This paper explores the use of new scientific techniques to examine collections of historic scientific apparatus and other technological artefacts. One project under discussion uses interferometry to examine the history of lens development, while another uses X-ray fluorescence to discover the kinds of materials used to make early mathematical and astronomical instruments. These methods lead to surprising findings: instruments turn out to be fake, and lens makers turn out to have been adept at solving the riddle of aperture. Although exciting, (...) in some ways this is neither novel nor particularly unusual. After all, lab techniques have been used in art and archaeological collections for a very long time. In fact, scientific instruments themselves have been examined in this way since at least the 1950s. What, then, is special about the use of new instruments to examine old instruments? We argue that the answer has less to do with measuring historical innovation or establishing priority, and more to do with networks of craft know-how that, typically, have left no other historical traces than those embodied in surviving instruments themselves. We show, in particular, how collections of objects can be mobilised within wider histories of knowledge, placing instruments within a dynamic interplay of craft knowledge, expertise, labour, commerce, and material exchange, over the longue durée. Finally, we suggest that these kinds of lab analyses can be given an extra dimension through the use of computational modelling, and we introduce the “Tools of Knowledge” project, which is designed to bring together XRF with techniques from the digital humanities, in order to tell a new story about the development of scientific instruments from the 16th to the 20th century. (shrink)

In March 1980, the oil-platform Alexander L. Kielland capsized in the North Sea resulting in the death of 123 workers. The Norwegian inquiry into the disaster was closed to the public and the survi...

This article examines the role of emotions during insurgent conditions by focusing on the Nicaraguan revolution, in particular the two-year period (1977–1979) leading to the overthrow of the Somoza regime. Based on an analysis of testimonial accounts from an oral history volume, ¡Y Se Armó La Runga!, and a NVivo-10 content analysis of testimonies therein, it sets out to make a case for the significance of hope as a dominant emotion during guerrilla offensives. The manuscript answers the following questions: 1) (...) What is the role of hope during guerrilla offensives?; 2) what other emotions are in play during these events?; and 3) in what ways does hope combine with other emotions to maintain insurgent activism? In addition to defining and coding eleven negative and positive emotions (analyzed as secondary emotions), it evaluates the varied relationships these have to hope. To accomplish the latter varied emotion chains are identified for each respective secondary emotion. (shrink)

Sensational trials are a venue for the performance of social knowledge—the kind of knowledge that does not regularly make an appearance on the front pages of national newspapers. if sensational trials routinely catapult private matters into the public sphere, it is less such exciting revelations that concern me here, than the dross kicked up in their wake. Sensational trials, I contend, are a point of entry into everyday life, that far more elusive zone of ordinary beliefs and practices situated between (...) the institution and the bedroom, in the interstices of the scripted and chronicled domains of private and public life. To address the everyday is to confront those undocumented procedures and forms of knowledge that exist beyond the realm of official discourse, practices that cultural theorists are increasingly eager to explore and increasingly sceptical of finding. As Barry Sandywell recently observed, ‘Like the omnipollent term “community”, “everyday life” is in continuous use within lay and theoretical discourse and yet continuously evades definition. Perhaps... we should ask “where is everyday life”?’ This paper argues that one answer to this question lies in the study of sensational trials. (shrink)

The pragmatic semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce has a lot of practical benefits for enhancing visual communication in illustrations. His triadic theory of Semiosis focuses on the dynamic interrelationships between the concept to be communicated, how it is represented through a semiotic sign, and how this affects the success of how the concept is eventually interpreted. Peirce's pragmatic semiotic theory uses complex language, and although Peirce is embraced in some design disciplines, the language that defines Semiosis is problematic beyond (...) academia. This paper is an attempt to address this by providing illustrators with a basic introduction to how Semiosis can help to enhance the success of the visual communication in their illustrations. This is done by translating Peircean terminology into illustrator-centric language and providing an example of how the Semiosis is implemented in an illustration. Within the limits of a short paper, illustrators can begin to understand how the triadic nature of concept/representation/interpretation can benefit them during their ideation and sketching phase to author effective images. In doing this, this paper will mostly discuss iconic, indexical, and symbolic semiotic representation within pragmatic semiotic signs of the intended concept to be communicated in an illustration. This paper's aim is to enact a pragmatic turn in illustrators, in which Semiosis theory becomes more integrated within their practical work, by providing a more illustrator-centric dissemination of Peirce's semiotic theory. (shrink)

Microstudies and big picture accounts are often counterposed. This paper investigates the supposed dichotomy between the two historiographical approaches. In particular it investigates how the discussions are reflected in the historiography of molecular biology and the special questions posed by the disciplinary context. Taking inspiration from the microhistory tradition as exemplified by the works of Carlo Ginzburg, Jacques Revel, and David Sabean among others, the paper highlights the heuristic value of microstudies to reconstruct the multiple contexts that link apparently small (...) events with broader structures. In a parallel fashion, the paper argues for using microstudies to open up the history of molecular biology to other fields of study and thus moving beyond the confines of the disciplinary framework. Such an approach does not dismiss the search for big pictures. Yet rather than opposing big pictures to microstudies, it sees microstudies as a valid way to gain new and broad vistas. (shrink)