[Athena] Conferences SCHCT: Sebastian Grevsmühl - Exploring the borders of lab and field sciences in Antarctica: Which lessons for remote sensing through satellites?

[Gemma Cirac <gemma.cirac AT gmail.com>]

Conferences SCHCT - Sebastian V. Grevsmühl: “Exploring the borders of lab and field sciences in Antarctica: Which lessons for remote sensing through satellites?”. 10 February 2021 (CET), online.

 

Conferences of the Catalan Society for the History of Science and Technology (2020 – 2021)

 

Cycle: Situating space technology between lab and field sciences

 

-                    “Exploring the borders of lab and field sciences in Antarctica: Which lessons for remote sensing through satellites?”

 

Lecturer: Sebastian V. Grevsmühl

 Wednesday, 10 February 2021, 16h (CET)

Online session. Registration required (before 10 February 2021 at 14:00 (CET) at: https://www.iec.cat/jornades/coloquisSCHCT.asp )

 

(due to cybersecurity reasons, registration is required before 3 February 2021 at 14:00 (CET). Registration is free. The same day of the lecture, soon after 14:00 (CET), you will receive a Zoom link for joining the meeting. Please check your email, including your spam box)

 

Sebastian Grevsmühl is CNRS researcher at the Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS) in Paris. He is a historian of science, technology and environment who specialises in environmental history and visual studies. He has written mainly on the geophysical sciences, environmental history, polar history and the history of explorations, visual culture and the role of images and metaphors in science. He is the author of La Terre vue d’en haut: l’invention de l’environnement global (Seuil, 2014).

 

 

Organizer: Gemma Cirac-Claveras (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

 

Summary of the cycle: Historians of 20th Century science have portrayed a time when science was organized along the lines of a modern division between field and laboratory sciences. It has been described that many scientific and technical institutions, professions and funding organizations rejected the field as an outmoded and second-class arena in contrast with the promise of modern laboratory physics. Earth-orbiting satellites (and space technologies more broadly), usually portrayed as hallmarks of modernity and paradigmatic examples of Big Science, belong to this imagined laboratory science. The three lectures proposed in this cycle, instead, make a plea for reading satellite history also as part of field sciences practices tradition.

 

This cycle of conversations aims to discuss one of the key questions to the history of 20th century science: the demarcation between lab and field sciences. How these boundaries are negotiated? Why and by whom exactly? How are they contested, modified, or perpetuated? What stories do they tell us?

 

Program:

-                     3 February 2021, 16h: Kristine C. Harper, “Eyes looking up, eyes looking down: blurring the field/lab boundary in meteorology”

-                     10 February 2021, 16h: Sebastian V. Grevsmühl, “Exploring the borders of lab and field sciences in Antarctica: Which lessons for remote sensing through satellites?”

-                     17 February 2021, 16h: Chunglin Kwa, “The smallest unit of landscape: a concept negotiated between field sciences, aerial photography and remote sensing through satellites”

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More information at: https://blogs.iec.cat/schct/colloqui-2020-2021/

 

 

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