|
8:00 p.m.
- 9:30 p.m.
|
|
The Fifth John McDonald Moore Memorial Lecture is delivered
by Peter L. Galison, historian,
writer, filmmaker and the Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in History of
Science and Physics at Harvard
University. Galison was appointed
a Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, he won the Max Planck Prize in 1999, and was named
a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 1997.In this lecture, Galison addresses speculation as it
pertains to inaccessible sites, focusing on “nuclear wastelands” and “pure
wilderness.” As they are usually understood, these designations are opposites;
when they converge into nature reserves on the sites of decommissioned nuclear
weapons lands we often describe this circumstance as “paradoxical” or “ironic.”
Taking stock of plans to handle lands that will remain saturated with
radionuclides for tens of thousands of years, Galison argues that the
categories of wastelands and wilderness are far from dichotomous; that their
relation is far more intriguing (and disturbing) than a binary of purity and
corruption. Removing parts of the earth in perpetuity – for reasons of sanctification
or despoilment – alters a central feature of the human self, presenting us in a
different relation to the physical world, and raising irreducible questions
about who we are when land can be classified, forever, as not for us humans. * * *Named after one of the university’s most influential art
history teachers, this lecture series honors John McDonald Moore’s contribution
to the university’s intellectual life. Moore
taught art history and criticism at The New School from 1968 until his death in
1999. Not unlike the speakers in this series –Stephanie Barron, Michael
Brenson, Boris Groys, Linda Nochlin, and now Peter L. Galison – McDonald Moore brought to his
students the vision of an artist who is also a scholar, and his classes were
famously popular. His students, family, and friends established this lecture
series in 2000.* * * Peter L. Galison is a historian, writer, filmmaker and the Joseph
Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of several
books, among them Image & Logic: A
Material Culture of Microphysics (1998) which won the Pfizer Award from the
History of Science Society. His book Einstein’s Clocks and Poincaré’s Maps: Empires
of Time (2003) was one of the first to draw close links between the young
Albert Einstein and the French mathematician Henri Poincaré who made parallel
attempts to harness time and helped create the science of relativity. Galison
co-wrote Objectivity (2007) with his colleague Lorraine
Dastonof the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Their book
examines how the idea of scientific objectivity evolved from the 17th century
to the present day from the study of curiosities, through the representations
of perfect, notional specimens, to a concept of objectivity as responsibility
for science. He is currently finishing another book, Building Crashing
Thinking, about technologies that reform the self. Galison
has been involved in the production of two documentary films. The first, The
Ultimate Weapon: The H-Bomb Dilemma, focused on the political and
scientific decisions behind the creation of the first hydrogen bomb in the United States,
and premiered on the History Channel in 2000. The second film, Secrecy,
co-directed with Harvard filmmaker Robb Moss, is about the costs and benefits
of government secrecy, and premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Galison
is beginning a new feature documentary film on nuclear landscapes. Like his
scholarly work, these films ultimately address how the tools and techniques
used to visualize scientific information influence our understanding of
science, and the course of scientific research itself. *Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2011 focus theme “Speculation.” Image: Film still from Secrecy (2008), directed by Peter Galison and Robb Moss.
|