Lorraine Daston
Director (Since 1995)
PhD, Professor, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago/MPIWG Director 1995–2019
Lorraine Daston has published on a wide range of topics in the history of science, including the history of probability and statistics, wonders in early modern science, the emergence of the scientific fact, scientific models, objects of scientific inquiry, the moral authority of nature, and the history of scientific objectivity. Recent books include Gegen die Natur (2018; English edition Against Nature, 2019) as well as Science in the Archives (2017) and (with Paul Erikson et al.) How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality (2014), the latter two both products of MPIWG Working Groups.
Her current projects include a history of rules, the meaning of modernity in the history of science, international governance in science since the late nineteenth century, and the relationship between moral and natural orders.
She is the recipient of the Pfizer Prize and Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society, the Schelling Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the Lichtenberg Medal of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the Luhmann Prize of the University of Bielefeld, and honorary doctorates from Princeton University and the Hebrew University. In 2018 she was awarded the Dan David Prize in the History of Science. In addition to directing Department II of the MPIWG, she is a regular Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.
Current Projects
Completed Projects
Selected Publications
Daston, Lorraine (2017). “The History of Science and the History of Knowledge.” KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1 (1): 131–154. https://doi.org/10.1086/691678.
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Daston, Lorraine (2016). “History of science without ‘Structure.’” In Kuhn’s “Structure of scientific revolutions” at fifty : reflections on a science classic, ed. R. J. Richards and L. Daston, 115–132. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
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Daston, Lorraine (2016). “Cloud physiognomy.” Representations 135 (1): 45–71. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2016.135.1.45.
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Daston, Lorraine (2016). “Authenticity, autopsia, and Theodor Mommsen’s Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.” In For the sake of learning : essays in honor of Anthony Grafton. Vol. 2, ed. A. Blair and A.-S. Goeing, 955–973. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004263314_054.
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Daston, Lorraine (2016). “When science went modern.” The Hedgehog Review 18 (3). https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-cultural-contradictions-of-modern-science/articles/when-science-went-modern.
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Daston, Lorraine (2015). “Epistemic images.” In Vision and its instruments : art, science, and technology in early modern Europe, ed. A. Payne, 13–35. University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
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Daston, Lorraine (2014). “The naturalistic fallacy is modern.” Isis 105 (3): 579–587. https://doi.org/10.1086/678173.
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Erickson, Paul, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, and Michael D. Gordin (2013). How reason almost lost its mind : the strange career of Cold War rationality. Chicago [u.a.]: The University of Chicago Press.
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Daston, Lorraine (2012). “The sciences of the archive.” Osiris 27 (1): 156–187. https://doi.org/10.1086/667826.
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Daston, Lorraine (2008). “On scientific observation.” Isis 99 (1): 97–110. https://doi.org/10.1086/587535.
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Bookshelf
Feature Story
Media
Events
Discussion
Inaugural Event: The Future of Medieval Studies in the History of Science
MOREPremodern Conversations Series
- Institute Event
A History of Rules: Algorithms, Patterns, and Recipes
MORELecture
- Institute Event
Plato’s Cave Revisited: A Conversation about Education Today
MOREExternal/Cooperation Event
- Institute Event
Before Scientific Revolutions: Error and the Fear of Error
MOREInstitute's Colloquium
- Institute Event
The Future of Academic Publishing
MOREReading
The Berlin Sofa
MOREDiscussion
- Institute Event
Was weiß das Ohr? Zum Hör-Wissen im Wandel der Moderne
MORELecture
- Institute Event
Das synoptische Bild: Kollektive Beobachtung in der frühneuzeitlichen Wissenschaft
MORELecture
- Institute Event
Histories of Scientific Observation
MORELecture
Histories of Science without Structure
MOREPresentations, Talks, & Teaching Activities
Conference Undead Texts: Grand Narratives in the History of the Human Sciences at Columbia University and MPIWG
Keynote Lecture, Conference Media of Exactitude in The Humanities, Art, And Sciences at the University of Basel
Lecture at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing
Lecture at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Conference The Engine of Modernity at Columbia University
Lecture at Simpson Center for the Humanities, University of Washington
Page-Barbour Lectures, University of Virginia
Keynote lecture at conference Description across the Disciplines at Columbia University
Keynote lecture at conference The Total Archive at the University of Cambridge
Keynote Lecture at Conference "Breaking Rules," University of Leiden
Martin Buber Lecture, Israel Academy of Sciences
University of Chicago
Seminar at the University of Chicago
Humanitas Lecture, Oxford University
Seminar at the University of Chicago
Royal Society of London
University of California at Berkeley
Rubinstein Lecture at the Queen Mary University of London