MONDAY, JUNE 29, 4:00 P.M. | NADOR 11, ROOM 201
PUBLIC LECTURE BY
STÉPHANE VAN DAMME
Professor of History of Science, European University
Institute, Florence, Italy
ABSTRACT | The case of Paris provides a touchstone for this lecture on the intersection of the history of science
with environmental history. Interest in the intersection of these fields has grown rapidly over the past decade in the
urban context. On the one hand, history of science paid more attention to the relations between science and the city,
especially on environmental sciences and medicine such as meteorology, environmental health, but urban natural
sciences remained a subject often discussed on the fringes of histories of geology, biology, zoology and pharmacy;
however, few studies had the ambition to tackle the idea of a physical history of metropolises at a whole. On the
other hand, environmental history started to reformulate the classical opposition between nature and urbanity. For
some decades now, under the influence of new thinking on “sustainable cities”, urban ecology, environmental
sciences has shifted the ground under these old questions, reformulating them from a more environmentalist
perspective showing the deep impact of engineering the city. Urban nature returned to the historiographic arena
through twin processes: socializing urban nature through technologies and economy, which led historians to pay
attention to risks, industrial revolution, recycling and to explain urban political economy, or naturalizing the
metropolis through urban parks in a culturalist vein which led historians to analyse the revitalization of city-centers
or the romantic critique to industrialization. However, these two historiographies assume that social and cultural
forces and physical power are distinct phenomena, hardly related. The aim of this lecture is to bridge that
historiographical gap by taking advantage of new developments in the history of science and urban history.
BIO | Formerly professor at the University of Warwick (Britain) and at SciencesPo (Paris), Stéphane van Damme joined
the department of History and Civilization at the EUI in 2013, where he holds the chair in History of Science. His
research examines the origins of early modern scientific knowledge and European culture between 1650 and 1850 by
looking at essential elements overlooked by historians of science such as scientific centres (Lyon, Paris, London,
Edinburgh, New York), founding fathers (Descartes), paradigmatic disciplines (philosophy, natural history,
antiquarianism), imperial projects. His current project addresses the natural history of metropolises in comparative
and transnational dimension looking at London, Paris and New York from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.
.
ORGANIZED BY CEU SUMMER UNIVERSITY COURSE ON
CITIES AND SCIENCE: URBAN HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN THE
STUDY OF EARLY MODERN AND MODERN EUROPE