Objects and Knowledge in and between the Natural and Human Sciences

Brooke Penaloza-Patzak and Tamara Fernando

University of Vienna

29. June - 1 July 2023

Collections-based research revealing how material objects are involved in the stabilization, transfer, lass, and transformation of knowledge has grown into one of the most vibrant spheres of inquiry in the history of science. Despite this, the scope of conversation is still overly determined by more contemporary disciplinary boundaries and enlightenment-mode

preoccupations about what constitutes science. At the same time, there is a curious lack of discourse between scholars working on objects, specimens, and collections in natural history and the natural sciences on one hand, and the human sciences on the other. And

while research into the former is increasingly becoming a mainstay in the history of science, the latter is still largely dismissed as the purview of anthropologists working on the history of museums and their own and auxiliary disciplines. This obscures vitally important information about how material-based ideas and practices intertwine different spheres of knowledge. The time is ripe to begin attending to how specimen- and collections-based practices and ideas function in relation to knowledge in, and more emphatically between, the history of the natural and human sciences broadly conceived. This workshop aims to gather scholars working in the history of science and auxiliary fields to establish a forum for critical discussion about how objects, specimens, and collections are involved in the transfer, loss, and transformation of specialized knowledge across all eras and geographic regions.

To apply to participate please submit a title and 250 word apstract to penaloza.patzak@univie.ac.at by 4th March 2023