Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Research Article| October 01 1992 The Image of Objectivity Lorraine Daston, Lorraine Daston Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Peter Galison Peter Galison Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1992) 40: 81–128. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928741 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Lorraine Daston, Peter Galison; The Image of Objectivity. Representations 1 October 1992; 40 81–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/2928741 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRepresentations Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1992 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Journal Article K. Zweigert & H. Kötz (T. Weir, transl.): An Introduction to Comparative Law Get access An Introduction to Comparative Law. by Zweigert Konrad and Kötz Hein. Translated by Weir Tony . Amsterdam, New York, Oxford: North-Holland Publ. Co., 1977. Vol.1 PP. xvii, 385; vol.2 PP. xvii, 379. John G Fleming John G Fleming *Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley. I must express my gratitude to Hartmut Dietrich of the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg for reading the manuscript and making invaluable suggestions. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Journal of Comparative Law, Volume 26, Issue 3, Summer 1978, Pages 495–497, https://doi.org/10.2307/839818 Published: 01 July 1978

A heterogeneous catalyst is a functional material that continually creates active sites with its reactants under reaction conditions. These sites change the rates of chemical reactions of the reactants localized on them without changing the thermodynamic equilibrium between the materials.

Huntington's disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by an unstable CAG repeat. For patients at risk, participating in predictive testing and learning of having CAG expansion, a major unanswered question shifts from "Will I get HD?" to "When will it manifest?" Using the largest cohort of HD patients analyzed to date (2913 individuals from 40 centers worldwide), we developed a parametric survival model based on CAG repeat length to predict the probability of neurological disease onset (based on motor neurological symptoms rather than psychiatric onset) at different ages for individual patients. We provide estimated probabilities of onset associated with CAG repeats between 36 and 56 for individuals of any age with narrow confidence intervals. For example, our model predicts a 91% chance that a 40-year-old individual with 42 repeats will have onset by the age of 65, with a 95% confidence interval from 90 to 93%. This model also defines the variability in HD onset that is not attributable to CAG length and provides information concerning CAG-related penetrance rates.

Scientific objectivity is neither monolithic nor immutable: our current usage is compounded of several meanings - metaphysical, methodological and moral - and each meaning has a distinct history, as well as a history of fusion within what now counts as a single concept of `objectivity'. The rise of aperspectival history in nineteenth-century science is one strand of this plaited history of objectivity, as embodied in scientific ideals and practices. It is conceptually and historically distinct from the ontological aspect of objectivity that pursues the ultimate structure of reality, and from the mechanical aspect of objectivity that forbids interpretation in reporting and picturing scientific results. Whereas ontological objectivity is about the fit between theory and the world, and mechanical objectivity is about suppressing the universal human propensity to judge and aestheticize, aperspectival objectivity is about eliminating individual (or occasionally group) idiosyncracies. It emerged first in the moral and aesthetic philosophy of the late eighteenth century and spread to the natural sciences only in the mid-nineteenth century, as a result of a reorganization of scientific life that multiplied professional contacts at every level, from the international commission to the well-staffed laboratory.

The mind lives on the heart Like any parasite.-Emily Dickinson, "The Mind Lives on the Heart

Hearing has traditionally been regarded as the second -- as somehow less rational and less modern than the first sense, sight. Reason and Resonance explodes this myth by reconstructing the process through which the ear came to play a central role in modern culture and rationality. For the past four hundred years, hearing has been understood as involving the sympathetic resonance between the vibrating air and various parts of the inner ear. But the emergence of resonance as the centerpiece of modern aurality also coincides with the triumph of a new type of epistemology in which the absence of resonance is the very condition of thought. Our mind's relationship to the world is said to rest on distance or, as the very synonym for reason suggests, reflection. Reason and Resonance traces the genealogy of this intimate animosity between reason and resonance through a series of interrelated case studies involving a varied cast of otologists, philosophers, physiologists, pamphleteers, and music theorists. Among them are the seventeenth-century architect-zoologist Claude Perrault, who refuted Cartesianism in a book on sound and hearing; the Sturm und Drang poet Wilhelm Heinse and his friend the anatomist Samuel Sommerring, who believed the ventricular fluid to be the interface between the soul and the auditory nerve; the renowned physiologist Johannes Muller, who invented the concept of sense energies; and Muller's most important student, Hermann von Helmholtz, author of the magisterial Sensations of Tone. Erlman also discusses key twentieth-century thinkers of aurality, including Ernst Mach; the communications engineer and proponent of the first nonresonant wave theory of hearing, Georg von Bekesy; political activist and philosopher Gunther Anders; and Martin Heidegger.

If personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, "brainhood" could name the quality or condition of being a brain. This ontological quality would define the "cerebral subject" that has, at least in industrialized and highly medicalized societies, gained numerous social inscriptions since the mid-20th century. This article explores the historical development of brainhood. It suggests that the brain is necessarily the location of the "modern self," and that, consequently, the cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent to modernity (at least insofar as modernity gives supreme value to the individual as autonomous agent of choice and initiative). It further argues that the ideology of brainhood impelled neuroscientific investigation much more than it resulted from it, and sketches how an expanding constellation of neurocultural discourses and practices embodies and sustains that ideology.

Part 1 The topography of wonder: marvels on the margins wonders of creation prodigious individuals and marvellous kinds wonder and belief. Part 2 The properties of things: collecting wonders artificial marvels wonders at court. Part 3 Wonder among the philosophers: the philosophers against wonder curiosity and the preternatural making wonders cease. Part 4 marvellous particulars: marvellous therapeutics preternatural history preternatural philosophy. Part 5 Monsters - a case study: horror - monsters as prodigies pleasure - monsters as sport repugnance - monsters as errors. Part 6 Strange facts: Baconian reforms strange facts in learned societies the sociability of strange facts the credibility of strange facts. Part 7 Wonders of art, wonders of nature: art and nature opposed the wonders of art and nature displayed the wonders of art and nature conjoined nature as artist, nature as art. Part 8 The passions of inquiry: ravening curiosity wonder and curiosity allied gawking wonder. Part 9 The enlightenment and the anti-marvellous: the unholy Trinity - enthusiasms, superstition, imagination vulgarity and the love of the marvellous nature's decorum the wistful counter-enlightenment.

This study argues that morphology was integral to the life sciences of the 19th century. It traces the development of morphological research in German universities and illuminates significant institutional and intellectual changes in 19th-century German biology. Although there were neither professors of morphology nor a morphologists' society, morphologists achieved influence by colonizing niches in a variety of disciplines. Scientists in anatomy, zoology, natural history, and physiology considered their work morphological, and the term encompassed research that today might be classified as embryology, systematics, functional morphology, comparative physiology, ecology, behaviour, evolutionary theory, or histology. Nyhart draws on research notes, correspondence and other archival material to examine how these scientists responded to new ideas and to the work of colleagues. She examines the intertwined histories of morphology and the broader biological enterprise, demonstrating that the study of form was central to investigations of such issues as the relationships between an animal's structure and function, between an organism and its environment, and between living species and their ancestors.

This work brings together current scholarship on the earliest true writing system in human history. Invented by the Babylonians at the end of the fourth millennium BC, this script, called proto-cuneiform, survives in the form of clay tablets that have until now posed formidable barriers to interpretation. Many tablets, excavated in fragments from ancient dump sites, lack a clear context. In addition, the purpose of the earliest tablets was not to record language but to monitor the administration of local economies by means of a numerical system. Using the latest philological research and new methods of computer analysis, the authors have deciphered much of the numerical information. In reconstructing both the social context and the function of the notation, they consider how the development of our earliest written records affected patterns of thought, the concept of number and the administration of household economies. Archaic Bookkeeping should interest specialists in Near Eastern civilizations, ancient history, the history of silence and mathematics, and cognitive psychology.

MOTIVATION: A large number of molecular mechanisms at the basis of gene regulation have been described during the last few decades. It is now becoming possible to address questions dealing with both the structure and the dynamics of genetic regulatory networks, at least in the case of some of the best-characterized organisms. Most recent attempts to address these questions deal with microbial or animal model systems. In contrast, we analyze here a gene network involved in the control of the morphogenesis of flowers in a model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. RESULTS: The genetic control of flower morphogenesis in Arabidopsis involves a large number of genes, of which 10 are considered here. The network topology has been derived from published genetic and molecular data, mainly relying on mRNA expression patterns under wild-type and mutant backgrounds. Using a 'generalized logical formalism', we provide a qualitative model and derive the parameter constraints accounting for the different patterns of gene expression found in the four floral organs of Arabidopsis (sepals, petals, stamens and carpels), plus a 'non-floral' state. This model also allows the simulation or the prediction of various mutant phenotypes. On the basis of our model analysis, we predict the existence of a sixth stable pattern of gene expression, yet to be characterized experimentally. Moreover, our dynamical analysis leads to the prediction of at least one more regulator of the gene LFY, likely to be involved in the transition from the non-flowering state to the flowering pathways. Finally, this work, together with other theoretical and experimental considerations, leads us to propose some general conclusions about the structure of gene networks controlling development.

Panel studies, in which the same subjects are repeatedly observed at multiple time points, are among the most popular longitudinal designs in psychology. Meanwhile, there exists a wide range of different methods to analyze such data, with autoregressive and cross-lagged models being 2 of the most well known representatives. Unfortunately, in these models time is only considered implicitly, making it difficult to account for unequally spaced measurement occasions or to compare parameter estimates across studies that are based on different time intervals. Stochastic differential equations offer a solution to this problem by relating the discrete time model to its underlying model in continuous time. It is the goal of the present article to introduce this approach to a broader psychological audience. A step-by-step review of the relationship between discrete and continuous time modeling is provided, and we demonstrate how continuous time parameters can be obtained via structural equation modeling. An empirical example on the relationship between authoritarianism and anomia is used to illustrate the approach.

In 1993, the WHO declared tuberculosis a global emergency on the basis that there are 8 million new cases per year. The complete genome of the strain H37Rv of the causative microorganism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, comprising 3924 genes has been sequenced. We compared the proteomes of two non-virulent vaccine strains of M. bovis BCG (Chicago and Copenhagen) with two virulent strains of M. tuberculosis (H37Rv and Erdman) to identify protein candidates of value for the development of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics. The mycobacterial strains were analysed by two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) combining non-equilibrium pH gradient electrophoresis (NEPHGE) with SDS-PAGE. Distinct and characteristic proteins were identified by mass spectrometry and introduced into a dynamic 2-DE database (http://www.mpiib-berlin.mpg.de/2D-PAGE). Silver-stained 2-DE patterns of mycobacterial cell proteins or culture supernatants contained 1800 or 800 spots, respectively, from which 263 were identified. Of these, 54 belong to the culture supernatant. Sixteen and 25 proteins differing in intensity or position between M. tuberculosis H37Rv and Erdman, and H37Rv and M. bovis BCG Chicago, respectively, were identified and categorized into protein classes. It is to be hoped that the availability of the mycobacterial proteome will facilitate the design of novel measures for prevention and therapy of one of the great health threats, tuberculosis.

For thousands of years, people have used nature to justify their political, moral, and social judgments. Such appeals to the moral authority of nature are still very much with us today, as heated debates over genetically modified organisms and human cloning testify. Moral Authority of Nature offers a wide-ranging account of how people have used nature to think about what counts as good, beautiful, just, or valuable. The eighteen essays cover a diverse array of topics, including the connection of cosmic and human orders in ancient Greece, medieval notions of sexual disorder, early modern contexts for categorizing individuals and judging acts as against nature, race and the origin of humans, ecological economics, and radical feminism. The essays also range widely in time and place, from archaic Greece to early twentieth-century China, medieval Europe to contemporary America. Scholars from a wide variety of fields will welcome Moral Authority of Nature, which provides the first sustained historical survey of its topic. Contributors: Danielle Allen, Joan Cadden, Lorraine Daston, Fa-ti Fan, Eckhardt Fuchs, Valentin Groebner, Abigail J. Lustig, Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, Katharine Park, Matt Price, Robert N. Proctor, Helmut Puff, Robert J. Richards, Londa Schiebinger, Laura Slatkin, Julia Adeney Thomas, Fernando Vidal

Economics has identified three types of capital as the drivers of economic growth—physical capital, human capital, and knowledge capital. This article introduces the concept of entrepreneurship capital and suggests that it is also an important factor shaping the economic performance of an economy. We define entrepreneurship capital as those factors influencing and shaping an economy's milieu of agents in such a way as to be conducive to the creation of new firms. The hypothesis that entrepreneurship capital is positively linked to economic growth is then tested by examining the relationship between several different measures of entrepreneurship capital and regional economic performance, measured as per–capita income for Germany. The empirical evidence suggests that there is indeed a positive link between entrepreneurship capital and regional economic performance. These results suggest a new direction for public policy that focuses on instruments to enhance entrepreneurship capital.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies offers new and engaging perspectives on the significance of sound in its material and cultural forms. The book considers sounds and music as experienced in such diverse settings as shop floors, laboratories, clinics, design studios, homes, and clubs, across an impressively broad range of historical periods and national and cultural contexts. Science has traditionally been understood as a visual matter, a study which has historically been undertaken with optical instruments such as slides, graphs, and telescopes. This book questions that notion powerfully by illustrating how sounds have always been a part of human experience, shaping and transforming the world in which we live in ways that often go unnoticed. Sounds and music, the articles argue, are embedded in the fabric of everyday life, art, commerce, and politics in ways which impact our perception of the world. Through a diverse set of case studies, articles illustrate how sounds—from the sounds of industrialization, to the sounds of automobiles, to sounds in underwater music and hip-hop, to the sounds of nanotechnology—give rise to new forms listening practices. In addition, the book discusses the rise of new public problems such as noise pollution, hearing loss, and intellectual property and privacy issues that stem from the spread and appropriation of new sound and music-related technologies, analog and digital, in many domains of life.

Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations

Three studies demonstrate that mutual facilitation and interference among personal goals are distinct characteristics rather than mutually exclusive opposites and have different functions for psychological well-being and goal pursuit. The three studies vary in design (cross-sectional, short-termlongitudinal) and follow a multimethod approach using questionnaires, diaries, and objective behavioral information. Results show that interference among goals (resulting from resource constraints and incompatible goal attainment strategies) is negatively associated with trait and state well-being, whereas mutual facilitation among goals (resulting from instrumental goal relations and overlapping goal attainment strategies) is positively associated with involvement in goal pursuit.

We dissected the T cell activation potency and the immunoglobulin (Ig) E-binding properties (allergenicity) of nine isoforms of Bet v 1 (Bet v 1a-Bet v 1l), the major birch pollen allergen. Immunoblot experiments showed that Bet v 1 isoforms differ in their ability to bind IgE from birch pollen-allergic patients. All patients tested displayed similar IgE-binding patterns toward each particular isoform. Based on these experiments, we grouped Bet v 1 isoforms in three classes: molecules with high IgE-binding activity (isoforms a, e, and j), intermediate IgE-binding (isoforms b, c, and f), and low/no IgE-binding activity (isoforms d, g, and 1). Bet v 1a, a recombinant isoform selected from a cDNA expression library using IgE immunoscreening exhibited the highest IgE-binding activity. Isoforms a, b, d, e, and 1 were chosen as representatives from the three classes for experimentation. The potency of each isoallergen to activate T lymphocytes from birch pollen-allergic patients was assayed using peripheral blood mononuclear cells, allergen-specific T cell lines, and peptide-mapped allergen-specific T cell clones. Among the patients, some displayed a broad range of T cell-recognition patterns for Bet v 1 isoforms whereas others seemed to be restricted to particular isoforms. In spite of this variability, the highest scores for T cell proliferative responses were observed with isoform d (low IgE binder), followed by b, 1, e, and a. In vivo (skin prick) tests showed that the potency of isoforms d and 1 to induce typical urticarial type 1 reactions in Bet v 1-allergic individuals was significantly lower than for isoforms a, b, and e. Taken together, our results indicate that hypoallergenic Bet v 1 isoforms are potent activators of allergen-specific T lymphocytes, and Bet v 1 isoforms with high in vitro IgE-binding activity and in vivo allergenicity can display low T cell antigenicity. Based on these findings, we propose a novel approach for immunotherapy of type I allergies: a treatment with high doses of hypoallergenic isoforms or recombinant variants of atopic allergens. We proceed on the assumption that this measure would modulate the quality of the T helper cell response to allergens in vivo. The therapy form would additionally implicate a reduced risk of anaphylactic side effects.