ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Perspectives: Hands on Instruments Approaches (with Gloves) to Writing a History of Scientific Practices I

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Objects are rich sources of information about the production of scientific knowledge. While historians usually work in archives with historical documents trying to reconstruct theories and the social and cultural context of physics, not everything about the history of physics is recorded in textual form. We can gain new insights into the history of physics by analyzing scientific instruments and foregrounding material aspects of scientific practice in historical narratives.
It was this insight that motivated the launch of the seminar Material Culture in the History of Physics, in 2016 at the Deutsches Museum Munich, which is generously funded by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus-Foundation. The contributions in this symposium are presented by participants from different cohorts to the seminars - starting from the close study of an object in the museum’s collection or present the findings of subsequent research that applied the seminar’s methodology. These papers are complemented by contributions from two of the seminar’s four instructors, whose talks further broaden the methodological scope of the sessions.
The case studies presented here examine instruments from different periods and contexts. Together, they demonstrate the potential of material-based approaches for writing a history of science that appropriately addresses the practice with scientific instruments.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Peter Heering, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Institute of Physics, its Didactics and its History

Individual Presentations

• Practices in Parallel: Experiments in Early 20th Century Physics Laboratories - Julia Bloemer, Europa-Universität Flensburg

• A light in the darkness: Presences and meanings of an electric lamp in Northern Spain (1851-2025) - Anxo Vidal Nogueira, Universitat de Valencia

• Material Culture Across Time, Place, and Disciplines: Brander’s Hydrostatic Balance and Zoological Lantern Slides - Júlia Garcia de la Torre, Universität Wien

Session Organizers

• Julia Bloemer, Europa-Universität Flensburg

• Kristen Frederick-Frost, Smithsonian Institution

• Johannes-Geert Hagmann

• Peter Heering, Europa-Universität Flensburg, Institute of Physics, its Didactics and its History