10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17997
application/pdf
2038-3460
17997
1
en
Maria Amuchastegui
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Lanoë (eds.), Les sciences et les techniques, laboratoire de l’Histoire: Mélanges en l’honneur de Patrice Bret, Presses des Mines, 2022
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
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Book Reviews
2023-09-26
2023-09-13
2023-09-26
2023-09-26
171-174
TS
Maria Amuchastegui
2023/09/26
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17997
171
York University
2038-3460
1
en
174
Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Lanoë (eds.), Les sciences et les techniques, laboratoire de l’Histoire: Mélanges en l’honneur de Patrice Bret, Presses des Mines, 2022
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17997/16766
14
T/S                                                                                BOOK REVIEWS



Les sciences et les techniques, laboratoire de l’Histoire:
Mélanges en l’honneur de Patrice Bret
[Science and technology, the laboratory of History: A collection
of essays in honour of Patrice Bret]

by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Lanoë (eds.) (2022) Presses des Mines.




Maria Amuchastegui
York University


   The STS-adjacent disciplines of the history of science and the history of technology have
undergone many of the same changes as STS. In both disciplines, for example, there has been
an increasing emphasis on peripheries and on material practice. For decades, the eminent
French historian of science and technology, Patrice Bret, has been at the forefront of these
changes. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Catherine Lanoë’s edited collection Les sciences et les tech-
niques, laboratoire de l’Histoire (2022) is an homage to Bret. Many of the chapters thus relate
to the historical time period in which Bret specializes: the second half of the eighteenth cen-
tury and the first half of the nineteenth century, a period marked by the collapse of the An-
cien Régime, the tumult of the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. Hilaire-Pérez
and Lanoë argue that Bret’s influence was such that it exceeded the bounds of his own disci-
pline, causing traditional historians to take up the methods and the objects of study of histo-
rians of science and technology. Hilaire-Pérez and Lanoë’s edited collection is clustered into
thematic groupings, with each section emphasizing a different aspect of Bret’s influence. The
first part is devoted to the relationship between science, technology, and the state. The second
part centers on chemistry, a domain that blurs the boundaries between science and technolo-
gy, as the science of chemistry has always been bound up with technological innovation. The
third part relates to the circulation and translation of knowledge, between and within nations
and continents, while the fourth part is concerned with the role of women in science and
technology. The common thread, as the editors remind us, is the emphasis on the marginal
figures – Jean-Claude Pingeron, Jean-François Fontallard, Gilbert Romme and Peter Simon
Pallas, for example – and the material practices – such as translation, indexing, and care work
– that enable the circulation of knowledge. This focus on materiality and marginality stands
in sharp contrast with the concerns of earlier historians of science. Over the past few decades,
the object of study of the history of science has shifted from the internalist study of intellec-
tual history – the content of science – to the externalist study of its social context (Shapin

 CNOSIEZA
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)14( p. 4 17- ISN 2038-46                                         Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
         DOI: 10.692/issn/179.2038-46                             www.tecnoscienza.net
Amuchastegui                                                                                  172

1992). Similarly, the previous emphasis on the study of major figures, situated in the Europe-
an or North American metropoles, has given way to an emphasis on secondary actors and
peripheral locales. Finally, the strict demarcation between the history of science and the histo-
ry of technology has collapsed, as has the demarcation between history and the social sciences.
All of these tendencies can be discerned in Les sciences et les techniques. For example, whereas
an earlier generation of historians of science largely limited themselves to the study of “great
men”, such as Lavoisier or Linnaeus, Virginie Fonteneau (Chapter n. 8) examines the prépa-
rateurs – the lab assistants – who set up the instruments for the lectures of illustrious chem-
ists. These secondary actors often came from pharmacist families and had knowledge that was
technical, rather than theoretical. Similarly, whereas an earlier generation of historians of sci-
ence largely limited themselves to the study of Europe, Lorelai Kury (Chapter n. 12) sets her
sights on the periphery, comparing two eighteenth-century Brazilian naturalists: the military
officer Domingos Alves Branco Muniz Barreto (1748-1831) and the friar José Mariano da
Conceição Velloso (1742-1811). To study peripheral science and technology is to study the
social context that enables knowledge claims and technologies to prevail – a concern that has
been central to STS since its inception. But whereas the canonical works of early STS scholars
emphasized the social context of major figures – for example, Latour’s (1988) work on Louis
Pasteur – contemporary STS scholars and historians of science emphasize lesser-known fig-
ures, as well as peripheral locales. The contributors to Les sciences et les techniques do not ex-
plicitly invoke the STS canon. This may sound surprising, given that this canon includes the
works of French scholars like Bruno Latour or Michel Callon. Still, the book shares many of
the concerns of STS, and notably questions the relationship between technological innova-
tion and politics. In Chapter n. 4, Irina Gouzévitch relates the conflict that ensued, at the end
of the eighteenth century, between the inventors of two competing telegraph technologies.
The telegraph invented by the Frenchman Claude Chappe included a signaling device that
resembled two human arms, with each arm held aloft on its own pole. In contrast, the tele-
graph invented by the Spaniard Agustín Betancourt and the Swiss Abraham-Louis Breguet
included a signaling device that resembled the face of a watch, with a needle pointing to indi-
vidual letters and numbers. Both technologies were optical telegraphs that relied on tele-
scopes to discern messages that had been spelt out from afar. Although a committee of ex-
perts from the Académie Royale des Sciences deemed the foreign technology to be superior,
government bureaucrats opted for the technology that had been developed by a Frenchman.
This recalls the oft-repeated observation that technology cannot be separated from politics
– represented in this instance by the Napoleonic army, which ended up conveying messages
via the telegraphs of Chappe. In another example, Isabelle Lémonon Waxin (Chapter n. 15)
relates that the creation of indexes for chemistry textbooks was often done by women, and
that the categories identified by women indexers shaped the field of chemistry itself. This re-
calls Bowker and Star’s (2000) observation that classification has material effects. Bowker and
Star described how the inclusion or non-inclusion of a disease in the International Classifica-
tion of Disease (ICD) affected subsequent diagnoses of the disease. Similarly, the chemical
categories identified by women indexers influenced the subsequent development of the field
of chemistry. As such, indexing represents a significant but unacknowledged contribution by
women to chemistry. The most well-known contribution of French intellectuals to STS the-
173                                                                        Tecnoscienza. 2023. 14(1)

ory is undoubtedly actor-network theory, also known as the sociology of translation. Several
of the chapters in Les sciences et les techniques are about translation in the literal sense, as it is
an essential aspect of the circulation of knowledge, as well as one of Patrice Bret’s research
interests. But Anne Collinot’s chapter (n. 14) on Monique Lévi-Strauss is about translation
in the sociological sense. By describing the care work – which included emotional support
and even cooking – that Monique Lévi-Strauss provided for her famous husband, Collinot
recalls Hélène Mialet’s work (2012) on the entourage that enabled the work of the physicist
Stephen Hawking. Valérie Burgos Blondelle (Chapter n. 16) combines scientometric and
feminist methods in her analysis of the archives of the journal Bulletin of the Society for the
Encouragement of National Industry (1802-1945). Burgos Blondelle searched the journal ar-
chive for keywords suggesting the contributions of women, identifying contributions that
ranged from the authorship and translation of journal articles, to the financial sponsorship of
the learned society, to the invention of a useful technology – specifically, a device for measur-
ing the level of alcohol in wine. By uncovering such a wide range of contributions, the chapter
is a strong contribution to the feminist tradition. A weakness common to many edited collec-
tions is a certain lack of cohesiveness. Les sciences et les techniques is not immune to this ten-
dency, although to a lesser extent than most. Its cohesiveness is undoubtedly due to its organ-
ization according to the various interests of Patrice Bret, interests that were diverse but that
shared a common concern with marginality. The book would have benefited, moreover, from
a brief overview of the work of Patrice Bret. As it stands, the editors and the contributors as-
sume that readers will already be familiar with his work. The book excels, however, in provid-
ing a nuanced understanding of marginality. Whereas peripheral science, for example, is often
understood as the science of formerly colonized nations, in this book peripheral science is
usually framed as the science of Eastern Europe or the French provinces. Far from being a
limitation, this provides STS scholars with a more nuanced understanding of marginality and
peripheral science, one that is not restricted to the binary opposition between Europe and
North America, on the one hand, and the rest of the world, on the other. The editors argue
that Bret inspired historians to take up the concerns of historians of science and historians of
technology. By providing European examples of peripheral science, the contributors to this
volume redefine marginality not just within the history of science or the history of technolo-
gy, but within history writ large. The book will be of particular interest to STS scholars who
wish to remain au courant with trends in the intertwined histories of science and technology,
as they relate to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century continental Europe. Many canonical
works from the early days of STS relate to historical topics, including early modern topics, the
most well-known example being Shapin and Shaffer’s (2011) Leviathan and the Air-Pump.
But pre-20th century historical topics are virtually unheard-of in contemporary STS, an omis-
sion that Peter Dear and Sheila Jasanoff (2010) have criticized. Moreover, despite the canon-
icity of French-inflected STS theory, the dominance of English-language publishing in STS
often brings with it an emphasis on Anglo-American topics, at the expense of the rest of the
world. From an STS perspective, the book’s greatest strength may be that it serves as a neces-
sary corrective to the presentism and Anglo-American dominance of STS.
Amuchastegui                                                                                       174

References

Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Star, Susan Leigh (2000) Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Conse-
   quences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.
Dear, Peter and Jasanoff, Sheila (2010) Dismantling Boundaries in Science and Technology Studies, in
   “Isis”, 101(4), pp. 759-74.
Latour, Bruno (1988) The Pasteurization of France, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard
   University Press.
Mialet, Hélène (2012) Hawking Incorporated: Stephen Hawking and the Anthropology of the Knowing
   Subject, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Shapin, Steven (1992) Discipline and Bounding: The History and Sociology of Science as Seen through the
   Externalism-Internalism Debate, in “History of Science”, 30(4), pp. 333-69.
Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon (2011) Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Exper-
   imental Life, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
