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SUMMARY:Did wonders ever cease? The singular\, shining and spectacular in 
 Charles Dufay's 'Mémoires sur l'électricité' (1733–7) - Michael Bycro
 ft (Department of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20110518T120000Z
DTEND:20110518T130000Z
UID:TALK30778@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Alexandra Bacopoulos-Viau
DESCRIPTION:One thesis about eighteenth-century science is that it killed 
 off wonders from serious empirical inquiry. The second is that it placed g
 reat weight on experimental spectacles. How can these theses be reconciled
 \, given that they offer very different timetables (different by about 75 
 years) for the \ndisappearance of bizarre\, anomalous and striking phenome
 na from elite experimental practice in Europe? I will try to answer this q
 uestion in an important case: Charles Dufay's memoirs on electricity. Thes
 e eight memoirs are crucial to the wonder thesis because historians have t
 aken Dufay's work on phosphorescence as emblematic of the Enlightenment di
 sdain for wonders. They are also relevant to the spectacle thesis since ot
 her historians take \nDufay's topic -- electricity -- as emblematic of the
  eighteenth century love of experimental spectacle. I argue\, against the 
 wonder thesis\, that far from \ndisdaining wonders Dufay found them valuab
 le for epistemic reasons. And I argue\, against the spectacle thesis\, tha
 t Dufay found spectacles _only_ \nepistemically valuable -- he was not pri
 marily interested in them for theatrical\, political or theological reason
 s. On a more positive note\, \nDufay's electrical memoirs extend the spect
 acle thesis insofar as they show the value of spectacular experiments amon
 g professional researchers such as \nDufay (and not just among public lect
 urers). And they support the wonder thesis insofar as Dufay valued wonders
  only as a means and _not_ as an end \nof inquiry. Hence the Dufay case sh
 ows one way in which our two theses might be partially reconciled.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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