Science X Medicine - 24th ICHSTM, Manchester, 22-28 July 2013
Dear All,
We are looking for a number of additional participants
for a symposium on the interactions and intersections of science and medicine,
and their respective historiographies, to be held at the 24th ICHSTM in
Manchester, July 2013 (http://ichstm2013.com/).
The details of the symposium and speakers already signed are available below.
If you are interested in participating in this symposium
please contact us
(josicas@alumni.uv.es)
before 15th September 2012. Please, include a paper title, abstract (max. 2500
characters) and affiliation details. Thank you.
All the best,
Josep
****
Josep Simon
Université Paris Ouest
****
SYMPOSIUM ‘Science X Medicine: Promiscuous Objects,
Entangled Problems’
Organized by Josep Simon (Université Paris Ouest) &
Mónica García (Universidad del Rosario).
24th ICHSTM, Manchester, 22-28 July 2013
‘Science’ and ‘Medicine’ are two objects of study
characterized by great complexity and covering a large territory. But
historians have traditionally considered that their boundaries could be clearly
defined, at least with regard to each other. This distinction is still
conventional, shaped by divided academic, intellectual and historical
traditions. In this framework, for instance, the making of ‘modern medicine’ is
explained through a simple narrative stressing the introduction in the
nineteenth century of laboratory science in medical practice as ‘Science’
applied to ‘Medicine’, characterized instead by clinical practices, and thus
subordinated to the former. A more symmetrical image of the science/medicine
nexus is currently being prompted by the study of contemporary developments
such as biomedicine. Yet, this growing scholarship has not reshaped yet the
basic science/medicine framework. The question is complex, since historical
actors themselves have often built their own scientific or medical identities, in
opposition to each other. However, it is increasingly visible that these two
areas are far more promiscuous than conventionally held. They can in fact be
characterized by a large number of entangled problems, mediating instruments
and shared spaces.
This symposium is connected to recent calls to overcome
the aforementioned opposition (Warner 1985 & 1995; Pickstone, 2000; Sturdy,
2011; Pickstone & Worboys, 2011). A major aim is to bring together
different approaches used in the study of science or medicine to understand
situations involving promiscuity and entanglement in scientific and medical
practices. Some guiding questions
are: What is the role of technology in the making of
scientific disciplines and medical specialisms? What is the role of quantification
in creating scientific and medical objects of inquiry? How have physics,
chemistry, engineering, and medicine shaped each other? How were perceived the
different standards of proof in medicine and in the physical sciences? What
were the major spaces of exchange and trading zones between science and
medicine?
This symposium presents case studies dealing with objects
and problems across science and medicine in national and transnational contexts
between the 19th and 20th centuries. Among these, Stefan Pohl (Universidad del
Rosario) deals with the making of ‘race’ in Colombia, through interdisciplinary
research on nutrition. Mónica García (Universidad del Rosario) shows how
bacteriology and statistics shaped medical and epidemiological research in Colombia.
José R.
Bertomeu Sánchez (Universitat de València) discusses how
chemical and medical methods configured forensic practice in French toxicology.
Ximo Guillem (Universitat de València) analyzes the development and
problematization of pesticide treatments by medical and scientific experts in
England and Spain .
Josep Simon (Université Paris Ouest) discusses the role
of technology in the making of ‘medical physics’ as a discipline in France and
Mexico.
Comments to the symposium papers will be provided by
Steve Sturdy (University of Edinburgh).