The History of Science Society

Vol. 40, No.4, October 2011
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Conferences

Upcoming Conferences

2012 Geological Society of America: From Archean to Anthropocene—The Past is the Key to the Future

The Geological Society of America will hold its annual conference on 9–12 October 2011 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Minneapolis Convention Center. We encourage everyone to visit the History and Philosophy of Geology Division booth (number 118) in the exhibit hall.
More information: http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/2011/ and http://gsahist.org/

History of Science at AHA Chicago, 5–8 January 2012

HSS members will be interested in a number of science-oriented sessions to be held at the American Historical Association meeting in Chicago, 5–8 January 2012. A key word search of "science" in the preliminary program yielded 100 results. Among these: "In the Name of Science: The Politics of Scientific Authority in Modern Spain," "Toxic Networks: Science, Eugenics, and the Politics of Race in Latin America," "Networks of Knowledge: Circulating Science in Early Modern Europe," three panels on "Ethnography, Ethnology, and Science, 1500-1800," and "Scientists as Activists Since 1945." For more history of science panels, go to AHA's Annual Meeting Program.

HSS Members Receive Discounted Registration at AAAS

The American Association for the Advancement of Science will be meeting in Vancouver, BC, one of the more beautiful cities in North America, from 16–20 February 2012. Registration for the meeting is now open, and we are pleased to once again offer AAAS-member rates for all HSS members, a savings of over $100 for the professional rate for non-AAAS members. The theme of this year's conference is "Flattening the World: Building a Global Knowledge Society." We are delighted that Robert Smith (University of Alberta) will deliver the 50th George Sarton Memorial Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Science at the 2012 conference. His title is "Making Science Big: From Little Science to Megaprojects?" Early registration will be available through 26 January 2012. Please contact the Executive Office at info@hssonline.org for questions and registration. For information on the 2012 conference go to http://www.aaas.org/meetings/

Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (&HPS4), Athens 2012

The Department of Philosophy and History of Science, University of Athens, Greece, will host the forth Integrated History and Philosophy of Science Meeting on 15–18 March 2012. Jed Z. Buchwald (California Institute of Technology) and Thomas Ryckman (Stanford University) will be the keynote speakers.

More information: For further information about &HPS4, please visit the conference website: http://conferences.phs.uoa.gr/andhps/

Call for Papers: Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture Annual Meeting 2012

SSPC is pleased to announce the call for papers for the 2012 annual meeting in New York, 9–11 May 2012. Abstracts are due no later than 1 November 2011, and all abstracts will be peer-reviewed.

More information:
http://www.psychiatryandculture.org/SSPC2012CallforPapers.htm

Call for Papers: Fourth Formal Epistemology Festival, Konstanz, 4–6 June 2012

Please submit full papers prepared for blind-review to: formal.epistemology@uni-konstanz.de by 30 November 2011. Notification of acceptance: 31 December 2011.
View the full CFP at http://www.uni-konstanz.de/philosophie/fe/index.php?article_id=27

Seventh Joint Meeting of the BSHS, CSHPS, and HSS

The seventh joint meeting of the British Society for the History of Science, the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, and the History of Science Society will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA from 10–13 July 2012. Previous successful meetings were in Oxford, England (2008); Halifax, Nova Scotia (2004); St Louis, Missouri (2000); Edinburgh, Scotland (1996); Toronto, Canada (1992); and Manchester, England (1988).

Unlike some three-society meetings in the past, the 2012 conference has no stated theme; papers on all topics in the history of science are welcome. As 2012 marks the centennial of Isis, papers related to the history of both Isis and/or the discipline would be timely.

The Philadelphia Area Center for the History of Science (PACHS) is helping with the arrangements. Dorm room accommodations will be available at the University of Pennsylvania, and a small number of hotel rooms will be reserved for the conference (individuals will need to call the hotel directly or visit the HSS website, hssonline.org, for reservations). The program will include parallel themed sessions, plenary lectures, education and outreach activities, and events at the American Philosophical Society, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania. A more extensive social program is being developed by the local organizers. The conference schedule will offer delegates the opportunity to explore the many attractions to be found in the "City of Brotherly Love," including Philadelphia's extensive links to the history of science.

The Program Committee welcomes proposals for sessions or individual papers from researchers at all stages of their careers. Participation is in no way limited to members of the three organizing societies, but there will be a registration discount for members. Intending participants should also note that the usual HSS rules concerning presenting at successive conferences do not apply to this meeting.
Online abstract submissions will open on 25 October 2011. The deadline for submitting a session or abstract is 5 December 2011.

Full details of how to submit your session or abstract will be available shortly on the HSS website at hssonline.org. Inquiries concerning this conference should be directed to info@hssonline.org.

PSA2012 in San Diego, California, 15-17 November 2012

The Philosophy of Science Association is pleased to announce that its Twenty-Third Biennial Meeting will be held in San Diego, California, from Thursday through Saturday, 15–17 November 2012, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the History of Science Society.

PSA2012 will take place at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, a beautiful hotel in a gorgeous location.

Calls for symposia and contributed papers for PSA2012 can be found at http://philsci.org/meetings/psa2012/index.html. Watch the PSA web page, www.philsci.org, for additional announcements.
We look forward to seeing you in San Diego!

Conference Reports

Montréal Meeting in the News

Last year's meeting in Montréal attracted attention from scholars beyond the history of science community thanks to the reporting efforts of Sarah Everts at Chemical & Engineering News. Everts profiled Naomi Oreskes' work on three Cold War physicists' influence on US health and science policy, which Oreskes presented to a packed audience at last year's meeting. Oreskes, in collaboration with Erik M. Conway, recently published these findings in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, available from Bloomsbury Press. A second article by Everts featured stories on several papers at the Montréal conference, including a talk on the curious weight-loss mechanisms of seventeenth-century Croatian physician Sanctorius Sanctorius, described in humorous detail by HSS member Lucia Dacome last fall. Both articles may be found online at ACS Publications. Links provided with permission.

More information:

Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry at Oxford

In early July, some fifty delegates attended a two-day conference held at the Maison Française d'Oxford. The conference, sponsored by The Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC), was entitled "Sites of Chemistry in the 18th Century." The five sessions covered a broad range of topics under the following general headings: "Metropolitan Sites and Contexts," "Laboratories: Spaces and Practices," "Chemical Sites, Cultural Spaces and Contexts," "Chemical Sites and Economic Contexts," and "The State and Innovation: Private Entrepreneurs, Innovation and the State." A conference dinner and river excursion was held on July 4th.

More information: Contact John Perkins at shacperkins@googlemail.com.

Neale Watson (right) and Robert Fox relax on the river at Oxford during the SHAC meeting this July.

Neale Watson (right) and Robert Fox relax on the river at Oxford during the SHAC meeting this July.

History of Astronomy X at Notre Dame and Adler Planetarium

Christopher M. Graney, Jefferson Community & Technical College, Louisville, KY

On 6 July 2011, an interdisciplinary mix of scholars and educators converged on the University of Notre Dame for the Tenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop (NDX). Abstracts of all papers and panels, as well as a summary of workshop activities, are available at www.nd.edu/~histast/workshops/2011ndx/abstracts.shtml.

To celebrate this year's theme, "The Philosophy of Astronomy," Liba Taub, of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science and the University of Cambridge, opened the workshop in Notre Dame's Digital Visualization Theater with a standing-room-only lecture entitled "Three Astronomers Philosophize—Ptolemy, Kepler, and Rees." After the lecture, the audience leaned back for an overhead tour of Kepler's cosmos, rendered in IMAX-quality detail by Katherine Brading and Matthew Meixner, both of Notre Dame. The tour had been created by Brading and Meixner to help undergraduates visualize the platonic solids model of the planets.

Workshop Participants at Chicago's Adler Planetarium.

Seated: Jeanne Bishop, Trudy Bell, Durruty Jesus de Alba Martinez, Jarita Holbrook, Barb Becker, Dorothy Havlik, Joe Pitt, Owen Gingerich, Morgan Saletta, Sarah Symons, Liba Taub, Marv Bolt. First row (standing): Kevin Ryan, Mike Crowe, Chris Graney, Gary Cameron, Bruce Stephenson, Bob Havlik, Alan Hirshfeld, Lee Minnerly, Henry Zemel, Jackie Feke. Second row (standing): Chris Hunt, Yaakov Zik, Chuck Bueter, Erick Norquest, Steve Case, Craig Waff, Henry Zepeda. Back row (standing): Richard Oosterhoff, Davis Baird, Matt Dowd, Ariel Cohen, David DeVorkin, Voula Saridakis, Marc Rothernberg, Paul Knappenberger, Jennifer Brand, Dana Freiburger, Misty DeMars, Jill Postma

On Friday, participants made the short trip to Chicago's Adler Planetarium for a day of presentations on philosophy, history, cutting-edge astronomical research, and teaching. Participants had the opportunity to take a firsthand look at a new tool for teaching the broader public about astronomy: the Adler's new projector, which opened to the public that day.

Adler-Mansfield Prize recipient Matt Dowd of the University of Notre Dame Press.

At the close of the workshop on July 10, Marv Bolt, of the Adler Planetarium, surprised the group with the announcement that Matt Dowd, of the University of Notre Dame Press and the driving force behind the workshop series for some years now, would receive the Adler-Mansfield Prize for "promoting astronomical and historical research and encouraging innovative ways to increase the public's awareness of the universe."

The 11th Biennial Workshop will be 12–16 June 2013.

More information: For the full report from the 2011 workshop, or for information on future meetings, visit the workshop's web page at www.nd.edu/~histast/.

New Exhibit at Harvard

Cold War in The Classroom uses archival film, photographs, models, laboratory demonstrations, and period textbooks to explore the meaning and nature of scientific pedagogy during this unique period in American and world history. Guest curators Jeremy Blatter and Christopher Phillips have transformed the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instrument's (Harvard Science Center, Room 251) Special Exhibitions Gallery into a mid-century classroom that tells the story of a nation with a mission, one in which science education became a crucial weapon of politics and society.

The exhibition runs from 30 September 2011 to 16 December 2011, Mon-Thus 9–5, and Fri 9–4.

For more information, please call 617.495.2779.

Visit us online: www.fas.harvard.edu/~hsdept

History of Science Society