Mutability, Mobility and Meteorites

The Department of Science and Technology Studies

invites you to the first Haldane Lecture:

“Mutability, Mobility and Meteorites”

Prof. Simon Schaffer

(Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge)

The work of the sciences deals with challenging and complex objects whose properties and character are rarely stable nor entirely easy to fix. Elaborate and ingenious techniques are developed to manage such objects and to render them observable and describable. The long history of meteoritics, and its antecedents in folklore, in natural history, in field chemistry, and in astronomy provide rich material for this approach to the work of the sciences. The lecture explores some aspects of that history, especially to connect practices designed to cope with mutable materials and the changing narratives of life, space and earth in which these objects found their place.

Date: Thursday November 20, 2014

Time: 6-8pm

Location: Gustav Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL Wilkins Building

STS launched the Haldane Lectures in 2014 in honour of UCL Professor JBS Haldane, a polymath not only in the life sciences but also in science communication and science policy. We aim to hold two Haldane Lectures each year, one in History and Philosophy of Science; another, in Science and Society.

More details are available here