International conferences are standard features of scientific life today. Since their emergence, ... more International conferences are standard features of scientific life today. Since their emergence, in the second half of the nineteenth century, some 170 000 of them are estimated to have taken place. Still the reasons for this rise, and the functions that conferences have fulfilled in scientific practice, have rarely been studied.
In a new joint research project, "The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural, and Political History" (SciConf), a European team of scholars will study conferences, not as a background for other, ‘real’ action, but as a phenomenon to be grasped in itself. What happened at scientific conferences? How have they exchanged knowledge and shaped expertise? What forms of sociability have developed in these meetings, what rituals have been performed? How have scientific conferences embodied social hierarchies and international relations? How have they informed policies on relevant subjects? The project will look at conferences as “public spaces” and address these questions through that lens.
Tables, graphs, chemical formulae, maps and other two-dimensional abstract visual representations... more Tables, graphs, chemical formulae, maps and other two-dimensional abstract visual representations constitute a family of powerful and effective tools widely used in science. They are referred together as diagrams, or spatial arrangements on a two-dimensional surface of letters, numbers and/or words in combination with lines, shapes or images. More than a combination of text and image, diagrams can best be understood as tools for thinking and acting : they portray relations, help manipulate numbers and other entities, they organize, display and communicate information, and they are put to many practical uses. Across the wide diversity of their forms and historical contexts, diagrams help to mediate between the world and abstract knowledge, and between different actors involved in scientific enterprises, such as scientists, students, engineers or craftspeople.
The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation i... more The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation in 1869 and for the following five decades, and an early practioner of the new astronomy. He frequently used the journal to expound his scientific theories, report on his work and send news home while on expeditions. I look into the particular visual culture of astrophysics developed by Lockyer in Nature, its evolution at a time of rapid development both of the techniques of astrophysical observation and visualization and of the techniques of image reproduction in print. A study of the use and reuse of visual materials in different settings also makes it possible to sketch the circulating economy of Lockyer’s images and the ways in which he put himself forward as a scientist, at a time when he was advocating the State support of research and scientists and helping create the modern scientific journal.
International conferences are standard features of scientific life today. Since their emergence, ... more International conferences are standard features of scientific life today. Since their emergence, in the second half of the nineteenth century, some 170 000 of them are estimated to have taken place. Still the reasons for this rise, and the functions that conferences have fulfilled in scientific practice, have rarely been studied.
In a new joint research project, "The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural, and Political History" (SciConf), a European team of scholars will study conferences, not as a background for other, ‘real’ action, but as a phenomenon to be grasped in itself. What happened at scientific conferences? How have they exchanged knowledge and shaped expertise? What forms of sociability have developed in these meetings, what rituals have been performed? How have scientific conferences embodied social hierarchies and international relations? How have they informed policies on relevant subjects? The project will look at conferences as “public spaces” and address these questions through that lens.
Tables, graphs, chemical formulae, maps and other two-dimensional abstract visual representations... more Tables, graphs, chemical formulae, maps and other two-dimensional abstract visual representations constitute a family of powerful and effective tools widely used in science. They are referred together as diagrams, or spatial arrangements on a two-dimensional surface of letters, numbers and/or words in combination with lines, shapes or images. More than a combination of text and image, diagrams can best be understood as tools for thinking and acting : they portray relations, help manipulate numbers and other entities, they organize, display and communicate information, and they are put to many practical uses. Across the wide diversity of their forms and historical contexts, diagrams help to mediate between the world and abstract knowledge, and between different actors involved in scientific enterprises, such as scientists, students, engineers or craftspeople.
The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation i... more The early astrophysicist Norman Lockyer was both editor of the journal Nature from its creation in 1869 and for the following five decades, and an early practioner of the new astronomy. He frequently used the journal to expound his scientific theories, report on his work and send news home while on expeditions. I look into the particular visual culture of astrophysics developed by Lockyer in Nature, its evolution at a time of rapid development both of the techniques of astrophysical observation and visualization and of the techniques of image reproduction in print. A study of the use and reuse of visual materials in different settings also makes it possible to sketch the circulating economy of Lockyer’s images and the ways in which he put himself forward as a scientist, at a time when he was advocating the State support of research and scientists and helping create the modern scientific journal.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2008
The issue of shifting scales between the microscopic and the macroscopic dimensions is a recurren... more The issue of shifting scales between the microscopic and the macroscopic dimensions is a recurrent one in the history of science, and in particular the history of microscopy. But it took on new dimensions in the context of early twentieth-century microscophysics, with the progressive realisation that the physical laws governing the macroscopic world were not always adequate for describing the sub-microscopic one. The paper focuses on the researches of Jean Perrin in the 1900s, in particular his use of Brownian motion to produce evidence of the existence of atoms and in favour of the kinetic theory. His results were described by many contemporaries, and subsequently by historians, as the first direct proof of atomic and molecular reality. The paper examines the different strategies developed by Perrin for bridging the macro and sub-microphysical realms and making the latter accessible to the senses; even though neither atoms nor molecules were ever actually seen, and in fact very few visual representations were shown and published in connection with these experiments. This case provides a good example of how visualizing, representing and convincing could be interwoven in the production of evidence about the sub-microphysical realm circa 1900.
The British Journal for the History of Science, Dec 1, 2007
found a junior but well-paid teaching post at the Ecole militaire. With the all-important entry t... more found a junior but well-paid teaching post at the Ecole militaire. With the all-important entry to the Académie des sciences achieved (by his election as an adjoint) in 1773, there was no holding someone of his ability and single-minded ambition. His collaboration with Lavoisier in the study of heat followed in the later 1770s, and by the eve of the Revolution he was living comfortably, serving the Académie on committees and frequenting the Parisian scientific elite (though never, significantly, the fashionable salons or political gatherings). This was career-making at its most dedicated and effective. Hahn’s biographical focus also pays dividends for the tempestuous period in which Laplace dextrously navigated the choppy waters of French life between 1789 and the return of the Bourbon line in 1815. By 1796 Laplace was irreversibly a major public figure, a respected popularizer (as the author of the Exposition du système du monde) and a participant in the restructuring of France’s scientific institutions, notably the newly founded Institut national des sciences et des arts, after the depredations of the Terror. And on he went, under Bonaparte, to ministerial office (briefly as minister of the interior) and membership of the Senate, with a salary of 72,000 francs that allowed him, with Berthollet, to sustain the brilliant ‘society’ (more properly a circle of promising young scientists) at Arcueil, on the southern outskirts of Paris. Only in the last decade of his life, with some of his most cherished scientific beliefs coming under attack, did his star begin to wane, and even then only slowly. So what kind of Laplace are we left with? Hahn presents him as ‘steadfast ’ in his philosophy, single-minded in his science and resilient in his personal life. One person’s steadfastness, of course, can be another’s obduracy, but Hahn’s Laplace, though cautious in everything he did, does not emerge as the inflexible conservative that he is commonly thought to have been. A starting point of political neutrality, especially evident in his early years, made it easy for him to sway with the changes of regime, and in religion he moved from youthful Catholic conformity to Enlightenment scepticism and finally back to a partial reconciliation with Christianity, tempered by the difficulty of reconciling the notion of supernatural divine intervention with that of a law-bound universe in the Laplacean manner. Not surprisingly, contemporaries sometimes found it hard to determine where the true Laplace lay. This was not someone who inspired affection, and he remained intensely private, travelling little (never abroad and never south of the Loire) and revealing little of himself, apparently even to friends. Such a man was no easy target, and we must be grateful that, in Roger Hahn, he has found the accomplished, tenacious biographer that he deserves. ROBERT FOX University of Oxford
The Carte du Ciel, launched in 1887 by Paris Observatory director E. Mouchez, was a significant i... more The Carte du Ciel, launched in 1887 by Paris Observatory director E. Mouchez, was a significant impetus to the institutionalisation of photographic astrometry internationally. The adoption of mechanical means of representation, meant to increase speed and precision in the recording of data, brought with it unsuspected social and material changes, however. Great numbers of unskilled workers, mostly women, were recruited
Si elles ne manquent certainement pas de visibilité, les images contemporaines souffrent par cont... more Si elles ne manquent certainement pas de visibilité, les images contemporaines souffrent par contre d'un défaut de lisibilité. Suralphabétisés que nous sommes, nous sommes encore imparfaitement préparés pour déchiffrer les nouvelles réalités visuelles qui déterminent pourtant nos vies, plus que jamais. Comment réarmer le regard et faire de la lecture un outil critique du présent ? Regards croisés (histoire de l'art, philosophie, photographie, cinéma, architecture, histoire des sciences...) sur les formes hétérogènes que peut prendre le discours des images. Avec, incidemment, un retour sur la notion même de lecture qui, au contact des images, vient toucher à sa propre limite. Comment lire donc, au risque de l'illisibilité ?
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In a new joint research project, "The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural, and Political History" (SciConf), a European team of scholars will study conferences, not as a background for other, ‘real’ action, but as a phenomenon to be grasped in itself. What happened at scientific conferences? How have they exchanged knowledge and shaped expertise? What forms of sociability have developed in these meetings, what rituals have been performed? How have scientific conferences embodied social hierarchies and international relations? How have they informed policies on relevant subjects? The project will look at conferences as “public spaces” and address these questions through that lens.
In a new joint research project, "The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural, and Political History" (SciConf), a European team of scholars will study conferences, not as a background for other, ‘real’ action, but as a phenomenon to be grasped in itself. What happened at scientific conferences? How have they exchanged knowledge and shaped expertise? What forms of sociability have developed in these meetings, what rituals have been performed? How have scientific conferences embodied social hierarchies and international relations? How have they informed policies on relevant subjects? The project will look at conferences as “public spaces” and address these questions through that lens.