Download The workshop of nature. Production of material knowledge, material

The workshop of nature.
Production of material knowledge, material production of knowledge
The International Study Day wishes to explore the link between working on sites and working
in workshops, recreating similar experiences. In such a framework, it makes sense to bridge a various
set of practices not restricted to science: a local site is the constantly evolving product of the
practices, imaginations, and negotiations of the users (scholars, travelers, artists, inhabitants) of a
given place. In any case, our idea is that a site is surely in the scholar’s job an en-plein-air experience
that should be related to the atelier phase, by which nature can be recreated (painters), transformed
(laboratories), classified (collectors) etc.
Workshops and sites of naturalist interest are hybrid fields of material and knowledge
production, places where materials are often transformed by means of knowledge and where
knowledge is transformed by the materials involved in its development. How do these
transformations in materials (by knowledge) and in knowledge (by materials) circulate? How they can
be recognized and represented?
To better understand that, it is worth a broad investigation of the cultural and experiential
transformations of relationships with nature and its mastery/control, at the articulation among the
Modern times, the Enlightenment moment and the Romanticism period.
Our focus on “sites” of knowledge makes it easier to show the representation of the
production of material knowledge as well as the representation of the material production of
knowledge in images and literature. We plan to do it by examining the nature of knowledge from the
peculiar point of view of the knowledge of nature.
Moreover, this continuous flow/activity of cross-references is the tool by which borderline
scientific disciplines (see for example chemistry, mineralogy and geology of the second half of the
18th century) can be cultivated in a site that is not simply the theatre of these transformations but
an active element of transformation, too.
The discipline of chemistry is often associated with the myth of the phoenix; chemistry, from
a certain point of view, was born by fire, as for many years fire was the only instrument chemists
could use to manipulate nature. That use of fire was often associated with volcanic phenomena, and
if we follow this way of thinking we should find the same process in early workshops and, above all
in cases of industrial accidents. In fact, they are frequently described as explosive disasters, in reality,
not very far from a picture of a volcanic eruption.
Our aim is that these rich topics will be well expanded by a meeting between cultural historians,
historians of sciences, techniques and environment, historian of arts and literature.
It will be held at the EHESS on the 10th November 2016, with the support of the LabEx HASTEC, the
Centre Alexandre Koyré and the Club d'histoire de la chimie (Société chimique de France).
Colleagues wishing to submit papers should send an abstract (no more than 250 words in English or
French) and a brief academic CV with institutional affiliation to
Corinna Guerra [email protected] et Marie Thébaud-Sorger [email protected]
Closing date for submissions is 20th September, 2016.