ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Universal Claims and Their Consequences in the 20th- and 21st-Century Earth and Climate Sciences

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Drawing from examples in the study of ocean circulation, the earth’s frozen regions, and the earth as an object of knowledge, this session will explore how geophysical research objects are stabilised and contested. Looking at the histories of “geophysics”, “cryosphere”, and “tipping points” or “collapse”, we show how these concepts had major consequences for research practices and priorities both within and outside of scientific communities. We also show how they have been continuously contested since their introduction. Debates about the nature and merits of these concepts and their attendant claims occurred in parallel in different scientific communities, with some researchers opposing them or seeking to offer alternatives. We pay special attention to the practical consequences of these conceptual debates, for instance how they enabled practices of science communication or resource extraction. Following these concepts will take this session from interactions between different forms of representation; between individuals, institutions, disciplines, and industry; and between localised knowledge and universal claims. Beginning with the end of World War I and ending in the present, this session invites participants to reflect on the concepts often taken for granted in modern-day earth and climate sciences. The stakes are high. Which concepts might be accurate and useful in researching and warning about potential collapses in the climate system? How justified is the claim that the cryosphere is the canary in the coal mine of climate and biodiversity crises? How do the extractivist underpinnings of geophysics affect knowledge production about the planetary scale? We show how the key concepts in these questions have contested histories that deserve reappraisal.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Dania Achermann

Individual Presentations

• Whose ‘Geophysics’? Petroleum Prospecting and Planetary Data in Interwar Geophysical Research - Erik Isberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology

• Whose 'Cryosphere'? Struggles to Define and Institutionalise the Study of the World's Ice in the First Half of the Twentieth Century - Floris Winckel, University of Copenhagen

• Whose ‘Collapse’? The Interaction Between Mathematical, Textual, and Visual Representations in the History of Research on Atlantic Ocean Circulation - Emilie Skulberg, University of Copenhagen; Martin Speirs, University of Copenhagen

Session Organizers

• Martin Speirs, University of Copenhagen

• Emilie Skulberg, University of Copenhagen

• Floris Winckel, University of Copenhagen

• Erik Isberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology