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Kanskje det er noen på forumet som kan ha glede av å høre denne forelesningen. Jeg skal hvertfall prøve å få med meg den.
OPEN GUEST LECTURE WITH LORRAINE DASTON, Director of the Max Planck Institute, Berlin. Organized by THE SEMINAR OF AESTHETICS, University of Oslo
The Science of Clouds, or: The Limits of Representation
Since the early nineteenth century, meteorologists have been trying to classify clouds according to genus and species, on the model of the Linnaean classification of organic species. But what exactly is the object of inquiry in this case?
The terminology of genus, species, and variety, familiar from organic classification schemes of plants and animals, is applied to clouds only by analogy, and by stretched analogy at that. Even the most resolute of cloud classifiers admitted that their schemes applied only "to the broad features of any sky, for no two skies are ever exactly alike any more than any two faces".
A botanist or a zoologist might retort that all organisms, scrutinized closely enough, are also unique individuals; nonetheless, taxonomy is possible. But the predicament of the cloud classifiers is more dire. As the most recent (1975) International World Cloud Atlas concedes, "[c]louds are continuously in a process of evolution and appear, therefore, in an infinite variety of forms." Darwin's puzzle of speciation is inverted for the cloud classifiers.
Darwin had to explain why are organisms clumped in recognizable species rather than smeared out in an infinitely graduated continuum; the meteorologists must explain how the infinitely graduated continuum of clouds can be clumped into genera, species, and varieties. In the same decades during which Darwin sought to undermine the most plausible example of the ancient ontology of natural kinds, meteorologists asserted its validity for the least plausible example. Is the cirro-cumulus cloud a natural kind like the dandelion and the housecat? This lecture explores the role – and limits – of scientific visualization in defining the object of inquiry.
Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her recent publications include (with Peter Galison), Objectivity (2007), Wunder, Beweise und Tatsachen: Zur Geschichte der Rationalität (2001), and (co-edited with Elizabeth Lunbeck), Histories of Scientific Observation (2011), as well as essays on the history of scientific facts, objectivity, curiosity, probability, and attention which have appeared in various journals and collections.
OPEN GUEST LECTURE WITH LORRAINE DASTON, Director of the Max Planck Institute, Berlin. Organized by THE SEMINAR OF AESTHETICS, University of Oslo
The Science of Clouds, or: The Limits of Representation
Since the early nineteenth century, meteorologists have been trying to classify clouds according to genus and species, on the model of the Linnaean classification of organic species. But what exactly is the object of inquiry in this case?
The terminology of genus, species, and variety, familiar from organic classification schemes of plants and animals, is applied to clouds only by analogy, and by stretched analogy at that. Even the most resolute of cloud classifiers admitted that their schemes applied only "to the broad features of any sky, for no two skies are ever exactly alike any more than any two faces".
A botanist or a zoologist might retort that all organisms, scrutinized closely enough, are also unique individuals; nonetheless, taxonomy is possible. But the predicament of the cloud classifiers is more dire. As the most recent (1975) International World Cloud Atlas concedes, "[c]louds are continuously in a process of evolution and appear, therefore, in an infinite variety of forms." Darwin's puzzle of speciation is inverted for the cloud classifiers.
Darwin had to explain why are organisms clumped in recognizable species rather than smeared out in an infinitely graduated continuum; the meteorologists must explain how the infinitely graduated continuum of clouds can be clumped into genera, species, and varieties. In the same decades during which Darwin sought to undermine the most plausible example of the ancient ontology of natural kinds, meteorologists asserted its validity for the least plausible example. Is the cirro-cumulus cloud a natural kind like the dandelion and the housecat? This lecture explores the role – and limits – of scientific visualization in defining the object of inquiry.
Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Her recent publications include (with Peter Galison), Objectivity (2007), Wunder, Beweise und Tatsachen: Zur Geschichte der Rationalität (2001), and (co-edited with Elizabeth Lunbeck), Histories of Scientific Observation (2011), as well as essays on the history of scientific facts, objectivity, curiosity, probability, and attention which have appeared in various journals and collections.