Just got this from one of the organizers — looks like an interesting meeting to all of us who work on visualisation:
Visualising Nature: Making Images and the Production of Biological Knowledge from Early Modern Natural History to Contemporary Life Sciences
Ischia Summer School on the History of the Life Sciences Ischia, 3 July – 10 July, 2007. Read More
Apropos the recent debate about the reliability of Wikipedia — take a look at the Uncyclopedia which already has about 175 articles on science (including a very instructive one on “intelligent rotation”). The Uncyclopedia is perhaps not as subtle as The Onion, but with a little help from its friends it could be turned into the hilarious counterpart of the Wikipedia.
The ultimate Google project is to turn all textual and numerical representations of the world – all books, manuscripts etc. – into searchable digital format. Great! But what is lost in the process? In a commentary in the 6 October issue of the TLS (“Such attics cleared of me: Saving writers’ manuscripts for the nation”, pp. 14-15), my old favourite poet Andrew Motion discusses my not-so-favourite poet Philip Larkin’s view on the collection of manuscripts.
“All manuscripts have two kinds of value”, says Larkin: “what might be called the magical value and the meaningful value”. Adds Motion: “I love Larkin’s distinction between the magical and the meaningful”. There is “a primitive, visceral thrill in thinking: ‘My god, Keats’s hand rested on this piece of paper’”.
Meaningful value has almost completely dominated historians’ valuation of collections. The neglect of the magical value has probably also underscored the (otherwise very useful) avalanche of projects for the digitalisation of collections.
Andrew Motion’s/Philip Larkin’s point about the magical value of collections is a reminder, however, of the fact – which everyone who has worked in an archive knows – that the physical remains add a dimension to the historian’s work which easily gets lost when one only has access to documents in html- or pdf-format.
Der bliver afholdt et PhD-kursus om “Kroppen som æstetisk og medicinsk fænomen” den 20.-22. november på Københavns Universitet (KUA og Medicinsk Museion).
De seneste års interesse for sammenhængen mellem kunst og videnskab er baggrunden for dette kursus om kropsbilleder i medicin og kunst. Ved nedslag i forskellige historiske perioder vil vi på kurset undersøge forbindelser mellem nyorienteringer i den medicinske diskurs om kroppen og samtidige æstetiske kropsudtryk. Også i den medicinske videnskab er kroppen blevet et tegn, der skal læses og tydes, og den videnskabelige omgang med kroppen er ikke blot indlejret i og udtryk for almene samfundsmæssige forhold, den mærkes også i den kunstneriske skabelse af kroppen. Hvilke kropsdiskurser følger med medicinen, og hvordan trækker disse spor i de kunstneriske universer? Hvilke billeder og forestillinger eksisterer der i medicinen af henholdsvis den sunde og syge krop og hvordan er gestaltningerne af samme modsætningspar i den æstetiske og litterære praksis? Når der er et misforhold, en usamtidighed mellem den medicinske videnskab og de æstetiske former: hvad kan da forklare denne spænding? Kurset vil selvsagt være tværfagligt forankret og forelæserne vil komme fra såvel historievidenskab og idehistorie som fra de æstetiske videnskaber: litteratur og kunst
The exhibition “Diagnose [Kunst]: Die Medizin im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Kunst” which opened at the art museum in Ahlen, Germany, on 22 October (and runs until 14 January 2007) seems to be more about medicin in contemporary art than contemporary medicine in contemporary art (see further http://www.kunstmuseum-ahlen.de/ausstellungen/diagnose_kunst_01.html):
The British Society for the History of Science (BSHS) holds their next annual conference at the University of Manchester, UK, 28 June–1 July 2007. The BSHS meetings are usually very nicely organised and you will meet a lot of British (+ US, German, some French, and even some Scandinavian) historians of STM who have decided to join the ranks of the BSHS for the sheer pleasure of attending their meetings and meet their peers.
As usual papers are invited in all areas of the history of science, technology and medicine. Proposals for themed panels are particularly encouraged. Themed panel organisers will receive further guidelines, and are welcome to discuss provisional proposals with the programme organisers via the address below. Paper abstracts should contain a maximum of 250 words, use no footnotes, and be comprehensible to a non-specialist audience. Panel submissions, where possible, should include individual abstracts (as above) for the papers, and should include contact details for all presenters.
The deadline for receipt of submissions is 4 February 2007 at bshs2007@bshs.org.uk. More info about registration will be published in February 2007 in the Society’s newsletter, Viewpoint, and on the Society’s website.
The workshop on “Meat, Medicine, and Human Health in the Twentieth Century” that is being held at the National Library of Medicine, NIH, 14–15 November 2006 reminds me that an historical perspective on food, medicine and health would be a very timely topic to pursue for the new University of Copenhagen — now that the Royal College of Agriculture is being incorporated to create a major ‘health and life science’ university.
Indeed one of expressed aims of the incorporation of the eartlier independent Agricultural College (and the pharmaceutical university) as faculties of the University of Copenhagen is to support synergies between food science, medical research and public health studies. What better way to achieve this goal than creating a joint historical project — fostering an understanding of the historical background for bringing these three areas together?
To give our university authorities something to think about, here’s a quote from the workshop programme: Read More
Any comments on the new header – name, text, colours?
Here’s a loose idea provoked by the “Towards a new materialism” seminar in Lund last Thursday. When God gradually disappeared from the Western world-view in the 17th through 20th centuries, the idea of an outside moving agency was gradually substituted with the idea of a human interpreting and constructing agency. Human intentionality increasingly shared the place with God’s almighty power and eventually took over. Now, if you give up the idea of human intentionality (e.g., by decentering the subject far enough), as much thinking in the social sciences and humanities have done over the last decades — and if you don’t want to make a retrograde movement to the notion of God — then what could possibly fill the void? Is the recent intellectual interest in materiality an attempt to fill the cultural void after giving up on both God and human intentionality?
The reading group “Towards a New Materialism? Exploring Artifactuality and Material Culture in History of Science, Technology and Medicine” which I presented in a post on this blog in early September has met twice now; last Thursday we visited Gustav Holmberg and his acquarium-ish seminar room at the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund to discuss Andy Pickering’s The Mangle of Practice (1995) — a great and original book which still raises some troubling questions about “material agency” and “intentionality” in scientific, technological (and by default, medical) practice.
Next time — Thursday 7 December — we will meet at the Medical Museion in Copenhagen where we are going to discuss another almost ten years old but still very influential book, viz., Sharon Macdonald’s collection of papers Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (1997). If you want to attend, please contact Mats Fridlund, MAF@dtv.dk.
It’s a wonderful group: both times we have been some 8-10 people around the table with all different kinds of backgrounds: history of ideas, history of technology, museums, computer research etc. Lively discussions, good sandwiches, and nice atmosphere. It’s a great learning environment.
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