Cfp ESHS 2020: Popular representation/misrepresentation of modern physical theories

The Commission for the History of Physics calls for contributions to a symposium at the ESHS conference, Bologna (31 August-3 September 2020).

 http://www.eshs.org/Bologna-ESHS-Conference.html <http://www.eshs.org/Bologna-ESHS-Conference.html>
Popular representation/misrepresentation of modern physical theories

The first decades of the twentieth century saw a plethora of reactions to the theories of relativity and the quanta. Much has been said about the reception of such theories in different cultural, philosophical and scientific geographies but more often than not, these have been presented in terms of the consistency of the theories and their philosophical implications. Earlier "reception" studies prioritized mostly professionals in the field, physicists and to some degree mathematicians and philosophers, but we want to expand the focus to the general public and media, and also to various other kinds of intellectuals in science, medicine, humanities, religious thinkers, artists, etc. beyond physics per se. In this session we suggest, thus, to pay attention to the “visual, material, and mathematical cultures of physics,” to paraphrase the general topic of the conference in the twentieth centuries, so as to broaden the scope of the ways new theories and cultures in physics used representation technologies: from visual models to gedankenexperiments, from cartoons and public exhibits to mathematical technologies, from practical future promises to contextual political interpretations.

Please send your expressions of interest by FRIDAY 13th December to:

Jaume Navarro (University of the Basque Country, Spain):  jaume.navarro@ehu.es <mailto:jaume.navarro@ehu.es>
Alexei Kojevnikov (University of British Columbia, Canada):   anikov@mail.ubc.ca <mailto:anikov@mail.ubc.ca>