abstract: This dissertation is an historical analysis of the science of human origins, paleoanthropology, examining the intersection of science and culture around fossil human ancestors (hominins) over the last century and a half. Focusing on fossils as scientific objects, this work examines three controversial fossils from the science’s history asking, how do fossils formulate, challenge, and reconfigure notions of what it means to be human? The introduction reviews the historiography of paleoanthropology and the gaps that exist in the literature. Chapter two examines the first case study, the type specimen of Homo neanderthalensis, known as the Feldhofer Neanderthal, providing a biography of the object from its discovery in Germany in 1856 until its species designation in 1864. Chapter three briefly links the Neanderthal’s story in time and space to the next fossil’s story. Chapter four picks up the story of paleoanthropology in 1924 in South Africa, with the discovery and initial analysis of a specimen nicknamed the Taungs Baby, which was labeled a new hominin species, Australopithecus africanus. Chapter five is another brief chapter connecting the Taungs Baby story in time and space to the final specimen examined in this work at the end of the century. Chapter six examines the final case study, a specimen discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, designated a new species named Homo floresiensis and nicknamed the Hobbit. Through comparing contrasting, and connecting the stories of these three specimens, three major conclusions emerge about the field. First, the fossils themselves play an important role in knowledge production about the hominin past. Second, scientific practice shaped both interpretations of fossils and larger questions of what it means to be human. Third, the scientific practice is itself shaped by local culture, which continually interacts with attempts to establish a global perspective about the human past. The perspective gleaned through the eyes of these three fossils therefore reveals the way shifting, rather than eternally true, claims are embedded in culture and intertwined with the perspectives of the humans conducting the science. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology 2020

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<p>When debating the structure of the cosmos, Raphael delivers to Adam perhaps Milton's most famous line: "be lowly wise." With the promise to "justify the ways of God to men," Milton does not limit man's knowledge to base matters, but reclaims the heights of "other worlds" for the poet. Over the course of the seventeenth century, the natural philosophers' material explanations of the natural order were slowly gaining authority over other sources of knowledge, the poets prime among them. My dissertation takes up the competing early modern claims to knowledge that Milton lays down for Adam. I argue that natural philosophy, what today we call "science," emerged as the dominant authority over knowledge by appropriating the poet's imagination.</p><p>The poet's imagination had long revealed the divine hand that marked nature--a task that, as Sidney put it, merited the poet a "peerlesse" rank among other professions. For Bacon, Galileo, and Royal Society fellows, the poetic imagination revealed material explanations of nature's order that other orthodox models and methods could not. For the first decades of the seventeenth century, the imagination aligned poetry and natural philosophy as complementary pursuits of knowledge: Sidney's poet was to imagine a "golden" world that revealed the divine order, the material cause of which Bacon's natural philosopher was to discover in nature. But as the Royal Society fellows countered the claim that they peddled fancies, they severed ties with the poet. In one ingenious rhetorical move, Royal Society fellows proclaimed themselves to have perfected the poet's imaginative work, securing the imagination for natural philosophy while disavowing poetry as the product of an idle fancy. Such rhetoric proved as powerful then as it does now. For Margaret Cavendish, the poet occupies the supplemental role that "recreate[s] the mind" once it grows tired of the "serious" natural philosophical studies. After the Restoration, then, the important role of the poetic imagination would go largely unrecognized even as it set itself to work in what would become the separate disciplines of literature and science.</p> / Dissertation

ABSTRACT Around 65 AD, the Ancient Roman philosopher Seneca wrote his only text concerning Natural Phenomenon: Natural Questions. Considered since medieval times as part of a trinity of great thinkers including Plato and Aristotle, Seneca’s work in rhetoric, philosophy, and legal theory still receive praise today. The praise is not replicated for Natural Questions, however. Modern historians who consider the work paint it as uninspiring. Pliny, another Roman author and philosopher, wrote a far more encompassing and detailed work called Natural History, and it is this work that is considered the premier Roman comment on Natural Philosophy. These contemporaneous works become juxtaposed and used to criticize Seneca’s work as inferior. A deeper consideration of the texts --primarily the subject material and use of poetry-- will determine that Seneca and Pliny wrote to different audiences and belong to different genres.

abstract: The goal of science education in the United States is promoting scientific literacy for all students. The goal necessitates understanding the nature of science-what science is as a body of knowledge, explanatory tool, and human enterprise. The history of science is one of the most long-standing pedagogical methods of getting at the nature of science. But scientific literacy also encompasses education in scientific inquiry, and in the relationships among science, technology, and society (STS), as well as fact and theory-based subject-matter content. Since the beginning of the standards-based reform movement (circa 1983) many attempts have been made to codify the components of scientific literacy. National level voluntary standards have lead to state standards. Under No Child Left Behind, those state standards have become integral parts of the educational system. Standards are political in nature, yet play the role of intended curriculum. I examine one thread of scientific literacy, the history and nature of science, from its beginnings in science education through the political perturbations of the last thirty years. This examination of "the history and nature of science" through the history of standards-based reform sheds light on our changing conception of scientific literacy. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Biology 2011

This thesis compares the ways in which the nationalisation process impacted the research practices of academics from two universities, the University of Rio Grande do Sul and the University of Parana. Systematic comparisons of both institutions located in the South of Brazil has shown that the differences between them were, indeed, significant during pre-nationalisation years. In Brazilian terms, they are ‘close’ together since only seven hundred kilometres separate them. However, the necessity for regionalised studies on the development of academic science is demonstrated in this thesis through a focus on specific faculties that achieved remarkably different research results, despite their geographical proximity. The comparative analysis carried out in this thesis reveals that significant differences existed, such as institutional arrangements, disciplinary boundaries and networks, despite the fact that they were often found under similar academic arrangements. The nationalisation project carried out in 1950 did not alter these differences overnight, but introduced a new element in both settings that would shape their scientific capabilities to this day. Substantial new evidence presented here indicates that in the early 1950s President Dutra, perhaps inadvertently, forced research-minded academics in both universities to consider the possibility of adapting their research projects to their nationalised institutions. Because of the chain of events enabled by this initiative, in later years, these universities became some of the most prominent institutional settings for scientific research in Brazil. A comparative study of the differences and similarities between ongoing practices in these academic settings at the moment of nationalisation indicates that nationalisation did not occur in an historical vacuum; rather, it enhanced and legitimised deeply rooted academic traditions that came to shape local research cultures over the following decades. When this context is explored it becomes clear that an understanding of nationalisation actually lends greater coherence to traditional chronologies of Brazilian academic science.

The Systematics community works to increase our understanding of biological diversity through identifying and classifying organisms and using phylogenies to understand the relationships between those organisms. It has made great progress in the building of phylogenies and in the development of algorithms. However, it has insufficient provision for the preservation of research outcomes and making those widely accessible and queriable, and this is where database technologies can help. This thesis makes a contribution in the area of database usability, by addressing the query needs present in the community, as supported by the analysis of query logs. It formulates clearly the user requirements in the area of phylogeny and classification queries. It then reports on the use of warehousing techniques in the integration of data from many sources, to satisfy those requirements. It shows how to perform query expansion with synonyms and vernacular names, and how to implement hierarchical query expansion effectively. A detailed analysis of the improvements offered by those query expansion techniques is presented. This is supported by the exposition of the database techniques underlying this development, and of the user and programming interfaces (web services) which make this novel development available to both end-users and programs.

The main theme is the differences in response among the churches to the Shinto Shrine Issue in Korea under Japanese colonialism. The central focus is an inquiry into the possible reasons why some religious groups, including the Catholic and Methodist Churches, should choose the way of compromise, while others, such as the Presbyterian Church, represented by individual missionaries and the Non-Shrine Worship Movement and the Mount Zion Sect, chose the way of radical challenge and withdrawal. It is proposed in this study to concentrate on three major churches - the Roman Catholic, the Methodist and the Presbyterian.This study offers, firstly, a detailed analysis of the content of the debate, the attitudes and actions of the three churches towards the shrine problem in their historical evolution since 1931; secondly, an attempt is made to explain the different positions of the three churches in terms of the sociology of religion and the sociology of missions. The sociological consequences of religious experience provide a general framework. The main assumption is that the difference in ideological elements is more important in religious institutions than has been usually thought. In explaining the differences of position in the three churches, the following eight factors are proposed: (1) Theological emphasis; (2) Church structure; (3) World view; (4) Mission policy; (5) Relationship to nationalism; (6) Relationship to non-Christian religions; (7) Early historical experience; and (8) Nationalities of missionaries.The thesis is divided into two parts: (1) Part I (Chapters One to Three) reviews the theoretical and methodological literature relevant to the study of the Shinto Shrine Issue. It also surveys the introduction of the two principal forms of Christianity (Roman Catholicism and Protestantism) in Korea, and examines modern Japan, State Shinto and Christianity.(2) Part II (Chapters Four and Five) comprises a detailed analysis of the positions of the three Christian churches towards the shrine problem, and a systematic comparison of the different responses of the three churches by employing the above-mentioned eight factors.Three key factors are proposed in respect of the denominational division in the matter of the Shinto shrine question: theological emphasis, mission policy and church structure. Attention is also drawn to the historical discontinuity in motivation between the Non-Shrine Worship Movement by the fundamentalists and the recent political struggle for justice by the liberals. The legacy of the ordeal of the Shinto shrine controversy in the 1930s remains as an obstacle to the reconciliation between ultra-conservative theology and liberal 'minjung' theology. It is therefore demonstrated in this thesis that the particular form of religious outlook is a relevant factor in its own right, which is not to be reduced to other variables. Thus for the purpose of this study, the tools of Weber seem to prove more effective than do those of Marx.