The Anthropocene, The Technosphere, and Energy Use II
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Time: 10:00-11:50 a.m.
Location: Allen 314
Join us for the second installment of our “Anthropocene, The Technosphere, and Energy Use” workshop.
Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory (CISSCT) sponsored a first workshop on this topic in December 2019. We focused then on Peter Haff’s concept of the “technosphere,” and his recent—perhaps counterintuitive—suggestion that addressing the dilemmas of climate change may involve finding ways to use more, rather than less, energy. Discussion focused especially on how a technosphere perspective relates to—or could be related to—a critical political economic perspective.
This second installment of the discussion will begin with short position statements by participants in the initial discussion, including Nima Bassiri, Benjamin Crais, Peter Haff, Mark Hansen, Quran Karriem, Rob Mitchell, Rebecca Uliasz, Keir Waddington, and Casey Williams.
Refreshments will be provided. This discussion is sponsored by Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory (CISSCT). Please contact Carolin Benack (carolin.benack@duke.edu ) with inquiries.
Cardiff University ScienceHumanities Initiative
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Time: 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Location: Allen 314
Join us for a discussion of the Cardiff University ScienceHumanities initiative. This discussion will begin with two presentations:
- Cerys Knighton (Cardiff University), “'Ffromi yn aruthr': Animalistic Representations of Manic-Depressive Illness in the Early-Nineteenth Century”
- Jim Scown (Cardiff University), “Precipitating Eugene Wrayburn: Chemical Restoration and Exhausted Soils in Our Mutual Friend”.
Refreshments will be provided. This discussion is sponsored by Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory (CISSCT). Please contact Carolin Benack (carolin.benack@duke.edu ) with inquiries.
The Anthropocene, The Technosphere, and Energy Use
Duke’s Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory (CISSCT) is sponsoring a workshop on “The Anthropocene, The Technosphere, and Energy Use.” The workshop will be held on December 9, 2019, from 11:30 a.m. -2 p.m., in the Allen Building (Room 314). The workshop will focus on Peter Haff’s concept of the “technosphere,” and his recent—perhaps counterintuitive—suggestion that addressing the dilemmas of climate change may involve finding ways to use more, rather than less, energy. Participants are asked to read two short pieces before the workshop: Peter Haff’s “The Technosphere and its physical stratigraphic record" (2019), and a short selection from N. Kate Hayle’s Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (2017) (which links the question of energy to that of information). Pdfs of these readings (as well as several other short optional readings) will be sent to workshop participants.
The workshop will begin with short statements by Peter Haff (Emeritus, Nicholas School of the Environment), Mark Hansen (Literature), and Rob Mitchell (English), and the rest of the workshop will be devoted to discussion among all participants. Boxed lunches will be provided. So that we can order the correct number and kind of lunches, and to keep the group small enough to enable conversation (i.e., maximum 25 people), we ask that you register at the following site if you are interested in participating: https://forms.gle/rVWhRZaLdTKgtuRXA
If you have any questions about this event, please contact Carolin Benack at carolin.benack@duke.edu.
“Alexander von Humboldt’s 250th” Events:
1 October 2019: AvH250 Public Lecture and Lynn Day Lecture given by Andrea Wulf, best-selling author of The Invention of Nature, 630-8pm, Love Auditorium, LSRC Building on Duke’s West Campus (parking in Bryan Center parking lot).
1-2 November 2019: Noon-to-Noon, Celebratory Colloquium for Alexander von Humboldt’s 250th At Forest History Society, 2925 Academy Rd., just off Duke’s west campus. Speakers include:
- Laura Walls, English Department at Notre Dame (Passage to Cosmos)
- Eleanor Harvey, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Senior Curator of the forthcoming American Cosmos)
- Nicolaas Rupke, Institut fűr Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Universität Göttingen (Alexander von Humboldt: A Metabiography)
- Stephen Bell, Department of Geography, UCLA (A Life in Shadow – Aimé Bonpland in Southern South America)
- Elizabeth Millán, Department of Philosophy, DePaul University (The Romantic Roots of Alexander von Humboldt’s Presentation of Nature)
- Stephen Jackson, Department of Botany, University of Wyoming (edited Humboldt’s Essay on the Geography of Plants and co-edited with Laura Walls Humboldt’s Ansichten der Nature)
There is also a Humboldt reading group that has just begun; if you are interested in participating in this, please see the “Contacts and organizers” information below.
Contacts and organizers: Daniel Richter, Prof. Soils and Ecology, & Zackary Johnson, Prof. of Molecular Biology in Marine Science, NSOE
Sponsors: Duke University’s Bass Connections, Forest History Society, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory, Nicholas School of the Environment, Department of History, Franklin Humanities Institute
In the Beginning Were the Words: Technological Speaking and Thinking Before a Philosophy of Technology
Thurs, Jan 30, 2019 4:00 p.m.
Rubenstein 249
Jocelyn Holland, Professor of Comparative Literature at California Institute of Technology
To scholars of Idealism and Romanticism, the years leading up to 1800 are known as a time of bold system-building and poetic experimentation. In this talk, I focus on a less-explored aspect of the same time period: where self-described “technologues” tried and, by their own admission, failed to come up with a theoretically sound account for the science of technology. Their sense of failure sprang from an inability to manage proliferation of technical terms, from a lack of consensus on the basic divisions of technology (including whether the fine arts should be included under its umbrella, with aesthetics as an “auxiliary science”), to unsuccessful attempts at constructing technological systems.
This talk examines technological thinking and speaking from the ground up. It begins with the problem of language before asking to what degree the failures of technological theories, with their incomplete gestures towards completion and perfection (Vollkommenheit), are themselves interesting and instructive as increasingly elaborate attempts to build conceptual frameworks. I begin with a brief meditation on Leibniz’s Unpresuming Thoughts on the Use and Improvement of the German Language (c. 1697), with its reflections on technological words, before diving into the late eighteenth-century quagmire of technological writing, drawing upon examples from Beckmann, Lamprecht, Cunradi, Walther, and others.