Probing how the past behaved
You have to love a conference that includes a lecture on sex and silkworms, as well as scholarly presentations on shark tagging, lunar geology, Soviet reflexology, cotton-wool hearing aides, wave pools for surfers, 19th-century studies of monsters, the anatomy of the goat moth caterpillar, and how beer-making influenced German nationalism. Four intensive days of such lectures, keynote addresses, and workshops marked the annual meeting, which ended Sunday, of the History of Science Society in Boston. For example, Peter Galison, Harvard’s Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, delivered a lecture Friday on “nuclear wastelands” in the United States, the enormous tracts set aside for toxic dumps related to nuclear power and bomb-making. Their sinister loveliness and mysterious visual power, he said, mean they are increasingly conflated with other conceptions of wilderness. (Galison is making a film on the same issue with University collaborator Robb Moss, a senior lecturer on visual and environmental studies.) The conference also...