolutionary discourse. By returning to a time when 'the development hypothesis' was a more fluid concept, we can examine how writers and poets on both sides of the Atlantic were able to actively shape its meanings and to use it as a framework for reflecting on their literary craft. In this dissertation, I argue that for Walt Whitman and Herman Melville, development is a key term in their particular constructions of a distinctive American literature in the 1840s and '50s. It underlies Whitman's conception of an experimental poetic voice in the 1855 Leaves of Grass as well as Melville's ambitions for literary narrative in Mardi and Moby-Dick. At the same time, the sweep of their careers well beyond the publication of Origin of Species in 1859---into the last decade of the nineteenth century---allows us to chart their later responses as evolution increasingly gained acceptance and Darwin became a front man of sorts for evolution. Although Whitman and Melville continue to incorporate evolution and scientific modernity into their late-career self-fashioning, we can trace a movement toward increasing distance, disillusionment, and abstraction in these deployments. This dissertation has implications not only for contemporary Whitman and Melville studies but also for re-assessing the broader trajectory of 19th-century American literary history. In conventional textbook accounts, the influence of Darwinian evolution is measured primarily in terms of the emergence of literary naturalism, a realist genre known for its unsparing look at lives caught in the scope of unsympathetic natural forces. Here, I suggest that developmental evolution offered alternative formal and epistemological possibilities for mid-19th-century American literature, enabling Whitman and Melville to develop hypotheses about literary truth and human value. / text

Neoclassical Medicine: Transformations in the / History of Science

This dissertation critically appraises the scientific identity of the discipline of political science. In it, I argue that in spite of the proclamations indicating the death of positivism, the spirit of positivism still reigns in the discipline's construction of science. The positivist state of the discipline carries with it, among other things, a belief in a world "out there" to be studied, understood and known completely. This entails faith that fact and value, subject and object, knower and known can all be reliably separated and that neutral and objective knowledge can build on itself in a progression toward the truth of political affairs. Mainstream political scientists, the bulk of the discipline's members, I contend, still embrace this positivist view of the world, a view that includes ontological and epistemological presuppositions that I find to be untenable. In support of my conviction I appeal to the hermeneutic perspective that Heidegger and Gadamer encourage and connect it to the critical theory approach of Habermas and Fay, to the postmodern approach of Derrida and Foucault and to various feminist perspectives. My goal is to (re)construct the scientific identity of the discipline in ways that are epistemologically and ontologically more tenable for what I take to be a complicated social and political world. Ultimately, I settle on Donna Haraway's notion of "situated knowledges" as the most useful alternative (re)construction of science for the discipline of political science. Situated knowledges grasp and embrace the complex nature of the world. They deny the existence of any of the dichotomies that positivism holds dear, they insist on the interpretive and contextual nature of knowledge, and they demand that we understand knowledge to be partial, perspectival and contestable. In these ways, situated knowledges compel us to take responsibility for our knowledge claims and to become accountable for how those claims are used. These are vital issues for a discipline such as political science, a discipline that professes, in these "postbehavioral" days, to be relevant for contemporary political practices.

This dissertation is a partial translation of the thirteenth-century Islamic physician, Ibn Abi Usaybi'ah's biographical dictionary, the 'Uyun al-anba' fi tabaqat al-atibba' ( Sources of Information on Classes of Physicians) and an historical analysis of the 'Uyun. The 'Uyun is a biographical dictionary which encompasses the biographies of physicians from the ancient Greek period through the author's time, the thirteenth century. It contains the lives and works of the most elite physicians of these periods. The translation portion of the dissertation is of the fourteenth chapter of the 'Uyun which is the chapter on physicians of Egypt from the 'Abbasid period to the early Mamluk period. The historical analysis of this dissertation is an examination of the contents of the 'Uyun to see what it reveals about the status of physicians during this period and about the author's intentions in writing this book. Since the author was from Syria and studied in both Syria and Egypt, I have based my analysis mainly on the translation of the chapter on Egypt and also on evidence found in the fifteenth chapter on Syria. Thus, this dissertation serves to give modern scholars incite into the mentality of the author and his class during this time period in the Islamic world.

This essay offers an overview of the intellectual and social structures of science in the United States from the 1930s into the 1950s. It argues that Germanic immigrant scientists who fled the Nazis in the 1930s were vital in energizing a productive collegiality among scientists and reinvigorating a dialectical interplay between theorists and experimentalists, both of which characterize "classical" science. This unique intellectual contribution and the "internal dynamic" of doing science are described as becoming embedded in new social and ethical structures since World War II. New directions for research have been shaped by such "external" factors as the increased accountability of science, governmental mega-projects and secrecy, the enlarged dimension of "instrumentalities" in science, changes in social relationships in the laboratory, and changes in the expectations of the public. As a consequence, styles of doing science, the motivations of scientists, and theoretical/experimental interactions, all part of the "internal" dynamic of science, have been strained and transformed. The concluding chapter argues that the most appropriate designation for American science since the 1960s is not just "big." In the most expansive sense of the concept, it is Baroque.

By the 1840s medical men felt they were in the midst of an unprecedented malpractice epidemic. For the first time, American patients began to sue their physicians on a wide scale. Focusing on mid-century this dissertation describes, explains, and analyzes the origins of American medical malpractice. Patients sued their physicians in the 1840s because of immediate social, medical, and technological developments. The anti-status, anti-professional sentiment of the Jacksonian period antagonized the lay public. Americans had a long tradition of home remedies and had little patience with doctors who demanded respect and privilege but offered few cures. Intra-professional competition also generated conflict and many medical men incited suits against fellow practitioners. Dramatic advances in several areas of medicine crated unrealistic expectations in both physicians and patients and blurred standards of care. However, these immediate causes would not have engendered widespread suits without fundamental cultural changes. Many Americans changed their views on divine providence in the first half of the nineteenth century. This transformation allowed individuals to seek earthly causes for their misfortunes, assign blame, and demand compensation. At the same time a variety of forces combined to make Americans dramatically more concerned about their physical well-being. Finally, the erosion of traditional community customs inhibiting litigation and a transformation in individualism allowed patients to attack their physicians in court. These cultural developments did not cause malpractice suits, but without them widespread litigation would not have been possible. Malpractice law in the early part of the nineteenth century was in flux. American judges and lawyers relied on British precedents but altered them. Many scholars have claimed that legal relationships evolve from status-based responsibilities to contract-based responsibilities. I argue that this process occurred in malpractice law but was ultimately incomplete. The patterns set in the first half of the century continued through 1900. Many of the inciting causes of the 1840s disappeared. However new technological, social, professional, and legal factors arose to take their place. Most importantly, the underlying cultural trends that made the suits possible continued to develop and provided an increasingly hospitable social environment for malpractice suits.