Events for October 3, 2008

October 3, 2008

Making Modernity

Chemical Heritage Foundation | Visit site »

Time: 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., M-F
Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation
Masao Horiba Exhibit Hall
415 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia

“Making Modernity” is a major new exhibition that celebrates how science shapes the modern world. Ten years in the making, it opens this fall at the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s new two-story museum hall.  The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Beckman Foundation.

From chemistry’s origins to today, “Making Modernity” brings to life the unexpected beauty of science outside the lab. Visitors can trace scientific progress from the laboratory, to the factory, to their homes and learn how chemistry created and continues to improve the modern world.

Drawn from CHF’s world-class collections, the exhibition ranges from cosmetics to computers and includes scientific instruments and apparatus, rare books, fine art, and the personal papers of prominent scientists. Singular scientific objects and everyday items tell the stories of discoveries that shaped our lives. 

October 3, 2008

Sharrona Pearl, Annenberg School, University of Pennsylvania

Diagnostic Physiognomy: From Phrenology to Fingerprints

Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science, Regional Colloquium

Time: 3:00 to 5:00 p.m., followed by social hour and light dinner
Location: The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street
Directions: http://www.librarycompany.org/about/access.htm

This chapter excerpt from the forthcoming book “Facing the Victorians: Physiognomy in Nineteenth-Century Britain” explores the use of physiognomy as a classificatory technology in medical and anthropological practice.  As the century progressed, modes of classification shifted from the individual to the group, and physiognomical applications changed accordingly.  In this piece, Pearl uses the writings of Francis Galton to chronicle these changes and argues for a reemergence of the individual with innovations in fingerprinting and psychoanalysis at the end of the nineteenth century.

October 3, 2008

Jan M. Goplerud, M.D., Drexel University College of Medicine, and Anna N. Dhody, Curator, Mütter Museum

“Only Human:  Obstetrical and Neonatal Consequences of Evolutionary Development”

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Section on Medical History, and the Mütter Museum | Visit site »

Time:  6:00 p.m.
Location:  The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

RSVP:  215.563.3737, ext. 304