MONDAY, JUNE 29, 4:00 P.M. | ZRINYI 14, ROOM 310/A
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