Doctoral dissertation research: Articulating the Past, The Value of Dinosaurs in America, 1870-1930

导论. 这项补助金是为了支持一个研究项目，这将有助于提高研究人员的博士论文。本论文的重点是科学知识的生产和流通，其主要目标之一是确定在世纪初的美国，各种各样的人如何与恐龙化石互动。本文共分三个部分。第一个是关于化石的获取，重点是与在野外收集恐龙骨骼相关的人和做法。 第二个探索博物馆馆长如何利用化石来产生关于地球生命历史的新知识。 最后一部分是关于公众与恐龙的互动，无论是在自然历史博物馆还是其他娱乐场所，如电影院或游乐园。密切关注构建一个新的和适当的解释方法来理解的建设和“消费”的知识使用经济交换模型。该奖项将资助前往选定数量的博物馆档案馆。这些旅行的目的是获取信息，这些信息将有助于提供对人们活动的新描述，这些活动是由对恐龙的共同兴趣以及他们每个人与这些物体以及彼此相互作用的不同方式聚集在一起的。该计划是围绕化石而不是人、思想或实践来进行历史叙述;这样做将产生一段跨越地理、社会阶层和一系列认识问题的历史。它还将有助于说明，科学在20世纪初的世纪不仅仅是一小部分学术精英的权限。相反，除了专业的古生物学家之外，许多人都对恐龙的新知识做出了贡献。 此外，美国文化的更广泛的横截面参与了它的消费。由于这些原因，恐龙的历史提供了一个独特的机会，探索科学和美国文化的其他领域之间的争议边界在世纪之交。本论文探讨了专家科学知识是如何融入更广泛的文化背景。今天，这一挑战的紧迫性不亚于一百年前;全球气候变化、大范围的栖息地破坏和生物多样性的丧失都是仅靠科学家无法解决的问题。在民主社会中，科学依赖于广泛的公众利益、参与和支持。因此，该项目有可能帮助我们更好地理解为什么在广泛分散的社会和文化背景下建立有意义的沟通如此困难。

Introduction. This grant is to support a research project that will serve to enhance the researcher's doctoral dissertation. The dissertation focuses on the production and circulation of scientific knowledge; one of its key goals is to determine how a wide range of people interacted with fossil dinosaurs in late 19th and early 20th century America. The dissertation consists of three parts. The first is on the acquisition of fossils, focusing on the people and practices associated with collecting dinosaur bones in the field. The second explores how museum curators used fossils to generate new knowledge about the history of life on earth. The final part is about the public's interaction with dinosaurs, both in natural history museums and other sites of amusement such as the cinema or amusement parks. Close attention is paid to constructing a new and appropriate interpretative methodology to understand the construction and "consumption" of knowledge using models of economic exchange.Intellectual Merit. This award will fund travel to a selected number of museum archives. The goal of these trips is to acquire information that will serve to provide a fresh account of the activities of people brought together by a shared interest in dinosaurs and the diverse ways in which each of them interacted with these objects and one another. The plan is to produce an historical narrative around fossils rather than people, ideas, or practices; doing so will results in a history that cuts across geography, social class, and a range of epistemic concerns. It will also serve to illustrate that science during the early turn 20th century was not just the purview of a small academic elite. On the contrary, many people besides professional paleontologists contributed to the making of new knowledge about dinosaurs. Moreover, an even broader cross section of American culture participated in its consumption. For these reasons, the history of dinosaurs provides a unique opportunity to explore the contested boundary between science and other domains of American culture around the turn of the 20th century.Potential Broader Impacts. The dissertation explores how expert scientific knowledge was integrated into a broader cultural context. The challenge of doing so is no less urgent today than it was a hundred years ago; global climate change, widespread habitat destruction, and the loss of biodiversity are all problems that cannot be solved by scientists alone. In democratic societies, science relies on a broad base of public interest, involvement, and support. As a result, the project has the potential to help us better understand why it can be so difficult to establish meaningful communication across widely dispersed social and cultural contexts.