Invitation to Fourth International Seminar on the Material Culture in the History of Physics at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

** Application deadline is on Monday 15 Dec. 2019 **

Intvitation to participate in the Fourth International Seminar on the Material Culture in the History of Phisics, which will take place from March 2nd – 6th 2020 at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

Usually historians work in archives with historical documents trying to reconstruct theories or the social and cultural context of physics. But not everything about physics’ history is written in the documents. Therefore, we try to access new levels of knowledge by analyzing 3d-objects and documents. Including the material aspects of science in the historical narrative can greatly enrich our knowledge about the way science works. We will introduce you to some standard approaches, such as the Winterthur model, to analyzing unknown objects. This model may be extended by considering the biography of the object, which changes in meaning over its lifetime. Another approach to acquiring more information about practical knowledge not written in documents is the historical reconstruction of experiments. We will also practice communicating to wider audiences about the material side of scientific knowledge by planning a small exhibition of selected objects.

Who may participate?
Master and graduate students of the following fields: History of Science, Physics, Didactics of Physics, as well as trainees in science museums. A strong historical interest is the prerequisite for consideration.

How to apply?
Please send a short CV and a letter explaining why you want to take part in the workshop in one PDF file (one page) to christian.forstner@uni-jena.de before December 15th, 2019.

For more information, see the flyer of the Fourth International Seminar on the Material Culture in the History of Physics.