Introduction. Pesticides: Past and Present

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>In September 1981 police raided the Institute for Behavioral Research (Silver Spring, Maryland, USA) seizing a number of macaque monkeys in response to accusations of animal cruelty against the neuroscientist Edward Taub. Over the following decade a volatile battle was fought as Taub, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the nascent animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), contested the claims and decided the monkeys’ fate. In spite of the monkeys having been surgically altered so as to be incapable of feeling pain a loose alliance of veterinarians, ethologists and animal advocates argued that they nonetheless suffered. Whilst this episode is often seen as a polarized confrontation between science and society, this paper argues that the Silver Spring monkey controversy saw two historically distinct cultures of laboratory animal care meet resulting in the development of new approaches to animal welfare in biomedical science.</abstract>

The Silver Spring monkey controversy: changing cultures of care in twentieth-century laboratory animal research

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The paper argues that humanity has entered a new stage of evolution: epistemic evolution. Just as cultural evolution emerged against the background of biological evolution, epistemic evolution began as an aspect of cultural evolution and now dominates the global fate of humanity. It is characterized by the increasing dependence of global society on the achievements and further extension of science and technology in order to ensure its sustainability in the age of the Anthropocene. The historical development of knowledge is reviewed from an evolutionary perspective that introduces key concepts of an historical epistemology.</abstract>

The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science in the Anthropocene

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> In the course of her career, German ornithologist Emilie Snethlage (1868-1929), who worked in Brazil in the early twentieth century, was involved in all the steps that characterize the “production” of a specimen for scientific collection: from fieldwork, with the collection and preparation of materials, to their description and publication of results. Each of these stages mobilizes different material practices and sociability networks. During fieldwork or in her museum activities, the fact of being a woman demanded from Snethlage specific strategies for establishing her scientific legitimacy, analyzed in this article, especially her activities related to collecting practices. </abstract>

Among Birds and Net(Work)S: Material and Social Practices in the Trajectory of Ornithologist Emilie Snethlage (1868–1929)

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Lead arsenate was introduced on a massive scale in agriculture in Spain in the early 1940s. With the support of a network of agricultural engineers, the new Francoist state encouraged the production and use of lead arsenate as the main weapon against a newly arrived pest, the Colorado potato beetle. In this paper I discuss arsenical pesticides as sociotechnological products which played a pivotal role in the joint production of both chemical-based agriculture and the emerging Francoist regime in Spain during the 1940s. I review the campaigns organized by agriculture engineers and the making of the new National Register for Phytosanitary Products in 1942. The new regulations promoted research in pesticide quality control but also contributed to concealing the health hazards. This invisibilization of the risks took shape in the confluence of interests of the emerging Francoist state, the new pesticide industry, and the large network of agricultural engineers.</abstract>

Arsenical Pesticides in Early Francoist Spain: Fascism, Autarky, Agricultural Engineers and the Invisibility of Toxic Risks

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>The transfer of railway technology within the British Empire, and particularly to India provides the focus for this paper that explores—conceptually, historiographically and substantively—what was transferred and how that transfer took place. Drawing upon the large-scale technical system literature and labor history the paper highlights various kinds and levels of transfer agents working through, albeit in an often-contested fashion, Afro-Asian labor processes as central components within the transfer process when railway construction was involved. Railway construction is then counterpoised to railway operation where the transfer process exhibited greater British dictation and adherence to British practice.</abstract>

The Transfer of Railway Technologies and Afro-Asian Labor Processes within the British Empire

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This article explores the transformations of an area of scientific research provoked by the introduction of big data and the possibilities to treat them by Artificial Intelligence. We study these transformations in contemporary astrophysics as it has developed over the last thirty years. These transformations extend from cognitive work procedures to information processing, systems of collaboration between scientists, epistemology and terrain of questions.
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The Transformation of a Science by a “Technology”: The Case of Astrophysics and the Introduction of Machine Learning

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This article addresses the leishmaniases in the Americas from a Brazilian perspective. The first cases of cutaneous and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis were described in 1909 in São Paulo. Latin American researchers gained international projection because of their work on this disease they considered autochthonous, which came to be known as American tegumentary leishmaniasis. But visceral leishmaniasis only emerged as a public health problem in the Americas in 1934 thanks to a new diagnostic technique for yellow fever. Zoonoses earned greater attention later, especially in the laboratory founded in 1965 at the Evandro Chagas Institute by Ralph Lainson and Jeffrey Shaw. Here we examine their connections with other teams and the resulting changes when they proved that parasite, vector, and host populations were much more heterogeneous than previously imagined. Technical innovations provided a better understanding of the distinct epidemiological characteristics of the illnesses caused by different <italic>Leishmania</italic> amid a backdrop of far-reaching transnational networks.
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The History of New World Leishmaniases From a Brazilian Perspective

Book Review: Karine Chemla and Glenn W. Most, eds. <italic>Mathematical Commentaries in the Ancient World. A Global Perspective</italic>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, 464 pp. ISBN: 978-1-1088-3957-0

Book Review: Martino Lorenzo Fagnani. <italic>The Development of Agricultural Science in Northern Italy in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century</italic>. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 277 pp. ISBN: 978-3-031-20656-6

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Landulfo Alves was an agronomist who was educated in the USA and became a politician, having served as federal intervener in Bahia from 1938 to 1942, in the context of the <italic>Estado Novo</italic>, and later as senator of the Republic from 1951 to 1954. His investments in agriculture and education left important legacies for scientific activities in Bahia. Despite these achievements, historians may not have fully grasped his importance in the development of Bahia, especially in science. Seeking to fill this void, this paper addresses questions which have received little exploration in historiography: how did his education motivate his initiation into the public sphere and influence his political choices? What were his investments in the state? Was he an isolated case, or was he in line with the development policies of his time? As a result, we hope that this work will provide new historiographical approaches to Landulfo Alves’ contributions to science and higher education in Bahia.
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Landulfo Alves’ Trajectory as an Agronomist and Federal Intervener in Bahia: State Investments in Agriculture and Education (1938-1942)

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This article examines the reception of Rachel Carson’s book <italic>Silent Spring</italic> in Scandinavian family gardening magazines. In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, family gardening associations were broad organisations with significant social impact. They were the most important arenas for transfer of scientific knowledge and values on gardening, linking plant protection experts, producers and sellers of gardening chemicals, horticultural advisors and the general public. Thus, these associations and their magazines influenced many social groups that had common interests in non-commercial gardening as part of their everyday life. In practice, these family gardening magazines were heavily dependent on the income from garden chemicals advertisements. Consequently, their editorial policies and plant protection technical advice were deeply rooted in the post-war ideals of chemical agriculture and horticulture. These ideals were pursued and applied everywhere—even into the tiniest allotment and family garden. Scandinavian countries and their gardening associations have many similarities and some differences between them. This makes them an interesting case for comparison. The gardening magazines of Sweden, Norway and Denmark show quite a few similarities in the way they first pretended to ignore Carson while spending much effort countering the possible effects of her message, and in the way they retrospectively engaged with her book. There are, however, quite interesting differences in the way the national garden associations, their magazine editors and the magazines’ pesticide experts handled the publicity generated by <italic>Silent Spring</italic> on the harmfulness of garden chemicals.
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Circulating Silence. The Reaction to Rachel Carson’s Book <italic>Silent Spring</italic> (1962) in Scandinavian Gardening Magazines

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This article gives visibility to Amazonian indigenous peoples in the global process of plant circulation and associated knowledge. The first part highlights the indigenous role in cultivating and collecting native plants, and in the processing of natural products over the second half of the eighteenth century. The second part shows that these activities were influenced by internal colonial dynamics, as well as by international relations. The case of the ayapana herb is analysed in detail. This plant became known worldwide at the beginning of the nineteenth century thanks to the interactions among indigenous knowledge, Portuguese colonial politics and the performance of military and naturalists of different nationalities. Examples like this show that, in the process of building botany, which occurred concurrently with the globalization of plants, indigenous peoples provided not only specimens that circulated around the world, but also knowledge related to cultivation, transportation and uses.
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Knowledge and Circulation of Plants: Unveiling the Participation of Amazonian Indigenous Peoples in the Construction of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Botany

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Why do collections continually surprise? The simple answer for students and researchers is that collections of historic objects contain abundant information not well represented in texts or on the internet. Collections in museums, libraries, campuses and private hands offer a unique source of diversity for research, teaching and broader cultural offerings. In this paper, I look at the wealth of findings resulting from the careful study of objects, collections and provenance. I provide examples from our national science museums in Ottawa, as well as collecting activities throughout Canada. I will also describe recent research in German science collections. The close study of objects has a capacity to reveal multiple narratives and unexpected human dimensions of the past, while also connecting us to complex human relations with what remains in the present. I reflect on how collection keepers and museums can better harness the possibilities stemming from these kinds of approaches.
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What Remains: The Enduring Value of Museum Collections in the Digital Age

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>Railway towns, in their essence, are a specific evolution of the system of company towns, which disseminated during the 19th and 20th centuries. These company towns were characterised by communities of workers employed by the same company or group of companies, which owned the houses and infrastructures and exerted some sort of control over the town’s economic and social living. The model of a garden-city, under which most of the examples studied were developed, was the most common, although not the only one. Despite the relevance of these processes, there are no papers that analyse them in a global perspective and in the long run, but only studies that focus on particular cases with barely any contextualisation. Lest we forget that railway towns grew in tandem with the rail networks all over the world, from the most industrialised and populated areas to the new regions targeted for colonisation. In order to overcome this set of isolated reports of individual railway towns, in this paper, I group the most significant references and studies about railway towns created by different companies in different countries to propose a broader interpretation of the overall phenomenon. Amidst the features intended to be analysed, I highlight the origin and nature of these towns, their forms and urban structures, the most notable case studies, and their future as industrial heritage (questioning the reasons for the current status of the towns, some devoid of their railway functions, others with a lesser presence of the railway, and others almost depopulated).</abstract>

Railway Towns: a Long-term Global Perspective

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This contribution interprets the intertwined issues of science, epistemology, society, and politics in Gramsci’s <italic>Prison Notebooks</italic> as a culturalist approach to science that does not renounce objectivity. Gramsci particularly criticized the scientist positions taken by the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin in <italic>Historical Materialism</italic> (1921) and the conference communication he delivered at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology in London in 1931. Gramsci did not avoid, at least implicitly, engaging with the theses of Lenin’s <italic>Materialism and Empiriocriticism</italic> (1909). Gramsci’s reception of these Russian positions was twofold: on the one hand, he agreed with the centrality of praxis (and politics) for a correct assessment of the meaning of epistemological positions; on the other hand, he disagreed with the reduction of the problem of epistemology to the dichotomy of materialism and idealism at the expense of any consideration of the ideological dimension of science.
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The Struggle for Objectivity: Gramsci’s Historical-Political Vistas on Science against the Background of Lenin’s Epistemology