CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: The Will to Predict. Thursday, March 14, 11:00 am ET / 16:00 CET / 17:00 Kyiv

 CHORUS & hps.cesee global book talk: The Will to Predict. Thursday, March 14, 11:00 am ET / 16:00 CET / 17:00 Kyiv, Zoom.

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Virtual platforms CHORUS (Colloquium for the History of Russian and Soviet Science) & HPS.CESEE (History of Science in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe) are proud to present their forthcoming book talk on a new publication on history of scientific prediction. Teresa Ashe (Open University, UK) and Ksenia Tatarchenko (Singapore Management University) will join Eglė Rindzevičiūtė (Kingston University, London) to comment on her recent book: The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science (Cornell, 2023) [1], in a discussion moderated by Slava Gerovitch (MIT).

Thursday, March 14, 11:00 am ET / 16:00 CET / 17:00 Kyiv

The meeting is free and open to the public. To receive the Zoom link, please register here: https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcrceyorzovEtF6jH6aDdnD8hJIDK5DECMG or write to hps.cesee@gmail.com

[1] Eglė Rindzevičiūtė. The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future through Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023

“In The Will to Predict, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė demonstrates how the logic of scientific expertise cannot be properly understood without knowing the conceptual and institutional history of scientific prediction. She notes that predictions of future population, economic growth, environmental change, and scientific and technological innovation have shaped much of twentieth and twenty-first-century politics and social life, as well as government policies. Today, such predictions are more necessary than ever as the world undergoes dramatic environmental, political, and technological change. But, she asks, what does it mean to predict scientifically? What are the limits of scientific prediction and what are its effects on governance, institutions, and society?

Her intellectual and political history of scientific prediction takes as its example twentieth-century USSR. By outlining the role of prediction in a range of governmental contexts, from economic and social planning to military strategy, she shows that the history of scientific prediction is a transnational one, part of the history of modern science and technology as well as governance. Going beyond the Soviet case, Rindzevičiūtė argues that scientific predictions are central for organizing uncertainty through the orchestration of knowledge and action. Bridging the fields of political sociology, organization studies, and history, The Will to Predict considers what makes knowledge scientific and how such knowledge has impacted late modern governance.”

The book introduction may be downloaded from https://www.academia.edu/105950239/The_Will_to_Predict_Orchestrating_the_Future_through_Science

Participants

Teresa Ashe is a Staff Tutor (Lecturer) in Economics at the Open University, UK. She is a co-author of Media and Uncertainty (2021) and a co-editor of Climate Change Discourse in Russia (2019).

Slava Gerovitch is a Lecturer in History of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is 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).

Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Politics and Sociology at Kingston University, London. She is the author of The Power of Systems and Constructing Soviet Cultural Policy (2016) and The Will to Predict (2023).

Ksenia Tatarchenko is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the College of Integrative Studies in the Singapore Management University. She is the author of SCI_BERIA: The Novosibirsk Science Center and the Late Soviet Politics of Expertise (forthcoming, 2024).