Myles W. Jackson

Goethe's economy of nature and the nature of his economy

Abstract This paper traces the interplay of economic, administrative and management theories with theories of nature in eighteenth-century Germany, by offering a social history of the period. The author uses the statesman, poet, dramatist, novelist and natural researcher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, to illustrate an administrative discourse in the Naturanschauungen of this period as well as demonstrate how eighteenth-century theories of economy were rooted in the laws of nature by the economists and politicians in order to legitimate the rule of their enlightened despots.

Music and Science During the Scientific Revolution

Historically, music has been classiaed both as a aeld of natural philosophy and as a performing art. Those savants interested in music’s association with natural phenomena offered elaborate schemes in order to account for its physical basis. After all, acoustics was to become a branch of physics. Many concerned themselves, for example, with physical accounts that could distinguish dissonance from consonance. They also delved into such theoretical problems as mathematically dividing up the octave in different ways, establishing various musical temperaments.2 Debates among musical theorists (so-called because they were exclusively interested in the theoretical qualities of music) concerning the appropriate temperament for pieces raged throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Meanwhile, natural philosophers such as Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Christiaan Huygens busied them-

From Theodolite to Spectral Apparatus: Joseph von Fraunhofer and the Invention of a German Optical Research-Technology

One of Joseph von Fraunhofer’s (1787–1826) greatest contributions to technical optics had its roots in ordnance surveying. Fraunhofer, the German territories’ leading optician and optical-glass manufacturer of the period, needed an apparatus that could measure angles very precisely, as he wished to determine the refractive and dispersive indices of optical glass specimens as accurately as possible. Theodolites were the answer, as Georg von Reichenbach, co-owner of the Optical Institute and co-founder of the Mathematico-Mathematical Institute of Munich, was the builder of Europe’s leading theodolites for the joint Bavarian and French Bureau of Topography and the Bavarian Bureau of Land Registry. Reichenbach had devised a new method for the dividing machine (Teilmaschine) that successfully divided a circle into equal parts with an unprecedented precision (Engelsberger 1969; Reichenbach 1821). Once the amazingly precise dividing machine had been constructed, Reichenbach turned to his main goal: the construction of precision theodolites for the ordnance surveying projects (and later Land Registry projects) undertaken in Bavaria during the first decade of the nineteenth century (Reichenbach 1804). These theodolites, as mentioned above, were used by ordnance surveyors in their triangulation projects. A base line was established (usually several miles in length), and by measuring angles subtended by the two ends of the base line and a tall object (a pole on a nearby hill top, for example) with a theodolite, distances could be calculated by using simple geometry. The maps were required for Napoleon’s occupational forces as well as for King Maximilian I’s new property tax program.

The Biology of Race: Searching for No Overlap

With the rise of molecular genetics and the cornucopia of techniques it provides, a number of biomedical researchers in both the public and private sectors have turned to the human genome to search for variations among the world’s populations, with the purpose of tracing human evolution and migration patterns and predicting genetic disorders. The human genome also offers insight into an individual’s genealogy, which has never before been charted with such precision. Whereas 18th- and 19th-century scholars fetishized external characteristics in order to classify humans, more recent scholars have turned to the internal sequence of the genome. But how does one define populations? Should they be based on race? Can one speak of race at the molecular level? This essay explores the history of the biology of race with a view to compare and contrast modern molecular biological studies with the more pernicious actions of early-20th-century eugenicists. The key linking the two practices is the search for biological entities that do not overlap among the races. A critical difference is that modern studies use molecular biology to include previously excluded populations in the treatment of certain diseases. While the intentions are quite different, a number of scholars feel that genetic essentialism might be the end result.

Putting the Subject back into Color: Accessibility in Goethe's Zur Farbenlehre

This article discusses Goethes theory of color and his (at times vitriolic) diatribes against the Newtonians by situating his work within two contexts, one political and the other intellectual. The political context is Goethes dismay over the rise of obscurantism, typified by the Illuminati movement of the late eighteenth century, with secrecy and elitism as its hallmarks. The intellectual context is the tradition of German Idealism. He was fundamentally committed to understanding the relationship between the subject, or the investigator of nature (or Naturforscher), and the object, or nature itself. How can a Naturforscher, who is a part of nature, be able to depict it objectively?

How Gene Patents are Challenging Intellectual Property Law: The History of the CCR5 Gene Patent

During the 1980s and 90s, various branches of the federal government did their best to encourage patenting in general, and genes in particular (Rai 1999, pp. 77–109; Dutfield 2009). The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit (CAFC) have ceded much ground (some might argue too much ground) to the interests of the biotech industry, including Big Pharma and DNA sequencing companies. In a concerted effort to bolster this economic sector a number of curious and indeed alarming decisions have been made. This essay details the story of the interesting decision of the USPTO to grant a patent on a gene, despite the fact the patent holder listed the incorrect sequence in the specification and did not know the most relevant attribute of the gene product, namely that it was a chemokine receptor- CCR5,1 which is the co-receptor recognized by HIV-1, the virus responsible for AIDS. We live in an age that some science-technology-and-society (STS) scholars have labeled biocapitalism (for an excellent summary of biocapitalism, see Helmreich 2008). Biological entities and processes are commodities, which have their values set by the market.

Patenting in the Biological Sciences

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by A. Webster, volume 11, pp. 7612–7615,