CDH welcomes professor of the history of science and technology
© Jérôme Baudry
On February 1, Jérôme Baudry joined the EPFL College of Humanities (CDH) as tenure-track assistant professor, and director of the new Laboratory for the History of Science and Technology (LHST).
Can you introduce us to your research?
So far, I’ve focused my research in two directions. First, I’ve been interested in the history of patents at the time of their creation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
By comparing the English, American, and French cases, I’ve tried to understand how the principle of ownership – not of objects, but of ideas – came to be. By transforming the dynamics of innovation, patents redefined the boundaries between science and technology at that time: on the one hand, science was conceived as a pure, theoretical activity free from material interests; on the other, technology was seen as a simple application of science to the industrial world. It was at this moment that the terms ‘discovery’ and ‘invention’, once synonymous, became distinct.
But some recent developments, for example in biology and genetics, show that such a distinction may have been only temporary.
And what is your second research direction?
This focuses on the relationship between science and society, and on public participation in the production of knowledge. I have worked extensively on the recent citizen science, or participatory science movement, which aims to include citizen volunteers and amateur scientists in the very fabric of research.
By focusing on distributed computing projects (like SETI@home) or scientific crowdsourcing projects (like GalaxyZoo), I’ve studied the mechanisms by which communities of participants are formed around science. The aim was to understand the social engineering behind the current success of this movement.
What research projects do you want to conduct at the LHST?
Some projects will be a continuation of my previous research, but based on the environment offered by the Digital Humanities Institute. For example, I want to build a vast corpus of digitized patents spanning several centuries, the analysis of which will make it possible to model and better understand the dynamics of innovation.
As for new projects, I hope to establish collaborations with EPFL scientists and engineers. For example, in conjunction with the School of Engineering and the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, I would very much like to launch a research project on the history of computer-aided design (CAD), which since the 1970s has profoundly transformed design practices, engineering education, and industrial objects themselves.
Finally, I would like to highlight the Physics Museum, or physics instrument collection at the University of Lausanne, which is the result of more than two centuries of teaching and research. We are currently preparing a new website, which will allow users to search the detailed inventory compiled by Professor Jean-François Loude. This collection will of course be used for research on the history of scientific instruments, but also for public education and events. During the EPFL Open Days on September 14th and 15th, we will show some of the instruments and, with the help of demonstrators, present reconstructions of past scientific experiments.
What courses will you be teaching?
In September, I will give a course on “history and the digital” within the Master of Science in Digital Humanities program. The goal will be twofold: to present (and even create!) digital tools that make it possible to process historical data; and to reflect, through historical case studies, on the scope and limits of computational thinking. I will also offer a new course as part of the Social and Human Sciences (SHS) program on the history of innovation and the interactions between science and technology, from the 18th century to the present.
Why is it important to study the history of science and technology at EPFL?
For many reasons! Because the past offers us a host of examples, models and concepts that can still inspire us today, and because it allows us to reflect on our own practice of science. But more fundamentally, I believe that we must defend the idea that there are no two separate cultures – one scientific and the other humanist. Science is an integral part of culture; it is irrigated by the society it irrigates in turn.