清华科史哲讲座第29讲
时间：2019年10月31日（周四）下午15:00–17:00
地点：科学史系系厅（蒙民伟科技大楼南楼212）
主讲人：John Durant (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
讲题：Building a museum collection in the history of science: where to start?
内容简介：
There are relatively few new collecting museums of science and technology anywhere in the world. (Far more common, of course, are science and technology centers, which typically do not hold historical collections.) At the same time, collections of historical artifacts hold many insights into the nature and significance of science and technology in the modern world. These observations are the starting points for a talk that will identify some of the basic principles that should be kept in mind when starting a collection in the history of science. Among other things, I will suggest that: (1) the right place to start a historical collection is not in some remote past, somewhere else, but rather right here, right now; (2) you do not need a lot of money to start a historical collection, but you do need the right contacts and connections with scientists and scientific institutions; and (3) since you cannot be comprehensive, you should aim to collect the unusual, the emblematic, the marvelous, and the evocative. Throughout the talk, I will give examples from the recent history of collecting in my own institution, the MIT Museum.
演讲人简介：
John Durant received his BA in Natural Sciences from Queens’ College, Cambridge in 1972 and went on to take a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science, also at Cambridge, in 1977. After more than a decade in University Continuing Education (first, at the University of Swansea in Wales, and then at the University of Oxford), in 1989 he was appointed Assistant Director and Head of Science Communication at the Science Museum, London and Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, London. In 2000, he was appointed Chief Executive of At-Bristol, a new independent science centre in the West of England. He came to MIT in July 2005, to take up a joint appointment as an Adjunct Professor in the STS Program and Director of the MIT Museum.
His earlier research was in the history of evolutionary and behavioral biology, with special reference to debates about animal nature and human nature in the late-19th and 20th centuries. More recently, however, he has undertaken sociological research on the public dimensions of science and technology. He is especially interested in public perceptions of the life sciences and biotechnology, in the role of public consultation in science and technology policy-making, and in the role of informal media (especially museums) in facilitating public engagement with science and technology. He is the founder editor of the quarterly peer review journal, Public Understanding of Science, and the author and editor of numerous books, essay collections and scholarly articles in the history and the public understanding of science.
