Prof. Peter L. Galison

Scientific knowledge does not spring whole into being like Athena from the head of Zeus, full grown and armored.  Instead, it depends on networks and affiliations, bonded communities of experimenters, instrument makers, and theorists.  We will begin with attention to early modern structures—the 18^th century Republic of Letters and the alliance of 19^th century geologists, naturalists, natural theologians, and museum curators.  The course then turns to the growth of large-scale collaborations: World War II weapons work on radar and the atomic bomb;  the ever-expanding particle-physics groups at Fermilab and CERN; the complex alliance of science, industry, government, and engineering;  scientifically directed space missions.  How, we ask, does decision-making take shape in a collective world of hundreds—even thousands—of scientists?  How and when does democratic deliberation function in an epistemic context?  How does knowledge from collaborations differ across scientific domains?  Using primary sources, historical studies, social-scientific explorations, and philosophical inquiry—with the aid of group leaders invited to the course--we aim here to understand, and perhaps to intervene in the way collective reason does and ought function.

Examination of the theory and practice of capturing scientific practice on film. Topics will include fictional, documentary, informational, and instructional films and raise problems emerging from film theory, visual anthropology and science studies. Each student will make and edit short film(s) about laboratory, field, or theoretical scientific work.

Albert Einstein is the most famous figure in science, ever.  Following his physics, cultural, philosophical, and political trajectory, this seminar aims to track the shifting role of science in the 20th and 21st centuries. This first-year seminar addresses Einstein's engagement with special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, Nazism, nuclear weapons, philosophy, the arts, and technology, and it raises basic questions about physics in its broader history.  For students coming with backgrounds in arts, humanities, and social sciences, the seminar will link their interests to the sciences; for those more focused on physics in particular and science more generally, it will frame those interests within a broader context of war, architecture, and film. Did you know Einstein had a patent on a refrigerator?  That he did a groundbreaking, delicate experiment about magnets while coming up with radical ideas about gravity, displacing Newton?  That every time you flick on a navigation program to bike somewhere you are testing general relativity?  

“Einstein Changes Our World” will present a mix of science (no prerequisites!—we get to the relativity of time, for example, with no more than the thought experiment of two mirrors and a flash of light) and the broader, relevant cultural surround. Some weeks will examine physics concepts, like curved space, or current work on black holes—while others will have us watching films or discussing the modernist poetry of William Carlos Williams that took off from relativity. Or we might be looking at the philosophical roots and philosophical consequences of Einstein’s works.  At other times we will be fully engaged with historical and political questions: not least, the building, detonation, and proliferation of nuclear weapons.  So: Why Einstein?  Because his work is still changing our world.

This course will follow major debates and transformations in the history of Science and Technology Studies and allied fields by tracing the works of Bruno Latour through the network of his interlocutors. Topics will include early and later forays into history, anthropology, and laboratory studies, the emergence of Actor-Network Theory, the study of the Anthropocene, as well as engagements between STS scholarship and the arts.

Visualization has been central to the development of science over the last 400 years, from Galileo to black holes. From diagrams and thought experiments through traces, photographs and film, the ability to picture, and reproduce, images of scientific phenomena has shaped our understanding of the natural world. This course will explore that history, philosophy, and sociology; how the scientific image has shaped standards of demonstration, opened up new ways of knowing, and accompanied the development of the very idea of objectivity.