FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

"Graphing Genes, Cells and Embryos II. Cultures of Seeing 3D and Beyond"

Workshop
hosted by Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Berlin, June 11-15, 2008
Deadline: February 15, 2008

http://www.utlib.ee/teadusosakond/konverentsid/graphing_genesII/index.php


Following a workshop recently held in Naples (May 2007), this second
meeting will focus on elaborated analyses of how the life sciences
visually mastered to manifest the dimensionalities living organisms
exhibit when taking shape. Our attention will direct towards scale and
pattern of biological objects like embryos, cells and genes. To fully
trace the (epistemic) steps of representing these 3D objects, the
scientists will offer detailed information about their techniques,
tricks and tools when producing and employing images of distinct
scales and dimensions. Besides clarifying the process of image
construction, they will explicate what their images reveal, what is
filtered out, if so, why,  and how the images render their research
program. Scholars will supply these information with historical case
studies on the changing practices of visualization, encompassing
specific techniques, model organisms and styles of representation.
Along the images they will suppose of controveries that still persist
like a palimpset (e.g., fields), and elucidate why it sometimes takes
decades until a crucial issue (fate or specification) is visualized
realiter. The task of all participants will be to delineate an
epistemic archeology of spatial forms which occur naturally beyond the
range of unaided vision, e.g., rotating embryos, differentiating cells
and their components, the fine structure of organisms, or yet the
branching of species in models of evolution. In open discussions we
will compare and contrast the differences in handling the images by
scientists and humanists.

The workshop fulfills two main purposes, (1) it reconstructs some
chapters of the visual biography of genes, cells, and embryos in the
life sciences and related specialties (e.g., architecture), and (2) it
traces the influence of specific issues, like dimensionality, scale
and pattern on biological imagery from around 1800 to the 21st
century.

We welcome contributions from young scientists and scholars in such
diverse fields like the life sciences, mathematics, scientific
illustration, architecture, history and philosophy of science, art
history, history of technology and architecture, media and
communication studies.

To engage in lively debates, we are especially interested in
experimental, visual, conceptual and historical contributions that
elucidate and advance the issues and thematic concerns of the
transdisciplinary topic how the life sciences represented and (still)
represent dimensionality, scale and pattern, how some of these images
disseminated into other fields, and how they were used to communicate
science.

The deadline for abstract submittal (not more than 300 words,
preferably with an image) is

                         February 15, 2008.

We will inform about the accepted abstracts until March 1, 2008.
Selected papers will be published in a Preprint of the Max Planck
Institute for the History of Science in 2009.

Information about the first workshop devoted to "Graphing Genes, Cells
and Embryos" can be found at:

http://www.utlib.ee/teadusosakond/konverentsid/graphing_genes/description.htm

For any further question about the workshop, or for submitting an
abstract, please send your query/abstract to

                         biograph2008@gmail.com


Organizers

Sabine Brauckmann, Science Center, Tartu University, Tartu (Estonia)
Denis Thieffry, INSERM ERM206-TAGC, Marseille (France)
Christina Brandt, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
(Germany)
Gerd B. Müller, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition
Research, Altenberg (Austria)

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