the rise of scientific observation in early modern europe...the rise of scientific observation in...

Hans Rausing Lecture 2010 11 oktober kl. 18.15 universitetshuset, sal IV Avd. för vetenskapshistoria ObseRVatIOn Is tHe most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human. Observation educates the senses, calibrates judg- ment, picks out objects of scientific inquiry, and forges communities. Over the course of centuries, scientific observ- ers tried to answer riddles such as: Where is society? How blue is the sky? Which way do X-rays scatter? Yet scientific observation lacks its own history: why? Observa- tion seems at once too ubiqui- tous, too basic, and altogether too obvious to merit a history. Scientific observation is how- ever a form of scientific experience as carefully crafted as the experiment – and it emerged, in tandem with the experiment, in the course of the seventeenth century. Previously, both terms had figured only rarely in natural philosophy. In the past twenty years, historians of science have written a rich history of how experiment rose to epistemological prominence in the sciences, but the story of how observation created a veritable empire by the mid- eighteenth century has yet to be told – a key chapter in the history of modern experience. biographical sketch Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her books include Classical Probability and the Enlightenment (1988), (with Katharine Park), Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150– 1750 (1998), Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science (2004), and (with Peter Galison), Objectivity (2007). She has also published on the history of quantifica- tion, the moral authority of nature, and natural law in early modern Europe. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sci- ences, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and the Leopoldina; two of her books have been awarded the Pfizer Prize of the History of Sci- ence Society. The Rise of Scientific Observation in Early Modern Europe LORRainE DaSTOn Max PLanck inSTiTuTE fOR ThE hiSTORy Of SciEncE, BERLin

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Hans Rausing Lecture 201011 oktober kl. 18.15 universitetshuset, sal IV

Avd. för vetenskapshistoria

ObseRVatIOn Is tHe most pervasive and fundamental practice of all the modern sciences, both natural and human. Observation educates the senses, calibrates judg-ment, picks out objects of scientific inquiry, and forges communities. Over the course of centuries, scientific observ-ers tried to answer riddles such as: Where is society? How blue is the sky? Which way do X-rays scatter? Yet scientific observation lacks its own history: why? Observa-tion seems at once too ubiqui-tous, too basic, and altogether

too obvious to merit a history. Scientific observation is how-ever a form of scientific ex-perience as carefully crafted as the experiment – and it emerged, in tandem with the experiment, in the course of the seventeenth century. Previously, both terms had figured only rarely in natural philosophy. In the past twenty years, historians of science have written a rich history of how experiment rose to epistemological prominence in the sciences, but the story of how observation created a veritable empire by the mid-

eighteenth century has yet to be told – a key chapter in the history of modern experience.

biographical sketchLorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her books include Classical Probability and the Enlightenment (1988), (with Katharine Park), Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (1998), Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and

Science (2004), and (with Peter Galison), Objectivity (2007). She has also published on the history of quantifica-tion, the moral authority of nature, and natural law in early modern Europe. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sci-ences, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and the Leopoldina; two of her books have been awarded the Pfizer Prize of the History of Sci-ence Society.

The Rise of Scientific Observation in

Early Modern Europe

LORRainE DaSTOn Max PLanck inSTiTuTE fOR

ThE hiSTORy Of SciEncE, BERLin