March 2016
Science (as) Culture: Integration of Science & Society: The Current View?
Join us at the table for part 1 of an intimate yet challenging 3-part multidisciplinary exchange of ideas that gives everyone the opportunity to be heard and aims to change how we as a society think about, learn about, and talk about art, science and technology.
Find out more »Jamie Pietruska – Weather Prophets, Frauds, and Counterfeiters from the Gilded Age to the New Era – NY HoS Series
This talk will draw together histories of science, capitalism, and culture to examine epistemological debates over weather prediction during a period when the first national weather service in the United States found itself in constant competition with a multitude of private commercial forecasters in a contest for professional scientific authority.
Find out more »Collective Dynamics: Consensus, the Emergence of Leaders and Social Hydrodynamics
On March 31 from 3:30-4:30 P.M., the Distinguished Colloquium Series in Interdisciplinary & Applied Mathematics will host an event with Professor Eitan Tadmor (University of Maryland, College Park).
Find out more »Columbia University Science & Engineering Libraries Presents: A Book Talk with Prof. Stuart Firestein
Failure: Why Science Is So Successful delves into the origins of scientific research as a process that relies upon trial and error, one which inevitably results in a hefty dose of failure. In fact, scientists throughout history have relied on failure to guide their research, viewing mistakes as a necessary part of the process.
Find out more »April 2016
Luciana de Souza Leão and Gil Eyal – Experiments in the Wild: a Historical Perspective on the Rise of Randomized Controlled Trials in International Development
The Science, Technology, and Knowledge (SKAT) workshop is a forum for the seminar-style presentation and discussion of graduate student work in the sociology of expertise, the sociology of professions, actor-network approaches, medical sociology, science studies, etc. The workshop is hosted by Columbia Sociology but welcomes graduate students from all institutions and disciplines.
Find out more »Chris Stover – Time, Territorialization, and Improvisational Spaces
The Comparing Domains of Improvisation Discussion Group, co-organized by Marc Hannaford and Andrew Goldman, invites scholars and practitioners from many disciplines to discuss improvisation, conceived broadly, in order to better understand the nature of the concept and practice. On April 5, we invite Chris Stover, Assistant Professor of Music in Theory & Composition at the New School, to lead a discussion on Deleuze and the “improvisational moment.”
This event is free and open to the public.
Find out more »The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Books from the Library of Ernest Jones
Exhibition at Sotheby’s New York during Rare Book Week NYC Bernard Quaritch will be exhibiting highlights from their forthcoming catalogue The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Books from the Library of Ernest Jones at Sotheby’s New York between Wednesday 6 April and Saturday 9 April. Ernest Jones – ‘the Huxley to Freud’s Darwin’ – is remembered as the man who introduced psychoanalysis to Britain; founded the London Psychoanalytical Society; and persuaded Britain to offer Sigmund Freud sanctuary from the Nazis and effected…
Find out more »Containment – Film Screening and Discussion
Can we contain some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? Left over from the Cold War are a hundred million gallons of radioactive sludge, covering vast radioactive lands. Governments around the world, desperate to protect future generations, have begun imagining society 10,000 years from now in order to create monuments that will speak across time. Part observational essay filmed in weapons plants, Fukushima and deep underground—and part graphic novel—Containment weaves between an uneasy present and an imaginative, troubled far future,…
Find out more »Elisabeth Berry Drago – Bewitching Chemistry: Art, Alchemy, and the Making of Color
In the 17th century, artists and alchemists competed to imitate and even improve elements of the natural world. But one thing united their attempts: color. Manufactured by alchemy, pigments such as lead white, azurite, and vermillion (lead carbonate, copper carbonate, mercuric sulfide) were key to painters' astonishing, illusionistic renderings of the natural world. Join us on April 6 as CHF research fellow Elisabeth Berry Drago explores the making of pigments and their implications to the histories of both art and science. This event is free…
Find out more »The Maintainers: A Conference
This multidisciplinary conference could be more playfully titled, "The Maintainers: How a Group of Bureaucrats, Standards Engineers, and Introverts Made Technologies That Kind of Work Most of the Time." Presentations will cover a wide variety of technologies and practices, including software, spaceflight, trolleys, meteorology, digital archives, and the politics of funding for infrastructure.
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