92919 - Culture, Science and History (1)

Learning outcomes

The aim of this course is to provide the students the tools for understanding the historical relations between scientific activities and their wide and layered cultural contexts. These contexts include: popular cultures, intellectual traditions, social interactions, the relationships between politics and scientific authority, the influence of gender on science, and the interpretation of non-written sources.

Course contents

February 2000, Cuernavaca, Mexico, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme annual conference. 1995 chemistry Nobel prize winner Paul Crutzen suddenly interrupts his colleagues who keep referring to the current geological era as Olocene. "Stop talking about the Olocene – he said – we are not in the Olocene anymore. Now we are in the... in the... in the Anthropocene!". Two years later, Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer publish a famous paper on Nature identifying the Anthropocene as the age when human activity become an agent of geological transformation.

Since 2000 discussions on the nature, length and beginning of the Anthropocene keep scientists and humanists busy. This course – which beginning by its title mixes historiographical and a bio-geological categories – makes use of a pluralistic and open history of science to critically reflect on the validity of the notion of "Anthropocene" (which by now has been used and abused) as well as on the historical relationships among nature, history, gender, and society in light of the discussions on climate change, the relationships between historical and geological time, micro- and macro approaches to history. 

More specifically we will study the historical trajectories of the idea s and the practices of "nature" from the early modern scientific revolution to the 21st century. 

Among the issues we will study: does nature have a history? what are the historical relations between history of nature and the sciences of nature? how Nature ceased to be a personified female being and became a set of mechanical rules and laws? how ideas of nature, science and technology are linked to ideas on masculinity and femininity? how nature has been quantified in terms of its economic value and how, on the opposite side, nature has become the common ground on which to build a new society? what role did scientific knowledge played in the exploitation, conservation, and even the liberation of nature? how can we approach such different temporal scales as human and bio-geological time?

This course follows the two books in the syllabus and reads them in a critical and contextualizing manner, taking into account different historiographical traditions. The chronological narrative will be punctuated by focuses on issues such as the female nature of Renaissance nature; the new sciences of the 17th century; the industrial revolution; the developments of darwinism; the agricultural revolution of the 20th century, ecc.

 

Classes will begin on November 9, 2022: Monday 9-11 (aula I, Via Zamboni 38), Tuesday, Wednesday 9-11 (aula IV, Via Zamboni 38).

Readings/Bibliography

• Carolyn Merchant, La morte della natura: donne, ecologia e rivoluzione scientifica (Bibliografica, 2022).

• Cristophe Bonneuil, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, La terra, la storia e noi. L’evento antropocene (Treccani, 2016).

 

Suggested readings (students not attending lectures will have to study one additional book from this list).

Robert Lenoble, Storia dell'idea di natura (Napoli, 1974)

Donald Worster, Storia delle idee ecologiche (Bologna, 1994)

Pierre Hadot, Il velo di Iside. Storia dell'idea di natura (Torino, 2006)

Franco Brevini, L'invenzione della natura selvaggia (Torino, 2013)

Simon L. Lewis, Mark A. Maslin, Il pianeta umano. Come abbiamo creato l'Antropocene (Torino, 2019)

Dipesh Chakrabarty, La sfida del cambiamento climatico (Verona, 2021)

Jason W. Moore, Antropocene o capitalocene? Scenari di economia-mondo nella crisi planetaria (Verona, 2017)

Bruno Latour, La sfida di Gaia. Il nuovo regime climatico (Milano, 2020)

Anna Tsing, Il fungo alla fine del mondo. La possibilità di vivere nelle rovine del capitalismo (Rovereto, 2020)

Naomi Oreskes, Eric Conway, Mercanti di dubi. Come un manipolo di scienziati ha nascosto la verità, dal fumo al riscaldamento globale (Milano, 2019)

Teaching methods

Lectures; participation will be encouraged.

Assessment methods

Oral exam.

Top marks (28-30) will be given to students who demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the material discussed in class and contained in the texts, critical and analytical skills, and the ability to express ideas and concepts clearly and cogently. Those students who will demonstrate a good knowledge of the material but tend to repeat it mechanically rather than demonstrate full understanding and the ability to build connections and present an argument will be rewarded with average to high marks (23-27). Students who demonstrate superficial knowledge, gaps in preparation, poor critical and analytical skills and difficulties of expression will receive average to low marks (18-22). Severe lacunae in one or more areas listed above could lead to the student repeating the exam.

Office hours

See the website of Paolo Savoia