International Congress of the History of Science and Technology

IASCUD-sponsored symposium

"Placing mathematical knowledge in a world of and beyond nations."

Organizers: Michael J. Barany (University of Edinburgh) and Ellen Abrams (Cornell University)

Modern theoretical sciences have been defined by the tension between an ideal of placelessness and the deeply place-rooted means by which theories are produced and shared. Places tie mathematical formulations to nations and nationalisms, institutions and infrastructures, ideals and ideologies, philosophies and practices, images and cultures, while also furnishing the means for the makers of theoretical knowledge to imagine and extend their knowledge beyond their respective contexts. Speakers will examine modern theoretical sciences including informatics, physics, and pure and applied mathematics alongside literature, philosophy, and other interacting fields to elucidate the importance of place and the production of placeless knowledge in the modern world. We will ask how local sites and practices configure knowledge and its knowers within extended networks and imaginaries in the context of political, technical, philosophical, and other circumstances at multiple scales. We will examine how geographically distributed theoretical knowledge becomes local, and how, conversely, locally produced theoretical knowledge can travel the world.

Thematic sessions (pending adjustments to the final schedule):

I. Political and philosophical economies. Presentations will examine communities of theory and practice by situating mathematical institutions in geopolitical, economic, and philosophical contexts.

II. Publications and circulations. Presentations will trace texts their producers and circulators to examine the geopolitical significance and geographic specificity of reading and writing theories.

III. Identities and subjectivities. Presentations will track how local, national, and international communities of theoretical knowledge produce distinctive kinds of personal experience and selfhood.

IV. Rhetorics and institutions. Presentations will examine how recent institutions framed and reframed their places and roles.

Generously sponsored by: