Leviathan and after
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Leviathan and after

A celebration of the history of science, the field, and its future.

By UCL Department of Science & Technology Studies

Date and time

Monday, May 12 · 10am - 7pm GMT+1

Location

Science Museum

Exhibition Road London SW7 5HD United Kingdom

Agenda

10:00 AM - 10:15 AM

Welcome

Tim Boon and Jean-Baptiste Gouyon

10:15 AM - 10:30 AM

Introduction

Jenny Bulstrode

10:30 AM - 11:20 AM

Early modern solutions

Jonas Engelmann & Pierre Von-Ow


Jonas Engelmann History & Philosophy of Science, Utrecht University Right Actions: Legal Analogies in the Construction of Experimental Facts in 17th-century England Pierre Von-Ow Académie de France à...

11:40 AM - 12:30 PM

Environmental knowledge & social order

Davide Martino & Victoria Maguire-Rajpaul


Davide Martino Philosophie et Sciences Sociales, Université Libre de Bruxelles Governing water: art or science? Hydraulic experts’ work and the construction of the ‘environment’ Victoria Maguire-Rajp...

12:40 PM - 1:10 PM

Speaker

Mirjam Brusius


German Historical Institute London What’s wrong with the field? Archives, the field, and the social materiality of science

2:00 PM - 2:50 PM

Indigenous knowledge & social order

Shreya Khaund & Alexander Stoeger


Shreya Khaund Royal Geographical Society & Department of History, University of Warwick False trails: indigenous subversive tactics and colonial bioprospecting in nineteenth-century Assam Alexander S...

3:20 PM - 4:10 PM

Technoscience & problems of social order

Anin Luo & Annabella Zamora


Anin Luo, History of science, Princeton University Immunology as a theory of life: biological knowledge and political order Annabella Zamora, STSlab, University of Lausanne CERN and particle accelera...

4:10 PM - 5:20 PM

Gallery tour

5:20 PM - 6:40 PM

Plenary


Simon Schaffer, Steven Shapin, chaired by John Tresch

7:00 PM

Reception Science Museum Dana Library

About this event

  • Event lasts 9 hours

On Monday 12 May 2025, join the UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Science Museum, London, in our landmark celebration of history of science, the field, and its future to mark the 40th anniversary of Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's field-changing Leviathan and the Air Pump.

Forty years ago, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer's Leviathan and the Air Pump approached ranges of scientific methods as integrated within contrasting patterns of behaviour and ways of life. Their suggestion was that solutions to the problems of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order. That suggestion becomes ever more significant in periods of dramatic social and political transformations and of shifting models and standards of knowledge.

Four decades after the appearance of that book, up and coming researchers will consider how the relations between changing social orders and solutions to problems of knowledge figure in the concerns of their own work today.

The day will end with a conversation between Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer and John Tresch, to be followed by a reception at the Dana Research Library.


For full details of the events including location information, please visit the following link:

Leviathan and after - 12 May 2025

Please make sure that you book tickets for all events that you would like to attend

Should you have any accessibility requirements to access our event, please let us know as soon as possible via email: sts@ucl.ac.uk.


Free