ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Failed Instruments as Epistemic Mediators: The Case of Helmholtz’s Phakoscope

• In Event: After Loss: Ephemeral Histories of Science and Technology 1 - Ephemeral Instruments of Knowledge

English Abstract

Historical narratives of scientific instruments have often emphasized a linear trajectory of success and progress, while limited attention has been given to instruments that are overlooked, less influential, or considered unsuccessful–referred to in recent literature as “failed instruments.” Such instruments may include devices abandoned due to technical or physical limitations, those requiring subsequent refinement, those that did not achieve contemporary acceptance, or others initially developed within one disciplinary context but later applied successfully in another field. These examples illustrate distinct forms of failure, which may also co-occur in the same device. To recover the nuances in between, it is necessary to pose questions such as: failure in relation to what, in what manner, and for what reasons? Rather than being interpreted merely as a technical deficiency, failure should be understood as the result of processes embedded within historical, disciplinary, and social contexts. Building on Hermann von Helmholtz’s phakoscope–an instrument designed to demonstrate the mechanism of ocular accommodation and now preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich–this contribution explores how an apparatus can embody multiple types of failure, providing a vibrant entry point for such an investigation. By combining the study of textual sources with experimental replication, it seeks to uncover the hidden practices and tacit knowledge that shaped the making of vision science.

Author

• Valentina Roberti, University of Catania