This workshop series addresses the ways that scientific knowledge becomes instantiated in non-specialist culture(s)—or not. Much has been written about the entanglements (and estrangements) of ‘science’ and ‘culture’; this workshop will investigate the dynamic middle ground of popular knowledge as the space where the public scope of scientists is defined, and where the intellectual and material products of science are deployed. When, and to what extent, does it matter that non-specialists understand scientific theories or practices? How are the products of science disseminated, and what difference might resistance or acceptance in the broader public sphere make to the continued practice or conceptualization of the sciences? What mediations broker these exchanges?"Certainly, simplicity, vividness originate in popular knowledge… Therein lies the general epistemological significance of popular science." — Ludwig Fleck"More than half of Americans are unaware that the earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it." — The New York Times, Feb. 22, 1999
| Session
I. Friday, Nov. 16, 2001
Healing and the Body |
Session
II. Saturday, Feb. 23, 2002
Media of Knowledge |
Session
III. Friday, Apr. 12, 2002
The Scientific Laity |
Session I. Friday, November 16, 2001, Healing and the Body: In her ground-breaking work, The Woman in the Body, Emily Martin showed how scientifically-educated women perceived, perhaps even experienced, their bodies differently from uneducated women, and taught their daughters different narratives of menstruation and sex. The study of medicine and the human body is one of the most public of the sciences and one that most universally touches individual lives, but how has the presence or absence of medical knowledge affected different people in difference places and times? How has the professional medical practitioner represented his or her knowledge and power, and for what cause? How has vernacular knowledge of the human body, at once publicly common and intimately unique, informed the development of biomedical sciences or the practices of healing?
Speakers for Session I:
Adriana Petryna, New School, NYC
"Science and Ignorance: The Rule of Partial Truths in the Chernobyl
Aftermath"
Marta Hanson, UCSD
"Understanding is Within One's Grasp: hand Mnemonics
in Early Modern Popular and Elite Chinese Medicine"
Mary Fissell, Johns Hopkins University
"Making Protestant Bodies in Tudor-Stuart England"
Note: Papers for the workshops, like Davis Center papers, are precirculated. They may be requested or obtained from Vicky Glosson (609-258-6705) in the two weeks preceding each event. Lunch is provided for all who attend; just let Vicky Glosson know you are coming.
Session II. Saturday, February 23, 2002, Media of Knowledge: The media has long been called "the fourth estate" to denote its power in articulating political agendas and public reaction. To what extent has mass media also transformed the practices of science? Media outlets have long served as the organ of dispersion of scientific knowledge, but what if the message is the medium? Has the publicity of the scientific enterprise merely conveyed a "popularized" science, or has it in a reciprocal way helped shape the sciences? To what extent has the development of the sciences required an audience? How has the media shaped public debate about scientific issues? How have scientists used media to intervene in political policies?
Speakers for Session II:
9:00 a.m. Thomas Broman, University
of Wisconsin-Madison
"Metaphysics
for the Enlightened Public: Johann Christoph Gottsched and the Debate over
Wolffianism, 1730-1745"
10:40 a..m. Adrian Johns, University
of Chicago
"The
Thermodynamics of Civilizatioin: Print, Piracy, and the Invention of Social
Science in Nineteeth-Century America"
1:10 p.m. Alison Winter,
University of Chicago
"Seeing
Selves: Mind, Memory, and Identity on Film, 1920-1962"
3:00 p.m. Gregg Mitman, University
of Wisconsin-Madison
"Pachyderm
Personalities: The Media of Science, Politics, and Conservation"
4:35 p.m. Kavita Philip,
Georgia Institute of Technology
"Technologies
of Desire: Pop Cultural Discourses of Science and Technology in the Shadow
of Globalization"
Note: Papers for the workshops, like Davis Center papers, are precirculated. They may be requested or obtained from Vicky Glosson (609-258-6705) in the two weeks preceding each event. Lunch is provided for all who attend; just let Vicky Glosson know you are coming.
Session III. Friday, April 12, 2002, The Scientific Laity: It would be difficult to imagine an expert’s "science" that wasn’t founded on a more pedestrian knowledge of the everyday, or to name an important science that doesn’t have a range of non-expert aficionados. How has a kind of ‘scientific laity’ intervened in the formation and movement of scientific knowledge? What role have they had in creating a public science, and how do their activities reflect structures of thinking within their culture? When have vernacular ways of knowing come into conflict with elite agendas and when have they formed the basis of new ones? How does knowledge about the way the world works take shape among various communities outside the circle of "official" science?
Speakers for Session III:
9:30 a.m. Christopher Kelty, Rice
University
"Of
Polymaths and Transhumanists: Networked Scientific Laities"
Commentary: Michael S. Mahoney
11:15 a.m. Jarita Holbrook, UCLA and University
of Arizona-Tucson & Max Planck Institute for History of Science and
Technology
"Modern
Navigation and the Navigators: Theory versus Practice"
Commentary: Eric H. Ash, Dibnor Institute for
the History of Science and Technology
2:00 p.m. Ken Alder, Northwestern
University
"Lies
and the Laity: Expertise and the Machinery of Truth-Telling in American
Life"
Commentary: Elizabeth Lunbeck, Princeton University
Note: Papers for the workshops, like Davis Center papers, are precirculated. They may be requested or obtained from Vicky Glosson (609-258-6705) in the two weeks preceding each event. Lunch is provided for all who attend; just let Vicky Glosson know you are coming.