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Call
for papers for symposium : Materials and chemistry from bench to brand and
back
Next year,
Manchester hosts the 24th International Congress of History of
Science, Technology and Medicine (Monday 22 - Sunday 28 July).
We invite contribution submissions for a symposium entitled
“Materials and chemistry from bench to brand and back” sponsored
by the Commission for the History of Modern Chemistry (see
symposium abstract below).
The CHMC symposium aims at investigating itineraries of
materials from bench research to consumers brand, as they spread
among the society and the natural environment, and the itinerary
back. We want to focus on the co-construction of materials and
chemistry through specific case studies. Potential topics of
interest are synthetic polymers, nanotechnologies, metallurgy,
electronics, new and old materials like plastics or
ceramics, as well drugs, fertilizers and biomaterials, a.o.
We invite historians of science,
technology, and medicine, as well as scholars in science and
technology studies. Scholars interested in contributing
to this symposium should contact one of the symposium organizers
listed below.
Brigitte Van Tiggelen [log in to unmask]
Pierre Teissier [log in to unmask]
Materials and chemistry from bench to brand and back
It has become almost commonplace since the 19th century to
emphasize how much chemists shape matter and build new
materials, not only to enhance natural knowledge, but also in
the hope of improving the human condition. By creating new, hopefully
useful substances, chemists have established a role, not only in
science and technology but also as architects of both matter and
society. Less often stressed is how materials may in turn shape
chemists and their science, both by creating or reorganizing
disciplinary fields, communities, instrumental consensus and
experimental practice and objects, and by initiating new
behaviours in society and consumption or adding to the ever
growing number of synthetics.
For example, consider the solid compounds extensively
synthesized by inorganic chemists in the twentieth century. This
led in the 1960s to the emergence of a new subdiscipline: solid
state chemistry. Referring to themselves as “solidists”, solid
state chemists became identified by their will to synthesize
original solid compounds. These were shaped at the inner
(atomic) level to exhibit new intrinsic properties. These pieces
of matter rapidly escaped their creators to be transformed into
“materials” by a new field, materials chemists, working at an
intermediary (microscopic) level to turn solid compounds into
commercial products with many uses, including ceramics,
metallurgy, and electronics. The step from matter to materials
was induced by the transformation of a bench compound to a brand
product when solid state chemists, who exhibited properties,
were replaced by materials chemists who stabilized the compound
to make it useful. In
the process two new subdisciplines of chemistry emerged. Ultimately the resulting
new products have had a significant impact on modern consumption
patterns and material culture. Introducing new materials into
the environment has also posed unexpected challenges for
regulation, clean-up, and recycling, which have in turn affected
the activities of chemists and have led to the emergence of
another new field, “green chemistry.”
There is thus a co-construction of the subject and object of
chemistry, and in the frame of this symposium, we would like to
invite further considerations of the mirror dynamism between
people and materials in a wide range of interacting fields and
levels of activity from bench research through engineering to
human society and the natural environment. Up to now this has been
mostly underlined in the field of inert or non-living materials,
as in our example (other examples from the twentieth century
could include the development of synthetic polymers and
plastics); we also welcome case-studies and considerations from
the life sciences, where the creation of new drugs or food
ingredients may follow a similar trajectory (or not).