Vivien Hamilton | Harvey Mudd College (original) (raw)
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Papers by Vivien Hamilton
Isis, 2020
The authors of this essay reflect on the experience of co-teaching a course on the history of gen... more The authors of this essay reflect on the experience of co-teaching a course on the history of genetics and race. The collaboration has pushed them both-a historian of science and a biologist-to consider how to make space for moral and scientific judgment in a history classroom. Drawing on examples from the course, they argue that it is possible to encourage social action and thoughtful critiques of past and current science without succumbing to a whiggish narrative of progress. Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.-Harvey Mudd Mission Statement W e often joke that new students and faculty at Harvey Mudd College should be able to recite our mission statement from memory after just a few hours on campus. It is quoted frequently in presentations and conversations, pointing toward some of our most ambitious goals: to be both a STEM school and a liberal arts college and to graduate students with impressive technical expertise and an understanding of the entanglement of science, technology, and society. As a historian of science (Vivien) and a biologist (Dan), we each contribute to these goals in different ways through our teaching. The opportunity to teach a history course together, however, gave us the chance to address our institution's mission more fully. It stretched us both beyond our usual disciplinary methods and pushed us to imagine how historical understanding might encourage certain kinds of judgment and action.
The announcement of the discovery of x-rays in 1896 sparked great excitement among physicists who... more The announcement of the discovery of x-rays in 1896 sparked great excitement among physicists who rushed to replicate Wilhelm Röntgen's experiments, hoping to make sense of the properties of this new disturbance in the aether. The medical world was equally entranced by the x-ray pictures that circulated in the press. The diagnostic possibilities were clear, and within a few months, doctors were able to purchase equipment to begin their own x-ray investigations. Physicists and doctors asked very different kinds of questions of these new rays, and the medical and physical investigations were largely separate. There were, however, a number of points of contact between these two worlds. Physicists were members of the first x-ray societies alongside doctors, and, by the 1920s, a small number of physicists were employed in the United States and Britain in hospitals and medical schools. In this study, I trace the contributions of these few physicists in medicine in order characterise the professional relationships that developed between doctors and physicists, individuals from very different disciplinary cultures. I show that the physicists' values of objectivity and precise measurement, along with their deep belief in regularity, often clashed with the culture of individualism in early 20 th century medicine. The first doctors to use x-rays expressed faith in their own, unique clinical art, and emphasized bodies' idiosyncratic responses to radiation. These conflicting attitudes were evident in debates surrounding the best way to measure therapeutic x-rays, and I argue that the eventual adoption of the röntgen as the international unit of x-ray measurement in 1928 represents a victory of the values of physics. I link the increasing authority awarded to physicists in the American and British x-ray communities to the particular leadership roles taken on by these individuals as physics teachers and safety inspectors. I would like to thank my supervisor, Chen-Pang Yeang and my committee members, Lucia Dacome and Janis Langins for their guidance, support and enthusiasm for my project. I would like to thank the librarians, archivists and curators who provided invaluable assistance during my research. In particular, David Pantalony and Helen Graves-Smith at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Paul Robertson and the team of curators at the Health Care Museum in Kingston, Judy Chelnick at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., the staff at the Fisher Rare Books Library, and Susan Smith at the British Institute of Radiology. I would like to thank my fellow students at IHPST, especially Liz Burns, Teri Gee, Michelle Hoffman, Boaz Miller, Brigit Ramsingh, Isaac Record, Jonathan Turner, and the rest of the Gerstein Gang. And most of all, Delia Gavrus, with whom I shared an office, a possibly worrying dependence on chocolate and a delight in the antics of early 20 th century medicine. We took turns believing it could be done and we were right. Finally, I would like to thank my family: my husband Andrew, whose encouragement and faith in me have never wavered, my two beautiful thesis babies, Sophie and Hugh, my sister Liz for her humour and unfailing love, and my parents, Sharon and Rich, from whom I learned always to be curious, and who expressed only mild dismay when I told them I was going to be a historian and not a physicist.
History: Reviews of New Books, 2016
Medical History, 2017
Life in Science is a marvellous and provocative biographical study of a pioneer in cybernetics. D... more Life in Science is a marvellous and provocative biographical study of a pioneer in cybernetics. Deeply grounded in archival and published sources, richly contextualised and graceful in its rigorous theoretical engagements, the volume offers a veritable feast for its readers through its deceptively simple narrative that renders practically invisible the many challenges it resolves in telling its maverick subject. Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) was a renowned figure in the twentieth-century mind and brain sciences. Trained in philosophy, psychology and medicine at Yale and Columbia Universities, McCulloch also brought to his science a sophisticated understanding of applied mathematics and physics. He was widely read, imaginative in the extreme, politically liberal in his sensibilities and as handy with a hammer as he was with computational models. A teacher to many, a mentor to some and a sage for a few, McCulloch struck many as frustratingly imprecise, considerably obtuse and generous to a fault. His habits-perpetual whiskey drinking and ice-cream eating, sonnet writing, eccentric modes of dress, holding forth in his French salon style of a household, his conversation speckled with literary allusions likely lost on everyone and considerable intellectual generosity-at once charmed and overwhelmed his admirers and detractors. His major contributions, more easily summarised than readily understood, included landmark studies of the functional organisation of the cortex, the reduction of neuronal function to Boolean logic and numerous hypotheses about the psychological behaviours concomitant to neurophysiological states. He was also a highly successful scientific manager, most famously as a central organiser of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics which included such renowned luminaries as Norbert Wiener and Margaret Mead. The latter, in an observation that might have applied as easily to McCulloch personally as to the proceedings generally, commented with acerbic wit on the incommensurability of them all. Such is the McCulloch that ably emerges in Abraham's hands: a highly admirable if completely enigmatic experimentalist in epistemology. To handle such a life as a historian is to recognise the inadequacy of easy occupational categories or seemingly settled biographical divisions. McCulloch, Abraham details, was more than a clinician, scientist or poet. Her narrative visits him self-fashioning his identity chapter by chapter, from neurophysiologist to engineer. His private and public lives make little sense disentangled-with the revolving door of guests that defined the McCulloch's household particularly breaking down any useful domestic distinction. His self-fashioning-conscious and unselfconscious-thus results in a life more revealing and understandable historically in fragmented shards than artificially compromised by being forced into a seamless whole. Abraham therefore casts away the biographical conceit that we might understand McCulloch's identity and instead turns the question around and asks readers to ponder why we insist upon the appearance of historical continuity across something as long as a lifespan. Even more provocatively, Abraham's narrative challenges readers to consider whether McCulloch experienced his identity as a seamless whole, or, whether, alternatively, his past selves became strangers to later versions of himself.
Technology and culture, 2017
This article tackles a common assumption in the historiography of medical technology, that new me... more This article tackles a common assumption in the historiography of medical technology, that new medical instruments in the nineteenth century were universally seen as symbols of the scientific nature of medical practice. The article examines the strategies used by Jenny Trout, the first woman in Canada licensed to practice medicine, and J. Adams, a homeopathic physician, to advertise electrotherapy to the residents of Toronto in the 1870s and 1880s. While electrotherapy involved complex electrical technology, the doctors in this study did not draw attention to their instruments as proof of the legitimacy of their practice. In fact the technology is almost entirely absent from their promotional texts. While both doctors wanted their practice to be associated with scientific medicine, neither saw their instruments as immediately or obviously symbolic of science.
Isis, 2020
The authors of this essay reflect on the experience of co-teaching a course on the history of gen... more The authors of this essay reflect on the experience of co-teaching a course on the history of genetics and race. The collaboration has pushed them both-a historian of science and a biologist-to consider how to make space for moral and scientific judgment in a history classroom. Drawing on examples from the course, they argue that it is possible to encourage social action and thoughtful critiques of past and current science without succumbing to a whiggish narrative of progress. Harvey Mudd College seeks to educate engineers, scientists, and mathematicians well versed in all of these areas and in the humanities and the social sciences so that they may assume leadership in their fields with a clear understanding of the impact of their work on society.-Harvey Mudd Mission Statement W e often joke that new students and faculty at Harvey Mudd College should be able to recite our mission statement from memory after just a few hours on campus. It is quoted frequently in presentations and conversations, pointing toward some of our most ambitious goals: to be both a STEM school and a liberal arts college and to graduate students with impressive technical expertise and an understanding of the entanglement of science, technology, and society. As a historian of science (Vivien) and a biologist (Dan), we each contribute to these goals in different ways through our teaching. The opportunity to teach a history course together, however, gave us the chance to address our institution's mission more fully. It stretched us both beyond our usual disciplinary methods and pushed us to imagine how historical understanding might encourage certain kinds of judgment and action.
The announcement of the discovery of x-rays in 1896 sparked great excitement among physicists who... more The announcement of the discovery of x-rays in 1896 sparked great excitement among physicists who rushed to replicate Wilhelm Röntgen's experiments, hoping to make sense of the properties of this new disturbance in the aether. The medical world was equally entranced by the x-ray pictures that circulated in the press. The diagnostic possibilities were clear, and within a few months, doctors were able to purchase equipment to begin their own x-ray investigations. Physicists and doctors asked very different kinds of questions of these new rays, and the medical and physical investigations were largely separate. There were, however, a number of points of contact between these two worlds. Physicists were members of the first x-ray societies alongside doctors, and, by the 1920s, a small number of physicists were employed in the United States and Britain in hospitals and medical schools. In this study, I trace the contributions of these few physicists in medicine in order characterise the professional relationships that developed between doctors and physicists, individuals from very different disciplinary cultures. I show that the physicists' values of objectivity and precise measurement, along with their deep belief in regularity, often clashed with the culture of individualism in early 20 th century medicine. The first doctors to use x-rays expressed faith in their own, unique clinical art, and emphasized bodies' idiosyncratic responses to radiation. These conflicting attitudes were evident in debates surrounding the best way to measure therapeutic x-rays, and I argue that the eventual adoption of the röntgen as the international unit of x-ray measurement in 1928 represents a victory of the values of physics. I link the increasing authority awarded to physicists in the American and British x-ray communities to the particular leadership roles taken on by these individuals as physics teachers and safety inspectors. I would like to thank my supervisor, Chen-Pang Yeang and my committee members, Lucia Dacome and Janis Langins for their guidance, support and enthusiasm for my project. I would like to thank the librarians, archivists and curators who provided invaluable assistance during my research. In particular, David Pantalony and Helen Graves-Smith at the Canada Science and Technology Museum, Paul Robertson and the team of curators at the Health Care Museum in Kingston, Judy Chelnick at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., the staff at the Fisher Rare Books Library, and Susan Smith at the British Institute of Radiology. I would like to thank my fellow students at IHPST, especially Liz Burns, Teri Gee, Michelle Hoffman, Boaz Miller, Brigit Ramsingh, Isaac Record, Jonathan Turner, and the rest of the Gerstein Gang. And most of all, Delia Gavrus, with whom I shared an office, a possibly worrying dependence on chocolate and a delight in the antics of early 20 th century medicine. We took turns believing it could be done and we were right. Finally, I would like to thank my family: my husband Andrew, whose encouragement and faith in me have never wavered, my two beautiful thesis babies, Sophie and Hugh, my sister Liz for her humour and unfailing love, and my parents, Sharon and Rich, from whom I learned always to be curious, and who expressed only mild dismay when I told them I was going to be a historian and not a physicist.
History: Reviews of New Books, 2016
Medical History, 2017
Life in Science is a marvellous and provocative biographical study of a pioneer in cybernetics. D... more Life in Science is a marvellous and provocative biographical study of a pioneer in cybernetics. Deeply grounded in archival and published sources, richly contextualised and graceful in its rigorous theoretical engagements, the volume offers a veritable feast for its readers through its deceptively simple narrative that renders practically invisible the many challenges it resolves in telling its maverick subject. Warren S. McCulloch (1898-1969) was a renowned figure in the twentieth-century mind and brain sciences. Trained in philosophy, psychology and medicine at Yale and Columbia Universities, McCulloch also brought to his science a sophisticated understanding of applied mathematics and physics. He was widely read, imaginative in the extreme, politically liberal in his sensibilities and as handy with a hammer as he was with computational models. A teacher to many, a mentor to some and a sage for a few, McCulloch struck many as frustratingly imprecise, considerably obtuse and generous to a fault. His habits-perpetual whiskey drinking and ice-cream eating, sonnet writing, eccentric modes of dress, holding forth in his French salon style of a household, his conversation speckled with literary allusions likely lost on everyone and considerable intellectual generosity-at once charmed and overwhelmed his admirers and detractors. His major contributions, more easily summarised than readily understood, included landmark studies of the functional organisation of the cortex, the reduction of neuronal function to Boolean logic and numerous hypotheses about the psychological behaviours concomitant to neurophysiological states. He was also a highly successful scientific manager, most famously as a central organiser of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics which included such renowned luminaries as Norbert Wiener and Margaret Mead. The latter, in an observation that might have applied as easily to McCulloch personally as to the proceedings generally, commented with acerbic wit on the incommensurability of them all. Such is the McCulloch that ably emerges in Abraham's hands: a highly admirable if completely enigmatic experimentalist in epistemology. To handle such a life as a historian is to recognise the inadequacy of easy occupational categories or seemingly settled biographical divisions. McCulloch, Abraham details, was more than a clinician, scientist or poet. Her narrative visits him self-fashioning his identity chapter by chapter, from neurophysiologist to engineer. His private and public lives make little sense disentangled-with the revolving door of guests that defined the McCulloch's household particularly breaking down any useful domestic distinction. His self-fashioning-conscious and unselfconscious-thus results in a life more revealing and understandable historically in fragmented shards than artificially compromised by being forced into a seamless whole. Abraham therefore casts away the biographical conceit that we might understand McCulloch's identity and instead turns the question around and asks readers to ponder why we insist upon the appearance of historical continuity across something as long as a lifespan. Even more provocatively, Abraham's narrative challenges readers to consider whether McCulloch experienced his identity as a seamless whole, or, whether, alternatively, his past selves became strangers to later versions of himself.
Technology and culture, 2017
This article tackles a common assumption in the historiography of medical technology, that new me... more This article tackles a common assumption in the historiography of medical technology, that new medical instruments in the nineteenth century were universally seen as symbols of the scientific nature of medical practice. The article examines the strategies used by Jenny Trout, the first woman in Canada licensed to practice medicine, and J. Adams, a homeopathic physician, to advertise electrotherapy to the residents of Toronto in the 1870s and 1880s. While electrotherapy involved complex electrical technology, the doctors in this study did not draw attention to their instruments as proof of the legitimacy of their practice. In fact the technology is almost entirely absent from their promotional texts. While both doctors wanted their practice to be associated with scientific medicine, neither saw their instruments as immediately or obviously symbolic of science.