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Jimena Canales, continued

 

Experimental History of Science (EHS)

Starting in the 1850s, the life and physical sciences changed abruptly with the rise of a new sense of history and historical development. The physical sciences (particularly thermodynamics and microphysics), life sciences (through microbiology), and theories of evolution were updated in the face of this new sense of temporal development. The rise of these sciences, in turn, also affected contemporary views of history. Thus Marx was widely considered as attempting to “do to history what Darwin did to biology.” His studies of capital focused on the “economic cell-form” which “to the superficial observer, may seem to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy.” At this moment, science, history and technology entered into a new phase of interdependence as thinkers sought to understand the effects of microscopic entities (both physical and temporal) on the world at large. Science became historical (thermodynamics, microbiology, evolution); history became scientific (Henry Buckle, Thomas Carlyle, Karl Marx), and the relation between history and science became a central intellectual problem across various disciplines.

EHS investigates this interdependence—due to a new sense of history in connection to new scientific and technological developments—in a way that eludes disciplines that do not focus on history and its material transformation (such as traditional philosophy). 

What does EHS look like?

Work on EHS is not a simple recounting of important dates and events, but rather an exploration of what science and history are, and how they relate to each other. In EHS form and content are not considered as separate, but each is seen as affecting the other. EHS adopts a symmetrical focus and use of materials, technologies, and spaces. It simultaneously uses new media (film, internet technologies, and contemporary exhibition venues) and new forms of communication to comment on older media (print, photography, cinematography, telegraphy, wireless) and their connection. See Critical Media Practice (CMP) and the MetaLAB(at)Harvard. Everyday speech acts, gestures, intimate feelings, and daily-use technologies are seen as essential for understanding historical development and its relation to science and technology. It no longer assumes apriori agents of historical change or clear outcomes of debates, but studies how specific entities gained or lost agency at certain historical period. EHS is interested in investigating how asymmetries and irreversibilities form in connection to new technologies (from the most simple, like doors, to the most complex, like particle accelerators) affecting hierarchies of delegation and participation in modern societies.  EHS is simultaneously historical and historiographic—any commentary on history is considered as dependent on practices of writing and reading history. History and science are considered simultaneously real and narrated. Texts, reenactments, and replication of experiments address the contemporary and the historical simultaneously.

Where did EHS come from?

There are four main precedents to EHS:

  • SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge)
  • Historical Epistemology
  • Media Studies
  • ANT (Actor Network Theory)


How is EHS similar and different from SSK?

How is EHS similar and different from Historical Epistemology?

How is EHS similar and different from Media Studies?

How is EHS similar and different from ANT?



 

 

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