CfP: Physics in the field - 26th ICHST, Prague 2021
CFP: Physics in the field: Turning the historiography of physics around spatiality
This session engages with the spatial turn in the history of physics. It departs from the fruitful but partial focus on the laboratory that has characterized the mainstream historiography of physics, to deal instead with other spaces of physics research that have been overshadowed. In order to redress this bias, it is useful to reopen and expand (beyond the lab) the question: have place, space, and geography been elements relevant for physics research practices? This session is interested on a broad and more inclusive understanding of the spaces were physics knowledge was produced. For instance, how does physics look if we direct attention to its research practices in the field involved in the course of expeditions and the space of field stations between the 19th and 20th centuries? Why physics research required and became intertwined to expeditions and field stations? For which purposes? How physicists, research practices and instruments were adapted to field sites? Trough empirical studies this session seeks to add comprehensiveness and cohesion to the analytical and methodological tools that should guide a history of physics in the field and a history of physics as a field science. It also interrogates how the spatial turn can be brought to the core of the historiography of physics, what can result from such an exercise in terms of narratives and geographies of the discipline, and conversely, which contribution the history of physics can make to the spatial approach in the history of science at large.
This session is planed to be presented as a symposium for the 26th International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Prague from July 21-25, 2021. If you are interested in this call, please send your abstract proposal (approx. 250 words) to Adriana Minor before May 28th 2020. Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or comments.
This session engages with the spatial turn in the history of physics. It departs from the fruitful but partial focus on the laboratory that has characterized the mainstream historiography of physics, to deal instead with other spaces of physics research that have been overshadowed. In order to redress this bias, it is useful to reopen and expand (beyond the lab) the question: have place, space, and geography been elements relevant for physics research practices? This session is interested on a broad and more inclusive understanding of the spaces were physics knowledge was produced. For instance, how does physics look if we direct attention to its research practices in the field involved in the course of expeditions and the space of field stations between the 19th and 20th centuries? Why physics research required and became intertwined to expeditions and field stations? For which purposes? How physicists, research practices and instruments were adapted to field sites? Trough empirical studies this session seeks to add comprehensiveness and cohesion to the analytical and methodological tools that should guide a history of physics in the field and a history of physics as a field science. It also interrogates how the spatial turn can be brought to the core of the historiography of physics, what can result from such an exercise in terms of narratives and geographies of the discipline, and conversely, which contribution the history of physics can make to the spatial approach in the history of science at large.
This session is planed to be presented as a symposium for the 26th International Congress of History of Science and Technology in Prague from July 21-25, 2021. If you are interested in this call, please send your abstract proposal (approx. 250 words) to Adriana Minor before May 28th 2020. Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or comments.