iHC Seminar- online

Resum:

Abstract: The notion of "culture scientifique" has long been a French singularity. This talk aims at making a genealogy of this category. I will first focus on the emergence of cultural initiatives centered on science in the late 1960s within the cultural institutions created by André Malraux. Then I will show how in the 1970s and 1980s scientific activism, on the one hand, and the State, on the other, shaped what would later become, in its institutionalized form, the "culture scientifique" network. To conclude, I will stress the reasons why in this case using the word "culture" matters.   

Andrée Bergeron is associate professor of history of science at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris and member of the Centre Alexandre Koyré. She has long been working on the history of science popularization and science museums with a particular focus on their political dimensions.