The 2022 recipient of the Karl Spencer Lashley Award is Nicholas Spitzer, Atkinson Family Chair, Distinguished Professor, and Vice Chair, University of California, San Diego, “in recognition of his discovery of neurotransmitter switching in single neurons of adult mammals, and his demonstration of causal links between neurotransmitter switching and behavioral state.”  The 2022 Lashley Award was presented at the Society's November 2022 Meeting.

Nick Spitzer discovered neurotransmitter switching in adult mammals in response to sustained environmental stimuli or sustained stress.  Switches typically replace an excitatory transmitter with an inhibitory one or vice versa, and postsynaptic receptors change to match the newly expressed transmitter.  In elegant experiments, Professor Spitzer showed that transmitter switches are linked to changes in behavioral state, playing a critical regulating role in behaviors as diverse as motor skill learning, behavioral responses to changes in day length, and behavioral expression of fear.  Neurotransmitter switching is a novel form of neuroplasticity that may lie at the root of numerous long-term behavioral changes.

The Karl Spencer Lashley Award was established in 1957 by a gift from Dr. Lashley, a member of the Society and a distinguished neuroscientist and neuropsychologist.  His entire scientific life was spent in the study of behavior and its neural basis.  Dr. Lashley’s famous experiments on the brain mechanisms of learning, memory and intelligence helped inaugurate the modern era of integrative neuroscience, and the Lashley Award recognizes innovative work that continues exploration in the field.

The members of the selection committee are William T. Newsome III (chair), Harman Family Provostial Professor, Vincent V. C. Woo Director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Professor of Neurobiology and, by courtesy, of Psychology, Stanford University; John E. Dowling, Gordon and Llura Gund Research Professor of Neurosciences Emeritus, Harvard University; Catherine Dulac, Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and Investigator for Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Ann M. Graybiel, Institute Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Investigator, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; John G. Hildebrand, Regents Professor of Neuroscience, University of Arizona; Eric Knudsen, Sewell Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine; Edvard Moser, Professor of Neuroscience, Director, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; and Larry R. Squire, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California, San Diego, Research Career Scientist, Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego.

The 2022 Patrick Suppes Prize in the Philosophy of Science will be split between two equally deserving recipients, Craig Callender for What Makes Time Special and Sabina Leonelli for Data-Centric Biology. The 2022 Suppes Prize was presented at the Society's November 2022 Meeting.

Craig Callender: What Makes Time Special?

This book is an ambitious and original exploration of the question in the title, involving an in-depth account of the understanding of time in both contemporary physics and contemporary psychology. It addresses a fundamental challenge to physics’ claim to tell us what the physical universe is really like: physics does not seem able to accommodate time as we encounter it in everyday life, with its special sense of ‘now’, the asymmetry of past and future, and our sense of the flow of time. Yet it seems pure scientific hubris to dismiss our experience of time as chimerical on account of our favourite theories in physics.

The book provides a masterful survey of the role of time in Newtonian gravitation, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and quantum gravity, concluding that none find an easy place for time as we know it, with relativity and quantum gravity positively inimical to it.

Then the book deploys insights from biology, cognitive science and psychology to construct a brilliant reconciliation. Our model of time as we experience it is forged by our minds to deal with the perceptual and evolutionary problems thrown at it. Time can be as physics portrays but we misrepresent if for very good reason. This way of saving both views at once is well grounded in the science and is compellingly argued. The Suppes Prize Committee congratulates  the book for opening serious new inroads on a classic problem that philosophy has long struggled with.

Sabina Leonelli: Data-Centric Biology

Sabina Leonelli recognizes the ways in which the abilities to accumulate, preserve, and distribute massive amounts of data are changing many scientific fields.  Her ground-breaking study attends to the philosophical issues raised by this important trend.  Focusing on biology, she shows how big data modifies orthodox ideas about experiment and theory, and she addresses the new philosophical questions it raises.  The Suppes Prize Committee sees Data-Centric Biology as a pioneering book that opens up a major new area of science for philosophical discussion.

The possibility of amassing and storing huge amounts of data invites researchers to perform exploratory experiments, and shifts emphasis from theory construction to practical goals.  When data become broadly shared, new norms arise: withholding data is sinful.  As Leonelli shows, the concept of data evolves.  Data are relative to goals, since they must be stored – “packaged” – to aid particular research questions.

This requires a new style of scientific work.  Databases require “curating” to enable investigators around the globe to find information potentially relevant to their projects.  Leonelli explores the challenges facing those who assume this novel role.

As she notes, one of the few previous philosophers to take an interest in the production of data was Patrick Suppes.  Her rich account may be seen as the flowering of a seed that he once planted.  The committee regards her book, not as the last word on its topic, but as one that will inspire and shape an important subfield in the philosophy of science.

The Patrick Suppes Prize honors accomplishments in three deeply significant scholarly fields, with the prize rotating each year between philosophy of science, psychology or neuroscience, and history of science. The Patrick Suppes Prize in the Philosophy of Science is awarded for an outstanding book in philosophy of science appearing within the preceding six years.

The committee members were Nancy Cartwright (chair), Distinguished Professor, University of California, San Diego, Professor of Philosophy and co-director of CHESS, Durham University; Lorraine Daston, Professor, Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Visiting Professor of Social Thought and History, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago; Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University; and Stephen Stigler, Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago.

January 6, 2022 Update

All public-facing digital services, including the Digital Library, are now available. If you encounter any issues, please contact [email protected]. 

November 19, 2021 Update

The Member Directory and collections search are now available. The Digital Library and some Center for Digital Scholarship projects are still under maintenance.

November 11, 2021

To ensure the long-term accessibility of our digital collections, we are doing a major upgrade to our technological infrastructure. We are working to restore service as quickly as possible, but access to some services including the Digital Library, collections search, and Member directory has been interrupted. If you need immediate assistance with the APS's Library & Museum collections, please contact [email protected] and we will do our best to help. We apologize for the inconvenience.
 

Select answers from Neeraja Sankaran, author of A Tale of Two Viruses: Parallels in the Research Trajectories of Tumor and Bacterial Viruses

Q: I wonder if you could talk a little more about why this particular animal-based sarcoma so captured the attention of these important scientists? Historically, why do some diseases get scientific study when others might not?

A: Opportunity is the first reason that occurs to me. So, to begin with it was a new problem—a farmer brought in a bird with a tumor and so it was what Peyton Rous investigated. After all, he had been hired at the Rockefeller specifically to do cancer research—at a place that was explicitly not an institute of cancer research. So there was little or nothing established there already—he didn’t get to walk into a lab and help tackle an on-going problem, as James Murphy who arrived a year or so later did. In 1910 Rous was new at the Rockefeller and I’m not sure that at the time he had even begun working any particular problem. So when the right opportunity came along—so opportunely (if you’ll pardon the overuse of the word)—he took it on.

Ease of the model also plays a part—one cannot investigate the transmissibility of human tumor to another human. So unless there is a suitable animal model for a disease one could not carry out certain avenues of investigation.

The fact that the sarcoma was transmissible not only by transplanting bits of cancerous tissue (not unusual) but by injecting cell-free filtrates of ground up tissue, made it unique and therefore not only interesting but also allowed him to stake out his own territory. The research actually stalled,  dried up quite early, in the face of discouraging data, negative results and leads, but since it was possible to maintain the tumor tissue—at I suspect relative low cost in terms of both funds and space—he decided to do so and supply it to others interested in further investigating the problem.

Turning for a moment to the “other” virus in this book, the bacteriophage, its 1917 discovery by Felix d’Herelle took place under very different circumstances. Here it was an offshoot/byproduct of an investigation into a very specific problem for very specific reasons. d’Herelle had been assigned the microbiological investigation of a particularly nasty outbreak of dysentery at a garrison stationed just outside Paris. Dysentery was a known disease with an established microbial cause by then (actually two since people had already distinguished between bacterial and parasitic, i.e. amoebic types, but the unusually severe symptoms of this outbreak had led the chief medical officer Bertillon to suspect that the bacterial strain was different. In d’Herelle’s words, “one did not need to be a great hygienist to find the cause…” But having pinpointed the cause fairly early, he continued to follow the cases of convalescing patients and an unusual finding during routine examinations of stools etc. led to his discovery.

To answer the second part of your question—why some diseases get attention and other do not—both extremes, i.e. continued negative results or very quick resolution of a problem might have the same effect, in a problem not being pursued. Continued negative results and dead ends might render a problem “unsolvable” until newer techniques are developed and give one idea for instance. The early trajectory of bird sarcomas is a good case in point. Rous himself stopped work on the problem as early 1915 less than 4 years after his initial discovery, quoting precisely the discouragement of negative results as his reason. And the field lay fallow for nearly a decade until new results from across the pond, revived interest all over the world. As for the negative impact of positive results—especially in the context of a hospital laboratory, where a laboratory investigation is undertaken for a specific goal, once that goal is achieved, then the case is closed and the investigator moves on. Or as it happened in the case of the bacteriophage, a new tangential discovery completely overshadows the initial investigation.

Q: The examples of correspondence you show are really interesting. What do they reveal about the scientific research process in the 20th century. How similar or different is the process today in an age of digital communication and data sharing?

A: I think one thing —the most exciting thing really—about using correspondence (epistolary sources) to reconstruct history is the immersion into the lives and times of the people writing the letters. And to me it was amazing how much some things change/have changed while others surprisingly feel as contemporary as if written yesterday! I studied microbiology before I ever became a historian and some of the things the scientists talked about were very familiar and it was actually quite remarkable to thing that ways of culturing bacteria growing them in the lab and identifying colonies had not changed in decades! But other references are completely obscure because they cite obsolete techniques etc.

One thing about research then vs. now that is striking is the pace—letters took much longer of course, (there’s a reason its been dubbed snail mail in this digital age)—and often materials took even longer. Also easier nowadays to send the same message to multiple people at once. Back when cc literally meant carbon copying, i.e. placing a sheet of carbon paper under the paper to receive an imprint of the original letter—that was much more difficult or impractical. But still these were mechanics. To give an entirely unsatisfactory answer to this question “the more things change the more they stay the same.” or equally unhelpfully—some things have changed drastically others remained the same. Exactly what the some and other are, however, varies in each case.

Q: Can you talk more about Rous s'working methods? How did they figure out the chicken virus?

A: I don’t think that Rous’s working methods were in and of themselves particularly unique. He proceeded rather systematically to examine the tumor at different levels: gross, microscopic, chemical and try to induce it in a new animal to try and pinpoint the cause. The Koch’s postulates scheme of searching for the cause of a disease was in place even if the disease was not infectious. The early papers (1910-12) go into the details of the initial plan of attack, so to speak.

It took a long time to figure the chicken virus—nearly a century if you think about the actual mechanism and some parts are being figured out even now, I’d venture to say.

Q: Is our understanding of what viruses are still evolving?

A: Oh absolutely! In the light of what they can do, new discoveries etc. Furthermore, they themselves are evolving. But our understanding of some of the basic characteristics, that set them apart from other categories of beings for instance, have not really changed since the 1950s.

Q: When did scientists start to see viruses? Was seeing viruses under a microscope, key to proving viruses caused some tumors?

A: May I refer you to chapter 6 of my book? Jokes aside, though, it sort of depends on the specific type of seeing. The crystallization of virus particles in the 1930s allowed us to “see” viruses—or rather, the configuration of their constituent molecules—in a certain way; the cultivation in different types of media—e.g. leaves of plants, bacterial cultures (both in liquid and on solid media), chick embryos and ultimately on cell cultures—offered a different set of pictures of viruses. These images are of the lesions they cause in their hosts. So while you could not actually see the viruses themselves, you could see them through their effects. Without a doubt though, it was the invention of the electron microscope (1937) that brought the viruses into the visual realm.

To the second part, I’d have to say, that this sort of seeing was not key... not really. What it did was to help clinch the evidence. But the similarity of viruses to other like-sized things in cells, etc., sometimes confounded matters instead of clarifying them. Even more than photographs (photoshop manipulators take note!) electron micrographs are open to both manipulation and, even more so to differing interpretations of what one was seeing.

Q: The APS sounds like a very rich archive! Do you have plans for future projects using these collections?

A: Would love to!

October 18-20, 2021

Papers for "Meanings of Independence" can be found below.  You will be required to enter a password provided by conference organizers to access them. Please contact Adrianna Link at [email protected] if you are attending the conference but have not yet received the password.

Papers are not to be cited or circulated without the written permission of the author

The following events will be held via Zoom (times listed in EDT)

Monday, October 18

1:00–2:15 p.m.: Sexuality & Identity in the American Revolution

"Violations, Mortifications, Transformations: The Pinckney Women Confront the Revolutionary War"
Lorri Glover (Saint Louis University)

“Slavery, Freedom, and Survival: Life at Westover Plantation in Revolutionary Virginia”
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch (University of Toledo)

“Female Genius: Eliza Harriot and George Washington at the Dawn of the Constitution”
Mary Sarah Bilder (Boston College)

“'Damn the Bougre': LGBTQ+ People and the American Revolution"
John G. McCurdy (Eastern Michigan University)

Tuesday, October 19

1:00–2:15 p.m.: Slavery, Race, & Revolution

“'Cruel war against human nature itself’: Understanding the American Revolution’s Impact on Slavery within the Context of Imperial Governance"
Holly Brewer (University of Maryland)

“Reexamining Activism in the Revolutionary Era: The Life-Long Efforts of the Revolution's Soldiers of Color”
Benjamin Remillard (University of New Hampshire)

“A Call to Stand Up: Meanings of Independence for People of African Descent"
Sherri Burr (University of New Mexico)

Wednesday, October 20

1:00–2:15 p.m.: Contesting Power & Authority in the Age of Revolutions

 “Sigenauk’s War of Independence: New Indian Leadership and the Struggle for Autonomy in the Revolutionary Borderlands"
John Nelson (Texas Tech University)

“the disagreeable situation in between the Civil in the Military’: Prisoners of War and Local Governance in the American Revolution”
Susan Brynne Long (University of Delaware)

“Taxation With and Without Representation: The Union Crisis in Scotland, The  Imperial Crisis in North America, and the Prospects and Costs of Incorporating Union"
Ned Landsman (SUNY Stony Brook)

The recipient selected for the 2021 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is Paul Betts in recognition of his book Ruin and Renewal: Civilizing Europe After World War II (Basic Books, 2020).  Dr. Betts is a Professor of Modern History at St. Anthony’s College, University of Oxford.

Is the concept of civilization a grand illusion or an indispensable part of historical and political thinking?   Professor Betts’ remarkable book offers interesting answers to this question and also explores what it means to ask it.   He looks at the modern workings of ‘this old, troublesome, and much-maligned principle’, and suggests that a preoccupation with the fate of civilization is …  less the product of peace and prosperity than the result of rupture, vulnerability, and the drive for reform’.  After World War II, Professor Betts says, ‘the contest for civilization inspired a mixed crowd of advocates on both sides of the Iron Curtain’, and the title of his last chapter’ – ‘New Iron Curtains’ – offers us a sobering reminder of where we are.   ‘A new specter is haunting Europe’, but it is not Communism, and it is haunting other places too.  It is whatever mixture of racism, reaction and privilege Donald Trump meant to evoke when in 2017 he said we needed to defend the ‘civilized world’.  Or for that matter, what Winston Churchill meant when in 1947 he said ‘the real demarcation between Europe and Asia…  is… a system of beliefs and ideas which we call Western Civilization’.

Fortunately, civilization has other meanings, and Professor Betts tracks a large number of them through different, consecutive contexts: relief work and reconstruction after the war; encounters between religion and international politics; science, culture and domestic life as features of modern civility; the end of an old empire-dominated world; the rise and supposed fall of multiculturalism; the recurrence of colonial wars as ‘referenda on the myth of European civilization’.   Certain key events and figures emerge: the Nuremberg Trials, the Geneva  Convention, the Algerian War, the cultural work of UNESCO; Cardinal Mindszenty, Leopold Senghor, Pope John Paul II, Mikhael Gorbachev  -  Professor Betts says the meeting of the last two persons in 1989 was ‘perhaps the most dramatic episode that indicated the changing shape of European politics’.  And through it all ‘the bruised concept of civilization’ survives, even if its meanings often contradict each other.   The notions that a campaign could be waged ‘to civilize war itself’’, while civilization is also ‘a favorite rhetorical weapon’, do not sit comfortably together.    But Ruin and Renewal is not a comfortable book; it is a constant provocation to thought.

The Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History is awarded annually to the author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.  Established by a former student of Jacques Barzun, the prize honors this historian and cultural critic who was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1984.   

The selection committee consisted of Michael Wood (chair), Charles Barnwell Straut Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Princeton University; David Hollinger, Preston Hotchkis Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley; and Robert B. Pippin, Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor, Committee on Social Thought, Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago.

The 2021 recipient selected for the Judson Daland Prize in Clinical Investigation is Sergiu P. Paşca.  Dr. Paşca is Kenneth T. Norris, Jr. Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program, and Director, Stanford Neuroscience Stem Cell Core, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. The 2021 Daland Prize was presented at the Society's November 2022 Meeting.

Sergiu Paşca pioneered novel approaches to investigate neuropsychiatric disorders by creating self-organizing, stem-based models of the human brain, including functional human circuits in a preparation he named assembloids. He creatively applied these innovative models to uncover mechanisms of several neuropsychiatric disorders, identify therapeutic targets, and reveal the power of molecular psychiatry.

Dr. Sergiu Paşca seeks to understand the rules that govern the assembly of the human brain and the molecular mechanisms that lead to psychiatric disease. His models have allowed him to map genetic variants associated with schizophrenia and autism onto human forebrain development and identify susceptible timepoints and cell types. At Stanford, he serves as the inaugural Bonnie Uytengsu and Family Director of the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program– a university-wide effort to innovate and share advances in human brain disorders at Stanford and internationally. Taken together, these novel tools and discoveries made by Dr. Paşca are giving access, for the first time, to unique cellular aspects of human brain development and function and deciphering the molecular mechanisms of disease opening a new exciting era of molecular psychiatry.

The prize is named for Dr. Judson Daland, born in 1860, a prominent Philadelphia physician and outstanding figure in medical research who left the bulk of his estate to the Society to support research in clinical medicine. The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in clinical investigation, particularly patient-oriented research.  The $50,000 prize is presented every 3 to 5 years. In addition to the prize, a Judson Daland Fellowship is awarded annually using these funds.

The Daland selection committee members are Clyde F. Barker (chair), former President, American Philosophical Society, Donald Guthrie Professor, Department of Surgery, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; Lawrence H. Einhorn, Distinguished Professor, Livestrong Foundation Professor of Oncology, Professor of Medicine, Indiana University; Ronald M. Fairman, The Clyde F. Barker - William Maul Measey Professor of Surgery, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Endovascular Therapy, Vice-Chairman for Clinical Affairs, Department of Surgery, Professor of Surgery in Radiology, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; and John N. Loeb, Professor Emeritus of Medicine,  Columbia University.