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August 1998

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From:
Chris Young <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 16:25:24 -0700
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Subject:  Symposium on Models
From:     [log in to unmask]

MODELS IN THE SCIENCES, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE:
DISPLAYING THE THIRD DIMENSION

WELLCOME SYMPOSIUM FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
with
THE SCIENCE MUSEUM

Friday & Saturday 13-14 November 1998

Models in three dimensions have been critically involved in the
practices of
many disciplines, and although largely ignored by recent scholarship on
the
problems of representation, they offer exciting opportunities for
historical
inquiry. The meeting will bring a variety of historians together to
explore
what we can learn from each other about the practices of modelling and
the
cultures of models, and more ambitiously, to discuss what histories of
modelling we should tell.

The scattered work of various scholars is already making clear that
three-dimensional modelling has played important roles in perhaps every
discipline. The models we have in view range from the anatomical waxes
of
the Italian Enlightenment to the human embryos that were reconstructed
from
serial sections since the 1880s; from the ball-and-stick molecules that
were
introduced into mid-nineteenth-century chemistry to the macromolecular
models of electron densities that were produced by X-ray diffraction
analysis in the mid-twentieth; from the plaster casts studied by
archaeologists, anthropologists and palaeontologists to the models of
mathematical surfaces that filled the cabinets of mathematical
institutes by
the end of the nineteenth century; from the inventions that were
displayed
in the collections of eighteenth-century rulers to the wind tunnels of
more
recent engineers. Modelling was a commercial enterprise, and models a
substantial proportion of the scientific, medical and technological
exhibits
at world?s fairs. Crucially, modelling was held to be an unusually
powerful
means of communication: from models that produced the structure of the
human
body for medical students to the dioramas that displayed natural history
to
the museum-going public, three-dimensional representations were designed
to
achieve a vividness that no flat picture could match. For these reasons
too,
modelling was in many disciplines a key research practice; its
proponents
argued vehemently that models were actually more important publications
than
those that appeared in print. But the meanings of models were not fixed,
especially when, as often happened to anatomical waxes in peep-shows and
panopticons, they ended up in the 'wrong' hands, being viewed in 'wrong'
ways.

Historians and sociologists of science and medicine have shown that much
of
scientists' work can be analysed as processes of representation. Often
the
point has been to show how a three-dimensional world could be mastered
on
paper; scientists are reckoned to work most effectively by reducing
three
dimensions to two. Actual three-dimensional representations would, it
has
widely been assumed, be too expensive and immobile for routine use,
though
it is usually conceded that they might be valuable for teaching or
communicating with lay audiences. We would like to challenge this view
by
focusing on cases like those we have just mentioned in which
three-dimensional models actually have been key to the practice of the
sciences, medicine and technology.

We do not propose to discuss models as theoretical constructs or
abstract
representations. Nor do we wish to fetishize an isolated class of
objects,
but rather to encourage speakers to explore the place of models in
scientific, medical and technological practice by analysing their
production,
 manipulation and display. As Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar have
argued,
representations can be made to represent only within the activities in
which
they are produced and used. Whilst models have often been rather robust
bearers of meaning, 'representational transparency' has always required
hard
work and has by no means always been achieved. We would like speakers to
pay
attention to the ways in which models were problematic or controversial,
and
especially to the fraught interrelations between practices of
representation
in two dimensions and in three. Framing the analysis like this should
also
allow us to reflect self-critically on the ways in which it may, or
conversely may not, be useful to focus on the specific virtues and
problems
of three-dimensionality.


FRIDAY: in the Auditorium of the Wellcome Building, 183 Euston Road,
London
NW1

09.30 - 10.00 Registration

10.00 - 10.10 Dr Nick Hopwood (Wellcome Institute) and
Dr Soraya de Chadarevian (University of Cambridge)
Introduction

10.10 -10.50 Dr Malcolm Baker (Victoria and Albert Museum)
The Three-Dimensional Model in Eighteenth-Century Design Procedures: The
representation and viewing of process

10.50 -11.30 Dr Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge)
Fish and Ships: Enlightenment models and practical reason

11.30 - 11.50 Coffee

11.50 - 12.30 Professor Renato Mazzolini (University of Trento)
Felice Fontana and His Models of the Human Body

12.30 - 13.10 Dr Nick Hopwood (Wellcome Institute)
Publishing in Wax: Modellers and anatomists in turn-of-the-century
embryology

13.10 - 14.10 Lunch

14.10 - 14.50 Dr Thomas Schnalke (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)
Casting Reality, Capturing the Individual: The production and meaning of
medical moulages

14.50 - 15.30 Professor Christoph Meinel (University of Regensburg)
Molecular Modelling and Chemical Synthesis, 1865-1875

15.30 - 15.50 Tea

15.50 - 16.30 Professor Herbert Mehrtens (Technical University,
Braunschweig)
What is 'Anschauung' about? The role of models in mathematics before
World
War I

16.30 -  17.10 Professor Deanna Petherbridge (Royal College of Art)
Translations: Representation and dimensionality

17.10 - 18.00 General Discussion


SATURDAY: in the Fellows Room at the Science Museum, Exhibition Road,
London SW7
09.30 - 10.00 Registration

10.00 - 10.40 Dr Christopher Evans  (Cambridge Archaeological Unit)
Model Excavations: Text/context and graphic literacy

10.40  - 11.20 Professor Lynn Nyhart  (University of Wisconsin)
When is a Model Not a Model? Science, art and authenticity in natural
history displays

11.20 - 11.40 Coffee

11.40 - 12.20 Dr Eric Francoeur (École des Mines, Paris)
Powerful Tinker-Toys: Space-filling molecular models and the
experimental
articulation of structural constraints

12.20 - 13.00 Dr Soraya de Chadarevian (University of Cambridge)
Models and the Making of Molecular Biology

13.00 - 14.00 Lunch

14.00 - 15.00 Tour of models in the Science Museum Collections
Led by Dr Alan Morton and Alex Hayward (Science Museum)

15.00 - 15.20 Tea

15.20 - 16.00 Dr Mary Morgan (LSE) and Dr Marcel Boumans (University of
Amsterdam)
The Secrets Hidden by Two-Dimensionality: Modelling the economy as a
hydraulic system

16.00 - 16.40 Dr Ghislaine Lawrence (Science Museum)
Making the Bed: 1960s engineering design research for the King?s Fund
hospital bed

16.40 - 17.10 Commentaries:
Professor Ludmilla Jordanova (University of East Anglia) and
Dr Dominique Pestre (Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris)

17.10 - 18.00 General Discussion

18.00 Reception - All Welcome


R E G I S T R A T I O N

Registration Fee:       Friday and Saturday, 13-14 November 1998
includes VAT and covers
coffee, tea and buffet lunch on both days               £28.00 / £20.00
[students/Friends]
and Reception on Saturday                                       TWO DAYS

OR:
Friday 13 November only                                         £14.00 /
£10.00
[students/Friends]

Saturday 14 November only                                       £14.00 /
£10.00
[students/Friends]

Forms from Frieda Houser at the Wellcome Institute: 0171-611 8619/Fax:
8862
PLEASE NOTE: The closing date is 6 NOVEMBER 1998
--
Christian C. Young
Associate Professor
Department of History, Science, and Culture
Mount Angel Seminary, St. Benedict, Oregon   97373
Summer phone:  (503) 245-6913 (H)
[log in to unmask]

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