On a warm and sunny St Valentine’s day, twenty-two PhD-candidates from the Low Countries gathered in the beautiful Rolduc Abbey (Kerkrade) for the seventh edition of the History of Science and Humanities PhD-conference. Many of them had just recently started their projects, some were finishing, others were working on specific case studies. The topics ranged from Chinese medicine in the Song period to nuclear research in post-war Belgium, and from oral history in the 1960s to early modern natural history. A full coverage of such diversity would not be possible, so I have grouped the presentations into five main themes. In this way, this report gives an impression of the subjects and discussions of the diverse ongoing research projects in the field of History of Science and Humanities in the Low Countries.
Images: visual epistemology
The first topic that I will discuss is the focus on images: How are they produced? What do they represent? And what are the epistemic convictions that establish them? The report from 2015 indicates that the use of images as a source itself was a topic of discussion, while at the current edition many projects use visual sources as a point of departure.[1]
This topic was presented from various angles. Victor Xu (Leiden University) looks at fiscal policies in combination with classificatory activities, in order to understand a so-called visual and naturalistic turn in the way Chinese pharmacologists depicted ‘exotic’ aromatics. Sophia Hendrikx and Robbert Striekwold (both Leiden University, project “New History of Fishes”) focus on the difference in depiction of animals between ichthyology and other fields of zoology. In analyzing the works of Conrad Gessner on fishes (1558), Sophia Hendrikx argued that there are very specific characteristics of (research on) fishes that explain these differences, such as the larger number of species compared to mammals or birds. Remarkably, Robbert Striekwold noticed the same anomaly in his work on the 19th century, and suggested that this could lead to a new way of thinking about objectivity and representation in the 19th-century sciences, as it did not develop parallel with for example the development of scientific imaging as proposed by Daston & Galison in their book Objectivity (2007).
This shows that the focus on images has become a fruitful method to understand ideas about classification in botany and zoology. That it can also be used to understand the relation between imagination and knowledge of natural history was shown by Wouter de Vries’ talk (VU Amsterdam) on his project ‘Image and Idea in the History of the Earth (1650-1750)’. While guiding us via Thomas Burnet to Willem Goeree, De Vries argued that the visual aspect of Descartes’ dynamic model of the earth was vital in the development of conceptualizing the earth’s history, and its conception as “an object, floating in space.”
Contesting expertise, disciplines, and science societies
The second noticeable theme is that of the formation of groups of experts, be it in the form of disciplines, science societies, or the authority of expertise. What knowledge counts as part of a discipline, and why? And can we account for specific interrelations between several disciplines? Several on-going projects show how these questions provide a new perspective on the history of science and humanities.
The project of Didi van Trijp (Leiden University) on Peter Artedi (1705-1735) focuses on the way his classification of fish was connected to the inclusion and exclusion of knowledge from, for example, fishmongers and fishermen. She concluded her talk by stating that “classifying nature is also about classifying knowledge, which is also about classifying people.” The status of the ‘knower’ is also at stake in Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen’s (Utrecht University) recently-started project on 17th-century Botanical Watercolors. The visual side of early-modern botany mostly relied on the contributions of collectors, and in her research she aims to show how these so-called ‘amateurs’ contributed to the development of natural knowledge in the early-modern Low Countries.
Lea Beiermann’s (University of Maastricht) new project on microscopists in the 19th century not only addresses the issue of amateurs and professionals historically, but also intends to use the expertise of citizen-scientists to assist in classifying a collection of microscopy publications. By analyzing the circulation of texts, images, copies and periodicals, Beiermann hopes to get a better insight in the diverse microscopy community that transcended disciplinary, national and professional boundaries.
Transcending disciplinary boundaries is at the core of the project at the University of Amsterdam titled ‘The Flow of Cognitive Goods’. The two PhDs in this project, Emma Mojet and Sjang ten Hagen, presented their work. Emma Mojet presented her ideas for her new case study on the position of Belgian astronomer and statistician Adolph Quetelet in the history of statistics. How did it happen that a diverse set of disciplines, such as botany, economics, medicine and sociology, all refer to Quetelet as the founding father of their statistical approach? In order to do this, she will investigate how Quetelet as a person, his research methods, and his results were used as examples in their own research.
Sjang ten Hagen introduced us to his new comparative case study on the development of similar epistemic virtues in the disciplines of historiography and physics in mid-nineteenth-century Berlin. He focuses on the practical training that Gustav Magnus and Leopold Ranke offered their students, and on how the epistemic virtues of the researcher were described. The research of Sjang ten Hagen provides a bridge from the concept of discipline formation to the nowadays well-established focus on ‘scientific personae’ and ‘epistemic virtues’.
Scientific Personae & Epistemic Virtues
While the concept of ‘scientific personae’ caused some confusion in 2015, it is interesting to see how dominant this concept has become at the conference.[2] In the report of the conference of 2017 Jorrit Smit noted that ‘the persona approach to history of science is in vogue’, and this trend continued in the 2019 conference.[3] The focus on scientific persona and its implications for epistemic virtues has been popularized most profoundly by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison in their seminal book Objectivity (2007). Recently, Jeroen van Dongen and Herman Paul published Epistemic Virtues in the Sciences and the Humanities (2017) in which they employ the term concept of epistemic virtues as a tool to bridge the gap between the history of science and the history of the humanities .[4] The assembly of PhD candidates at Rolduc has shown how influential these concepts are for current research into the history of science and humanities.
Chaokang Tai (University of Amsterdam) uses the notion of ‘scientific personae’ and ‘epistemic virtues’ to analyze the Dutch astronomer Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), in order to get a better understanding of the relation between his scientific work and his Marxist political convictions. This talk sparked a discussion about the limits of the concept of ‘scientific personae’. Should we reserve it solely to describe groups of scientists, or does it make sense to apply it to individuals as well? Furthermore, specific circumstances might lead to choices that the scientists would normally not make, such as a focus on an epistemic virtue as ‘rigorous analysis’ because of a lack of observatory. This questions the role of intention and autonomy in the concept of ‘epistemic virtue’.
Larissa Schulte Nordholt’s (Leiden University) gave a different perspective on epistemic virtues by presenting her project on UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1964-1999). She showed how the specific task to write a history of Africa from the perspective of Africans demanded a specific kind of historian, namely one that was much more trained in the oral tradition. The employed oral methodology not only gave voice to African perspectives, it also questioned the universal applicability of a supposed western methodology of historical research.
Hybrid Experts
Several talks touched upon the notion of ‘experts’ from a different perspective, namely in relation to non-scholarly practices, such as forensic practices and engineering.
Reinout Vander Hulst’s (KU Leuven) project on Belgian Catholic physicians analyses the identity of religious experts. In his research on the Société Médicale Belge de Saint-Luc (1922-1965) he showed how Catholic physicians in Belgium tried to balance their professional and religious identities. For example, they discussed in their journal how they should strive for a single identity, namely that of the ‘physician-apostle’.
Lourens van Haaften (KU Leuven) discussed the introduction of a new kind of expertise in India, namely ‘managers’. In his work on the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) he currently focuses on the self-understanding of the modern Indian manager that was propagated at the institute, and how this created a new kind ‘people’ and ‘experts’ as a new social phenomenon in India. A project that also addresses the rise of specific expertise is that of Sara Serrano Martínez (Utrecht University), who is part of a new project that investigates the role of forensic expertise in trials for murder, infanticide, and rape. Working on the case study of Spain (1931-1975), she reflected upon many of the historiographical and philosophical challenges of working with the ‘voices’ of the criminals, victims and witnesses in the trials.
Lucie Bastiaens (University of Maastricht) works on the history of public health in Maastricht (1880-1900) and discussed the issue of ‘priority’ in local public healthcare. Why was the ‘association for the promotion of public health’ more successful in creating alliances with state officials than the previously established local health committee? In her analysis, she addresses several strategies (performances) that might have helped to establish the authority of expertise, such as the use of statistics and the distribution of the obtained knowledge among citizens.
The figure of the ‘engineer’ is also a theme that touches upon the hybrid identity of experts. In his research, Andrew Morris (VU Brussels) focuses on the work of the British engineer John Smeaton (1724-1792) as an example of the relation between theoretical debates and practical technology. The figure of the engineer embodies the interrelation between practical applications and theoretical knowledge.
Modern Science: from dark matter to educating and managing the future
The fifth topic that was discussed in Rolduc is the development of the science and humanities in the 20th century. These projects share an interest in an increasing focus on quantification, predictability and analyses of physical ‘science parks’ and instruments.
From his analysis of Dutch pedagogical journals, Pieter van Rees concludes that there was a break around 1970 in the way researchers discuss citizenship education. He notices a shift from a philosophical focus on the development of the personal conscience towards a sociological focus on equality, based on quantitative measurements. This is what van Rees has coined the ‘double disappearance of the person’ in the Dutch educational sciences.
Jaco de Swart (University of Amsterdam) presented his work on the so-called ‘Rebirth of Cosmology’, and how the field was transformed during the 1970s. In his talk he argued that the field became more observation-oriented, the scientists became a more hybrid breed that consisted of physicists and astronomers, and the methodology became a hybrid version as well, combining philosophical discourse and statistical approaches.
The development of large research facilities itself is also much-discussed, and it is the main subject of Robert van Leeuwen’s (KU Leuven & SCK•CEN) project on the early history of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK•CEN. He will mainly focus on the way in which science, industry, and politics interacted in the construction-phase of the research site. One of the topics that will be explored is how several of these aspects came together in individual persons.
Hein Brookhuis (KU Leuven & SCK•CEN) is part of the same project, but focuses on a different period and different themes. He will address the way in which SCK•CEN has transformed as a research institute from the late 80s onwards. Currently he analyzes the way SCK•CEN anticipated its own future at the late 80s by means of an in depth research on a so-called ‘turn-around-plan’. What should be the future of a nuclear institute that felt the need for a change of priorities, and how were these kind of plans developed?
Managing the unknown future is at the core of Tom Kayzel’s (University of Amsterdam) research on the history of the Dutch Central Planning Bureau (CPB). In his talk he showed how the CPB came about and what methods it used, but also how the ideals of planning and democratization sometimes merged, but also clashed. On the one hand some hoped that it would stimulate bottom-up approaches, on the other hand, Kayzel showed how the growing authority of the CPB questioned the balance of power between experts and politicians in political decision-making.
The physical embodiment of planning the scientific future in the Dutch Science Parks was the topic that Jorrit Smit (Leiden University) introduced to us. In his talk he reflected upon the way in which the spatial configurations of the science parks reflect a certain idea of ‘valorization’ of scientific research. Building on the work of Jasanoff & Kim (sociotechnical imaginaries) and Gieryn (truth-spots), he argued that these science park embody and legitimatize the position of science in the modern society.
Future organization
The conference was organized by Emma Mojet, Jaco de Swart, Sjang ten Hagen, and Chaokang Tai (all University of Amsterdam), with financial support from the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities (Utrecht University), Huizinga Institute (Research Institute and Graduate School of Cultural History), and Vossius Center for History of Science and Humanities (University of Amsterdam).
To conclude, we
can be sure that the excellent organization of this biennial conference has
strengthened the community of historians of science and humanities in the Low
Countries. The delegation from Leuven is honored to organize the next
conference and continue this tradition. See you in two years!
[1] Schouwenburg, Hans. The Rolduc Conference: A postmortem. http://www.shellsandpebbles.com/2015/01/27/the-rolduc-conference-a-postmortem/
[2] Schouwenburg, Hans. The Rolduc Conference: A postmortem. http://www.shellsandpebbles.com/2015/01/27/the-rolduc-conference-a-postmortem/
[3] Smit, Jorrit. The De Glind Conference: A Retreat for Young Historians of…Knowledge. Studium 10:1 (2017), 20.
[4] The concept ‘scientific personae’ itself was introduced in 2003 in Lorraine Daston and H. Otto Sibum, ‘Introduction: Scientific personae and Their Histories’, Science in Context 16:1-2 (2003) 1-8.