The Power of Norms
The 7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science will be held in Prague, Czech Republic, 22–24 September 2016. The Conference is organized by the Society for the History of Sciences and Technology of the Czech Republic. The theme of the Conference is “Science and power, Science as power”.
One session, for example, will explore “The power of norms: standardisation and normalization through International Scientific Organisms”. Most international scientific unions, such as IUPAC, IUPAP, IUPAB, IAU, IUGG, URSI, ... etc., were creations of the 20th century, and aspired to be pure scientific bodies, above national government or cultural influences, and making decisions or issuing recommendations on strictly rational grounds. One of their aims, especially in the case of IUPAC and IUPAP, was to draw up norms and standards to facilitate the development and the propagation of science. In the frame of ICSU for instance, IUPAC and IUPAP founded joint special commissions to deal with specific matters: symbols, units, nomenclature, constants, atomic weights, physicochemical standards, analytical methods, etc. Furthermore, IUPAP or IUPAC also developed joint commissions with the other international organizations mentioned above for special common subjects.
Standards allow for a better diffusion and exchange of knowledge by creating and maintaining a common language. But standards, terminology, and norms also are a mean of power. It comes thus as no surprise that before these standards were enacted and accepted locally, whenever they were, heated or extended debates took place inside commissions before reaching consensus. Afterwards, the task still remained for the international bodies to diffuse the new standard as a scientific recommendation to be followed by its users, especially in teaching and publishing. Few historical studies have been devoted to this contingent part of scientific activity up to now, as it appears at first to be a purely administrative or technical part of scientific management, whereas this process of normalization eventually impacts and structures the science itself.
The proposed session will focus on this under-investigated facet of scientific work, to which nonetheless several scientists, often of great fame—F. and I. Joliot-Curie, E. Bauer, G.T. Seaborg, G. De Hevesy, or J. Timmermans, among others—have devoted a notable part of their time and activity.
For more information about this specific session, contact Danielle Fauque: danielle.fauque@u-psud.fr or Brigitte Van Tiggelen: vantiggelen@memosciences.be
For full program see www.7eshs2016.cz
©2016 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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- Masthead - Full issue pdf
- Guest Editorial
- Outer Limits: Pushing the Extremities
- Contents
- Officer’s Column
- Secretary General’s Column
- Features
- The Three-letter Element Symbols:
- Procedures for the Naming of a New Element
- The Chemical Structure Association Trust
- IUPAC Wire
- Discovery and Assignment of Elements with Atomic Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118
- Open Data in a Big Data World
- UN Secretary General Appoints ICSU Executive Director to Special Advisory Group on the SDGs
- Project Place
- Company Associates Reengineering Project
- Postgraduate Course in Polymer Science, Prague, Czech Republic
- Critically Evaluated ESR (EPR) Spectra of Important Polymerization-related Radicals
- Which Elements Belong in Group 3 of the Periodic Table?
- Making an imPACt
- Discovery of the elements with atomic numbers Z = 113, 115 and 117 (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Discovery of the element with atomic number Z = 118 completing the 7th row of the periodic table (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Glossary of terms used in computational drug design, part II (IUPAC Recommendations)
- Standard electrode potentials involving radicals in aqueous solution: inorganic radicals (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Maritime pollutants in shipping and commercial European ports based on relevant physical and biogeochemical environmental parameters (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Latest Updates from PAC Conferences & More—Brief
- IUPAC Provisional Recommendations
- Glossary of Terms Used in Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology
- How to Name Atoms in Phosphates, Polyphosphates, their Analogues, and Transition State Analogues for Enzyme-catalysed Phosphoryl Transfer Reactions
- Comprehensive Definition of Oxidation State
- Stamps International
- Berzelius and the Chemical Alphabet
- Conference Call
- Latin American Pesticide Residue Workshop—Food and Environment
- Ecological Risk Assessment
- Where 2B & Y
- New Chemistries for Phytomedicines and Crop Protection Chemicals
- Function Through Disorder: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Biology and Medicine
- Phosphorus Chemistry
- Self-assembly in the World of Polymers
- Solubility Phenomena
- Blood-Biomaterial Interactions
- CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science
- 28th National [Turkish] Chemistry Congress with International Participation
- The Power of Norms
- Selenium Research (Se2017)
- Mark Your Calendar
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead - Full issue pdf
- Guest Editorial
- Outer Limits: Pushing the Extremities
- Contents
- Officer’s Column
- Secretary General’s Column
- Features
- The Three-letter Element Symbols:
- Procedures for the Naming of a New Element
- The Chemical Structure Association Trust
- IUPAC Wire
- Discovery and Assignment of Elements with Atomic Numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118
- Open Data in a Big Data World
- UN Secretary General Appoints ICSU Executive Director to Special Advisory Group on the SDGs
- Project Place
- Company Associates Reengineering Project
- Postgraduate Course in Polymer Science, Prague, Czech Republic
- Critically Evaluated ESR (EPR) Spectra of Important Polymerization-related Radicals
- Which Elements Belong in Group 3 of the Periodic Table?
- Making an imPACt
- Discovery of the elements with atomic numbers Z = 113, 115 and 117 (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Discovery of the element with atomic number Z = 118 completing the 7th row of the periodic table (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Glossary of terms used in computational drug design, part II (IUPAC Recommendations)
- Standard electrode potentials involving radicals in aqueous solution: inorganic radicals (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Maritime pollutants in shipping and commercial European ports based on relevant physical and biogeochemical environmental parameters (IUPAC Technical Report)
- Latest Updates from PAC Conferences & More—Brief
- IUPAC Provisional Recommendations
- Glossary of Terms Used in Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology
- How to Name Atoms in Phosphates, Polyphosphates, their Analogues, and Transition State Analogues for Enzyme-catalysed Phosphoryl Transfer Reactions
- Comprehensive Definition of Oxidation State
- Stamps International
- Berzelius and the Chemical Alphabet
- Conference Call
- Latin American Pesticide Residue Workshop—Food and Environment
- Ecological Risk Assessment
- Where 2B & Y
- New Chemistries for Phytomedicines and Crop Protection Chemicals
- Function Through Disorder: Intrinsically Disordered Proteins in Biology and Medicine
- Phosphorus Chemistry
- Self-assembly in the World of Polymers
- Solubility Phenomena
- Blood-Biomaterial Interactions
- CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science
- 28th National [Turkish] Chemistry Congress with International Participation
- The Power of Norms
- Selenium Research (Se2017)
- Mark Your Calendar
