The virtual platform HPS.CESEE and CHORUS: Colloquium for the History of Russian Science are proud to present the global book talk "Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of Cold War". Alexei Kojevnikov (The University of British Columbia) will join with Elena Aronova (University of California, Santa Barbara), to discuss her recently published book Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of Cold War [1], in a discussion moderated by Slava Gerovitch (MIT). It is part of a series of open zoom events aiming to foster the discussion of new books and approaches within the history of science and scholarship (broadly understood) in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.
"Increasingly, scholars in the humanities are calling for a reengagement with the natural sciences. Taking their cues from recent breakthroughs in genetics and the neurosciences, advocates of “big history” are reassessing long-held assumptions about the very definition of history, its methods, and its evidentiary base. In Scientific History, Elena Aronova maps out historians’ continuous engagement with the methods, tools, values, and scale of the natural sciences by examining several waves of their experimentation that surged highest at perceived times of trouble, from the crisis-ridden decades of the early twentieth century to the ruptures of the Cold War. The book explores the intertwined trajectories of six intellectuals and the larger programs they set in motion: Henri Berr, Nikolai Bukharin, Lucien Febvre, Nikolai Vavilov, Julian Huxley, and John Desmond Bernal. Though they held different political views, spoke different languages, and pursued different goals, these thinkers are representative of a larger motley crew who joined the techniques, approaches, and values of science with the writing of history, and who created powerful institutions and networks to support their projects."
The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the link, please register here: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/hpsceseechorus-book-talk-elena-aronova-scientific-history-tickets-153356520481 or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com.
[1] Elena Aronova, Scientific History: Experiments in History and Politics from the Bolshevik Revolution to the End of Cold War, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 2021.
Participants:
Elena Aronova is assistant professor of the history of science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She co-edited (with Christine von Oertzen and David Sepkoski) a volume of Osiris, Data Histories (2017) and (with Simone Turchetti) a collection of papers Science Studies During the Cold War and Beyond: Paradigms Defected (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology, 2016).
Alexei Kojevnikov is associate professor for History of Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He authored Stalin’s Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists (London, 2004) and The Copenhagen Network The Birth of Quantum Mechanics from a Postdoctoral Perspective (SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology 2020)
Slava Gerovitch is historian of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the author of From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (2002), Voices of the Soviet Space Program (2014) and Soviet Space Mythologies (2015).
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