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Projects

Current & Completed

The Institute’s research projects span all eras of human history, as well as all cultures north, south, east, and west. The Institute’s projects canvass an array of scientific areas, ranging from the origins of continuity systems in Mesopotamia to present-day neuroscience, Renaissance natural history, and the origins of quantum mechanics.

The Institute's researchers explore the changing meaning of fundamental scientific concepts (for example number, force, heredity, space) as well as how cultural developments shape fundamental scientific practices (for example argument, proof, experiment, classification). They examine how bodies of knowledge originally devised to address specific local problems became universalized.

The work of the Institute's scholars forms the basis of a theoretically oriented history of science which considers scientific thinking from a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary perspectives. The Institute draws on the reflective potential of the history of science to address current challenges in scientific scholarship.

Project List

Crops on the Move
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Fossil Fuels at an End
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A History of "Making Things" in West Africa, 1920–1980
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Ideas, Objects, and Instruments, 800–1650
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Agriculture and the Making of Sciences
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The Entangled History of Biology and Silk in Modern Japan
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Launching Nature into the History of Airports
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Anthropogenic Markers
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Arhcaeology of the Astral
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Concepts as Technologies
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Deep Time Labscapes.
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Epistemologies of Craft
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Follow the Thread
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Astral Knowledge on Ancient and Medieval Coins
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Historicizing the Applied Humanities
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Image Database: Visualization of the Heavens
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Industrial Catalysis in the Anthropocene
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Investigating the Human Psyche through Motor Skills
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Knowledge in Translation
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Local Gazetteers
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Making Sense of the Environs: Exposure as Epistemic Action
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Nature’s place at the colonial museum
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Mobile Laboratories and Diplomatic Gifts
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On Intelligence Tests
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Political Epistemology of ESS
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Ming Field Allocation Maps
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Reclaiming Turtles All the Way Down
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Sacred Crafts
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Water Laws in Classical Islamic Legal Traditions
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Testing Chemicals and Validating Tests
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