In the 2002-2003 academic year Princeton University's Program in the History of Science (in conjunction with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center) will host two day-long workshops tied to the broader Davis Center theme of "migrations." Our aim is to investigate how scientific knowledge moves--across cultural boundries, geographical spaces, and linguistic communities. What role does "place" play in the history of science? What distinctive epistemologies and practices emerge in the "contact zones" of the world? What light can comparative approaches shed on these questions? Both sessions will address these general problems, but each has a distinctive focus."For is not the modern growth of the Empire BEyond the seas itself the outcome of the very embodiement of the advancement of science?." — Sir David Masson, 1911
| Session
I. Friday, Dec. 6, 2002
Global Science and Comparative History: "Jesuits, Science and Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850" |
Session
II. Saturday, March 7, 2003
Science Across the Seas: Nature, Knowledge, and the Oceans |
Session I. Friday, December
6, 2002, Global Science and Comparative History: "Jesuits, Science, and
Philology in China and Europe, 1550-1850": How did textual knowledge
acquired through the use of philology impact natural studies in Germany
and China?
What was the impact in early eighteenth-century
China of the Jesuit expertise in Renaissance scientia, which included training
in astronomy, mathematics, and global geography? Rather than labeling the
early modern European tradition in natural studies "science" and dismissing
such interests in late imperial China as "magic" or "superstition," can
we do justice to each on their own terms in light of their overlapping
scope and unique content?
Speakers for Session I:
9:00 a.m. Florence Hsia, University of Wisconsin
- Madison
"Rereading Jesuit Contributions to the History
of Chinese Science"
10:40 a.m. Laura Hostetler, University of Illinois
- Chicago
"Ethnography
and Exploration in Southwest China"
1:25 p.m. Bruce Rusk, University of California
- Los Angeles
"Old
Scripts, New Actors: Ming Philology Before the Jesuits"
3:00 p.m. Alix Cooper, State University of New
York - Stony Brook
"Latin
Words, Vernacular Worlds: Language, Nature, and the "Indigenous' in the
Early Modern German Territories"
4:35 p.m. Denise Phillips, Harvard
"Science,
Myth and the Eastern Soul: J.S.C. Schweigger and the Society for Natural
Knowledge and the Spread of Higher Truth"
Note: Papers for the workshops are precirculated and will be available to download approximately two weeks prior to the workshop. Lunch is provided for all who attend. Please register for lunch with Vicky Glosson (609-258-6705).
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.