Program: 

15.00-16.00: Petra Brouwer (University of Amsterdam): Narrating the Globe. A 19th-Century Perspective on World Architectural History Writing

The nineteenth century saw the emergence of a new genre of architectural writing: the grand history of world architecture. This genre often expressed a deeply Eurocentric worldview, largely dismissing non-Western architecture through narratives of historical progress and stylistic beauty. Yet even as nineteenth-century historians worked to construct an exclusive architectural canon, they were engaged in constant debate over its categories and constraints. Brouwer will talk about her recent book Narrating the Globe (MIT Press 2023), which traces the emergence of this historical canon, exposing the questions and problems that prompted the canon's very formation.

16.00-17.00: Simon Allzén (Stockholm University): The Bibliographic History of Dark Matter Research: A Data Exploration

Famously, dark matter has remained empirically undetected despite the best efforts of experimentalists. This situation is unique in physics since dark matter is still considered as 'real' in some sense. How can we interpret the epistemic status of dark matter without rejecting the "scientific method", and what justificatory paths has cropped up in the backwater of failed attempts of detecting it? Partial justification has been sought in the history of dark matter, where the establishment of a historical pedigree, or linear progression, has been central.  

As a part of my research project on the history and philosophy of dark matter, I have investigated the bibliographic history of dark matter to better analyse these historical arguments and the idea that the history of dark matter suggests convergence towards truth. In the talk, I will share some preliminary results and interesting patterns from the collected data, and how they impact the historical and philosophical arguments surrounding dark matter.