CESIMA ANNO XX –  Crossing Oceans: Exchange of Products, Instruments, Procedures and Ideas in the History of Chemistry and Related Sciences

“In 2014, CESIMA (Centre Simão Mathias of Studies in History of Science) celebrates its 20th anniversary. To mark the occasion, CESIMA will host an international conference, co-sponsored with the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC) and the Centre of Logic, Epistemology and History of Science, Unicamp (CLE), with particular focus on the history of chemistry and related sciences. This conference also marks SHAC’s first meeting in Latin America.

The organisers invite abstracts for papers that investigate exchanges of chemical knowledge – whether of theoretical concepts, practices, materials, instruments, or apparatus – from the early modern period to the present day. From the reception of alchemical theories of matter, to the development of worldwide markets for chemical raw materials and products, we will ask how the science of material transformation was itself transformed through local, regional and global exchanges. Papers are welcomed on all aspects of the history of chemistry, broadly defined to include related topics in the history of medicine and interfacial sciences.

We also welcome papers that discuss the organisation, acquisition and nature of knowledge: from “trees of knowledge” in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, to attempts to classify the scientific disciplines that ground contemporary science, and new historical methodologies and search tools that offer resources to scholars – for instance, the use of concept mining to locate historical information on chemistry in databases.”

See here for more conference details.