Fellows Lectures

How to Plant a Colonial Garden: Botanical Work in the British Empire July 26, 2018, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium

In the 18th century, European empires sought to discover and cultivate spices, medicinal plants, and other cash crops. The British government turned to colonial botanic gardens to help develop agriculture and explore the plant life of its imperial possessions. This talk explores the triumphs and tribulations of people working in botanic gardens in India, Australia, and the Caribbean, as they navigated diverse social, political, and environmental landscapes to pursue botany in the service of empire.

The speaker:

J’Nese Williams is a doctoral candidate studying the History of Science and Modern British History at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, “The Texture of Empire: British Colonial Botanic Gardens, Science, and Colonial Administration,” uses local activities of the British colonial gardens as a window into the operation of empire and government support of science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. J’Nese is interested in the ways that the gardens responded to the needs of their local communities and the impact of these local programs on the perceived success or failure of individual gardens. Her dissertation also looks closely at botanic garden workers, including individuals of low social status, enslaved and free, whose botanical expertise led to recognition for themselves and for the gardens as scientific institutions. J’Nese will spend the 2017-2018 year in residence as a fellow at the Humanities Institute at the New York Botanical Garden and the Linda Hall Library. She earned a BA in history at Princeton University.
Differentiating Astronomy and Astrology in Early Modern Europe December 12, 2019, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

The lecture:

If today there is a sharp distinction between astronomy, the science of stars, and astrology, using horoscopes to make prediction, that has not always been the case. Before the seventeenth century, the words astronomy and astrology were often used interchangeably, and most astronomers (for example, Ptolemy and Kepler) were also astrologers. Putting the two disciplines in opposition is essentially a construction of the seventeenth century. However, the roots of the distinction are far older and can be traced back to medieval times, when ancient astronomical and astrological texts were first recovered. In this talk, Jean Sanchez examines how the distinction between astronomy and astrology had been puzzling scholars for centuries, and how a consensus was finally found in the early modern period. Behind this question of terminology lies the problem of distinguishing good and bad knowledge, and judging the heritage of the past. It is a question about the bases and norms of scientific knowledge. It is a question about building boundaries in the intellectual world.

The speaker:

Jean Sanchez is a PhD candidate at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris in history and philosophy of sciences. At the Linda Hall Library, he is working on his current project, “Conceptions of astrology among Parisian scholars (1570-1680),” a history of the intellectual demarcation between science and superstition in the seventeenth century.
The Living Sea: How a Group of Women Botanists Proved that Coral Reefs are Alive, 1880-1930 October 11, 2019, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

The lecture:

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, algologists (a botanist who studies algae, also called phycologists) conducted research on the multiple ecological roles of algae on coral reefs. This talk explores how algologists, and in particular Anna Weber-van Bosse (1852-1942) and Ethel Barton Gepp (1864-1922), reframed the discussion of coral reefs from geological structures to living units, thus shaping the modern concept of the reef ecosystem.

The speaker:

Emily Hutcheson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in History of Science. She holds an MA in History of Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA in History and Philosophy of Science from Florida State University, and a BA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale University. Her dissertation is on the history of coral reef science traces how reefs came to be seen as living communities between 1880 and 1930, through the work of a self-organized network of scientists.
Can Such a Thing be Doubted? Nietzsche and Principle of Identity in the History of Science August 15, 2019, in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library.

The program:

The principle of identity (A=A) has formed the foundation of western knowledge and science since the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid. It is well known that Friedrich Nietzsche fundamentally changed and influenced the political and intellectual climate of the 20th century. However, it is less well known that Nietzsche’s critiques of the principle of identity predate, by decades, the largest epistemological crises encountered by western thought. The consequences of this crisis began to be felt near the middle of the 20th century in logic, mathematics, and physics. Nietzsche’s explanation for why we were so easily misled has recently been confirmed by contemporary evolutionary cognitive science. Much of what we hold to be indubitably true and conceptually unassailable, including the principle of identity, are likely only useful illusions.

The speaker:

William A. B. Parkhurst is a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of South Florida and a Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. He received his BA in philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He received his MA in philosophy at San Jose State University. His archival research has been accepted for publication in several volumes as well as Nietzsche-Studien. His historical archival research focuses on Nietzsche’s critique of the principle of identity. This extends into Nietzsche’s critiques of logic, mathematics, language, morality, physics, and philosophy of science. Parkhurst’s research project at the Linda Hall Library uses Nietzsche’s critique of the principle of identity as a focal point of orientation for understanding how, historically, the principle of identity was established and then called into question in the western tradition and western science.
The World of Our Dreams: How America’s Plant Explorers Transformed Our Farms and the Food We Eat October 23, 2018, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

The lecture:

Many of the plants that populate our farms today are the result of federal plant introduction, an extensive effort by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to expand the range of species cultivated in the United States.The Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction (SPI) soon led the way. Beginning in 1898 and lasting for a period of about forty years, the “golden age” of plant exploration promised to rescue struggling farmers, revolutionize diets, and modernize American industries.

This lecture examines how a little-known team of explorers searched the world for enticing plants, looking closely at both what they accomplished and failed to achieve. It weaves together the stories of Frank N. Meyer, a Dutch immigrant and the namesake of the Meyer lemon; David Fairchild, the team’s charismatic leader; Wilson and Paul Popenoe, two brothers from Kansas who intertwined the fields of plant breeding and eugenics; and Howard Dorsett, a University of Missouri alumnus who helped introduce America to the soybean. Ultimately, while the plant explorers transformed American diets, the abundance of new plants often failed to translate into lasting biological diversity.

Amidst growing concerns about crop genetic diversity and food security, plant explorers remain central figures in the making of modern America. Join us to learn more about their work and complex legacy.

The speaker:

Dr. Rebecca Egli is a historian of agriculture and the environment in the United States. At the Linda Hall Library, she is conducting research for her current project, “Seeds of Misfortune,” a history of America’s plant explorers that examines the impact of plant introduction and breeding on the development of modern agriculture.

Rebecca grew up in Kansas City and received her PhD in history from the University of California, Davis in 2018. Her dissertation, The World of Our Dreams: Agricultural Explorers and the Promise of American Science, investigates federal scientists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, exploring developments in plant biology, attitudes towards breeding and race, and the ecological consequences of importing non-native plants and insects into the U.S. Her work has been supported by a number of organizations, including the Council on Library and Information Resources. She received an MA from King’s College London in 2010 and a BA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2008.
How French Philosopher Henri Bergson Helped 20th-Century Biologists Get Creative About Evolution November 29, 2018, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

The lecture:

In the first decades of the 20th century, French philosopher Henri Bergson was an international celebrity. His philosophy of time, or “duration,” was discussed in most intellectual circles and he was also popular with the general public. People would climb up the side of the building to listen in on his lectures at the College de France in Paris, and it is said that a lecture he gave in New York City in 1913 caused the first ever traffic jam on Broadway. In 1907, he published Creative Evolution, a book in which he discussed a burning question of the day, biological evolution, from a philosophical perspective. The book was rapidly translated into several languages and became an international bestseller. Among Bergson’s wide readership were many biologists including zoologist Julian Huxley (the grandson of Thomas Huxley who was also known as “Darwin’s bulldog”), geneticist Arthur Darbishire, and animal behavior scientist Conwy Lloyd Morgan.

What can a philosopher like Bergson teach us about the history of biology? The fact that many 20th-century biologists admired Bergson, and integrated his philosophical reflections about life into their scientific theories about life, clashes with the traditional representation of the 20th century as the era of extreme scientific specialization and of the definitive separation between science and philosophy. In this talk I propose to use the little-studied case of Bergson’s reception among the biologists of his time to think about the relationship between science and philosophy, both in the history of 20th-century biology, and, more generally, in our current state of affairs in which the humanities are often devalued. Bergson will help us think about how scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge can be viewed as complementary.

The speaker:

Emily Herring is a historian of biology and philosophy. She is using the collections at the Linda Hall library for her research on the reception of French philosopher Henri Bergson in French and British biology. Emily grew up in Paris and is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Leeds in the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science. She received a BA from the Sorbonne in 2012 and an MA from Paris Diderot University in 2014. She has recently published articles on one of the British Bergsonian biologists in her study, Julian Huxley, in the Annals of Science and on a little-studied case of 20th-Century institutionalized Lamarckism in the Revue d’Histoire des Sciences.
The Ascending Republic: Aeronautical Culture in France 1860-1908 August 23, 2018, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

Patrick De Oliveira earned a PhD in history at Princeton University. His research traces how the French navigated the interstices of politics, culture, and technology to rehabilitate the balloon (an artifact that became discredited soon after its invention in 1783). In doing so, French civil society cultivated a thriving form of airmindedness decades before the advent of the airplane—one that encompassed such distinct cultural strands as sacrificial patriotism, aristocratic modernity, and technological cosmopolitanism. Patrick’s dissertation shows how at the turn of the century aeronautics was, to a degree scholars have not previously suspected, a central element to France’s self-understanding as a modern nation. Ballooning became a patriotic endeavor that people from all political stripes could get behind, and helped shape the image of France as a nation in which advanced technology, quality, and style came together in a single package.

Patrick was a Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum in 2015-2016, and spent the 2014-2015 academic year in Paris as a Doctoral Exchange Fellow at Sciences Po. While in Kansas City, has conducted research in the Linda Hall Library’s rich collection of rare aeronautical volumes, which includes more than one hundred pamphlets, ballooning narratives, and aeronautical periodicals spanning the long nineteenth century.
Astronauts and Astrobiology: Military Space Science Before Apollo February 8, 2019, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

The lecture:

Seventy years ago, in February 1949—nearly a decade before Sputnik and the creation of NASA—the United States Air Force tasked a small group of doctors and psychologists with solving the biological problems of spaceflight. Under the banner of “space medicine” they conducted medical studies, simulations, and far-flung expeditions. This research resulted in early visions of both the American astronaut, and the places they might go. This talk explores this nearly-forgotten period of military space science in the 1950s and how it set the stage NASA’s Space Race in the 1960s. First, we will examine some of the earliest astronaut tests, which utilized a diverse range of subjects beyond the iconic white, male, military test-pilot, including regular soldiers, high-altitude Indigenous people, women pilots, mountaineers—even monkeys.

Beyond the task of keeping humans alive in space, Air Force space medicine experts also wondered about the places their military astronauts might travel to, primarily Mars. What kinds extraterrestrial life might they encounter there? Could it be used to establish a base? To answer this, they constructed tiny simulations of the Mars environment—called “Mars Jars”—and sealed different Earth microbes inside. These experiments kickstarted the scientific field now called “astrobiology”, but they also encapsulated the military’s Cold War approach to space and science. Remembering the military origins of both astronauts and life-on-Mars studies sheds critical new light on the triumph of Apollo, and the current shift toward private space ventures.

The speaker:

Jordan Bimm is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Post-Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University. During his Fellowship at the Linda Hall Library, he will research his current project, “Putting Mars in a Jar,” a history of early American astrobiology focusing on military life-on-Mars studies conducted in the early-to-mid-1950s.

Jordan grew up in Toronto, Canada, and received his PhD in Science & Technology Studies (STS) from York University in 2018. His dissertation, Anticipating the Astronaut, (awarded the 2014-2015 HSS/NASA Fellowship in the History of Space Science) explores the construction of the American astronaut in the military field of space medicine during the first decade of the Cold War. He is also the recipient of the 2013 Sacknoff Prize for Space History, and the 2016 Adams Center Prize for Cold War Military History. His research has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Slate, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, El Mundo, The Toronto Star, and The Life Sciences Podcast.
The Apex of Ptolemaic Astronomy: the Epitome Almagesti of Peurbach and Regiomontanus July 30, 2019, in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library.

The lecture:

One of the treasures of the Linda Hall Library is a relatively thin, unassuming volume printed in Venice in 1496, entitled Epytoma in Almagestum Ptolemei. This book, a reworking of Ptolemy’s astronomical masterpiece, the Almagest, was written in the early 1460s by Georg Peurbach and Johannes Regiomontanus, two of the most important figures of fifteenth-century astronomy. While it built upon earlier medieval commentaries on the Almagest, the Epitome Almagesti (as it is usually called) is remarkable for its depth of comprehension of even the most technical aspects of Ptolemy’s astronomy, its clear explanations, and its incorporation of new discoveries made by its authors and by Arabic astronomers. This work, which had circulated in manuscript form for 35 years before it was printed, became the textbook by which students of astronomy learned the intricacies of Ptolemy’s geocentric astronomy.

In his writings challenging the Ptolemaic system, Copernicus did not always use Ptolemy’s own work, the Almagest; instead, he often referred to this book by Peurbach and Regiomontanus. Indeed, the Epitome Almagesti did not just serve as the foil to Copernicus’s new theories; on the contrary, it contained proofs that were fundamental to his development of a heliocentric system.

Dr. Zepeda will tell the drama-filled story of how and why this book was written, as well as discuss its contents, its sources, and its influence upon the astronomy of the 15th and 16th centuries.

The speaker:

Henry Zepeda is a historian of science with his specialization in the medieval mathematical sciences, especially astronomy. He is a Teaching Fellow at Wyoming Catholic College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, and he worked in Munich for several years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus group at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His first book, The First Latin Treatise on Ptolemy’s Astronomy: The Almagesti minor (c. 1200), provides an edition, translation, and study of an influential medieval summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest.

At the Linda Hall Library, Henry has been working on a critical edition and analysis of the Epitome Almagesti. The Epitome Almagesti is a summary of Ptolemy’s Almagest, and it can arguably be considered the high point of the Ptolemaic astronomical tradition because of its depth of comprehension of even the most technical aspects of Ptolemy’s astronomy, its clear explanations, and its incorporation of new findings made by both of its authors and by Arabic astronomers. Better knowledge of this work will help scholars better understand the state of astronomy at the time when Ptolemy’s system was challenged by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and others.
After Innovation: Maintenance, Care, and Our American Dreams August 9, 2018, in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library.

Lee Vinsel is an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech. He earned his PhD in History and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University before working for five years as a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the social dimensions of technological continuity and change, with particular focus on how government influences technology. His first book manuscript, which is currently under review at an academic press, examines the history of automobile regulation in the United States from 1893 to the present to track how government action has shaped technological change over time. In 2015, Vinsel co-founded The Maintainers, a global, interdisciplinary research network that focuses on the maintenance, repair, and upkeep of technologies, rather than on traditional topics like invention and innovation. He earned a BA in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Urbana champaign and an MS in History and Policy from the Carnegie Mellon University.
The Unknown Copernicus: Spies, Printers, Amazons, and Body-Snatchers in an Age of Astronomical Revolution ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

April 28, 2016, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium

About the lecture:

We remember Nicholas Copernicus primarily as the first modern astronomer to propose that the Earth does not rest in the center of the universe but rather moves in a high-speed orbit around the Sun. Most of his professional life, however, was spent not in astronomy but in working as a church government official who oversaw political negotiations, property and boundary disputes, and even a short military campaign during an era of extraordinary political and social upheaval. This talk explores some of these other features of Copernicus’s time, including the colorful cast of characters who intersected with his life and work. What can these more Earth-bound aspects of his biography tell us about the context of how he came to revolutionize our understanding of the heavens?

About the speaker:

Karl Galle is a historian of science specializing in the early history of astronomy, cartography, and other mathematical arts. From October 2015 to June 2016, Dr. Galle is in residence at the Linda Hall Library as a Research Fellow. From 2011 to 2015 he was a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo, and before that he served as a science and technology policy fellow with the State Department and a foreign service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development. He holds a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from the University of London and is currently working on a biography of the life and times of Nicholas Copernicus.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Influential Books in the Development of Arithmetic and Algebra in the 15th and 16th Centuries ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

October 76, 2015, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium

Dr. Cynthia Huffman, University Professor of Mathematics, Pittsburg State University, and Research Fellow, Linda Hall Library

About the presentation: The world renowned History of Science Collection at the Linda Hall Library is home to many books which have impacted the development of mathematics. We will take a look in particular at some of the books which were involved in the development of arithmetic and algebra in the 15th and 16th centuries. Topics will include the introduction of the “new” Hindu-Arabic numeration system to Europe, the controversy over the solution of cubic equations, and the shift from rhetorical to symbolic algebra.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Red or White: How Cabernet and Chardonnay Came to Define Wine ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

July 20, 2015, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium

About the lecture: Throughout the twentieth century, France has dominated quality wine production. Italy, although a prolific producer, largely made “rough” wines of inferior quality. New world producers like California, Australia, and South Africa largely made sweet wines for the mass market. In her talk, Dr. Gabriella M. Petrick, will examine how the global palate for wine shifted from syrupy sweet to bold and dry by the turn of the twenty-first century.

The speaker: Gabriella M. Petrick’s interdisciplinary research on food combines the fields of the history of technology, sensory history, environmental history and the history of science. Additionally Dr. Petrick’s training at the Culinary Institute of America, Cornell University, and at several wineries in Napa and Sonoma Counties has shaped her theoretical approach to the history of taste. Her book, entitled Industrializing Taste: Food Processing and the Transformation of the American Diet, 1900-1965, analyzes how new food processing techniques transformed the foods available to American consumers as well as how housewives incorporated these new industrial foods into their family’s diet over the course of the last century. She is also working on a second book project, Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter: Taste in History, for the sensory history series at the University of Illinois Press that looks at the importance of taste historically. She is an Associate Professor at the University of New Haven.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Living Forms: Faust and Geometry in 20th Century Anglophone Morphology and Plant Sciences ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

September 8, 2015, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium

About the lecture: Evolution and genetics came to dominate 20th century biology. Yet morphology, which had been more prominent during the 19th century, continued to intrigue and inform biologists, particularly plant scientists. The latter often pointed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German poet, novelist, and naturalist who also authored Faust, as the creator of plant morphology. Morphology played various roles in 20th century Anglophone science. Through it’s mathematical forms forwarded by individuals such as the Scottish naturalist and classicist D’Arcy Thompson (1860-1948) and the English mathematician Alan Turing (1912-1954), it became a way to bring biology firmly into the realm of the sciences. In more idealistic forms, coming from individuals like the English botanist and historian Agnes Arber (1879-1960) and the English biologist Rupert Sheldrake (b. 1942), it served as a way to overcome modern science’s Faustian bargain and connect science to art, spirituality, and environmentalism. In many cases, these divergent roles given to morphology were not seen as mutually exclusive.

The speaker: Andy Hahn is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Science program at Oregon State University and a Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. While an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois-Champaign (B.A. in philosophy and minor in mathematics), he became interested in Goethe’s morphology and the use of the imagination as a tool to understand the natural world. To study Goethe’s work in closer detail, he completed a M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies at Oregon State. His thesis looked at Goethe’s use of the imagination in The Metamorphosis of Plants while placing it in three distinct contexts: its own historical context, its potential contributions to current theories of natural aesthetics, and its application in a contemporary institution that interacts with adult learners and is engaged in the debate over the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture. As a doctoral student OSU, he continues to look at Goethe’s morphology, turning to how it has been received, interpreted, and put to use since Goethe’s original formulation.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
On the Origin of Vestiges: Science, Religion, and the Natural World in Early Victorian Scotland ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

November 19, 2014, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

Angela Smith, Ph.D. candidate, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, and a 2014 Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library.

Fifteen years before Charles Darwin’s famous Origin of Species helped convert most naturalists to the idea of transmutation, the evolutionary treatise Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation ‘prepared the ground’—with no name on the title page. Vestiges was read and discussed by tens of thousands of people in both Britain and America, including most prominent men of science, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, and the future President Abraham Lincoln, creating, as historian James Secord has demonstrated, quite a ‘Victorian sensation.’ Unlike Origin, though, Vestiges presented a religious cosmology more so than a scientific theory, and its author argued that his main intention had been to show that “the mode” of God’s working was only through natural law. Though practically written out of popular history by Darwin’s success, much of what the early Victorians believed about evolution came from the mysterious “Mr. Vestiges,” the Scotsman Robert Chambers.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Against Sand and Sea: Strategies on Coastal Defense ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall **

November 5, 2014, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium.

Dr. Joana Gaspar de Freitas is a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the New University of Lisbon and a 2014 Research Fellow at the Linda Hall Library.

Every year the media brings us news about coastal storms and damaging flooding somewhere in the world and these catastrophic events seem to be increasing. This type of natural disaster is not new. They have happened repeatedly in history, but historians normally are not interested in these subjects and scholars from natural sciences rarely deal with events that lie more than a few decades in the past. In this lecture. Dr. Gaspar will discuss the long-term perspective of humanity’s relationship with the sea and strategies to protect from its dangers. Using as examples case studies from Europe and the U.S., she will demonstrate how human choices over the last centuries have contributed to the enhancement of the natural hazards that we face today.

Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Feather Wings, Leather Wings: Victorian Geology and the Moral Hierarchy of Deep Time Wednesday, September 10, 2014, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium. 
 
Caitlin Silberman, Ph.D. candidate in art history, University of Wisconsin. 
 
Narratives in which membranous, leather-winged demons or dragons face off against feather-winged angels and heroes are hardly original to the Victorians. However, discoveries of fossil pterosaurs (flying reptiles) and Jurassic birds in the nineteenth century opened up new spaces for wings to perform their cultural work. In this presentation, Silberman argues that the cultural connotations attached to different types of wings conditioned the framing of flying creatures by early anatomists, geologist, and paleontologists. Further, paleontological restorations that contrast leather-winged, reptilian pterosaurs with ancient birds like Archaeopteryx illuminate nineteenth-century British perspectives on progress, evolution, and humanity's place in nature. 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Through Dark and Mysterious Paths: The Search the Origin of Springs from the 16th to the 18th Century July 23, 2014, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium. 
 
Dr. Francesco Luzzini, Adjunct Professor, Department of Biosciences, University of Milan, and Linda Hall Library Resident Fellow. 
 
Video produced by The Video Works of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Jesuit Science in Lisbon: The Practice of Astronomy in the Court of King João V, 1723-1750 About this lecture: 
 
November 13, 2013, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium. 
 
In 1722, following a request by King João V of Portugal, two missionaries from the Naples College traveled to Lisbon: Giovanni Battista Carbone (1694-1750) and Domenico Capassi (1694-1736). The aim was to employ the two astronomers in cartographical work on the state of Maranhão, in Brazil. In this lecture, Luis Tirapicos, a PhD candidate in history of science at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, will discuss the work of these and other Jesuit astronomers in the wider context of the Portuguese-Spanish dispute of borders between its South American colonies. 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Assessing the Value of Modular Design ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
October 23, 2013, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium. 
 
Eric Friesel, Ph.D. Candidate in Technology Management, Indiana State University. 
 
Modular design allows for mixing and matching standard components within a machine to vary its function. For example, standard batteries (AA, AAA, etc.) are replaceable modules that can be selected for low cost, long life, single use, or ability to recharge. Other examples of modularity are found in nature and throughout the productive endeavors of humankind. Join Eric Friesel, Ph.D. Candidate in Technology Management at Indiana State University and a B2 bomber pilot at Whiteman Air Force Base, as he explores modular design from the 16th century, through the enlightenment, and into the digital age. 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
"Taming Our Machines:" Race and America's Robots, 1790-2010 ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
August 14, 2013, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium 
 
Dr. Dustin Abnet, PhD, Indiana University, and Visiting Professor, Grand Valley State University. 
 
Dr. Dustin Abnet uses the history of robots and automata to explain changes in how Americans imagined the relationship between race and technology from the late 18th century to the present. Examining exhibition automata, toy catalogs, science and engineering periodicals, films, and other sources, he shows how imagining robots in the forms of different types of people helped Americans address the tensions created by the rise of industrial capitalism and the emergence of modern science and technology. 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks, Inc. of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Homology, Redux: Revisiting Pre-Darwinian Debates within Comparative Biology ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
July 24, 2013, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium 
 
Dr. Catherine Kendig, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, Missouri Western State University, and Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
The concepts of homology and analogy continue to be a source of heated discussion within comparative anatomy and comparative genomics. Richard Owen provided the first formal distinction between the similarity of structure or “homology” and the similarity of function or “analogy.” His contribution was pivotal to the development of early 19th-century British biology. Dr. Catherine Kendig, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Missouri Western State University, investigates both the longstanding pre-Darwinian debates within comparative biology and analyzes the recent impact of the new evolutionary developmental synthesis (the approach that incorporates ecology, developmental plasticity, as well as genetics to explain evolutionary change) on the current meaning and use of these concepts. 
 
Lecture video produced by The VideoWorks, Inc., of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Governing Technological Landscapes: The Historical Making of Rural Electrification Co-operatives ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
July 10, 2013, in the Linda Hall Library Auditorium 
 
Monica Brannon, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, The New School for Social Research, and Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
 
In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created to address the lack of access to electricity, a technology that had been developed 50 years prior in urban areas. Because electric companies did not see rural areas as lucrative business opportunities, self-organized farmers developed co-operatives, most of which remain today as the governing structure of electricity covering 75% of the geographical United States. Monica Brannon, PhD candidate in sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York City, examines the meaning of technological access and the culture of electrification in rural America. 
 
Lecture video produced by The VideoWorks, Inc., of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Engineers' Class Struggle and the Question of "Technology" in the Era of High Industrialism ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
April 26, 2013, the Linda Hall Library Auditorium. 
 
Dr. Adelheid Voskuhl, Associate Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University and 2012 Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
In the period around the First World War, engineers raised questions about the relationship between industrialism and the state, technocracy and democracy, and global technological and diplomatic rivalries—but also about their own social status and ethical obligations. Dr. Heidi Voskuhl, Associate Professor of History of Science at Harvard University, explores how engineers’ discussions at that time represented the earliest moments of engineers' active participation in political debates, and were a prototype of later debates about the abstract, and often hazy, idea of the “impact” of modern technology on society. 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
"...what a great many Authors have said...": Learning about New World Plants in Early Modern Europe ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
About this lecture: 
 
March 21, 2013, at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
Jerusha Westbury, Ph.D. candidate in history at New York University and 2013 Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
The arrival of Columbus in the Western Hemisphere initiated an unprecedented movement of flora and fauna between the eastern and western hemispheres that historians have called the Columbian Exchange. How did people make sense of this exchange in an era when print information was still in its infancy? By looking at the “biography” of one American plant, the prickly pear, Jerusha Westbury, PhD Candidate in history at New York University, will explore some of the problems Europeans faced when trying to make sense of the world they had “discovered.” 
 
Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Engineering the Environment: The Rise of a Control Technology in Federal Air Pollution Policy ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
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March 14, 2013, at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
Jongmin Lee, Ph.D. candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech and 2012 Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
During the 1970s the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency shifted its priorities away from issues pertaining to “community health” including the establishment of standards for source reduction of pollutants to a “control technology” approach in which intermediate pollution control technologies were used to reduce harmful emissions. Jongmin Lee, a PhD candidate in science and technology studies at Virginia Tech, will examine the origins of technology-based EPA regulations, and the limitations of federal environmental policy. 
 
Video produced by The Video Works of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Colonizing Amazonia From Above: Aeronautical Technology in the Brazilian Frontiers ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
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March 7, 2013, at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
Felipe Cruz, Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Texas at Austin and a 2013 Resident Fellow at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
Brazil's rulers have always been concerned that while the country has a very extensive territory, most of it is sparsely populated - Brazilians have always lived along the coast rather than in the vast hinterlands. The advent of aviation, however, seemed like a panacea for the Brazilian government in its mission to conquer its extensive frontiers. In this lecture, Felipe Cruz explores how the Brazilian government promoted and utilized aviation in novel ways in order to achieve its goal of colonizing the Amazon - from teaching children how to build model airplanes to deploying paratroopers to coerce Indians into building Amazonian airports. 
 
Video produced by The Video Works of Roeland Park, Kansas.
Faith and Facts, Experience and Expedience: Protestant and Italian Catholic Perspectives on Theories of the Earth ** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at http://new.livestream.com/lindahall ** 
 
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July 18, 2012, at the Linda Hall Library. 
 
Dr. Francesco Luzzini, University of East Piedmont, Italy. 
 
Dr. Luzzini spent three months as a resident fellow at the Library Hall Library. In this lecture, he discusses his research project, “Faith and Facts, Experience and Expedience: A Comparison of Protestant and Italian Catholic Perspectives in 17th and 18th-Century Theories of the Earth.”

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