History of Science

 Electricity: condenser jars, an electro-static generator, and a vase with flowers. Gouache painting. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Scientific knowledge of the natural world, human behaviors, and the technologies and material objects that make up modern cultures is also a facet of historical study. The History of Science theme broadly includes the historical construction of disciplinary knowledge in its interactions with society and politics, including medicine as a mode of understanding bodies and human subjectivities. While historicizing the universality of these modes of knowledge-making, courses in this cluster are strongly linked to regional clusters in central and eastern Europe (the Habsburg and Romanov empires and their successor states).