“How scientific objects end. A workshop”

Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge
December 3rd and 4th, 2018

 In his 2009 paper “We have never been Whiggish (about Phlogiston)”, Hasok Chang pointed at the difficulty of writing a history of the Chemical Revolution in terms of winners and losers, of new and old, of Oxygen and Phlogiston. Similarly, the forthcoming book Ether and Modernity (OUP, 2018) portrays a more complex image of the presence of the ether in the early twentieth century than usually depicted. Phlogiston and the Ether are indeed two favourite examples in traditional philosophies of scientific change: new theories and experiments supposedly proved those entities never to have existed and only wrongly considered as scientific. Post-hoc histories of such objects and the processes of their abandonment, however, are not necessarily neutral on the ontology of the objects and can often create a new entity, one that is certainly dead, but not necessarily equal to the one that was supposedly killed. In other words, writing about dead scientific objects can turn into a process of object formation that perfectly demarcates the properties of the dead object in new ways.

This workshop addresses the afterlives of scientific objects by paying attention to the role played by the histories of defunct objects in their configuration qua deceased entities. Such narratives include not only later historical accounts but also the early ‘obituaries’ of the objects (written by the actors involved in their rejection), laboratory and museum catalogues (in the cases of instruments and other material objects), and pedagogical and popular accounts.

Please send expressions of interest either to attend or to present new research at the workshop to jaume.navarro@ehu.es by September 15th, 2018. Registration will be required but free of charge.

Confirmed speakers:

• Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens): “Do scientific objects have a life (which may end)?”
• Daniel Belteki (University of Kent): “Lost in the production of time and space: the transformation of the Airy Transit Circle from a working telescope to a museum object.” 
• Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge): “Is the Voltaic contact potential dead?” 
• Moritz Epple (Göethe Universität): “Have Vortex Atoms ever been alive? On an unstable existence between the Unseen Universe and new mathematics.” 
• Alexandra Ion (Romanian Academy and University of Cambridge): “Itineraries after death: thinking about time and agency through anachronistic specimens caught in anthropological collections.” 
• Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque Country): “The historiographical relevance of the early obituaries of the ether.” 
• Mat Paskins (London School of Economics): “Dyeing Off: the death of dyestuffs as chemical objects.” 
• Greg Radick (University of Leeds): “There was no such thing as the Mendelian gene and this is a talk about it.” 
• Jennifer Rampling (Princeton University): tba 
• Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge): “The object of death in oriental natural history.”
• Richard Staley (University of Cambridge): “The Undead in Climate History: The death and afterlife of the Medieval Warm Period.”

4th June - Elementary Poetry Workshop...and end of year party!

All are welcome to join us to celebrate the end of our elements series with a found poetry workshop using all of the texts we have read and discussed over the previous two academic years. See here for an online introduction to found poetry, and examples.

We meet on Monday 4th June in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College, from 7.30–9pm.

See you then!

14th May - Communication

 

Please join us in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room for the first meeting of term, when we will be discussing the following texts:

• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Wireless’ (1902)
• Philip R. Coursey, ‘Interplanetary Wireless?’, Wireless World (1920) 
• Eric Roach, ‘Beyond’ (1950)

Easter Term 2018 - Aether (take 2)

The Science and Literature Reading Group will hold two sessions which were postponed from last term due to industrial action. We first complete our explorations of the aether by looking at the theme of communication, across and beyond the globe. We will then celebrate the end of our elements series with a found poetry workshop using all of the texts we have read and discussed over the previous two academic years.

All are welcome to join in our wide-ranging and friendly conversations, which take place in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College on selected Monday evenings from 7.30–9pm. The group is organised by Melanie Keene and Charissa Varma.

For recaps, further readings, news, and other updates, please follow us on Twitter @scilitreadgrp or check this blog.

14th May – Communication

• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Wireless’ (1902)
• Philip R. Coursey, ‘Interplanetary Wireless?’, Wireless World (1920) 
• Eric Roach, ‘Beyond’ (1950)

 

4th June – End of year party and Elementary Poetry workshop

• Online introduction to found poetry, and examples

26th February - Communication

For the final meeting discussing the aether, we will take to the airwaves, reading three pieces which in different ways consider the consequences of communicating across (and even beyond) the globe:

• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Wireless’ (1902).
• Philip R. Coursey, ‘Interplanetary Wireless?’, Wireless World (1920).
• Eric Roach, ‘Beyond’ (1950). 

We will meet once again in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College. All welcome!

5th February - Connection

Our second meeting of term willl take place from 7.30-9pm in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College (left along the corridor from the Porters' Lodge, and up the carpeted staircase, passing the bust of Charles Darwin).

We focus on two readings which consider the ways in which ethereal connections were made and discussed in the early twentieth century:

• John Davidson, 'Fleet Street' (1909)
• Oliver Lodge, Ether and Reality (1925), ch. 2, 'Fundamental notions about an ether', 33–46 

All welcome!

22nd January - Imagination

Our aethereal explorations begin with a discussion of two classic works of science and literature:

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 'A Summer Evening's Meditation' (1773)
• John Tyndall, The Scientific Use of the Imagination (1870)

All welcome!

Twentieth-Century Think Tank - 'Ether: The Multiple Lives of a Resilient Concept'

Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque Country), Thursday 18th January

In this session I propose to discuss the text of the introduction to a collective volume on the ether in the early twentieth century soon to be published by Oxford University Press. This book is a snapshot of the ether qua epistemic object in the early twentieth century. The contributed papers show that the ether was not necessarily regarded as the residue of old-fashioned science, but often as one of the objects of modernity, hand in hand with the electron, radioactivity or X-rays. Instrumental was the emergence of wireless technologies and radio broadcasting, certainly a very modern technology, which brought the ether into social audiences that would otherwise have never heard about such an esoteric entity. Following the prestige of scientists like Oliver Lodge and Arthur Eddington as popularisers of science, the ether became common currency among the general educated public. Modernism in the arts was also fond of the ether in the early twentieth century: the values of modernism found in the complexities and contradictions of modern physics such as wireless action or wave-particle puzzles a fertile ground for the development of new artistic languages; in literature as much as in the pictorial and performing arts.

The question of what was meant by "ether" (or "aether") in the early twentieth century at the scientific and cultural levels is also central to this volume. The essays in this volume display a complex array of meanings that will help elucidate the uses of the ether before its purported abandonment. Rather than thinking of the ether as simply a name that remained popular among several publics, this book shows the complexities of an epistemic object that saw, in the early twentieth century, the last episode in the long tradition of stretching its meaning and uses.

Please contact Richard Staley if you would like a copy of the Introduction.

The Think Tank meets from 1-2pm 

Seminar Room 2

Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Free School Lane

Cambridge

CB2 3RH

Lent Term 2018 - Aether

Following our tour of the four classical elements, this term the Science and Literature Reading Group looks to the fifth: aether. Our first three meetings focus on ways in which ethereal concepts have been used: as a vehicle for the imagination; as a medium for interconnection; and as a means of communication. The final meeting will celebrate completing the elementary series with a found poetry workshop using all of the texts we have read and discussed over the past year.

All are welcome to join in our wide-ranging and friendly conversations, which take place at Darwin College on selected Monday evenings from 7.30–9pm. The group is organised by Melanie Keene and Charissa Varma.

For recaps, further readings, news, and other updates, please follow us on Twitter @scilitreadgrp or follow this blog.

22nd January – Imagination

• Anna Laetitia Barbauld, ‘A Summer Evening’s Meditation’, (1773).
• John Tyndall, The Scientific Use of the Imagination (1870).

5th February – Connection

• John Davidson, ‘Fleet Street’ (1909).
• Oliver Lodge, Ether and Reality (1925), ch. 2, ‘Fundamental notions about an ether’, 33-46.

26th February – Communication

• Rudyard Kipling, ‘Wireless’ (1902).
• Philip R. Coursey, ‘Interplanetary Wireless?’, Wireless World (1920).
• Eric Roach, ‘Beyond’ (1950).

12th March – Elementary Poetry workshop

• Online introduction to found poetry, and examples.

Workshop - Ether and Modernity

THE RECALCITRANCE OF AN AGONISING OBJECT IN PHYSICS AND IN CULTURE.

San Sebastian/Donostia (Spain)

30 – 31st March, 2017

CFP: Physicists, Historians of Science and Philosophers are invited to attend and submit short presentations to the workshop "Ether and Modernity", on the presence of the ether in twentieth-century science and culture.

This is the third of a series of meetings (Oxford 2014, San Francisco 2015, San Sebastian 2017) to discuss the way an epistemic object like the ether was rejected, modified or maintained in the firs half of the twentieth century, and the later attempts to resuscitate it in contemporary physics.

The workshop has a twofold practical purpose: the finalisation of a joint publication with the contributions of the invited speakers; and the dissemination of the results and the incorporation of new ideas into the project by other historians of science, physicists and philosophers.

Please send expressions of interest to jaume.navarro@ehu.es by November 15th 2016.

Invited Speakers:

Imogen Clarke (Independent Scholar)

Connemara Doran (Harvard University)

Linda D. Henderson (University of Texas)

Roberto Lalli (Max Planck Institute for the History of Physics)

Jaume Navarro (Ikerbasque and University of the Basque Country)

Richard Noakes (University of Exeter)

Arne Schirrmacher (Humboldt University)

Richard Staley (University of Cambridge)

Scott A. Walter (University of Nantes)

Michael Whitworth (University of Oxford)

Aaron Wright (Stanford University)

See: http://www.ehu.eus/en/web/etherandmodernity/home