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]