Modern Western Science Research Articles

The ‘Problem’ Of Science in China

The overall ‘problem’ in early accounts of science and/or medicine in China seemed to center upon whether or not China possessed or could acquire modern Western science. However, in the twenty-first century there is now little debate over whether or not China has science. Yet, questions and concerns about science in China linger. The ‘problem’ of science in China has moved away from a paradigm focused on possession or capability, to that of the correct or ethical application of Chinese science and technology. In this essay, I will argue that the shifting of the so-called problem of Chinese science reflects larger Western concerns about the definition and control of science itself, the rise of China as an international power, and the ability to ‘compete’ in a global market predicated on the creation and application of new science and technologies.

Globalization and Science Education: The Implications for Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Much of the current diversity literature in science education does not address the complexity of the issues of indigenous learners in their postcolonial environments and calls for a “one size fits all” instructional approach (Lee, 2001). Indigenous knowledge needs to be promoted and supported. There is currently a global initiative of maintaining worldviews, languages, and environments of which science education can be a part (McKinley, 2007). This paper is organized around five main topics that further guide the theoretical framework for this important area: a) describing postcolonialism and indigeneity related to science education, b) defining the terms indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, c) western modern science and the effects of globalization on these terms d) examining the research on learning implications of IK and/or TEK in classrooms with a focus on the research into student learning in indigenous language, e) connecting place-based education to curricular implications for indigenous knowledge systems.

The 'Problem' of Science in China

The overall ‘problem’ in early accounts of science and/or medicine in China seemed to center upon whether or not China possessed or could acquire modern Western science. However, in the twenty-first century there is now little debate over whether or not China has science. Yet, questions and concerns about science in China linger. The ‘problem’ of science in China has moved away from a paradigm focused on possession or capability, to that of the correct or ethical application of Chinese science and technology. In this essay, I will argue that the shifting of the so-called problem of Chinese science reflects larger Western concerns about the definition and control of science itself, the rise of China as an international power, and the ability to ‘compete’ in a global market predicated on the creation and application of new science and technologies.

Secular Sciences and the Question of “Decline”

The fate of secular sciences in Islamic civilization has been the object of intense historical investigation. Historians have long sought to explicate the seemingly mysterious reduction of knowledge production in late medieval Islam. The present article attempts to grapple with this phenomenon by focusing on the social elements of knowledge production at the local, rather than the global level. It argues that the transmission of ancient knowledge to medieval Islam depended largely on a close cooperation among historical agents, who sought to advance various interests. The ultimate reduction of knowledge production—commonly referred to as the “decline” of sciences—was brought about by intense rivalry and the increased tension between different forms of knowledge and their representatives, which in turn hampered patterns of cooperation. The article stresses the contingent nature of the social relations that gave rise to the “decline” of sciences: the configuration of social agents, their interactions, and the final outcomes were not bound to unfold the way they did, nor did they have to follow the same path that led to emergence of modern Western science.

Acerca de las consecuencias sociales de la arqueología. Epistemología y política de la práctica

En este trabajo se discute acerca de las consecuencias sociales de la arqueología considerando que buena parte de la misma funciona de acuerdo a los principios y postulados de la ciencia moderna occidental. Consideramos que esos mandatos constituyen una contradicción y un obstáculo para el involucramiento social dado que prescriben un deber ser sustentado en la neutralidad valorativa y la asepsia epistemológica. Como contrapartida, se propone considerar epistemología y política en conjunto como ámbito de oportunidades teniendo en cuenta las localizaciones geopolíticas de producción de los saberes.

A cogenerative inquiry using postcolonial theory to envisage culturally inclusive science education

This forum constitutes a cogenerative inquiry using postcolonial theory drawn from the review paper by Zembylas and Avraamidou. Three teacher educators from African, Asian and Caribbean countries reflect on problems confronting their professional practices and consider the prospects of creating culturally inclusive science education. We learn that in Mozambique, Nepal and the Caribbean scientism patrols the borders of science education serving to exclude local epistemological beliefs and discourses and negating culturally contextualized teaching and learning. Despite the diverse cultural hybridities of these countries, science education is disconnected from the daily lives of the majority of their populations, serving inequitably the academic Western-oriented aspirations of an elite group who are “living hybridity but talking scientism.” The discussants explore their autobiographies to reveal core cultural values and beliefs grounded in their non-Western traditions and worldviews but which are in conflict with the Western Modern Worldview (WMW) and thus have no legitimate role in the standard school/college science classroom. They reflect on their hybrid cultural identities and reveal the interplay of multiple selves grounded in both the WMW and non-WMWs and existing in a dialectical tension of managed contradiction in a Third Space. They argue for dialectical logic to illuminate a Third Space wherein students of science education may be empowered to challenge hegemonies of cultural reproduction and examine reflexively their own identities, coming to recognize and reconcile their core cultural beliefs with those of Western modern science, thereby dissipating otherwise strongly delineated cultural borders.

The research works on Shanghai Pasteur Institute

Shanghai Pasteur Institute, found in 1899, was the first institute of medical research on rabies with modern western medical science, and was also the first rabies vaccine manufacturer in China. By making use of relevant archives and documents, the authors attempt to elaborate its foundation and evolution, which focus on the fields of infectious disease prevention, popularization of vaccine inoculation, vaccine manufacturing and cultivation of Chinese medical talents. Before 1949, two branches of the Institute had been set up. It was incorporated into the newly established PLA Academy of Military Medicine Sciences in 1951. As an orient branch of the original Pasteur Institute, Shanghai Pasteur Institute inherit the sprit and methodology of the original Institute, and make great contribution to the foundation and development of Chinese modern microbiology, immunology and modern medical education.

Robert K. Merton e il software libero: gli imperativi istituzionali della ricerca scientifica nell’etica hacker

Free (and open source) software can be considered a sort of «total social phenomenon» in contemporary information society: it includes elements pertaining to the cultural, organizational and economical sphere and many others. Despite the fact that it is still often thought of as a «new» phenomenon, the model of production and diffusion of free software incorporates basic principles that have characterized modern western science since at least five centuries. In particular, the sociologist of science Robert K. Merton, in a famous essay of 1942, has formulated the institutional norms that every scientist will learn in the course of his education and that he will have to observe to gain respect and reputation within the community of his peers. These same norms (universalism, communism, disinterestedness and organised skepticism) perfectly depict the processes of production and diffusion of free software. We can therefore conclude that it is proprietary software (and not free software) that represents a historical anomaly in the models of production and organization of knowledge.

When Physics Became King, by Iwan Rhys Morus

Reviewed by: When Physics Became King Jordi Cat (bio) When Physics Became King, by Iwan Rhys Morus; pp. xii + 303. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, $60.00, $25.00 paper, £39.99, £16.00 paper. Introductions, surveys, and teachers in the history of physics (and of science more broadly) have increasingly lagged for decades behind scholarly research in the same field. This growing gulf can be traced to shifting positions in pedagogy and historiography: from a more traditional assumption of consistency or even overlap between research and pedagogy to a more recent assumption that the two will diverge or be in conflict. For the overlap school, material presented to students differs from academic research only in degree. For the conflict school, the difference is one of kind; classroom work stands in contrast with jargon-ridden, ideological, and fashionable ideas characteristic of the new scholarship and academic discussions. Both schools, however, tend to prefer what they consider to be safe, time-honored, uncontroversial information. Iwan Morus's When Physics Became King, although it might be seen as of the overlap school, aligns itself with a new kind of science historiography that seeks to bridge the gulf between pedagogy and scholarship in an innovative manner. For this new school, if it is what professional historians write, publish, and debate, it must be worth teaching. The difference is consistently one of explicit aims and implicit standards: teaching the new material and new approaches requires taking them seriously, but not for granted, and presenting them accordingly, free of dogma and drama. Finally, the difference includes the new historiography's critical tools: explicit and self-conscious statements of purpose and method, a broader perspective on what calls for explanation and what counts [End Page 138] as a relevant one, and exposure to updated background literature and to alternative notions. Open-minded readers will find both stimulus and opportunity. When Physics Became King sheds light on the blind spot in previous accounts of nineteenth-century physics and explains what they take for granted: physics' acquisition of preeminence among other scientific disciplines and its rise to a central role in our culture, then and now. To understand the rise of physics, argues Morus, one needs to recognize first that two centuries ago no discipline called physics or practitioners called physicists existed, and second that physics cannot and did not take place—and time—in a vacuum. Scholarship over the last two decades has explained physics' dominance in cultural terms. One can, then, approach the survey of physics more broadly by including the many explanatory dimensions of its practitioners' "real cultural engagement" (3). Science, Morus reminds us, is not a given; it is a multidimensional cultural achievement. This move abandons the isolationist Cartesian and romantic individualisms that have shaped previous accounts, especially in the more widely accessible literature. And when we look at nineteenth-century physics "through the lens of culture" (6), what we see is the conscious mobilization of specific material, intellectual, social, and political resources of the time. For consistency and plausibility's sake, Morus implies that the cultural birth of physics recapitulates the birth of modern Western science. He safely grounds his approach on both principle and precedent, and his comparison does not entirely succeed or fail. But When Physics Became King does subscribe to previous accounts' strong historiographical sense of locality, materiality, and contingency. It also subscribes to a notion of revolution, although it replaces preceding accounts' revolutionary narrative—in terms of the Copernican revolution—with a more explanatory and political counterpart—in terms of the French and American Revolutions. Nineteenth-century physics is more than the culmination of the unifying ambitions of the mechanistic worldview and the transition to the empire of energy. The consolidation of physics as a discipline is inseparable from its theoretical powers and special effects; its work and waste; its Newtonianism and Romanticism; its private emotions and public displays; its notations, units, and nomenclatures; its unifications and specializations; its university examinations and experimental laboratories; its ethereal entities and precise measurements; its national rivalries and international collaborations; and ultimately its service to revolution, theology, empire, and to industry, art, and commerce. It is equally inseparable from...

Integrating Western and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Basis for Effective Science Education in South Africa?

This article responds to a call for rethinking the science that we teach to school learners in South Africa. Much of the debate on the nature of science and science learning is reflected in a body of literature which analyses the tensions between disparate perspectives on science education. Post-colonialists, feminists, multiculturalists, sociologists of scientific knowledge and those who refer to themselves as indigenous researchers argue that science is not universal but locally and culturally produced. Universalists on the other hand, argue that modern Western science is superior to indigenous perspectives on the natural world because of the former’s advanced predictive and explanatory powers. The fact that indigenous knowledge has been included in South Africa’s recently developed National Curriculum Statements invites a fresh look at the kind of science that is taught to South African school learners. In this article the author argues for a (dis)position that moves the debate beyond the binary of Western science/indigenous knowledge. Ways in which Western science and indigenous knowledge might be integrated are explored.

Alternative Science

This entry counters the paradigmatic status of modern western science by pointing to the existence of alternative knowledges that precede this hegemonic form, and by showing the fruitfulness of alternative sciences that have emerged in contemporary times. It argues that the idea of an alternative science demonstrates that issues of knowledge determine the possibilities of a politics that connects the question of alternative lifeworlds to alternative livelihoods, lifestyles and life cycles.

Shaking the Tree, Making a Rhizome: Towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education

This essay enacts a philosophy of science education inspired by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's figurations of rhizomatic and nomadic thought. It imagines rhizomes shaking the tree of modern Western science and science education by destabilising arborescent conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically articulated branches of a central stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations, and explores how becoming nomadic might liberate science educators from the sedentary judgmental positions that serve as the nodal points of Western academic science education theorising. This is demonstrated by commencing two rhizomatic textual assemblages that generate questions, provocations and challenges to dominant discourses and assumptions of contemporary science education. The first of these addresses cultural representations of Sir Isaac Newton and the second makes multiple, hybrid connections among the parasites, mosquitoes, humans, technologies and socio‐technical relations signified by malaria.

Perception, Living Matter, Cognitive Systems, Immune Networks: A Whiteheadian Future for Science Studies

Perception, Living Matter, Cognitive Systems, Immune Networks:A Whiteheadian Future for Science Studies James J. Bono (bio) Unlike Athena, science studies did not emerge fully armed from the head of Zeus. Its eruption from the very loins of its disciplinary progenitors—history of science, sociology of science, philosophy of science—represents more than simple refashioning of well-worn problems, analytic approaches, and models dressed up in bright new, cosmetically retouched, form. Something profoundly more interesting happened on the way to science studies: rather than frictionless reproduction of the same, repetition gave issue to difference. Traces of such difference within the familiar analytics of the historical, the social, and the philosophical (one might add: the anthropological, the literary) abound in science studies, nowhere perhaps as strongly as in the so-called turn toward "practice."1 Despite attempts to contain practice within traditional disciplinary regimes, attention to practice has proven time and again deeply disruptive. Not only has it caused science studies—I mean, of course, individual historians, sociologists, philosophers, and anthropologists of science—to attend to the materialities and contingencies of engagement with and communication [End Page 135] about nature and natural objects,2 but, most significantly, attention to practice has, in addition, slowly (one resists the temptation to add, inevitably) shifted attention from epistemology to ontology, from matters of fact to matter as richly entwined and situated in a world of agencies.3 This turn toward ontology in science studies, though slow and far from complete, nonetheless has deep roots that are only gradually beginning to be exposed, tended, and nurtured. Its genealogy includes Martin Heidegger as well as Gilles Deleuze4 and Félix Guattari, and has been extended back to the likes of Henri Bergson and Charles Darwin. This essay, arguing through the examples of seventeenth-century theories of living—or working—matter, the mid-twentieth-century developmental biologist and epigeneticist C. H. Waddington, and late-twentieth-century reconfigurations of the immune system as a cognitive network in the work of Francisco Varela and his colleagues, will insist upon the significance of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of organism to science studies and to its possible future. I. Reexamining Seventeenth-Century Notions of Matter In Science and the Modern World (1925), Alfred North Whitehead sketches out terrain that subsequently will give rise to his fully developed [End Page 136] philosophy of "organism." While his philosophy drew upon developments in mathematics and the sciences of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Whitehead turned in Science and the Modern World to the foundations of modern Western science in the seventeenth century—his "Century of Genius"—to reveal the assumptions that shaped the very ontological and metaphysical beliefs to which the modern world had become enthralled and against which he would offer an alternative philosophical cosmology. Yet, for Whitehead, however misplaced was the confidence exhibited by the "New Science" in such fundamental assumptions, its shining achievements in physics and mathematics nonetheless paved the way for subsequent intellectual developments that formed the immediate context for his own thought. More provocatively, he also glimpsed in the seventeenth century the seeds of potentially countervailing tendencies. I would like to suggest that such countervailing tendencies were stronger, more fully developed, and far more substantially in evidence than Whitehead, and the Whiggish historiography of the "scientific revolution" of his day, could possibly have imagined.5 What Whitehead glimpsed is tellingly suggested by his brief response to a passage from Sir Francis Bacon's (1561–1626) Silva silvarum. "It is certain," Bacon claims, "that all bodies whatsoever, though they have no sense, yet they have perception; for when one body is applied to another, there is a kind of election to embrace that which is agreeable, and to exclude or expel that which is ingrate; and whether the body be alterant or altered, evermore a perception [End Page 137] precedeth operation."6 Bacon's passing attribution of "perception"—"taking account of"7 in Whitehead's gloss—to ordinary bodies contains the seeds of an alternative ontology to the emerging orthodoxy enforced by the New Science of the seventeenth century. Thus, Whitehead further remarks: Bacon is outside the physical line of thought which finally dominated the century...

‘Multicultural’ science in South Africa's National Curriculum Statement

South Africa's Revised National Curriculum Statement for Further Education and Training (FET) is premised on the view that there are competing perspectives and worldviews from which to make sense of phenomena. Accordingly, elements of indigenous knowledges have been integrated into the discursive terrains of all subjects that form part of the National Curriculum Statement. This policy statement invites several critical questions, some of which are addressed in this article in relation to science education. These include questions as to whether seemingly disparate perspectives of ‘the world’ are competing or complementary and whether science (education) is universal or multicultural. A universalist position holds that Western modern science has superior explanatory powers of understanding the natural world to those of indigenous knowledges. A multiculturalist position holds that science is culturally produced and that cultures have disparate ways of understanding the natural world and that different ways of knowing should be recognised as science. This article discusses critical questions arising from much contestation about the nature of science as a consequence of different perspectives on science held by universalists and multiculturalists. Some of the implications this discussion has for science education in contemporary South Africa are also examined.

Atalanta's Apples: Postcolonial Theory as a Barrier to the ?Balance of Stories?

he ancient Greek myth of Atalanta's Apples is a story in which Atalanta, who had no wish to marry, challenges her suitors to a race, slows them down with well-placed golden apples, and ends up frustrating their desire. I came across this variation on better-known African fable of Tortoise and Hare came while I was reading Francis Bacon's Plan for The Great Instauration (25). Bacon was not just any old citizen of Western European nation that colonized my native land, Ghana, but, rather, one of fi rst advocates of inductive, experimen- tal modern Western science. The chief and only end of science, according to him, was to create and that is, material results and creature comforts. In other words, Science must justify itself as Technology, yet one that serves glory of God in that these fruits and works of science are also Works of Light. This comes right out of Christian Bible, especially exhortation to Let your light so shine before men, that they many see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven (Matthew 5:16). Meet it is, then, that Cross goes into wild, unknown world armed with Sword, leaving it to others or future generations to beat either of these into Ploughshares, if they choose. One of fi rst 'fruits and works' of modern science was, of course, charting of skies (by Copernicus and Galileo, for instance), which aided navigation and so facilitated intrusion of Europeans into other parts of Africa included. The Europeans, denizens of what called the known world, landed in these other, unknown worlds, armed with notions of their cultural superiority and manifest destiny, as endowed by both religion and science, and settled down to systematic colonization and devastation of these lands, Africa included, using technology. Surely, an essay, written by an African, advising wariness with all borrowed terms and theories could do better than craft its title from an ancient Greek myth, and moreover one acquired by way of an Englishman? Surely, native-indigenous myths and parables could provide more worthy titles, such as Ananse's Web, Eshu's Foot-tracks, or even Worm's Dance (Ananse and Eshu being tricksters in Akan folktales and Yoruba mythology, respectively, while third alternative title alludes to Yoruba/Igbo saying You may think worm is dancing but that is only way it walks)? Indeed, why not craft a title out of West African folktale of Tortoise and Hare, whose moral is that race (for knowledge and for power) is not for swift but for steady and wise? The Hare's speediness lulls it into complacency,

The logic of non-Western science: mathematical discoveries in medieval India

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)One of the most significant things one learns from the study of the exact sciences as practiced in a number of ancient and medieval societies is that, while science has always traveled from one culture to another, each culture before the modern period approached the sciences it received in its own unique way and transformed them into forms compatible with its own modes of thought. Science is a product of culture ; it is not a single, unified entity. Therefore, a historian of premodern scientific texts - whether they be written in Akkadian, Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, or any other linguistic bearer of a distinct culture - must avoid the temptation to conceive of these sciences as more or less clumsy attempts to express modern scientific ideas. They must be understood and appreciated as what their practitioners believed them to be. The historian is interested in the truthfulness of his own understanding of the various sciences, not in the truth or falsehood of the science itself.In order to illustrate the individuality of the sciences as practiced in the older non-Western societies, and their differences from early modern Western science (for contemporary science is, in general, interested in explaining quite different phenomena than those that attracted the attention of earlier scientists), I propose to describe briefly some of the characteristics of the medieval Indian sastra of jyotisa. This discipline concerned matters included in such Western areas of inquiry as astronomy, mathematics, divination, and astrology. In fact, the jyotisls, the Indian experts in jyotisa, produced more literature in these areas - and made more mathematical discoveries - than scholars in any other culture prior to the advent of printing. In order to explain how they managed to make such discoveries - and why their discoveries remain largely unknown -1 will also need to describe briefly the general social and economic position of the jyotisls.Sastra ('teaching') is the word in Sanskrit closest in meaning to the Greek 'ejciorrinn* and the Latin 'scientia.' The teachings are often attributed to gods or considered to have been composed by divine rsis ; but since there were many of both kinds of superhuman beings, there were many competing varieties of each sastra. Sometimes, however, a school within a sastra was founded by a human ; scientists were free to modify their sastras as they saw fit. No one was constrained to follow a system taught by a god.Jyotih is a Sanskrit word meaning 'light,' and then 'star' ; so that jyotihsastra means 'teaching about the stars.' This sastra was conventionally divided into three subteachings : ganita( mathematical astronomy and mathematics itself ).samhita (divination, including by means of celestial omens), and hora (astrology). A number of jyotisis (students of the stars) followed all three branches, a larger number just two (usually samhita and hora), and the largest number just one (hora).The principal writings in jyotihsastra, as in all Indian sastras, were normally in verse, though the numerous commentaries on them were almost always in prose. The verse form with its metrical demands, while it aided memorization, led to greater obscurity of expression than prose composition would have entailed. The demands of the poetic meter meant that there could be no stable technical vocabulary ; many words with different metrical patterns had to be devised to express the same mathematical procedure or geometrical concept, and mathematical formulae had frequently to be left partially incomplete. Moreover, numbers had to be expressible in metrical forms (the two major systems used for numbers, the bhutasafikhya and the katapayadi, will be explained and exemplified below), and the consequent ambiguity of these expressions encouraged the natural inclination of Sanskrit pandits to test playfully their readers' acumen. …

Between Coca and Cocaine: A Century or More of U.S.-Peruvian Drug Paradoxes, 1860–1980

Between Coca and Cocaine: A Century or More of U.S.-Peruvian Drug Paradoxes, 1860–1980

Modern Western Science as a Standard for Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Critical Appraisal

It is generally recognized that China, while attempting to develop modern scientific medicine in carrying out its national policy for modernization, has also made significant efforts to integrate traditional Chinese medicine into its health care system. For instance, the World Health Organization's first global strategy on traditional and alternative medicine (released in May 2002) lists China as one of only four of its member states to have attained an integrative health care system. However, medical integration can take many different forms and involve quite different health care standards. A health care standard is a set of mechanisms by which distinct diagnostic and therapeutic practices and products are validated or accredited for use in health care delivery. Traditional Chinese medicine and modern scientific medicine adopt different sets of such mechanisms and thereby engage different health care standards. Accordingly, in appraising the Chinese integrative health care system, it is important to investigate which health care standard has been appealed to.

Discovering indigenous science: Implications for science education

Indigenous science relates to both the science knowledge of long-resident, usually oral culture peoples, as well as the science knowledge of all peoples who as participants in culture are affected by the worldview and relativist interests of their home communities. This article explores aspects of multicultural science and pedagogy and describes a rich and well-documented branch of indigenous science known to biologists and ecologists as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Although TEK has been generally inaccessible, educators can now use a burgeoning science-based TEK literature that documents numerous examples of time-proven, ecologically relevant, and cost effective indigenous science. Disputes regarding the universality of the standard scientific account are of critical importance for science educators because the definition of science is a de facto “gatekeeping” device for determining what can be included in a school science curriculum and what cannot. When Western modern science (WMS) is defined as universal it does displace revelation-based knowledge (i.e., creation science); however, it also displaces pragmatic local indigenous knowledge that does not conform with formal aspects of the “standard account.” Thus, in most science classrooms around the globe, Western modern science has been taught at the expense of indigenous knowledge. However, because WMS has been implicated in many of the world's ecological disasters, and because the traditional wisdom component of TEK is particularly rich in time-tested approaches that foster sustainability and environmental integrity, it is possible that the universalist “gatekeeper” can be seen as increasingly problematic and even counter productive. This paper describes many examples from Canada and around the world of indigenous people's contributions to science, environmental understanding, and sustainability. The authors argue the view that Western or modern science is just one of many sciences that need to be addressed in the science classroom. We conclude by presenting instructional strategies that can help all science learners negotiate border crossings between Western modern science and indigenous science. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 85:6–34, 2001.

Strategic interdisciplinary relations between a natural science community and a psychology community Part 1: The development of the contrasting paradigms.

Abstract The scientists and scholars of behavior--environment relations, since the inception of their discipline, have debated the matter of how best to organize their discipline and nudge it along an appropriate course of maturation. Two main alternatives have emerged: (a) Infiltrate the already organized discipline of psychology and convert it into a natural science discipline with a properly useful kind of focus on behaviors, (b) Establish an independently organized natural science discipline existing apart from organized psychology. The 300-year development and emergence of the non-behavioral natural sciences have provided relevant history lessons pertinent to the current dilemma. That history suggests that the behavior analysis community has been experimenting for half a century with the less promising alternative. THE ROYAL SOCIETY In 1645 civil war raged through England, although as war was conducted in those times, certain classes of people could ignore it sufficiently to go about their business. In keeping with the traditional and prevailing belief that all worthwhile wisdom was derived from the ancients, England's two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were exclusively devoted to the study of ancient languages and the works of ancient philosophers, religious and secular. Science, founded on observation and experiment, was relatively new and had no place in the curriculum of those universities. At neither Oxford nor Cambridge could one study the works of Galileo, who had founded mechanics, Gilbert, who had founded experimental physics, or Kepler, who had derived the laws of planetary motion (Andrade, 1960). However, the works of such men of science were admired and studied within an informal community of well read and influential English noblemen, some of whom were churchmen and some of whom were actual practitioners of the new experimental philosophy. Following a decade or more of somewhat regular if informal meetings devoted to a sharing of their common interests in natural philosophy, what two years later would become The Royal Society was formed by 40 men at Gresham College in 1660. It received its Royal Charter, and its name, in 1662. The Royal Society, as it was known thereafter, was for a long period perennially short of funds both to support the scientific activity of its Fellows and to publish results. Nevertheless, it did so to the extent that its limited resources permitted (Andrade, 1960). The rise of modern Western science proceeded on various fronts throughout Europe mainly through the work of an often loosely knit community of individuals, but it was The Royal Society that most represented the organizational embodiment of science and functioned as the hub of European scientific activity, in part because it welcomed foreign members. The Royal Society gradually became a kind of clearing house for the advance of scientific activity throughout the European continent. From the outset, The Royal Society maintained a strict organizational autonomy as its most important organizational resource (Andrade, 1960; Purver, 1967). From the time of the founders, a policy of religious tolerance was strictly observed, yet The Royal Society was noted for the maintenance of its scientific integrity through a deliberate disengagement, or emancipation, of science and philosophy from the coercion of particular religious systems. Even so, the early Royal Society was entirely a product of the religion--dominated culture in which it emerged. The Society reflected a prevailing view among its members that had been elaborated by Francis (1561-1626). As Purver (1967) concluded after her scholarly review of Bacon's works: Bacon ... saw science as the notification of a universal language to be learnt by the scientist in the service of God for the benefit of man (p. 147). From that perspective, the world was God's creation, and science was an extension of religion. …