Special Lecture - Fall 2005
Sponsored by the Rhetoric Department
The Anthropology Department
Berkeley-UCSF Colloquium in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The Science, Technology, and Society Center

Dr. Simon Schaffer
Professor of History of Science, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge

The Astronomer as Tattoo Artist: Inscription and Translation in Scientific Travel

Several current stories about scientific practices tell of the inscription devices scientists use and the graphical traces they produce and distribute. These tales of how inscriptions are made, distributed and collected are supposed to aid both the understanding of sciencesí powers and also the definition of modern societiesí distinctiveness. This paper explores implications of these accounts of inscription and translation: it draws on material from encounters during the period of British entry into the Pacific in the eighteenth century; and on analyses of writing's history produced in that period. This historical reflection may offer some interesting lessons for more recent notions of inscription and translation, so for contemporary theories of science and modernity. This event is co-sponsored by the Rhetoric Department, the Anthropology Department, the Berkeley-UCSF Colloquium in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Science, Technology, and Society Center at UC Berkeley.

5:00PM
Thursday, October 13
370 Dwinelle Hall
U.C. Berkeley

Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
tel: (510) 642-4581, e-mail: diana@berkeley.edu