Search

Rethinking histories of data requires not only better answers to existing questions, but also better questions. We suggest eight such questions here. What counts as data? How are objects related to data? What are digital data? What makes data measurable, and what does quantification do to data? What counts as an “information age” ? Why do we keep data, and how do we decide which data to lose or forget? Who owns data, and who uses them? Finally, how does “Big Data” transform the geography of science? Each question is a provocation to reconsider the meanings and uses of “data” not only in the past but in the present as well.

The standard narrative in the history of the life sciences focuses on the rise of exper- imentalism since the late nineteenth century and the concomitant decline of natural history. Here, I propose to reexamine this story by concentrating on a specific set of material and cognitive practices centered on collections. I show that these have been central for the production of knowledge not only in natural history, from the Renais- sance to the present, but also in the experimental sciences. Reframing the history of the life sciences in this way makes historical continuities visible and raises new possibilities to contextualize recent developments in science, such as the prolifera- tion of databases and their growing use.

Neither science nor state has ever been transcendentally “neutral,” but they have sometimes been made neutral, together, as this paper shows in the context of cold war Europe. The paper explores how the Swiss government tried to “depoliticize” and “demilitarize” new international research institutions in the fields of high‐energy physics (CERN), space research (ESRO and ELDO), and molecular biology (EMBL) in order to make science neutral. Conversely, this paper investigates how participation in “neutralized” scientific institutions supported Switzerland’s neutrality policy and strengthened this essential element of its national identity. It thus addresses symmetrically the coproduction of neutral science and neutral state.