Part II Paper 2: Modern Science and Society

Paper managers: Rosanna Dent and Charu Singh

Overview

Lectures are held in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

Michaelmas Term

  • Sciences of Territory and Population
    Staffan Müller-Wille (4)
    Thu 11am (weeks 1–2), Tue 11am (weeks 1–2)
  • Technoscience in Latin America
    Rosanna Dent (4)
    Thu 11am (weeks 3–4), Tue 11am (weeks 3–4)
  • Physical Sciences, Empire and Modernity
    Joshua Nall (4), Richard Staley (4)
    Thu 11am (weeks 5–8), Tue 11am (weeks 5–8)

Lent Term

  • Science, State and Society in South Asia
    Charu Singh (8)
    Thu 11am (weeks 1–8)
  • Science, Technology and Society in East Asia
    Mary Brazelton (8)
    Tue 11am (weeks 1–8)

Introduction

This paper surveys the history of science and technology from the late 18th century until the present day. The sciences in this decisive epoch were made for a world increasingly dominated by the trade and industrialising economies of the West and punctuated by wars and revolutions at a global scale. New knowledges and technologies both in the natural and the human sciences, emerged and combined, extended their global reach through nation-building, colonial imperialism and decolonisation, and met criticism, challenge and resistance throughout their consolidation. Key institutions were established: scientific associations, teaching laboratories, research institutes, and professionally organised careers and qualifications. Key technologies were developed to set standards and collate data about the natural and social world. This was also the epoch of grand visions of the natural and social order and their secular meanings, whether in thermodynamics and electromagnetism, in engineering and industrial sciences, in astrophysics and cosmology, or in evolutionary theory and racial science. Changes in sciences and technology also sparked human imaginations, inspiring progressive dreams of solving global hunger or securing global communications, and fuelling nightmares of nuclear annihilation, racial conflict and catastrophic climate change.

Aims and learning outcomes

  • to acquaint students with fundamental issues in historical writing on the sciences from the late 18th century to the period of decolonisation and aftermath of the Cold War;
  • to provide students with an understanding of the principal changes that created the scientific institutions, professionals and practices of the modern world;
  • to explore the modern imperial and colonial origins and uses of scientific knowledge;
  • to present students with a deeper understanding of how science and technology came to occupy a central place in modern industries and state bureaucracies and especially in the daily lives of peoples worldwide;
  • to encourage students to reflect critically on their own experiences of science and technology now, informed by greater knowledge of its recent history.

Lectures

Sciences of Territory and Population

Staffan Müller-Wille (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Debates about the value of 'Big Data' have led in recent years to increased attention to the historical development of sciences that rely on practices of collecting, surveying and processing large amounts of empirical information. This course introduces the history of a range of disciplines, from mineralogy to racial anthropology, that played a key role in industrialisation and the governance of modern nation states and colonial empires. The lectures will cover the history of key concepts – like territory, resource, population, environment and inheritance, time and history, evolution and progress – but root this history in the global circulation of institutions and practices like map-making or census-taking. The course takes inspiration from Michel Foucault's equation of knowledge and power, but carries his analysis forward by paying particular attention to the way in which paper-based information processing articulated politics and subjectivities.

Technoscience in Latin America

Rosanna Dent (4 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

Focusing primarily on the 19th century to the present, this course explores the people, institutions and socio-political forces that have shaped and been shaped by technoscience in Latin America. From the political struggles of independence movements and abolitionism to developmentalist Cold War politics, science and technology have constituted key sites for the exercise of power and statecraft. Topics include territorial exploration and botanical extractivism in the Amazon, classification and race-making in the Andes, and the uneven social outcomes of state commitments to economic developmentalism across the continent. We will look at science and technology as they relate to the imperial relationships of European and North American powers to Latin American nation-states, as well as the development of nationalist projects, internal colonialism, and the efforts of people subjected to and resistant to these powers.

Physical Sciences, Empire and Modernity

Joshua Nall, Richard Staley (8 lectures, Michaelmas Term)

This course is about the transformation of the places and practices of the physical sciences in the last two centuries. Particular attention is paid to changes in scientific organisation and material technique. In this period, physical sciences became central to notions of progress and governance, investigated and prominently displayed in laboratories and observatories, workshops and international exhibitions. The politics of imperialism and of technological and economic transformations of modernity through the development of industrial capital were crucial for working institutions and practical conduct of physical sciences worldwide. These changes were marked especially in the material and the instrumental dimensions of physical sciences' enterprises. It is planned that the course include some working sessions with historical collections in the Whipple Museum. Key themes include the imperial role of astronomy and its instrumentation; new lab spaces for teaching and inquiry, involving the role of telecommunications and the advent of radiation sciences and nuclear physics; development of metropolitan spaces of performance, display and education and widely varying models of spectacle and of vision; and the development of electronic computing and sciences of artificial intelligence.

Science, State and Society in South Asia

Charu Singh (8 lectures, Lent Term)

This course explores the history and anthropology of science and technology in South Asia from the 17th century to the present. During this period, the natural, social and political orders of the region were first conscripted to global scientific networks through European commerce and imperialism; since formal decolonisation in the mid-20th century, South Asian nation-states have continued to participate in transregional technoscience. Science and technology have animated the region's multiple imperial, national and postcolonial projects – as forces for civilisation and enlightenment, political domination and liberation, and economic development and social transformation. These lectures provide an overview of the dynamic relationship between science, state and society in South Asia since 1600, with a focus on the institutions, practices and sociology of actors involved in the production and transmission of scientific knowledge.

Science, Technology and Society in East Asia

Mary Brazelton (8 lectures, Lent Term)

This course is about how people in modern East Asia sought to understand and organise knowledge about their world. These endeavours involved extensive exchanges of ideas, objects and people, as well as shifting definitions of what constituted science. Topics covered include China's Qing Dynasty and its officials' efforts to cultivate knowledge about their empire, as well as the Meiji Restoration in Japan and its projects of modernisation and industrialisation. In the 20th century, the rise of Communism in China and North Korea made the region a critical sphere in the Cold War, and led to novel exchanges in science, technology and medicine. The lectures connect narratives of science and technology in East Asia to themes that motivate other courses on the paper, such as the rise and spread of the university laboratory, the role of empire in the production of knowledge, and the relationships between science and industry.

Preliminary reading

Resources for this paper