74 research outputs found
Review of “Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture” by W. Patrick McCray
No full textReview of “Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture” by W. Patrick McCra
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Making a Factory Observatory: Mount Wilson, Regional Development, and the Environment in Southern California, 1900--1930
No full textThis dissertation tells the story of the founding and development of Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) during the early twentieth century. Located in the San Gabriel Mountains, just north of Los Angeles in Southern California, this astronomical observatory was founded in 1904 by astrophysicist George Ellery Hale with financial funding from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. I consider MWO as a factory of science: an observatory that efficiently produced a variety of astronomical knowledge. Hale was the factory manager who led the effort to locate a suitable site for the factory observatory, secured patrons, built the infrastructure, hired scientific workers, and expanded his enterprise by marketing his scientific resources and products. In doing so, I extend the focus from prominent astronomers and instruments typically associated with MWO to include the role of sociocultural and natural environments in shaping scientific practices.I argue that MWO was not a scientific inevitability but a regional contingency that reflected Southern California's sociocultural and natural environment. Emphasizing Hale's management style, which he had honed from a young age, I show that the site survey and regional patrons played a vital role in securing the Carnegie Institution's patronage to establish the factory observatory. The trail widening up Mount Wilson served as establishing infrastructure, an example of tangible regional investment, and a case of how white settlers used marginalized immigrant labor to accelerate the development of Southern California. By examining how astronomers, telescope operators, and human computers created scientific products, I highlight the nuanced gender dynamics of the scientific workers and how spatial layouts enforced existing sociocultural norms. I explore how the factory observatory expanded and gained prominence in the scientific community through the astronomers' use of unique scientific resources at the observatory, such as the Snow Solar Telescope and the 60-inch reflector telescope. By taking such a view, I connect Hale and MWO with the industrialization of the United States during the nineteenth century, the growth of Chicago and Southern California during that time, the role of sociocultural biases and assumptions, and the utility and limitation of the natural environment posed
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The Global Environmental Moment: Sovereignty and American Science on Spaceship Earth, 1945-1974
No full textThis dissertation argues that the still-existent political contours of international engagement on global environmental issues were forged in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in what I call the global environmental moment, during planning for and in the actions taken surrounding the first intergovernmental conference on the world environment: the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE), held in Stockholm Sweden in June 1972. Throughout the prior years of planning for the UNCHE, relatively less developed nations of the global South, led by Brazil, demanded that all environmental efforts must support--not limit--endeavors toward economic development, and along with other members of the Unite Nations, refused to relinquish their national sovereignty for the sake of global environmental protection. Ultimately, the UNCHE produced a Declaration, an Action Plan, and a new United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to coordinate environmental planning within the UN; yet these outward successes institutionalized non-binding, disjointed, and underfunded efforts that split the global North and South over the means for attaining global environmental protection. With the UN conference refusing to alter the status quo of geopolitical organization and impotent against stemming the environmental impact of economic development, large numbers of non-governmental organizations, politically active scientists, and environmental advocates of all stripes also descended on Stockholm to voice their own opinions on the causes and solutions to ongoing environmental degradation. Yet, the alternative conferences in Stockholm where these outliers met also fractured in political conflicts between advocates for the global South and those promoting environmental remedies popular in the global North. Collectively, the collapse of the global environmental moment amid these political and ideological differences created the historical ruts in which debate on global environmental issues have continued to tread ever since
Will small be beautiful? Making policies for our nanotech future
No full textWith the passage of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000, US investment in nanotechnology research and development soared quickly to almost US$1 billion annu-ally. The NNI emerged at a salient point in US history as lawmakers worked to reshape national science policies in response to growing international economic competition and the increasing commercialization of academic science. This paper examines how advocates of nanotechnology successfully marketed their initiative. It pays especial attention to their opti-mistic depiction of societies and economies improved by nanotechnology, and considers why utopian techno-visions continue to flourish despite their tendency to ultimately disappoint
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