UL exhibition - An age of Discoveries: 250 Years since the Endeavour Voyage to the Pacific

A display of key manuscripts and books relating to the voyage of James Cook, Joseph Banks, Sydney Parkinson and others to the Pacific in 1768 is now on show in the main entrance hall of the University Library. Curated by Edwin Rose, a Ph.D. student in HPS. More information can be found here.

Coffee with Scientists - Scientific Publishing

The HPS Coffee with Scientists group will be discussing Scientific Publishing this Friday, 25th May, at 3.30pm in the Department. Nick Hopwood, Stephen Eglen, Patricia Fara, and Richard Smith will lead discussions. Further information here.

Thirteenth Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine

Thursday, 1 March 2018 3.30pm in Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Professor Alisha Rankin (Tufts University)

Poison trials, panaceas and proof: debates about testing and testimony in early modern European medicine

At the courts of sixteenth-century Europe, a number of princely physicians and surgeons tested promising poison antidotes on condemned criminals. These tests were contrived trials, in which a convict took a deadly poison followed by the antidote. The medics sometimes shared detailed descriptions of their poison trials in printed publications or private correspondence, much as they shared case histories of ill patients. Yet these very same physicians disputed the value of remarkably similar tests on animals conducted by charlatans and empirics in marketplace shows. Sometimes, however, these worlds overlapped directly. In 1583, an empiric named Andreas Berthold published a work in Latin praising the virtues of a marvellous new drug, a clay called 'Silesian terra sigillata'. Berthold presented the drug as a perfect Paracelsian remedy for poison and, like most antidotes, useful against many other illnesses as well. While such lofty claims might easily have been disregarded, Berthold noted that his readers did not have to 'trust me on my bare words'. He concluded his book with three testimonial letters from powerful figures – two German princes and one town mayor – about trials they had conducted on the drug in 1580 and 1581. In all three cases, physicians had given poison to test subjects (two used dogs, one a condemned criminal), followed by the antidote. In every case, the subjects who were given the Silesian terra sigillata survived the poison. These testimonial letters provided official legitimacy to an alchemical empiric, in the form of tests conducted by physicians. Meanwhile, other alchemists began to use a different form of testimony to demonstrate the marvellous effects of their antidote cure-alls: testimonial letters from patients describing their miraculous recoveries, which physicians derided as a perversion of the case history. Some of these alchemists likewise ridiculed the poison trial as a lowly and irrelevant form of proof. This talk examines the overlap between the genres of poison antidote and panacea and the debates these drugs engendered in attempts to 'prove' their efficacy.

There will be tea before the lecture, at 3pm in Seminar Room 1, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 5pm in Seminar Room 1. A dinner will follow. Please email Lauren Kassell if you would like to join us.

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 Plus, earlier in the day (11:30-1pm, Seminar Room 1, HPS), Professor Rankin will discuss a draft chapter on 'Testing the Kunstkammer: bezoar, power and fraud in the sixteenth-century global drug trade’ (abstract below). If you would like a copy of it, please email me.

In 1563, the imperial surgeon Claudius Richardus wrote a glowing account of the virtues of bezoar stone, prized for its properties as an antidote and a cure-all. After giving a long description of the drug's appearance and virtues, Richardus recounted a series of tests of the drug he had personally conducted at the behest of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I: two in which patients under his care received bezoar in the midst of a serious illness and two in which he tested the bezoar in deliberate trials using poison on condemned criminals. All four men experienced miraculous recoveries. His testimony appeared to demonstrate the incontrovertible efficacy of bezoar. Yet bezoar stone was not just a drug. It was also an exotic, highly valued item in the princely Kunstkammer, or chamber of curiosities – often embedded in gold filigree to brighten up its dull brown exterior or set into drinking cups studded with gemstones or other rarities. It commanded a regal price in the marketplaces in Goa and Cochin, and fraud was a constant concern. The prince who could demonstrate he possessed a bezoar that worked had a powerful weapon indeed. In his 1589 treatise on bezoar and other exotic antidotes, German physician Johann Wittich proclaimed a grave need for 'powerful and artful substances that have been proven adequately in a trial'. This paper examines the role of testing exotic poison antidotes in the context of the expanding global drug trade in the sixteenth century.

These events are organised by the Casebooks Project and funded by the Wellcome Trust.

HPS Departmental Seminar - 'Barnum, Bache and Poe: the forging of science in the Antebellum US'

John Tresch (University of Pennsylvania)

5 February 3.30pm-5pm, seminar room 2, HPS, Free School Lane 

Two opposed tendencies characterised US public culture around 1840: first, a sharp increase of printed matter in which the sites, audiences, styles and speakers for matters of public concern exploded in number and diversity; second, an elite movement to unify knowledge through centralised institutions. In the domain of science, Barnum's 'American Museum' typified the first, while the US Coast Survey, directed by patrician polymath and West Point graduate Alexander Dallas Bache, exemplified the second. The life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe - who trained at West Point, and wrote constantly about the sciences, even as he struggled to survive as an editor, poet and storyteller - pushed in both directions at once. Poe 'forged' American science and letters in two senses: by crafting believable fakes which fed the uncertainty about authority over knowledge, and by lending aid to projects to restrict the flow of information and establish a unified intellectual infrastructure. His work thus offers uniquely astute, if dramatically conflicted commentary on the relations of science and public in a key phase of national consciousness and industrialisation.

John Tresch, associate professor of history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named Chair in History of Art, Science and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute. The new professorship will be critical in restoring, developing and elaborating the theoretical, cultural historical and anthropological implications of the work of Aby Warburg, the founder of the institute, and will inspire the kinds of cross-disciplinary work that will help revitalise the possibilities of research in the humanities. Professor Tresch is an historian of science and technology whose work focuses on changing methods, instruments, and institutions in the sciences, arts, and media. His book The Romantic Machine examined intersections between romanticism, science, and utopian politics in France before the revolution of 1848; it won the History of Science Society's Pfizer Award for Outstanding Book in 2013. Supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is currently finishing his next book, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science, which examines Poe's life and work in the light of antebellum America's obsession with science and technology. His other ongoing projects develop the concept of 'cosmograms' as a tool for comparing forms of natural order, and explore connections between contemporary neuroscience and traditional monastic practices. He has held fellowships from Columbia's Society of Fellows in the Humanities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin, the Huntington Library, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and has been visiting researcher at King's College London and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. He is editor-in-chief of the History of Anthropology Newsletter. Professor Tresch holds a BA in anthropology from the University of Chicago, a DEA from the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge. 

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

HPS Departmental Seminar - Making sense of art and science

Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent) will speak at the History and Philosophy of Science Departmental Seminar on Thursday, 18 January at 3:30pm on 'Making sense of art and science':

Historian of science Charlotte Sleigh has been working with science-artists since 2013, and in this talk she presents her reflections on hoped-for and actual relations between the two disciplines. A brief history of the field of A&S (art and science) will highlight the different purposes that art-science hybrids have fulfilled in different contexts, with particular emphasis on the past twenty years in the UK. Key concepts that have been marshalled to mediate between the two fields are subjected to critical analysis. A second part of the talk draws on Charlotte's particular experience in two A&S projects of her own: Chain Reaction! (2013) and Biological Hermeneutics (2017). In it, she reflects on some of the difficult and even embarrassing realities involved, drawing on Shapin's notion of 'lowering the tone' to help highlight some of the political tensions between art and science. Institutionalisation, money and space emerge amongst the categories in urgent need of more honest appraisal. Finally, related questions of research and critique are raised. There is a failure on the part of many scientists (just as there is amongst the general public) to understand and hence respect the research and critical practice that underpins contemporary art practice. What appears in galleries and elsewhere is the top tenth of the iceberg; research and critical practice are the nine-tenths that lie beneath. A&S collaborations may be improved, Sleigh argues, by an improved communication of this little-appreciated feature of contemporary art. Additionally she suggests that contemporary artists (as well as scientists) may have their research enhanced through an engagement with STS, which may be considered as the 'out-sourced' critical practice element of science.

Seminar Location: Seminar Room 2 Department of the History and Philosophy of Science Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH

Tea and biscuits will be available from 3pm in Seminar Room 1. Following the talk, there will be a reception, also in Seminar Room 1. All are welcome! If you would like to join dinner after the reception, please contact Mary Brazelton.

UL exhibition: Landscapes Below: Mapping and the New Science of Geology

A new, fascinating exhibition on mapping and geology by Allison Ksiazkiewicz (who completed her MPhil and PhD in HPS) at the University Library. See here for a good overview, and sign up here for special tours of the exhibition led by Allison.

The exhibition runs from November 25, 2017 to March 29, 2018 at Cambridge University Library's Milstein Exhibition Centre. Admission is free. Opening times are Mon-Fri 9am-6pm and Saturday 9am-16.30pm. Closed Sundays.

Whipple Library exhibition launch today - 'Staging the History of Science'

A final reminder about the launch event today (Thursday 1 June) to celebrate the installation of 'Staging the History of Science; an exhibit in three acts' by HPS MPhil students Julia Ostmann & Alona Bach. The display is looking very good, and the launch promises to be a fun event, running from 5.30-6.45pm (approx.).

Access is via the Library's 'evening entrance' in Storey's Gate (off Pembroke Street, or go out of the back door of the Dept and turn sharp right), and a member of staff will be there to welcome you if your card is not active for the swipe door. You are welcome to turn up on spec, but if you can sign up via the following form there's a greater chance we'll have enough refreshments: https://goo.gl/forms/MxRgBFNx75Eyb30I3

With thanks and best wishes from all at the Whipple.

HPS Departmental Seminars, Easter Term 2017

(Group members might be particularly interested in the frog-related talk on 25th May!)

Departmental Seminars, History and Philosophy of Science
Thursdays, 3:30-5pm, HPS Seminar Room, with tea from 3pm

4 May
Heather Douglas (University of Waterloo)
The materials for trust-building in expertise

The need for expertise is undisputed in today's complex society, but what expertise is, how to identify it, and how to build trust in it is hotly contested. Some philosophers presume that experts should be trusted and provide cursory means of assessment. Other philosophers argue that only experts can identify other experts, and thus we can do nothing but trust experts and hope for the best. Still other philosophers rightly point out that experts have failed some groups of people (and been part of past injustices), so trust is something that must be earned. This debate takes place against a backdrop of an increasing rejection of expertise in Western democracies, and thus addressing these issues takes on some urgency. In this talk, I will argue that expertise consists of a fluency of judgement in a complex terrain. While such fluency cannot be transferred to non-experts quickly or easily (we cannot all become experts in everything), expertise can and should be assessed by non-experts. I will articulate plausible bases for assessment experts by non-experts, and argue that crucial trust-building materials are to be found among them.


11 May
Twenty-Second Annual Hans Rausing Lecture
Lissa Roberts (University of Twente)
The history of failure: a chronicle of losers or key to success?
McCrum Lecture Theatre, Bene't Street, at 4.30pm


18 May
Henry Cowles (Yale University)
Scientific habits circa 1900


In the decades around 1900, habits were scientific. Psychologists saw mental habits as the intersection of an evolutionary past and an experimental future, while neurologists thought that habit signaled the mind's bodily roots. This talk explores the consequences of this attention to habit in the emerging human sciences, including the idea that science itself was (or could be) habitual. The sciences of habit helped recast the scope of scientific thinking and the reach of moral judgement, as issues of choice, willpower and belonging were naturalized in new ways.


25 May
Lydia Patton (Virginia Tech)
Frogs in space: physiological research into metric relationships and laws of nature


A surprising amount of research into theories of space and time in the nineteenth century involved experiments done on frogs' reactions to stimuli. William James and Hugo Munsterberg performed classic such experiments, but there was a much broader group involved. Those who cited the research and used it in their discussions of spatial relationships, and of the relationship between physiological and metric space, include Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach. Hermann von Helmholtz used experiments on frogs to establish a number of his most important results, including the claim that sensations are not propagated instantaneously but take time to propagate along a nerve. Helmholtz used other experiments on frogs to argue against the existence of a vital force, a key element of his proof of the conservation of force (energy), and a turning point in nineteenth-century physiology and medicine. Frogs mediated between the physiological and the metric: in theories of space and movement, and in theories of metabolism, energy and sensation. The formulation of well-known scientific laws during this time sprang from physiological as well as physical reasoning, and the domain of application of those laws extended to living bodies as well as to inert physical masses. Philosophers who argued that spatiotemporal relationships are fundamental to all sciences, like Cassirer and arguably Poincaré, were drawing on this history in part. The history of amphibious research forms part of the background to accounts of scientific law, like Wigner's and Mach's, that draw on evolution, perception and consciousness, including Wigner's controversial argument that consciousness collapses the wave function.


For more information on this series, please visit the website.