Publications
Books
Jon Adams
Interference Patterns
Literary Study, Scientific Knowledge, and Disciplinary Autonomy
Lewisburg, PN: Bucknell University Press, 2007.
268 pages
ISBN 0-8387-5681-2
Across the academy, disciplines flock for scientific status, keen to demonstrate that their approach to their subject matter is "scientific." How might literary criticism achieve anything like this sort of methodological consonance? Looking at the history of twentieth-century attempts, from Northrop Frye's macrostructural systematizing and Roman Jakobson's microstructural analysis, through to the collapse of the structuralist project and the recent strategic embrace of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science, this book looks at what hopes remain for a "science" of literary criticism, and draws on the work of such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty, and Kurt Vonnegut, to investigate what are the consequences of adopting a scientific perspective toward literary study. With an increasing number of departments teaching "literature and science" courses, the question of what literary study stands to gain (and what it might risk) from cleaving to the sciences is especially pressing.
http://www.amazon.com/Interference-Patterns-Scientific-Knowledge-Disciplinary/dp/0838756816
Simona Valeriani
 Kirchendächer in Rom (Church Roofs in Rome)
Capriate Ecclesiae
Berliner Beiträge zur Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege III,
Imhof Verlag, Petersberg, 2006
ISBN: 3-86568-005-4
By concentrating on the roof and the attic – a portion of the building often neglected by historians of architecture – Simona Valeriani opens up new research lines and methods in the history of architecture in Italy. By looking at spaces "locked away" from the public it is often possible to find material evidence of the history of buildings that has been destroyed or covered in their more accessible parts. This way of discovering the history of the fabric "from the top down" has proved very successful north of the Alps, but had never been introduced to Italy before. Kirchendächer in Rom also represents the first attempt – in cooperation with specialized international laboratories – to build up the necessary database to support the development and usage of dendrochronology (a method for the dating of wooden artefacts) in central Italy. Taking the roof structures of seven Roman basilicas of Palaeochristian origin as case studies, it documents the development of structural knowledge and practical skills related to the building process in Italy between late antiquity and the baroque era. Alongside a detailed examination of the architectural history of these buildings, the book also leads the way into a new research branch in the history of technology.
http://www.imhof-verlag.de/italien/kirchendaecher-in-rom.htm
Journals
Erika Mattila
Science Studies 1/2006
Special Issue: Computer Models and Simulations in Scientific Practice
Guest Editors: Tarja Knuuttila, Martina Merz and Erika Mattila
This special issue focuses on computer models and simulations as an increasingly important set of tools, methods, and practices that complement and, in part, substitute for the traditional theoretical and experimental modes of doing science. Computer modelling and simulation play prominent roles in scientific fields as diverse as physics, meteorology, neuroscience, nanoscience, sociology, economics and archaeology. The importance of models does not limit itself to science. Today models and simulations are of prime importance also in social, economic and environmental prediction and decision-making. Yet, as the discussion of climate change shows, there is some uncertainty in the air as to whether and on what grounds we should trust model results. Thus, from the point of view of scientific practice, computer models and simulations are particularly intriguing, being at the same time highly productive and contested.
http://www.sciencestudies.fi/v19n1
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