Program
Thursday, April 17 - 7:30p - 9:00p
Main Lounge, Moulton Union
Dr. Don J. Wyatt
John M. McCardell, Jr. Distinguished Professor of History, Middlebury College
The Spear and Shield of Knowledge: Scientific Transference and Cultural Obstruction between China and the West
Examples of the transference of science and technology that have occurred in the long history of contact between China and the West are abundant, momentous, and memorable. However, whether we are considering the ancient transmission of sericulture from China westward or early modern astronomical methods from the West eastward, we err gravely if we assume that such transfers always occurred freely, smoothly, and easily. On the contrary, attending each instance of transference is a contested history involving intense competition and even adversarial struggle over the possession, safeguarding, and retention of one’s own scientific and technological knowledge. This talk illustrates how certain early proprietary conflicts between the West and China for advantage in the sphere of science arose and ensued, and why these events have continued to contribute so profoundly to the mixed attitudes of mutual attraction and distrust that pervade contemporary Sino-Western
Friday, April 18 9:00a - 4:00p
Lancaster Lounge, Moulton Union
Panels - “The Peripatetic,” “The Encyclopedic,” “The Reflexive,” “The Pious,” and “The Mathematical”
Dialogue I. The Peripatetic
Dr. Jan Golinski (University of New Hampshire)
A Career in Transit: James Dinwiddie and the Circulation of Knowledge between East and West
Dr. Robert Morrison (Bowdoin College)
Scholarly intermediaries between the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Italy
Dialogue II. The Encyclopedic
Dr. Eugenia Lean (Columbia University)
Made to Order: Industrial Science, “Empirical” Practice (Shiyan) and Disciplining Knowledge in 1930s’ Chinese Technical Manuals
Dr. Meghan Roberts (Bowdoin College)
Antoine Lavoisier’s Organic Enlightenment
Dialogue III. The Reflexive
Dr. David Hecht (Bowdoin College)
The Dream of Nuclear Power: History, Technology, and the "Quick Fix"
Dr. Keith Peterson (Colby College)
Values in Science as Social Knowledge: The Case of Reflexive Ecology
Dialogue IV. The Pious
Dr. Pierce Salguero (Penn State University/Abington College)
The Canon of Chinese Buddhist Medicine: Its Construction in the 7th Century, and Some of its Ramifications for Present-day Scholarship
Dr. Brigid E. Vance (Colorado State University Pueblo)
Exorcising Dreams and Envisioning Health in Late Ming China
Dialogue V. The Mathematical
Dr. Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College)
The Diamond-Winged House Fly: L. B. Alberti’s Equivocal Tribute to Mathematics
Dr. Leah Zuo (Bowdoin College)
Keeping Your Ear to the Cosmos: Standards of Validity in the Northern Song (960−1127) Music Reforms