The topic “Science and the Industrial Revolution” has been much discussed. I would just like to address a few aspects of the topic that are of particular interest to the history of science and that, I believe, have not yet been sufficiently discussed. At the center of my short and often very pointed remarks is the question: How did some sciences – here Mechanics and Chemistry – develop in the...
Twentieth-century historiography of science was often characterized by a conflict between internalism and externalism. Comparing two fundamental historical alternatives, I will examine the role of the means of research in mediating the external determination of the internal ends of science.
I will present a comparative analysis of the early years of two world-class centers of mathematical research in Mandatory Palestine, and then in the recently created State of Israel. They pursued different ideals of mathematical excellence which were strongly associated with two different views of Zionism and of the role that science institutions should play in the national project envisioned...
This talk proffers a history of an electronic musical instrument, the trautonium, and uses it as a heuristic tool to probe the contours between the natural sciences, radio engineering, musical aesthetics, and politics from the 1920s through the 1960s. Such a material and cultural history of an object forces us to rethink the notion of modernity by showing how an electronic musical instrument...
