Objectivity: A Discussion

Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, University of Chicago)

Tuesday, 21 January 2025
9.30 am ET / 2.30 pm GMT / 8 pm IST
Register: https://forms.gle/HqoWwUCHZQzwtgzw8

If you asked a botanist in the eighteenth century to draw you a rose, he would have produced a flawless illustration of the flower. This perfect specimen would combine petals, pistils, stamens and stem in a way no single rose could replicate. Nor is the botanist interested in sketching a particular rose; he is in the business of making idealized images.

The same botanist in the nineteenth century would, however, shy away from this and instead offer you something more ‘objective’—a set of photographs of roses, however imperfect, irregular and different from one another they may be. The task of determining what was perfect—or even if such a concept applied—would be left to you, the viewer.

It is in this context, argues Lorraine Daston, that the ideal of objectivity emerges: a weariness towards generalizations, a reluctance to idealize nature, a commitment to represent the world as it is.

To be objective, then, is not necessarily to be scientific, accurate, precise or certain. Rather, objectivity, Daston argues, is one among many epistemic virtues that scientists—natural and social—strive to balance. Objectivity, both the word and the ideal, is a recent invention (or discovery), some two hundred years old. And yet it feels as though it has always been with us: in the minds of Thucydides and Descartes, in the methods of Newton and Boyle and in the sketches of Masaccio and Brunelleschi.

To discuss the history of objectivity, we’re honoured to welcome Lorraine Daston, director emerita at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, and visiting professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.