Cfp ESHS 2020: Popular representation/misrepresentation of modern physical theories
The Commission for the History of Physics
calls for contributions to a symposium at the ESHS conference, Bologna (31
August-3 September 2020).
Popular representation/
The first decades of the twentieth century
saw a plethora of reactions to the theories of relativity and the quanta. Much
has been said about the reception of such theories in different cultural,
philosophical and scientific geographies but more often than not, these have
been presented in terms of the consistency of the theories and their
philosophical implications. Earlier "reception" studies prioritized
mostly professionals in the field, physicists and to some degree mathematicians
and philosophers, but we want to expand the focus to the general public and media, and also to
various other kinds of intellectuals in science, medicine, humanities,
religious thinkers, artists, etc. beyond physics per se. In this session we
suggest, thus, to pay attention to the “visual, material, and mathematical
cultures of physics,” to paraphrase the general topic of the conference in the
twentieth centuries, so as to broaden the scope of the ways new theories and
cultures in physics used representation technologies: from visual models to
gedankenexperiments, from cartoons and public exhibits to mathematical
technologies, from practical future promises to contextual political
interpretations.
Please send your expressions of interest by
FRIDAY 13th December to:
Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque
Country, Spain)
Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British
Columbia, Canada)