Thursday, September 16, 2010

Science and Its Histories

Science and Its Histories

Everyone talks about “big picture” histories of science, but—to paraphrase Mark Twain—hardly anyone does anything about it. This conference explores new ways of broadening the scope of the historical investigation of the sciences. What is the “science” in the history of science? What kinds of problems arise when we associate science with modernity? How can science be viewed over broad spans of place and time?

Friday, September 24, 2010

8:30 Registration & Coffee

9:30 Welcome Robert C. Ritchie (The Huntington)

Remarks Robert E. Kohler (University of Pennsylvania) and
Kathryn M. Olesko (Georgetown University)

Session 1 The Nature of What We Call Science

Moderator:
Bruce T. Moran (University of Nevada, Reno)

Jan Golinski (University of New Hampshire)
“Is it Time to Forget Science?”

Peter Dear (Cornell University)
“Science is Dead, Long Live Science”

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Session 2 Science History across Time and Space, I

Moderator:
Margaret Garber (California State University, Fullerton)

Harold J. Cook (Brown University)
“Moving About and Finding Things Out”

Thomas H. Broman (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
“Transparency, Expertise, and the Public in Enlightenment Societies”


Session 3 Science History across Time and Space, II

Moderator: Matthew Hersch (University of Pennsylvania)

Fa-ti Fan (State University of New York, Binghamton)
“Outside the Boxes: Historiography of Science and Area Studies”

Saturday, September 25, 2010

9:00 Registration & Coffee

9:30 Session 4 Science and Modernity—The Modernity of Science

Moderator:
Tara Nummedal (Brown University)

Lynn K. Nyhart (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
“Scaling Up: Generalizing the ‘Modern’ Natural History Sciences, 1890-1950”

Paul Forman (National Museum of American History)
“Modernity Entailed Disciplinarity, Post-modernity Entails
Anti-disciplinarity”

12:00 Lunch

1:00 Session 5 Broadening the Horizon

Moderator:
Ted McCormick (Concordia University)

Theodore Porter (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Thin Description and the Power of Science”

James Endersby (University of Sussex)
“Talking to Ourselves?”

Session 6 Closing Remarks

Kathryn M. Olesko and Robert E. Kohler
“Science and Its Histories”

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