Aspects of Descartes' notion of analysis in his mathematics are looked at in detail with a view to relating this notion to Descartes' work in natural science. Descartes' method in his mathematics and science are subsumed beneath a more general method of analysis termed by Descartes 'indirect problem investigation'. The distinction between Cartesian analysis and synthesis is discussed. In terms of natural science a specific interaction of (1) metaphysically deduced results with (2) empirical data, involving an attendant conversion of secondary qualities to primary qualities for the solution of such problems, is advanced using the magnet as an illustration. A possible relationship with Descartes' methodology in his metaphysics is suggested.

This thesis discusses the rise of air pollution to become a major public and official concern in America during the 25 years after 1945. What had been largely ignored as a sporadic local smoke nuisance was seen as a nationwide crisis demanding federal intervention by 1970. Although air pollution was among the most salient issues creating a sense of environmental crisis and facilitating the emergence of environmentalism before Earth Day, 1970, recent environmental history studies have largely overlooked it, focusing instead on traditional conservation and wilderness preservation organizations and often criticizing these for their white, male, affluent, "elitist" character. However, the public-health/antipollution wing of early environmentalism drew broader support from women, minorities, and the working class as well, as citizens mobilized regarding real threats, not mere amenities or linguistic constructs. Air pollution was an issue in England, Continental Europe, and America long before 1945 due to health worries and economic damage, yet local government and industry throughout the industrial world long persisted in constructing the issue as merely an aesthetic nuisance, aided by quietist scientific and medical experts. Even after 1945, when major improvements in science and technology expanded control capabilities and understanding, local and state power structures often still ignored the problem and growing public complaints. Consequently, angry citizens increasingly demanded federal intervention to override state/local nonfeasance, and the federal government gradually responded, creating the (now sometimes criticized) present federal regulatory approach to environmental policy. Three case studies--Los Angeles, New York City, and rural central Florida--depict wider variations, contrasts and similarities in the national battle against air pollution and illustrate why traditional localism and federalism were unable to adequately address such aspects of the problem as recalcitrant interstate industries, interstate pollution problems, or state/local governments deliberately sheltering polluting industries. This thesis also reflects on other persistent problems and patterns in environmental policy, such as the politicization of science and medicine to serve as weapons in legal battles for economic purposes, or the general public's frequent refusal, even while blasting major industrial polluters, to accept fully their own responsibility for causing environmental degradation.

This doctoral thesis analyzes the scientific and political debate about human-induced climate change, popularly known as "global warming," and describes the shaping influence of larger U.S. social dynamics and political entities (Congress, President, federal policies, NGOs, the right-wing, and industry groups) on the climate debate. Environmental concern and new science funding practices have profoundly altered the social dynamics and distribution of resources and recognition within meteorology. At a time where funding for scientific research is more difficult to come by, new levels of status and resources are available to climate modelers. This conflicts with a traditional hierarchy within the sciences which granted theoretical mathematicians and physicists the greatest levels of prestige. The older hierarchy often ranked climate modelers below higher-status scientists, labeling them as "engineers," "technicians," or "computer-operators." While their new status is contested, climate modelers presently enjoy increased levels of access to status, funding, and influence, because they respond to needs of policy makers and the environmentally concerned public. At the same time, empirical meteorologists and scientists in other fields doing less policy-relevant science have found their access to resources reduced--resulting in resentment among some scientists, particularly when the climate projections are known to be more uncertain and problematic than sometimes suggested. The thesis suggests that status competition among scientists, a tightening national funding situation, and environmental concern, can encourage favorable public claims concerning the reliability of computer-based climate projections. The strongest scientific critics of climate projections tend to be empirical meteorologists and theoretical or defense-related physicists. They object to projections of significant human-induced climate change by pointing to large uncertainties in the science. In addition to resistance to recent changes inside and outside scientific circles, the arguments of "contrarian" scientists--a small subgroup of vociferous critics--reflect competition for access to funding, status, and political influence, and staunch political convictions which converge with the far Right. An older elite of highly influential physicists forms one contrarian subgroup. The thesis discusses manifest differences in historical consciousness, values, and subcultural styles, between this old scientific elite of physicists and emergent scientific elites of environmental scientists.

This dissertation examines efforts by the largest American philanthropic foundations, particularly those established by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, to improve mankind by funding research in the fields of human behavior and biology. In this study I argue that during the period between the world wars foundation policies and practices revolved around three main themes: the formation of an "interlocking directorate" of foundation officers, scientific entrepreneurs, and university administrators; the promotion of the ideal of transcending disciplinary boundaries through "cooperation in research;" and the launching of a human engineering effort that was based on the premise that human problems could be investigated and attacked through scientific research. Throughout the interwar period, university research programs that were coordinated by well-connected scientific entrepreneurs, that pledged to cultivate interdisciplinary cooperation, and that fulfilled the goals of the human engineering effort received millions of foundation dollars. The case studies that form the centerpiece of this dissertation both exemplify the most successful grant applications of the interwar period and illustrate how the human engineering effort unfolded over time. The early phases of the human engineering effort were based on the idea that humans could be improved through the investigation and control of behavior and sexual reproduction. Exemplary case studies for the earlier phases of human engineering include a multi-million dollar grant package for Yale University behavioral sciences, initiatives related to the eugenics movement, and support for the National Research Council Committee for Research in Problems of Sex. Gradually, foundation-sponsored human engineering was transformed into an effort to investigate and control living beings on a structural, chemical, and molecular level. Case studies that epitomize this later phase include grants for biological science research at Stanford University and University of Chicago, and especially the cooperative bio-organic chemistry and molecular biology projects that foundations helped to launch at the California Institute of Technology. My analysis of these case studies, viewed through the lens of the interlocking directorate, the cooperation in research ideal and the human engineering effort, elucidates intersecting social, intellectual, political and economic factors that shaped knowledge production in the United States.

<p> It is well known that American botanist Asa Gray's 1859 paper on the floristic similarities between Japan and the United States was among the earliest applications of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory in plant geography. Commonly known as Gray's "disjunction thesis," Gray's diagnosis of that previously inexplicable pattern not only provoked his famous debate with Louis Agassiz but also secured his role as the foremost advocate of Darwin and Darwinism in the United States. Making use of previously unknown archival materials, this dissertation examines the making of Gray's disjunction thesis and its relation to his collecting networks. I first point out that, as far back as the 1840s, Gray had identified remarkable "analogies" between the flora of East Asia and that of North America. By analyzing Gray and his contemporaries' "free and liberal exchange of specimens," I argue that Gray at the time was convinced that "a particular plan" existed in nature, and he considered that the floristic similarities between Japan and eastern North America manifested this plan. In the 1850s, when Gray applied himself to enumerating collections brought back by professional collectors supported by the subscription system and appointed in governmental surveying expeditions, his view of nature was then replaced by one that regarded the flora as merely "a catalogue of species." I argue that it was by undertaking the manual labor of cataloging species and by charging subscription fees for catalogued species that Gray established his status as a metropolitan botanist and as the "mint" that produced species as a currency for transactions in botanical communities. Finally, I examine the Gray-Darwin correspondence in the 1850s and the expedition that brought Gray's collector to Japan. I argue that Gray's thesis cannot be considered Darwinian as historians of science have long understood the term, and that its conception was part of the United States' scientific imperialism in East Asia. In light of recent studies focusing on the history of field sciences, this dissertation urges that a close examination of a biogeographical discovery like Gray's thesis is impossible without considering the institutional, cultural, and material aspects that tie the closets of naturalists to the field destinations of collectors.</p>

Investigating the concepts of qi and mai and their functions in the oldest extant, recently excavated, second century BCE practice-oriented guides to pulse taking, moxibustion, and needling practices, this thesis aims to show the prominent influence of water imagery and suggests a way to conceptualize its significance. These texts can be seen as transitional in the development of acupuncture, whose later practice would involve use of metal needles and be almost exclusively associated with the cosmological concepts of yin yang and wu xing and circular movements of qi that reached popularity in the Qin and Han dynasties and attested in the oldest and most famous Chinese medical compilation, also of the Han, the Huangdi neijing . In contrast, the paradigm of water, with its unidirectional free flows, is what informs these early medical manuscripts' understanding of qi and mai and their physiological movements.

<p> Abstract not available.</p>

In July 1965, Lyndon Johnson committed the United States to the ground war in Vietnam. This thesis argues that the 1965 decision marks a turning point in American foreign policy by creating a near Machiavellian Moment for the United States characterised by the question of Republic or Empire? To understand how the near-Machiavellian Moment changed American foreign policy, this thesis compares and contrasts Dean Rusk and Henry Kissinger. They will be compared and contrasted by asking three general questions. How did they view the United States? How did they view the World? How did they view the United States' role in the world? Dean Rusk represents a pre-Machiavellian Moment figure. His foreign policy philosophy of liberal internationalism reflects a belief in America's exceptionalism. Rusk justified the war by arguing that the United States' commitment to a decent world order was under threat in South Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson represents the Machiavellian Moment figure. He was caught between the international system, the commitment to a decent world order, and the domestic sphere, a commitment to deliver America's promise to all citizens. To overcome the dilemma, Johnson attempted to wage war and carry out reforms simultaneously. The decision created an imbalance at the heart of the Republic. The imbalance within the American regime and between the American regime and the international system brought the United States to the brink of Empire. Henry Kissinger represents a post-Machiavellian Moment figure. He rejected Rusk's foreign policy universalism. For him, the United States is a "normal" country that pursues a limited foreign policy based upon realpolitik. Rather than seeking to reform the international system, Kissinger sought to manage it. The thesis concludes that Rusk and Kissinger and their foreign policy alternatives represent the inherent tension between the American regime and the international system it supports.

This study is intended to be a contribution to nineteenth century Egyptian historiography with particular reference to a discussion of aspects of the economic and social role and activities of the Greek community in Alexandria. Given, however, the almost total absence of studies on the role and activities of the modern history of the Greeks in Egypt, this study constitutes both a pioneering and preliminary contribution.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2008. / Thesis directed by Michael Zuckert for the Department of Political Science. "April 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 278-307).