Events for February 2008
February 4, 2008
Michael Leja, University of Pennsylvania
“Eakins, Science, and Realism”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m. [Note time change.]
Place: 337 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania
February 5, 2008
Heather Ewing, Architectural Historian
“The Lost World of James Smithson”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: Chemical Heritage Foundation
In 1836 the United States government received an extraordinary and mysterious gift --a half-million-dollar bequest to establish a foundation in Washington “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The donor was an English chemist named James Smithson, who had never visited the United States. The Smithsonian went on to become the largest museum and research complex in the world and one of the best known, but the man behind the institution remained an enigma. Ewing’s The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian is the first full biography of Smithson. She will talk about her search for information on Smithson in archives across Europe and the United States, and how Smithson’s story emerged through the mapping of the network of Enlightenment scientists in which he worked.
February 6, 2008
Keith Mages, Doctoral Student, University of Pennsylvania
“Print Culture and Nursing”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, History of Nursing Seminar Series | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 3R Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall
Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu
February 7, 2008
Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Competition and Critique: The Discourse of Technology in Twentieth-Century America”
Hagley Museum and Library, Research Seminar | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Place: Hagley Museum and Library
February 8, 2008
Gaye Wilson, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
The Friends of the APS Library, Spring 2008 Lecture Series: “Thomas Jefferson: Image and Ideology”
American Philosophical Society | Visit site »
Speaker: Gaye Wilson, Historian, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Time: 5:30 p.m.
Place: Benjamin Franklin Hall, 427 Chestnut Street
RSVP: sduffy@amphilsoc.org or 215.440.3400
Gaye Wilson is an historian for the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, a part of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation that owns and preserves Monticello. Through her years with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, she has enjoyed studying the Jefferson image as preserved in his life portraits. Ms. Wilson has lectured and published essays on this topic and is currently at work on a book-length study of the Jefferson image.
February 8, 2008
Workshop, Program in History of Science, Princeton University: “Discovering Life”
Program in History of Science, Princeton University | Visit site »
Organized by: Angela N. H. Creager and Daniel Garber
Times: Friday, February 8, and Saturday, February 9
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., both days
Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University
Registration: Contact Amy Shortt to register for the workshop, including lunches, ashortt@princeton.edu
How has the conception of life related to other convictions and concerns, whether scientific, medical, intellectual, cultural or political? How have technologies and ways of manipulating living materials changed the understanding of life itself? How have the slippages in the meaning of “life” been subversive to, or perhaps generative of, biological knowledge?
Schedule for Friday, February 8
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Session 1. Life Between Machine and Technology
* Gideon Manning, California Institute of Technology, “Cartesian Anthropocentrism: Why Living Machines Were Different and Why It Mattered”
* Hannah Landecker, Rice University, “Life In Vitro”
* Commentator: John Tresch, University of Pennsylvania
2:30 - 5:30 p.m.
Session 2. Life, Death, and Medicine
* Nancy Siraisi, CUNY, “Human Life Span, Length of Life, and the Powers of Medicine: Some Fourteenth to Early Seventeenth Century Views”
* Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Indiana University, “Experimenting on Live Animals: A Taxonomy of Vivisections in the Seventeenth Century”
* Commentator: Harold Cook, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, London
[Also see February 9]
February 9, 2008
Workshop, Program in History of Science, Princeton University: “Discovering Life”
Program in History of Science, Princeton University | Visit site »
Organized by: Angela N. H. Creager and Daniel Garber
Times: Friday, February 8, and Saturday, February 9
9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., both days
Place: 211 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University
Registration: Contact Amy Shortt to register for the workshop, including lunches, ashortt@princeton.edu
This workshop will consider how natural philosophers and scientists have thought about--and experimented with--life over the last two thousand years or so. How has the conception of life related to other convictions and concerns, whether scientific, medical, intellectual, cultural or political? How have technologies and ways of manipulating living materials changed the understanding of life itself? How have the slippages in the meaning of “life” been subversive to, or perhaps generative of, biological knowledge?
Schedule for Saturday, February 9
9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Session 3. Visualizing Evolution
* Jessica Riskin, Stanford University, “The Divine Optician”
* Robert Richards, University of Chicago, “Objectivity in the Visualization of Life: The Charges of Fraud against Ernst Haeckel”
* Commentator: Jeff Schwegman, Princeton University
2:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Session 4. A Science of Life?
* James G. Lennox, University of Pittsburgh, “Aristotle on the Prospects for a Theoretical Science of Life”
* V. Betty Smocovitis, University of Florida, “Carl Sagan, The Encyclopedia Brittanica, and the Meaning of ‘Life’ in the Mid-Twentieth Century”
* Michel Morange, École Normale Supérieure, “The Resurrection of Life”
* Commentator: Daniel Cloud, Society of Fellows, Princeton University
[also see February 8]
February 10, 2008
Darwin Day Celebration: Darwin and Evolution Teach-In
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology | Visit site »
Time: 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
Place: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Charles Robert Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, was born February 12, 1809. Penn Museum joins a growing international celebration leading up to next year’s 200th anniversary of his birth in 2009. On Sunday afternoon, Penn professors from a variety of disciplines will offer short talks in the galleries, focusing on what evolution means to their particular fields of study. There will be children’s activities, badminton (a favorite Darwin pastime), film, a sneak preview of the spring exhibition “Surviving: The Body of Evidence,” and birthday cake—and Charles Darwin promises to make an appearance! Free event. Information: 215/898-4890.
February 11, 2008
Sarah Kaplan, University of Pennsylvania
“Projecting the Future: The Temporality of Strategy Making”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania
February 12, 2008
Jeffrey Johnson, Villanova University
“Chemicals in the Hindenburg Munitions Program: The Limits of ‘Total War’ in Germany, 1916-1918”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
This talk will discuss the chemical problems of German munitions production during the latter part of World War I, 1916–1918. It pays special attention to the so-called Hindenburg Program, which in the late summer of 1916 set the ambitious and controversial goal of doubling German munitions production by the spring of 1917 through an attempt at total economic mobilization. Despite huge problems and long delays, the chemical industry ultimately achieved its quantitative goal—a year late, and only an illusory success, gained by sacrificing the overall quality of German explosives. Even worse, as the Germans could not produce enough shell casings to use all the new explosives, their sacrifice in quality was largely wasted. This was one of the mistakes that cost Germans the war.
February 18, 2008
“A 1932 Physics Meeting at Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen Institute”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania
February 19, 2008
Sylwester Ratowt, University of Oklahoma
“Technologies for Maintaining a Scientific Dialog: Age of the Earth in American Science, Civil War to World War II”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
February 19, 2008
Paul Israel, Director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project,
Rutgers University
Public Lecture: “Thomas Edison and His Impact on New Jersey”
Office of Legislative Services, State of New Jersey, and the
Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, Rutgers University
| Visit site »
Speaker: Paul Israel, Research Professor of History and Director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project, Rutgers University
Time: 10:00 a.m.
Place: Committee Room 11, Fourth Floor, State House Annex,
125 West State Street, Trenton, NJ
Information: Larry Gurman at (609) 984-0445
or David Price at (609) 292-1646
February 20, 2008
Allison Squires, Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania
“Monks and Revolutions: Early Foundations of Mexican Nursing”
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, History of Nursing Seminar Series | Visit site »
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Place: 3R Conference Room, Claire Fagin Hall
Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu
This presentation will explore the significant events that led to the founding of modern Mexican nursing in the early 20th century. It will begin with the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1520 and the institutionalization of health care. The presentation concludes with the founding of the first formal school for Mexican nursing in 1907, just before the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Roles of religious orders, formally trained midwives, and the state will receive special focus.
February 20, 2008
Kelly Wisecup, University of Maryland
McNeil Center Brown Bag Seminar: “Communicating Disease: Epidemic and Encounter in Thomas Hariot’s Briefe and True Reporte of the New Found Land of Virginia”
The McNeil Center for Early American Studies | Visit site »
Speaker: Kelly Wisecup, University of Maryland
Time: 12:30 - 1:45 p.m.
Place: Seminar Room 105, McNeil Center
February 21, 2008
Paul Pasles, Villanova University
“Benjamin Franklin’s Numbers”
Philadelphia Area Seminar on the History of Mathematics (PASHoM) | Visit site »
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Place: Villanova University
February 22, 2008
Arwen Mohun, University of Delaware
How Does a Risk Society Evolve? Controlling Fire in Early America
Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Regional Colloquium
Abstract. Over the last few years, STS scholars have become increasingly interested in exploring the role of science and technology in understanding and managing risk in modern, industrialized societies. This chapter is drawn from a book-length study that explores how one such “risk society,” the United States, developed. Fire was the most useful, ubiquitous, and dangerous technology of the pre-modern world. The unique characteristics of fire risk--chronic, human-created, preventable and controllable, potentially leading to overwhelming disaster if not managed correctly--prompted the most elaborate public culture of risk management in pre-industrial Europe and the Americas. This chapter documents the characteristics of that pre-modern risk culture and shows how it was gradually transformed by new ideas and new techniques arising out of the Enlightenment and merchant capitalism.
Location: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street
Time: 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., followed by social hour with light dinner
Download event poster in PDF format.
This colloquium is made possible by an educational grant from Merck & Co., Inc.
February 25, 2008
“Extending Agricultural Extension: Theodore W. Schultz, International Development and Political Economy in the Cold War U.S.”
Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2008 Workshop | Visit site »
Time: 3:30 - 5:15 p.m.
Place: 337 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania
February 26, 2008
John Heilbron, University of California, Berkeley
Princeton History of Science Colloquium: “Francesco Bianchini: Analogies in the Practices of an Astronomer and Historian”
Program in History of Science, Princeton University | Visit site »
Speaker: John Heilbron, Professor of History, Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
Time: 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Place: 211 Dickinson Hall
Information: ashortt@princeton.edu
February 26, 2008
Dominique Tobell, University of Pennsylvania and Chemical Heritage Foundation
“Defeating Pharmaceutical Reform: The Political Strategies of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry After World War II”
Chemical Heritage Foundation, Brown Bag Lecture | Visit site »
Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation
February 29, 2008 - December 31, 2008
“Extraordinary Bodies: Mütter Museum Photographs”
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Mütter Museum | Visit site »
The historical bond between photographers and medicine carries forward to the present day an exhibition that presents more than a decade of work by sixteen contemporary fine-art photographers. Originally curated to coincide with the publication of Mütter Museum, this exhibition has traveled nationally since 2002 and now has come home for presentation for the first time in the Mütter Museum’s own gallery. The works in this exhibition find beauty not in conventional forms, but in the internal marvels revealed in the Museum’s specimens and medical models. The artists have been drawn to explore the enigma of the body, whether normal or deformed, broken, or disfigured, to create visual metaphors for the human condition.