Search Results

The founding of the Academic Assistance Council (AAC) in May 1933 was a rapid and constructive response to the Nazi threat to science and learning. Among the far-sighted academics involved was the physiologist A. V. Hill (1886–1977). He was to be a consistent, effective, and loyal supporter of the AAC and, as it became in 1936, the Society for Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL). Hill was remarkable in terms of his scientific achievements and his support of scientific organizations, most notably the Royal Society. Accompanying these activities was a set of social values concerning the scientist as citizen in a parliamentary democracy, and an agenda for science to modernize health care provision. Hill's commitment to the cause of academic refugees can be understood within a broader set of commitments and activities. Apart from many acts of practical assistance, Hill contributed to a broadening of the agenda of the SPSL, making academic freedom a core value. This chapter examines Hill's broader political vision of the defence of learning.

This chapter discusses Tehilla Lichtenstein’s activities as leader of the Society of Jewish Science; she succeeded her husband Morris Lichtenstein after his death in 1938. She viewed Jewish Science as something that “reveals to the Jew the great treasures contained within Judaism”. She articulated her views in over 500 sermons, essays, lectures, and radio broadcasts.

This chapter begins with an analysis of virtues of peace of mind as extolled by Tehilla Lichtenstein, Alfred Geiger Moses, Morris Lichtenstein, and Clifton Harby Levy. It then examines the reasons behind the lack of membership in the Society of Jewish Science. Finally, the emergence of Jewish community-based healing centers is discussed.

The Second World War gave Polanyi time and incentive to write about the foundations of freedom in economics, scientific inquiry, and socio-political organization. He felt that developing a satisfactory philosophy of freedom was the greatest contribution he could make to the war effort; in 1944, he rounded out his work on Keynesian economic theories with the publication of Full Employment and Free Trade. Because of his commitment to science as a model of free but responsible inquiry, he helped John Baker found the Society for Freedom in Science, an organization that opposed socialist philosophies of science as a tool that could and should be subordinated to the interests of the state.

The contributions to this collection were originally given at a conference held at the British Academy on 3–4 December 2008, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Academic Assistance Council in 1933, later the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (1936–98), and now the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics. This introductory chapter discusses the story of the SPSL and the flood of European refugee scholars and scientists from Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and their subsequent contribution to specific disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter focuses on the importance of Philipp Schwartz's role in the establishment of the Notgemeinschaft outside Germany, his remarkable success in placing thirty refugee scholars in the new University of Istanbul within a few months in 1933 (and, over the next twenty years, in recruiting some 250 ‘first-rate scientists (émigrés) for the Turkish Government’), and the close ties established with the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL) by his successor, Dr Fritz Demuth. Between 1936 and 1946, the Notgemeinschaft actually shared the SPSL's accommodation, and provided an invaluable database of refugee academics to the Society and to the American Emergency Committee. In 1937 Demuth was recognized as advisor to, and honorary member of, the SPSL Executive Committee.

This chapter presents the story of how two women, the author's mother, Eva Ehrenberg, and the late Secretary of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, Esther Simpson, saved his life and gave him an academic career. He believes that his story might not be worth telling but for the fact that few who escaped from the clutches of Hitler can have been as fortunate as he had been.

This chapter provides a guide for the preparation of an 8 to 10 hour teaching module on the history of epidemiology within a Master's or PhD curriculum. The text can also be of help for preparing a one to two hour session within the epidemiology teaching for undergraduate medical students. In an annex, a historical sketch offers a broad framework and some illustrative material for the module, to be supplemented by the references, particularly those denoted as ‘key’, at the end of the chapter. The objective of the module is to focus and raise the motivation of students for an historical perspective on epidemiology, promoting a critical yet positive attitude to the discipline placed within the context of the wider development of science in society. At a time when all scientific activities have increasing (and increasingly recognized and debated) implications of economic, social and ethical nature, this historical perspective becomes more of a necessity than a curiosity.

This chapter introduces Liang Zhongtang, one of the specialists who, during the late 1970s, voiced concern about what might happen if the one-child policy became political reality. The first part focuses on Liang's life story, tracing the imprint of Maoist politics on his intellectual training, professional location, and personal experiences. This is then followed by a study on the practices whereby he created a distinctive Marxian humanism of population. Finally, the chapter compares the three sciences of population, as well as the larger intellectual frameworks, political values, and visions of state–science–society interrelations that these embodied.

Chapter 2 focuses on Ibn Khaldun’s ‘new science’. His approach was a positive rather than a normative one – the study of state and society as they are rather than as they should be. In this sense, he departed from the dominant pattern of writings on state and society. Ibn Khaldun’s rationale for developing a new field of science is based on his critique of the conventional historical science of his time. That critique of conventional history and his argument for a new science to overcome its shortcomings are explained in detail, with emphasis on the key methodological aspects of the new science and its main features.

During the 1930s, in fulfilment of its adult education obligations as a public service monopoly organisation, the fledgling British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired more than a hundred domestic radio programmes which addressed the relations of science and society. This chapter examines governance challenges confronting the Corporation in these ambitious programmes, with a focus on three controversial science-related topics of particular salience to this turbulent decade: religion, eugenics and war. Having elected to disseminate the diverse, contentious, and often conflicting views held by the scientific community on these crucial issues, the BBC encountered a succession of difficulties arising from varied political stances amongst its speakers, other scientists, and its own staff alike. Nonetheless, through an array of effective governance mechanisms, the BBC helped to sustain modern science’s widely-accepted high stature, and uphold scientists’ reputation as leading contributors to Britain’s public good.

This chapter describes the last few years of Wollaston’s life, during which he more frequently engaged in outdoor pursuits such as fishing and shooting expeditions. He donated some of the last platinum in his possession to Faraday’s researches on optical glass and published papers on the brightness of stars, a two-fluid barometer and a double lens setup for microscopes that became known as a Wollaston doublet. In late 1827, Wollaston began to suffer from intermittent paralysis in his left arm and in late 1828 his worsening condition confined him to his home. In preparation for death, he bequeathed his belongings to family, made donations to the Royal, the Geological and the Astronomical Societies, and prepared personal gifts to many friends, which were distributed just prior to his death on Dec. 22, 1828. The chapter also gives examples of his mental acuteness just prior to death.

Charles Kingsley had a great deal of interest in geological science. His work provides direct links to the gentleman geologist who had pioneered its “heroic age.” Kingsley secured honorary membership upon his founding of the Society of Natural Science, where scientific instruction was delivered to the middle-class men of Chester. He was later greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, whereby his studies on geology interrogated his practice as a novelist. His fictional heroes were practitioners of geology, from Yeast's Lancelot Smith, to Alton Locke in the 1850 novel of the same name. This seeping of his scientific musing with the craft of literature brought about the censure of Kingsley's work in literary criticism for it seemed he was more interested in making statements than the conventions of plot. This chapter explores Kingsley's works and how they have influenced the development of geology.

We are attuned to the latest potential threat to our health, and this creates a fertile soil for inflating the findings of observational studies. In fact, most reported findings are false or exaggerated. Nevertheless, such findings can be invoked by scientists, advocates, and health agencies to draw attention to a potential danger. Media reports of overstated findings can give rise to information cascades – highly-publicized campaigns that can sow needless alarm and lead to misguided regulation and policies.

This chapter explores the two main existing modes in which professional ethicists interface with the scientific, regulatory, and policymaking communities, and advocates adopting a new, third mode of interaction that is especially appropriate for synthetic biology. It analyzes the existing modes of interaction and engagement between and among the human sciences, the biosciences, ethics, and organizational forms. It examines three predominant modes of engagement: the representation of technical experts, the facilitation of “science and society,” as well as inquiry and equipment. This chapter is oriented toward understanding how potentially viable design strategies emerge, how these strategies might inform synthetic biology, and what efforts are undertaken to integrate them into a comprehensive approach to the near future.

The Ørsted family moves to Studiestræde where it lives for the rest of Ørsted's life. Description of Ørsted's flat and study. Inspired by the Royal Institution and London Institution his plan ripens to establish the Society for the Dissemination of Science in Denmark in cooperation with Prince Christian Frederik, successor to the throne of Denmark and head of the Danish Academy of Arts. Unfortunately, he does not succeed in obtaining sufficient donors to fulfil his ambitious plans and ends up with a more modest society. A brief survey of Ørsted's former abortive plans to establish an independent research institute as well as his article on ‘Science Considered as one of the Basic Elements of Human Education’ to rally support is presented. Soon the dilemma between science instruction and mechanical practice threatens to split the board. The audience is classified.

Economic considerations of the effects of intellectual property rights on science and innovation often incorporate unwritten assumptions about the proper purpose of science and innovation and the social and economic justifications for IPRs. In thinking about IPRs and their effects in a broader context, it is perhaps useful to attempt to uncover and evaluate these assumptions. In this chapter we aim to elucidate and analyse these implicit normative values to ground consideration of not just the economic but the ethical implications of IPRs in the context of science and innovation. The chapter argues that while science has both public and private dimensions and may be driven by a range of different motives such as increasing knowledge, improving human welfare and wellbeing, or economic gain, we are not obliged to treat all such motives as morally equal.

Part I explains the emergence of the educational tradition and the idea of a darülfünun [House of Sciences]. There had been several attempts to build a university, and each attempt had failed for different reasons. Part I discusses the socioeconomic reasons of such attempts and their failures. As far as education was concerned, the Ottomans inherited the academic institutions and traditions that had proliferated under the rule of their political predecessors, the Seljuk Turks (1037–1194). These charitably funded centers of learning had been in continuous existence since the founding of the Ottoman Empire until its end in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Until the nineteenth century, the Ottomans continued to seek answers to their most pressing intellectual and practical problems from within Islamic culture and its institutions of learning. It was only after the Ottoman government was compelled to face the political advance of Europe that Ottoman administrators turned their attention westward for scientific and pedagogical inspiration.

Ørsted's report on his experiments on sonorous figures opened the doors to membership of the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters in 1808, although not without opposition from his old rival, professor Bugge, head of the society. Soon after Ørsted challenged him. Bugge suggested a ballistic investigation of Congreve's rockets for the annual prize question, whereas Ørsted came up with an alternative on the relationship between electricity and magnetism. This was a provocation, since Bugge believed with the French Academy of Science that a relationship between the two had already been doomed to denial. No satisfactory prize essay was submitted, and Ørsted had to come up with the correct answer himself 12 years later. More quarrels with Bugge are described. The same year Ørsted acquired new premises for himself and his collection of instruments, and his father having sold his pharmacy in Rudkøbing moved in with his son.