6th ESHS Conference
Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, e Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa (Abertura)
04 September to 06 September 2014
Welcome note
The 6th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science will be held in Lisbon, 4-6 September 2014 and is organized by the Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology (CIUHCT),a research centre associated with the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the New University of Lisbon.
The theme of the conference is "Communicating Science, Technology and Medicine”.
Communicating science, technology and medicine has always been central to the scientific and technological enterprise, but across ages and spaces agents, audiences, means, aims and agendas behind this complex process have varied considerably. The interpretations put forward by historians of science, technology and medicine have also changed considerably. Historians have been compelled recently to move away from former historiographical categories opposing creative producers to passive recipients and consumers, and contrasting the production of knowledge with its transmission. The vertical model of diffusion has been superseded by a horizontal conception of circulation and appropriation of science, technology and medicine, which gives voice to various actors and to their different, often contradictory, agendas. Within this framework, science, technology and medicine are envisaged as active forms of communication, to such an extent as ultimately blurring the distinction between the making and the communicating of science, technology and medicine.
The 6th ESHS aims at stimulating historical and historiographical studies and debates on the communication of science, technology and medicine along several sub-thematic clusters.