Review: Heiner Fangerau; Rethy Chhem; Irmgard Müller; Shih-Chang Wang, eds. Medical Imaging and Philosophy: Challenges, Reflections, Actions.
Review by: Louise Whiteley
Isis, Volume 104, Issue 4, Page 820-821, December 2013.
Archiv für März 2014
Review: Karel Davids. Religion, Technology, and the Great and Little Divergences: China and Europe Compared.
Review by: Bert S. Hall
Isis, Volume 104, Issue 4, Page 819-820, December 2013.
Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences, 2013
Isis, Volume 104, Issue S1, Page i-304, December 2013.
A life in education and architecture: Mary Beaumont Medd
Paedagogica Historica, Ahead of Print.
Roswitha Dubach, Verhütungspolitik. Sterilisation im Spannungsfeld von Psychiatrie, Gesellschaft und individuellen Interessen in Zürich (1890–1970)
Zürich: Chronos Verlag 2013. 351 S., br., ill., € 39,50. ISBN 978-3-0340-1134-1.
Inventuren der Erde. Vorratsschätzungen für mineralische Rohstoffe und die Etablierung der Ressourcenökonomie
Inventories of the Earth. Mineral Resource Appraisals and the Rise of Resource Economics. How do the earth sciences mediate between the natural and social world? This paper explores the question by focusing on the history of nonfuel mineral resource appraisal from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. It argues that earth sciences early on embraced social scientific knowledge, i. e. economic knowledge, in particular, when it came to determining ore deposits and estimating the magnitude of mineral reserves. After 1900, assessing national and global mineral reserves and their “life span” or years of supply became ever more important, scaling up and complementing traditional appraisal practices on the level of individual mines or mining and trading companies. As a consequence, economic methods gained new weight for mineral resource estimation. Natural resource economics as an own field of research grew out of these efforts. By way of example, the mineral resource appraisal assigned to the U.S. Materials Policy Commission by President Harry S. Truman in 1951 is analyzed in more detail. Natural resource economics and environmental economics might be interpreted as a strategy to bring down the vast and holistically conceived object of geological and ecological research, the earth, to human scale, and assimilate it into social matters.
Kommentar: „Ökonomische Kalküle um Ressourcen“ – Überlegungen zur Kontextualisierung der Beiträge des Themenheftes aus frühneuzeitlicher Perspektive
Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi?DOI=10.1002%2Fbewi.201401670
Von Biodiversität zu Biodiversifizierung: Eine Neue Ökonomie der Natur?
From Biodiversity to Biodiversification: A New Economy of Nature? This paper explores the relations between economy and ecology in the last quarter of the 20th century with the example of biodiversity. From its definition in the 1980s, the concept of biodiversity responded not only to conservational concerns but also to hopes and demands of economic profitability. The paper argues that archival systems of inventorying and surveying nature, the biodiversity database and the biodiversity portfolio, changed the view on nature from a resource to an investment. The paper studies the alliances of ecologists and environmental economists in managing nature according to economic principles of successful asset management, “diversification”, with the aim to distribute risk, minimize ecological loss and maximize overall ecosystem performance. Finally, the paper discusses the assumptions and the consequences of transferring principles from financial risk management to landscape management. How has the substitution of the existential values of nature by shareholder value affected the relations between ecology, environment, and ecosystem conservation? Who gains and who looses in exchanging natural capital and financial capital, yields, and profits?
Lösung für das Knappheitsproblem oder nationales Risiko? Auf Erdölsuche in der Schweiz
Remedy for Shortage or Risk for National Security? The Search for Oil in Switzerland. Over several decades, geologists, entrepreneurs, politicians, and public authorities dealt with a potential petroleum occurrence in Switzerland. They provided scientific expertise, granted concessions, invested capital and sank bore holes. Although the endeavour was never successful economically, it reveals how closely related geopolitical situations and the exploitation of natural resources were. This article investigates the search for crude oil in Switzerland from the 1930s until the 1960s, combining a history of science and technology perspective with a history of the political regulations and economic considerations concerning the extractive industry. It traces the changing fears and hopes about potential oil occurrences in Switzerland: From an investment to overcome future shortages, to the risk of imperial desires if oil would be found in abundance.
Joachim Radkau, Die Ära der Ökologie. Eine Weltgeschichte
München: C.H. Beck 2011. 782 S., geb., € 29,95. ISBN 978-3-406-61372-2.