Difference between revisions of "Bestor:Current events"

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<br/>
===<div style="text-align:center;"><big><big><big><font color="6495ED">Fifth Young Researchers Days in Logic, History and Philosophy of Science</font></big></big></big></div>===
+
===<div style="text-align:center;"><big><big><font color="6495ED">Science in the past, science in the present.<br/><br/>Reflections on a historiography of science for the 21st century</font></big></big></div>===
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
 
<big>
 
<big>
<div style="text-align:center;">'''Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (Hertogsstraat 1 rue Ducale, 1000 Brussels)'''
+
<div style="text-align:center;">'''Paleis der Academiën / Palais des Academies'''<br/>'''1, Hertogsstraat / Rue Ducale'''<br/>'''1000 Brussels'''<br/><br/>'''Thursday 24/11/2016'''<br/>'''Rubens room'''</div></big>
<br/>'''25 - 26 November 2016'''</div></big>
+
<br/>
 +
<br/>
 +
|}
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
 
<br/><big>
 
<br/><big>
:On 25 and 26 November 2016, we will host the fifth instalment of YRD in close cooperation with other Flemish and Francophone universities. its predecessors, YRD V will provide an excellent opportunity for young researchers (PhD students, young postdocs) working in the fields of Logic, Philosophy of Science and History of Science in Belgian Universities, to present their work to a larger community of emerging and established scholars in these fields. The event allows them to get to know their peers at other Belgian universities.</big>
+
:Attendance is free; please send an email to [mailto:steven.vandenbroecke@ugent.be <font color="6495ED">'''steven.vandenbroecke@ugent.be'''</font>] to confirm your presence.
 +
 
 +
<br/>
 +
:This meeting is sponsored by the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) and held under the aegis of the [http://www.rasab.be/index.php/nl/nationale-wetenschappelijke-comites/overzicht-a-list/geschiedenis-der-wetenschappen <font color="6495ED">'''National Committee for Logic, History and Philosophy of Science'''</font>].
  
  
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|
 
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
:<div style="text-align:center;"><big><big>'''Call for papers'''</big></big></div>
+
===<font color="6495ED">1. Description</font>===
  
<br/><big>Papers will be accepted in English, Dutch, and French. The lingua franca of YRD5 is English, and applicants are encouraged to present papers in this language. Paper presentations should be about 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
+
<br/>It is a truism that the face of past science changes in step with present notions of science. What are the precise implications of this for history writing on science, both theoretical and practical? Our one-day symposium focuses on this question, by encouraging historians of science to articulate their views and experiences concerning the relation between present situations, past realities, and objects (such as science) which cross this divide.
+
This focus entails many questions, which may or may not be addressed by our participants. Is past science to be understood on the model of an object which we increasingly know and master? Or is past science rather to be understood on the model of the rear view mirror: a mere index and reflection of our own passing notions of science?
<br/>Paper proposals (including title, abstract, and institutional affiliation) must be submitted through yrd5(at)bslps.be by August 31, 2016. Abstracts should be 250-300 words in length. Confirmation of acceptance will be given before the 15th of September.</big>
 
  
|}
+
<br/>What are the unexplored options and desiderata for historians of science working in the 21st century? For which specific audiences should we be writing? Which immediate effects should narratives of past science ideally carry with such an audience? Is our purpose best served by collections of exemplary micro-histories, or is there still a place for grand narrative? If so, how can liminal phenomena (religion, magic, dissimulation) be properly integrated? How far can/should historians go in undercutting received wisdom after the science wars? Does the material turn in history of science call for different conceptions of history writing? These are only a few of the questions that will be considered.
  
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
  
===<font color="6495ED">Organizing Committee</font>===
+
===<font color="6495ED">2. Programme</font>===
*Kenneth Bertrams (ULB)
 
*Steffen Ducheyne (VUB)
 
*Alexandre Guay (UCL)
 
*Bertrand Hespel (UNamur)
 
*Bruno Leclercq (ULg)
 
*Steven Vanden Broecke (UGent)
 
*Maarten Van Dijck (UGent)
 
*Geert Vanpaemel (KULeuven)
 
*Peter Verdée (UCL)
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
===<font color="6495ED">Keynote speakers</font>===
+
{|align="center"  width="90%" border="0" background-color: #DC143C; cellpadding="5"
*Ole Hjortland (Universitetet i Bergen) [[#Ole Hjortland|<small><font color="6495ED">[read more]</font></small>]]
+
|09h30 ||Opening remarks
*Omar Nasim (University of Kent), [[#Omar Nasim|<small><font color="6495ED">[read more]</font></small>]]
+
|- valign="top"
*Dominique Pestre (EHESS) [[#Dominique Pestre|<small><font color="6495ED">[read more]</font></small>]]
+
|09h45||Bart Karstens||Liquid Present, Liquid Past [[Bestor NL:Current events#Bart Karstens (Amsterdam), Liquid Present, Liquid Past|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|-
 +
|10h30 ||Geert Vanpaemel||The End of Discipline or How Science Became Public Knowledge [[Bestor NL:Current events#Geert Vanpaemel (Leuven), The End of Discipline or How Science Became Public Knowledge|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
  
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|-
 +
|11h15 ||Coffee break
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|11h30 ||Steven Vanden Broecke||Writing histories of astrology: why and how should we do it? [[Bestor NL:Current events#Steven Vanden Broecke (Gent), Writing histories of astrology: why and how should we do it?|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|12h15 ||Anne Staquet||Quand la science se dissimule [[Bestor NL:Current events#Anne Staquet (Mons), Quand la science se dissimule|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|13h00 ||Lunch
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|14h00 ||Dominique Pestre||Writing a history of science and knowledge on a global scale. Reflections on the past five centuries [[Bestor NL:Current events#Dominique Pestre (Genève), Writing a history of science and knowledge on a global scale. Reflections on the past five centuries|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|14h45 ||Sven Dupré||Revisiting Embattled Territory - Towards A History of Knowledge for the Early Modern Low Countries [[Bestor NL:Current events#Sven Dupré (Utrecht), Revisiting Embattled Territory - Towards A History of Knowledge for the Early Modern Low Countries|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|15h30 ||Coffee break
 +
|-
 +
|
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|15h45 ||Kenneth Bertrams||Legitimate Historique, Illegitimate History: the Strange Case of Jean Pelseneer’s Historique des Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie Solvay [[Bestor NL:Current events#Kenneth Bertrams (Bruxelles), Legitimate Historique, Illegitimate History: the Strange Case of Jean Pelseneer’s Historique des Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie Solvay|<small><font color="6495ED">[see abstract]</font></small>]]
 +
|- valign="top"
 +
|16h30 ||Closing remarks
 +
|}
  
----
 
<big>
 
<br/>
 
===<font color="6495ED">Origins of the YRD</font>===
 
Over the past decade, science studies have enjoyed an unprecedented success
 
in Belgium. Researchers from philosophy, history, literature, and sociology departments
 
have fostered a healthy research tradition in Logic, History and Philosophy
 
of Science. This tradition is carried out at several universities of the
 
Francophone and Flemish communities.
 
  
<br/>Since 2008, these researchers have shaped an interdisciplinary forum for
+
<br clear ="all">
PhD-students working in the broad domain of science studies. These Young
 
Researchers Days in Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science (henceforth
 
YRD) are organised under the aegis of the National Committee for Logic,
 
History and Philosophy of Science (NCLGFW) and the Belgian Society for Logic
 
and Philosophy of Science (BSLPS), and have consistently been a success,
 
easily attracting between 20 and 30 doctoral students.
 
  
<br/>
+
===<font color="6495ED">3. Abstracts</font>===
----
 
<br/>
 
===<font color="6495ED">Format of the workshop</font>===
 
The workshop will be based on 3 plenary lectures of 1 hour illustrating new
 
trends in Logic, History of Science and Philosophy of Science, on the one
 
hand, and on presentation sessions of young researchers' work in this broad
 
field, on the other. Each such session will also incorporate discussion of
 
the research of the participating students. The young researchers will have
 
20 minutes for their presentations which will be followed by a Q&A of 10
 
minutes.
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
----
+
=====Bart Karstens (Amsterdam), Liquid Present, Liquid Past=====
<br/>
+
:Science is often considered to be the hallmark of modernity. To become a scientist then typically is a modern vocation. It follows that views on modernity are strongly related to the way we think of science. For example, Bruno Latour’s posthumanist philosophy of science is supported by the idea that ‘we have never been modern’. Others however, continue to use the concept of modernity and divide it into phases. The latest phase is the period we currently live in. It has been identified as post-postmodernity, late modernity, high modernity and liquid modernity. The latter term stems from sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and in my view is the most interesting of these concepts. I will discuss the concept of liquid modernity, and focus on the challenges living in a liquid society poses to us according to Bauman. The most important challenge is the disappearance of previously stable points of reference, which triggers the need to establish these. I will then argue that the science studies face exactly the same problem, after falling prey to the strong current of epistemological relativism in the past few decades. This problem has featured in recent discussions on approaches to the study of science. I will discuss suggested solutions and, as some are still quite tentative, sketch the direction in which these solutions are heading. They include: focus on the role of virtues (or values), revaluation of expertise, search for dynamic conceptions of the notion of structure, and introduction of new concepts such as the concept of ‘cognitive goods’. These solutions have in common that they all offer some form of stability, which facilitates an analytical framework to study the history of science. All participants are invited to reflect on the potential fruitfulness of these frameworks for the study of the past.
===<font color="6495ED">Keynote speakers</font>===
 
  
====='''Dominique Pestre'''=====
 
Dominique Pestre is one of the foremost European historians of science.
 
He is Director of Studies at the École des hautes études en sciences
 
sociales (EHESS). He has recently edited the multivolume Histoire des
 
sciences et des savoirs (2015), and works mostly on the history of
 
twentieth-century science and technology, particularly in relation to social,
 
political, economic, and military power.
 
Title: 'Between knowledge and power. Turning the environment into economy,
 
1970-2010'.
 
 
<br/>Abstract: ''The economization of environment is a program that started in the 1970s and that became the main way to frame the economics/ecology question in most countries and international organizations. Taking OECD as a privileged space of observation, I intend to show how notions of Environment and Economization were both matters of debate, how different conceptualizations and interests led to various tools and expert work – but also why they directly led us to the quite disastrous Anthropocene situation today.''
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
====='''Omar Nasim'''=====
+
=====Geert Vanpaemel (Leuven), The End of Discipline or How Science Became Public Knowledge=====
Omar W. Nasim is lecturer at the School of History of the University of
+
:One of the most exciting trends to come out of the field of Science and Technology Studies, has been the articulation of a completely new understanding of science. Instead of using a narrow, technical emphasis on the theoretical organization of knowledge, confined within institutional or disciplinary boundaries, scholars, reflecting the concerns of science policy makers, now frame science within a much broader view of e.g. ‘knowledge production’ or the ‘national science system’. Within the science system, many stakeholders, including teachers and journalists, contribute to public forms of knowledge that are constantly being (re)configured, appropriated, negotiated and circulated. It is understood that science is being co-produced with social power systems, and that it is always tangled up with economic, political, industrial and legal practices. These approaches challenge the traditional narrative of the history of science as a history of ideas, and create new opportunities for making history of science relevant to contemporary debates. In my paper, I will focus on the concept of ‘public knowledge’ as one way to enlarge the scope of historiography and to include the wider range of stakeholders that make up for an effective science system.
Kent, joined Kent from the University of Oxford, where he remains a research
 
affiliate at the Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). Dr. Nasim has
 
published widely in a number of international journals. Along with a number
 
of co-edited works, he has also published two monographs: Bertrand Russell
 
and the Edwardian Philosophers: Constructing the World (Palgrave MacMillan,
 
2008); and more recently, Observing by Hand: Sketching the Nebulae in the
 
Nineteenth Century (Univ. Chicago Press, 2013).
 
Title: 'Producing scientific knowledge by drawing: 19th-century sketches of
 
nebulae'
 
  
<br/>Abstract: ''Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. During my presentation I will shed light on the ways in which the production and reception of hand-drawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. I will examine the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge.''
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
 +
=====Steven Vanden Broecke (Gent), Writing histories of astrology: why and how should we do it?=====
 +
:The notion that magic and modernity are somehow alien to one another has become difficult to defend. Recent historians have shown that far from being a historical anomaly, the thriving culture of magic and occultism in fin-de-siècle Europe was a full-fledged child of modernity. The same idea has been pursued by historians of early modern Europe. Early modern alchemy, we now know, was fully conversant with the new natural philosophies, experimental cultures, and artisan traditions. As early as 1970, Michel de Certeau analyzed the waves of demonic possession which ripped through 17th-century France as a symptom of modernizing changes in the relation between theology, medicine, and the State. Astrology too has been identified as a source of scientific expertise at many Renaissance courts, where it informed a new culture of political prudence and self-fashioning. Likewise, it has been demonstrated that the story of Copernican astronomy cannot be told outside the broader framework of astrology’s naturalizing approach to foreknowledge.
  
====='''Ole Hjortland'''=====
+
<br/>
Ole Hjortland is an Associate Professor at the University of Bergen. His
+
:At the same time, traditional restrictions for any history of marginal science seem to remain in place. For instance, astrology’s historical position and legitimacy are usually premised on its relation to official scientific and pedagogical institutions. Indeed, astrology tends to be interpreted as an art whose academic credibility before c. 1630 was dependent on outside sources of support (e.g., belief in the equivalence of words and things, an Aristotelian cosmology which upheld the distinction between super- and sublunary realms or the reality of celestial influence). Likewise, astrology after 1630 has usually been portrayed as collateral damage to the rise of intellectual modernity.
research is on logic and rationality. What makes an argument a good argument?
 
What does it mean to think and act rationally? Are there universal norms for
 
good reasoning? In 2016-2020 Hjortland is the Principal Investigator of a
 
project on the philosophy of logic, funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
 
He is an Associate Fellow of Arché Research Centre, University of St
 
Andrews, and the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy, LMU Munich.
 
Hjortland serves on the editorial board of the Norwegian Journal of
 
Philosophy and Ergo: an open access journal of philosophy.
 
Title: 'What Validity cannot be'
 
 
 
<br/>Abstract: ''Anti-exceptionalism is the claim that Logic isn’t special. Its theories are continuous with science; its method continuous with scientific method. Logic is not a priori, nor are its truths analytic truths. Logical theories are revisable, and when they are revised, they are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories. The hypothesis that knowledge of logic is obtained by a non-apriori, abductive method, leads to the sub-hypothesis that this abductive method supports non-classical logic. Now the question arises of what logical validity can and what it cannot be in such an anti-exceptionalist frame.'''
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
----
+
:These restrictions suggest that there is still work to be done towards a historiography of astrology which has the ambition of marrying a longue durée description of astrological culture with a symmetrical explanation of that culture: that is, towards a historiography which does not assume that “what come to be seen as true and false beliefs are (…) different types of social phenomena requiring different techniques of analysis” (Collins & Pinch 1982, p. 17). But how to implement this ambition, and why?
<br/>
 
 
 
===<font color="6495ED">Target audience</font>===
 
As we have learned from previous editions, the YRD are relevant to young
 
researchers active in the fields of:
 
  
*Science Studies
 
*Environmental History
 
*History of Science
 
* Literature
 
*Logic
 
*Philosophy of Science
 
*History of Philosophy
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
====='''Competences'''=====
+
=====Anne Staquet (Mons), Quand la science se dissimule=====
<br/>The attending young researchers will:
+
:Écrire l'histoire des sciences pose toute une série de difficultés : il faut à la fois faire comprendre les enjeux d'hier et ceux qui se sont greffés sur ces questions jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Cela ne se réduit évidemment pas à donner les informations dont disposaient le scientifique et ses contemporains, contexte compris, car il est particulièrement difficile de faire abstraction de ce que l'on sait aujourd'hui pour se replonger dans le passé. Cette difficulté est encore exacerbée lorsque la découverte scientifique est telle qu'elle remet en cause plusieurs autres éléments de la société. Prenons le cas de l'héliocentrisme. C'était loin d'être une question purement scientifique. Face à une telle question, ses défenseurs ont adopté des positions assez diverses : de l'affirmation pure et simple, à l'affirmation suivie de l'abjuration jusqu'à l'exposition volontairement ambiguë. C'est ce cas, à partir des Principes de Descartes, que je voudrais étudier tout particulièrement en montrant comment une telle question, où les deux positions sont aussi opposées, peut être présentée entre les lignes. Je conclurai en réfléchissant aux problèmes spécifiques que rencontre aujourd'hui l'histoire des sciences pour présenter les cas manifestes de dissimulation des positions scientifiques.
  
*be familiarized with the state of the art in Logic, Philosophy of Science and History of Science by the presentations by the keynote speakers
 
*be able to sharpen their presentation and Q&A skills
 
*be able to expand their intellectual horizons by interacting with other young scholars active in the broad field of Science Studies;
 
*be able to train their networking skills
 
*be able to train their abstract writing skills.
 
  
<br/>Prior knowledge required: Not applicable.
+
<br/>
 +
=====Dominique Pestre (Genève), Writing a history of science and knowledge on a global scale. Reflections on the past five centuries=====
 +
:The aim of this talk is to survey the most interesting elements to come out of a project which mobilized 70 people – the writing of a global History of science and knowledge from the 16th Century to today. Published in three volumes in October 2015 by Seuil (1500 pages), this history seeks to understand how science and other forms of knowledge interacted and evolved, as did their place in the cultural, political, economic and social worlds. It looks at the spaces where these forms of knowledge originated and tries to understand how the successive globalization processes which occurred over time contributed to the creation and expansion of science.
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
 +
=====Sven Dupré (Utrecht), Revisiting Embattled Territory - Towards A History of Knowledge for the Early Modern Low Countries=====
 +
:In 2015 ‘Embattled Territory. The Circulation of Knowledge in the Spanish Netherlands’ was published. Edited by Sven Dupré, Bert De Munck, Werner Thomas, and Geert Vanpaemel, the volume aimed at writing a history of science which was integrated in a more general historiography of the Spanish Netherlands. In this paper I will reflect on the opportunities (and limitations) of the approach of the book. In particular I will focus on the consequences of (1) the global turn, (2) the material turn and (3) the political turn, for the writing of the history of science in the Low Countries. How shall we deal with the interconnectedness of the Southern Netherlands with the Spanish Empire? What are the effects of focusing on knowledge instead of science? And should we make history relevant for policy debates?
  
====='''Content'''=====
 
<br/>See the information provided in the section 'detailed format of the
 
activity', especially points 2-5.
 
<br/>Language used in seminar: English
 
  
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
====='''Study material'''=====
+
=====Kenneth Bertrams (Bruxelles), Legitimate Historique, Illegitimate History: the Strange Case of Jean Pelseneer’s ''Historique des Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie Solvay''=====
Not applicable.
+
:Shortly after the Second World War, the Belgian historian of science Jean Pelseneer was entrusted the difficult mission to make an inventory of the archival collections of the International Solvay Institutes of Physics and Chemistry (which had organized the famous Solvay conferences since 1912). Pelseneer soon realized that “this material (…) could provide the substance” of a useful ''Historique of the Solvay Institutes''. The manuscript composed of 120 pages was completed by 1949. To Pelseneer’s greatest dismay, however, it was never published. More aptly said: the draft was discarded by the Board of the Solvay Institutes which considered it as out of scope. Today, Pelseneer’s ''Historique'' has become an instrumental source for the history of Solvay Institutes, but also an unexpected contribution (and inspiration) to the historiography of the history of science in the first half of the 20th century in a larger perspective and context. With this case study, I intend to elaborate on the relationships between official and unauthorized historical-writing, as well as on the outcome of history of science as a legitimating science (''Legitimationswissenschaft'').  
 
 
<br/>
 
====='''Condition(s) for attribution of credits'''=====
 
This course comprises 16 to 18 hours
 
of active participation.
 
<br/>Maximum number of participants: 30. We will guarantee that at
 
least 50 percent of the young researchers on the final programme are PhD
 
students.
 
<br/>Credits: 1
 
 
 
<br/>All information and registrations by sending an email to [mailto:steffen.ducheyne@vub.ac.be Steffen Ducheyne]
 
  
----
 
 
<br/>
 
<br/>
 +
</big>
 
|}
 
|}

Revision as of 13:27, 18 October 2016




Science in the past, science in the present.

Reflections on a historiography of science for the 21st century


Paleis der Academiën / Palais des Academies
1, Hertogsstraat / Rue Ducale
1000 Brussels

Thursday 24/11/2016
Rubens room





Attendance is free; please send an email to steven.vandenbroecke@ugent.be to confirm your presence.


This meeting is sponsored by the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) and held under the aegis of the National Committee for Logic, History and Philosophy of Science.



1. Description


It is a truism that the face of past science changes in step with present notions of science. What are the precise implications of this for history writing on science, both theoretical and practical? Our one-day symposium focuses on this question, by encouraging historians of science to articulate their views and experiences concerning the relation between present situations, past realities, and objects (such as science) which cross this divide. This focus entails many questions, which may or may not be addressed by our participants. Is past science to be understood on the model of an object which we increasingly know and master? Or is past science rather to be understood on the model of the rear view mirror: a mere index and reflection of our own passing notions of science?


What are the unexplored options and desiderata for historians of science working in the 21st century? For which specific audiences should we be writing? Which immediate effects should narratives of past science ideally carry with such an audience? Is our purpose best served by collections of exemplary micro-histories, or is there still a place for grand narrative? If so, how can liminal phenomena (religion, magic, dissimulation) be properly integrated? How far can/should historians go in undercutting received wisdom after the science wars? Does the material turn in history of science call for different conceptions of history writing? These are only a few of the questions that will be considered.



2. Programme


09h30 Opening remarks
09h45 Bart Karstens Liquid Present, Liquid Past [see abstract]
10h30 Geert Vanpaemel The End of Discipline or How Science Became Public Knowledge [see abstract]
11h15 Coffee break
11h30 Steven Vanden Broecke Writing histories of astrology: why and how should we do it? [see abstract]
12h15 Anne Staquet Quand la science se dissimule [see abstract]
13h00 Lunch
14h00 Dominique Pestre Writing a history of science and knowledge on a global scale. Reflections on the past five centuries [see abstract]
14h45 Sven Dupré Revisiting Embattled Territory - Towards A History of Knowledge for the Early Modern Low Countries [see abstract]
15h30 Coffee break
15h45 Kenneth Bertrams Legitimate Historique, Illegitimate History: the Strange Case of Jean Pelseneer’s Historique des Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie Solvay [see abstract]
16h30 Closing remarks



3. Abstracts


Bart Karstens (Amsterdam), Liquid Present, Liquid Past
Science is often considered to be the hallmark of modernity. To become a scientist then typically is a modern vocation. It follows that views on modernity are strongly related to the way we think of science. For example, Bruno Latour’s posthumanist philosophy of science is supported by the idea that ‘we have never been modern’. Others however, continue to use the concept of modernity and divide it into phases. The latest phase is the period we currently live in. It has been identified as post-postmodernity, late modernity, high modernity and liquid modernity. The latter term stems from sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and in my view is the most interesting of these concepts. I will discuss the concept of liquid modernity, and focus on the challenges living in a liquid society poses to us according to Bauman. The most important challenge is the disappearance of previously stable points of reference, which triggers the need to establish these. I will then argue that the science studies face exactly the same problem, after falling prey to the strong current of epistemological relativism in the past few decades. This problem has featured in recent discussions on approaches to the study of science. I will discuss suggested solutions and, as some are still quite tentative, sketch the direction in which these solutions are heading. They include: focus on the role of virtues (or values), revaluation of expertise, search for dynamic conceptions of the notion of structure, and introduction of new concepts such as the concept of ‘cognitive goods’. These solutions have in common that they all offer some form of stability, which facilitates an analytical framework to study the history of science. All participants are invited to reflect on the potential fruitfulness of these frameworks for the study of the past.



Geert Vanpaemel (Leuven), The End of Discipline or How Science Became Public Knowledge
One of the most exciting trends to come out of the field of Science and Technology Studies, has been the articulation of a completely new understanding of science. Instead of using a narrow, technical emphasis on the theoretical organization of knowledge, confined within institutional or disciplinary boundaries, scholars, reflecting the concerns of science policy makers, now frame science within a much broader view of e.g. ‘knowledge production’ or the ‘national science system’. Within the science system, many stakeholders, including teachers and journalists, contribute to public forms of knowledge that are constantly being (re)configured, appropriated, negotiated and circulated. It is understood that science is being co-produced with social power systems, and that it is always tangled up with economic, political, industrial and legal practices. These approaches challenge the traditional narrative of the history of science as a history of ideas, and create new opportunities for making history of science relevant to contemporary debates. In my paper, I will focus on the concept of ‘public knowledge’ as one way to enlarge the scope of historiography and to include the wider range of stakeholders that make up for an effective science system.



Steven Vanden Broecke (Gent), Writing histories of astrology: why and how should we do it?
The notion that magic and modernity are somehow alien to one another has become difficult to defend. Recent historians have shown that far from being a historical anomaly, the thriving culture of magic and occultism in fin-de-siècle Europe was a full-fledged child of modernity. The same idea has been pursued by historians of early modern Europe. Early modern alchemy, we now know, was fully conversant with the new natural philosophies, experimental cultures, and artisan traditions. As early as 1970, Michel de Certeau analyzed the waves of demonic possession which ripped through 17th-century France as a symptom of modernizing changes in the relation between theology, medicine, and the State. Astrology too has been identified as a source of scientific expertise at many Renaissance courts, where it informed a new culture of political prudence and self-fashioning. Likewise, it has been demonstrated that the story of Copernican astronomy cannot be told outside the broader framework of astrology’s naturalizing approach to foreknowledge.


At the same time, traditional restrictions for any history of marginal science seem to remain in place. For instance, astrology’s historical position and legitimacy are usually premised on its relation to official scientific and pedagogical institutions. Indeed, astrology tends to be interpreted as an art whose academic credibility before c. 1630 was dependent on outside sources of support (e.g., belief in the equivalence of words and things, an Aristotelian cosmology which upheld the distinction between super- and sublunary realms or the reality of celestial influence). Likewise, astrology after 1630 has usually been portrayed as collateral damage to the rise of intellectual modernity.


These restrictions suggest that there is still work to be done towards a historiography of astrology which has the ambition of marrying a longue durée description of astrological culture with a symmetrical explanation of that culture: that is, towards a historiography which does not assume that “what come to be seen as true and false beliefs are (…) different types of social phenomena requiring different techniques of analysis” (Collins & Pinch 1982, p. 17). But how to implement this ambition, and why?



Anne Staquet (Mons), Quand la science se dissimule
Écrire l'histoire des sciences pose toute une série de difficultés : il faut à la fois faire comprendre les enjeux d'hier et ceux qui se sont greffés sur ces questions jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Cela ne se réduit évidemment pas à donner les informations dont disposaient le scientifique et ses contemporains, contexte compris, car il est particulièrement difficile de faire abstraction de ce que l'on sait aujourd'hui pour se replonger dans le passé. Cette difficulté est encore exacerbée lorsque la découverte scientifique est telle qu'elle remet en cause plusieurs autres éléments de la société. Prenons le cas de l'héliocentrisme. C'était loin d'être une question purement scientifique. Face à une telle question, ses défenseurs ont adopté des positions assez diverses : de l'affirmation pure et simple, à l'affirmation suivie de l'abjuration jusqu'à l'exposition volontairement ambiguë. C'est ce cas, à partir des Principes de Descartes, que je voudrais étudier tout particulièrement en montrant comment une telle question, où les deux positions sont aussi opposées, peut être présentée entre les lignes. Je conclurai en réfléchissant aux problèmes spécifiques que rencontre aujourd'hui l'histoire des sciences pour présenter les cas manifestes de dissimulation des positions scientifiques.



Dominique Pestre (Genève), Writing a history of science and knowledge on a global scale. Reflections on the past five centuries
The aim of this talk is to survey the most interesting elements to come out of a project which mobilized 70 people – the writing of a global History of science and knowledge from the 16th Century to today. Published in three volumes in October 2015 by Seuil (1500 pages), this history seeks to understand how science and other forms of knowledge interacted and evolved, as did their place in the cultural, political, economic and social worlds. It looks at the spaces where these forms of knowledge originated and tries to understand how the successive globalization processes which occurred over time contributed to the creation and expansion of science.


Sven Dupré (Utrecht), Revisiting Embattled Territory - Towards A History of Knowledge for the Early Modern Low Countries
In 2015 ‘Embattled Territory. The Circulation of Knowledge in the Spanish Netherlands’ was published. Edited by Sven Dupré, Bert De Munck, Werner Thomas, and Geert Vanpaemel, the volume aimed at writing a history of science which was integrated in a more general historiography of the Spanish Netherlands. In this paper I will reflect on the opportunities (and limitations) of the approach of the book. In particular I will focus on the consequences of (1) the global turn, (2) the material turn and (3) the political turn, for the writing of the history of science in the Low Countries. How shall we deal with the interconnectedness of the Southern Netherlands with the Spanish Empire? What are the effects of focusing on knowledge instead of science? And should we make history relevant for policy debates?



Kenneth Bertrams (Bruxelles), Legitimate Historique, Illegitimate History: the Strange Case of Jean Pelseneer’s Historique des Instituts Internationaux de Physique et de Chimie Solvay
Shortly after the Second World War, the Belgian historian of science Jean Pelseneer was entrusted the difficult mission to make an inventory of the archival collections of the International Solvay Institutes of Physics and Chemistry (which had organized the famous Solvay conferences since 1912). Pelseneer soon realized that “this material (…) could provide the substance” of a useful Historique of the Solvay Institutes. The manuscript composed of 120 pages was completed by 1949. To Pelseneer’s greatest dismay, however, it was never published. More aptly said: the draft was discarded by the Board of the Solvay Institutes which considered it as out of scope. Today, Pelseneer’s Historique has become an instrumental source for the history of Solvay Institutes, but also an unexpected contribution (and inspiration) to the historiography of the history of science in the first half of the 20th century in a larger perspective and context. With this case study, I intend to elaborate on the relationships between official and unauthorized historical-writing, as well as on the outcome of history of science as a legitimating science (Legitimationswissenschaft).