Making the unknown knowable has always been located at the heart of scientific activity. Yet,
whether the goal is to understand extreme environments, outer space or the universe (Helmreich,
2009; Messeri, 2016; Galison, 2020), to transform uncertainties into calculable risks (Sarewitz,
2000; Brown and Rappert, 2017), to make futures present and actionable (Harding and
Rosenberg, 2005; Galison and Moss, 2015; Beckert, 2016, 2018; Saraç-Lesavre, 2020), to
characterise contamination, toxicity or pollution (Tousignant, 2018; Alexander and Sanchez,
2020; Gramaglia, 2020), to establish the causes and effects of human intervention on Earth and
its inhabitants (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2013; Chakrabarty, 2018; Yusoff, 2018) or to
comprehend bodies, diseases and pandemics (Cohn, 2004; Stark, 2020), this activity has never
been as equipped and mediated as it is today. Knowledge institutions, civil society organisations
and ordinary citizens engage with a myriad of methods, tools and technologies to collect and
analyse data; sometimes it is microbes, plants, and individuals (Paxson, 2008; Kelly and Lezaun,
2014; Houdart, 2017), and other times it is sensors, scenarios, algorithms, robots, tests, novel
analytical and methodological approaches or previously inaccessible archives that mediate the
approaching of uncertainties and unknowns (Gusterson, 1996; Saraç-Lesavre and Laurent, 2019;
Marres and Stark, 2020).
The production of knowledge about the unknown is not only a fascinating activity in that it
involves pushing the limits of human knowledge, but the analysis of its modalities also tells us
a lot about the nature and forms of scientific collaboration (Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Traweek,
1988; Galison, 1997; Vertesi, 2015), political economies in which these collaborations take
place (Birch and al. 2020), multispecies engagements (Haraway, 2008; Kirksey and Helmreich,
2010; Mélard and Gramaglia, 2019), modes of conflict and cooperation among humans and
non-humans (Tsing and al., 2017), definitions given to ‘responsible’ action under the conditions
of deep uncertainty (Dupuy, 2009; Haraway, 2016; Saraç-Lesavre, 2020), forms of injustices
(Voyles, 2015; Liboiron, 2021), and the identity of those who hold the capacity to access
information and to produce expertise in advanced industrial societies (Galison and Moss, 2008;
Oreskes and Conway, 2011; Galison and Proctor, 2020).
This seminar series will be inquiring into the ways in which the unknown is rendered knowable
by a wide range of actors in a multitude of contexts. It aspires to generate a fruitful discussion
among three concerned groups; those who produce knowledge on the unknown (scientists and
engineers who work within academic institutions and industry, regulatory instances, civil
society organisations), those who seek the limits of the known be extended to undertake policy
action (regulatory instances, policy-makers), and those who study how the unknown is made
knowable (historians/sociologists of sciences/technology, human geographers, philosophers of
sciences, anthropologists of science/technology, STS scholars…).
Programme
3:00-4:30 pm (GMT), over Zoom,
using this link: https://zoom.us/j/92462817781
Please email makingtheunknownknowable@gmail.com to request the
passcode.
April 29th Prof Sophie Houdart, Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative, Université Paris Nanterre/CNRS
May 6th Prof Christelle Gramaglia, Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
May 20th Dr Olga Ulturgasheva, Department of Anthropology, University of Manchester
May 25th Prof Jens Beckert, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
May 27th Prof Stefan Helmreich, Department of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
