[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, September 20th - Alex Csiszar - (Please RSVP)

[Harvard STS]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
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*Alex Csiszar*
*History of Science, Harvard*
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*Managing Science by Numbers: the Emergence of the Modern Scientific Journal
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Monday, September 20th
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106

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Lunch is provided.
Please RSVP to sts at hks.harvard.edu by Thursday, September 9th.

*Abstract: For just over a century, the journal literature of science has
been closely identified – by scientists and publics – with both the
cumulative and the present state of knowledge possessed by the scientific
community. A dominant historical narrative -- associated especially with
Mertonian views of the institutional bases of good science -- posits that
the modern scientific journal emerged essentially fully-formed in the late
seventeenth century, and that its emergence was (and, as a corollary,
remains) a central condition of possibility for maintaining trust, openness,
and accountability in modern science. In this presentation I will argue,
first, that the emergence of the modern scientific journal actually took
place over the course of the nineteenth century, and second, that the shift
whereby the social and intellectual authority of science came to be vested
increasingly in serialized print did not come about through any deliberate
choice taken by scientists based on the fitness of the periodical press to
play this role. On the contrary, it occurred through a series of struggles
in which the press was generally cast in the role of assailant, rather than
savior, of scientific order.
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*Biography: *Alex Csiszar recently completed his Ph.D. in the Department of
the History of Science at Harvard University. His dissertation -- "Broken
Pieces of Fact: The Scientific Periodical and the Politics of Search in
Nineteenth-Century France and Britain"  -- examines the circumstances in
which the scientific journal emerged to become a competitor with, and
eventually to take the place of, the scientific society and academy as the
principal institutional site for the representation, certification, and
registration of authoritative natural knowledge.  A portion of this work was
recently published as "Seriality and the Search for Order: Scientific Print
and its Problems During the Late Nineteenth Century." This academic year he
is an ACLS / Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, and he remains affiliated with
Harvard.

A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
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