Events
Events:
Science Club Lecture: The History of Sciences: Origins and Directions Apr 11, 2015
The next talk in the Science Club Lecture Series:
The History of Sciences: Origins and Directions
-by Prof. Dhruv Raina
Date: Saturday, April 11, 2015
Time: 5:00 pm
Venue: LHC 101, IISER Pune
Abstract:
The talk engages with the history of the history of sciences. It seeks to trace the evolution of the field from the French enlightenment, linking its beginnings with the processes of the institutionalization of science, the reflections on the nature of history proper and wider social change. The changing political and intellectual landscape of the long nineteenth century produced another set of methodological concerns linked up with the rise of the nation-state, neo-Kantian thought and positivism, and the ascent of the philosophy of science within the German university. This was the period when, as Sandra Harding points out, that Eurocentrism in the history and theory of science was consolidated, as well as an incipient critique of Eurocentrism concurrently emerges with the development of comparative philology. As we move into the twentieth century there is a new reckoning with the social relations of science, reflected in the humanism of Sarton, the inauguration of the Marxist history of science, and the beginnings of a substantial engagement with the sciences of the non-Western world. The talk discusses some of the conceptual and historiographical problems this engagement produced. If time permits I shall discuss the historical turn in the philosophy of science and its influence on the history of science over the last half century.
