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This article focuses on a meeting which was held in the Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, which discussed the problems of analyzing mathematics from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge. The meeting was sponsored by Project PAREX, a European programme of cooperative research in the social studies of science, and by the Science Studies Unit. The proposal for the meeting had arisen from a previous meeting of Project PAREX, held in Regensburg in July 1976, and devoted to "The Social Context of Mathematics: Nineteenth-Century Schools of Thought." The first research paper by David Bloor, attempted to bring together the work in the philosophy of mathematics of Imre Lakatos and that in social anthropology of Mary Douglas. In another research paper, Herbert Mehrtens made use of his research on the history of lattice theory to discuss various substantive and methodological issues in the sociology of mathematics. Sabetai Unguru of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma, discussed the historiographic issues arising from his work on Greek mathematics.

Feminist STS analyses of contemporary reproductive medicine have illustrated the proliferation of practices that position fetuses as individual subjects, and have highlighted the major implications of such practices for pregnant women. In an attempt to challenge medicine’s claims to ‘know’ the fetus, this body of literature has also demonstrated the renegotiable basis of pregnant/fetal subjectivity, using detailed empirical analyses of the practices through which particular pregnant and fetal subjects emerge in particular contexts. In this paper I contribute to this endeavour utilizing an empirical case study of an important, but neglected aspect of reproductive healthcare: the demarcation of temporal thresholds on abortion provision in the absence of diagnosed fetal abnormality. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Scottish health professionals, I explore the discursive practices through which they demarcate ‘later’ abortion as a problematic decision. I argue that such practices are intimately dependent on particular co-constructions of temporality and pregnant/fetal subjectivity, and support this argument with reference to the counter-representations of the gestational timing of abortion that emerge from a minority of health professionals’ accounts. I suggest that, collectively, this body of data illustrates the opportunities that (re)presenting temporality would afford those engaged in attempts to foster the construction of less oppressive pregnant/fetal subjectivities. My broader aim is to illustrate the insights that feminist theorizations of pregnant/fetal subjectivity gain from explicit engagement with another important theme of contemporary STS scholarship, namely, the constitutive role played by representations of temporality in technoscientific innovation and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the scientific work of the Laboratory of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh from its foundation in 1887 to 1920. It looks in particular at the pivotal role of clinical cases in the work of the Laboratory, using the concept of ‘triangulation’ to analyse how cases served both as objects of scientific knowledge and as sites for articulating and aligning the concerns of medical practitioners and career scientists. It goes on to propose a general model for thinking about the role of cases in scientific knowledge production, based on a rereading of Kuhn as seen through the lens of the sociology of scientific knowledge. It concludes with some general reflections on how this analysis of the work of the Laboratory helps us to rethink the relations between basic and applied medical science in the period before the emergence of modern biomedicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes and analyses the experience of applying the IFLA Checklist, Access to libraries for persons with disabilities to an academic library: the Fife Campus Library at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Dundee, Scotland. An introduction to disability legislation in the United Kingdom provides the legal framework for this paper. In the United Kingdom, this legislation has been recognized as an important incentive for libraries to improve their services to disabled people. This paper considers a number of physical and attitudinal barriers to good practice and the value of using the IFLA Checklist in overcoming some of these barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1735 the great Scottish mathematician Colin Maclaurin wrote a 94-page memoir to the Scottish Excise Commission, explaining how to find the precise amount of molasses in barrels at Glasgow. We describe the work itself, and place it in its social context by discussing the place of molasses in world trade, the increasing rationalization of tax collection and economic organization, the growth of public science, and the role of all these in the rise of the 18th-century nation-state in general, and of Scotland in particular. The paper is a case study illustrating the creation and use of mathematics to resolve socially divisive disputes by replacing arbitrary local practices with impersonally justifiable rules, and illuminating also the way the perceived prestige and objectivity of mathematics—and of eminent mathematicians—are used by political authority to quell unrest and achieve consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on The Academy of Physics at Edinburgh which flourished for only about three and a half years, from January 1797 to about May 1800. Just as the journal "Edinburgh Review" was founded as a reaction by a group of young men who were dissatisfied with the state of Scotland, so the Academy came into being some five years earlier owing to a similar discontent on the part of some of the first reviewers. The significance of the Academy is not to be found in scientific discoveries made by its members. Instead, one must look to the scientific experience and ideology shared by its members, and to their attitudes towards methodology and particular scientific subjects. These commitments were reflected in the society's structure. Although it gave them focus, the scientific commitments of this group neither began nor ended with the Academy. Before its foundation many of the group shared similar social backgrounds and a similar intellectual inheritance. Therefore, in considering the Academy as a scientific movement, one must also take account of its members' previous and subsequent experience at Edinburgh University and in writing for the "Edinburgh Review."

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Provides information on the Fifth World Conference on Continuing Professional Education for the Library and Information Science Professions which was held in Scotland from August 14 to 16, 2003. Organizer of the event; Theme of the event; List of papers presented in the conference.

Copyright of IFLA Journal is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)