Call for Contributions: Monographs and collections of essays for Brill Series “ Cultural Dynamics of Science” (original) (raw)
The new series Cultural Dynamics of Science (CDS) at Brill aims to contribute to ongoing efforts in the history of science to understand the relations between the production, communication, consumption and use of knowledge without having recourse to the traditional equation of popularization with notions such as 'diffusion' and 'simplification'. The same goes for the distinctions they imply between expert knowledge and practices, on one side, and lay communities and understanding on the other. Focused on the period from the Enlightenment to the present, CDS intends instead to consider the various ways in which tensions and exchanges among the different actors involved have historically fed the productive circulation of knowledge. Sensitivity to specific contexts, epistemologies, spaces and networks, in which material production merges with knowledge production, is therefore paramount. CDS also aims to contribute to recent efforts in the history of science to move across fields traditionally studied by different scholarly disciplines, and to evolve into more inclusive, interdisciplinary cultural studies. It is further committed to a geographically expansive scope of coverage, focusing on the transnational and transcultural character of the scientific endeavour. While the series aims foremost at the publication of well-written scholarly monographs, carefully integrated collections of essays will also be welcome.
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Introduction to special issue of Histories: (New) Histories of Science, in and beyond Modern Europe
Special issue of "Histories" (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/histories/special\_issues/histories\_of\_science)), 2024
In this Special Issue, (New) Histories of Science, in and beyond Modern Europe, we do not attempt to provide an all-encompassing overview of all research areas, methodological and theoretical approaches, and narratives that constitute the histories of the various sciences. Instead, we present contributions on a broad spectrum of current research topics and (new) approaches, highlighting their ramifications and illustrating their ties to neighboring disciplines and (interdisciplinary) areas of research, e.g., philosophy of science, science and technology studies, gender studies, or intellectual history. Moreover, the contributions exemplify how histories of science can be written in ways that not only move across but also challenge temporal and spatial categories and categorizations, including hegemonic understandings of “modernity”, Eurocentric views of the development of science and the humanities, or certain notions of center-periphery. They deal with histories of specific disciplines, specific research objects and phenomena, and with specific practices, while they also explore the historicity of certain ideals of scientificity (in the sense of the German Wissenschaftlichkeit). Furthermore, some papers are dedicated to selected methods and perspectives of current approaches in the histories of science. Among them is a focus on practices, including the everyday actions involved in engaging in science, but also on the specific spaces and places of knowledge production, as well as on the media of knowledge transfer and communication.
The Two Cultures" and the Historical Perspective on Science as a Culture
Forum on Public Policy a Journal of the Oxford Round Table, 2007
In the Rede lecture of 1959, C.P.Snow speaks in terms of two cultures, one of science, the other of literary intellectuals. Snow's discussion presupposes that science represents a culture of its own, independent of and superior to the arts and humanities, and unified within itself. At our present distance from this claim, Snow's point of view can be seen as a product of the philosophical orientation to science as an embodiment of universal truths about nature as well as cold war pressures on the West to improve educational standards in science. As the terms in which science is discussed have changed in the last nearly half-century, so has our response to the terms of Snow's "Two Cultures"altered with time. The fields of history and sociology of science have shown the degree to which science is both fully enmeshed in society and conditioned by history, making it more difficult to support the idea of a separate "culture" of science immune from the effects of society and history. That the viability of a culture of science as an independent entity is contested in contemporary academic circles furthermore affects the mode in which students of science and the humanities are inculcated. This paper discusses the historical perspective on science as a culture and considers the impact of changing views about the nature, aims, and methods of science on the teaching of science and its history.
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