International Conference 'Academic Revolutions?' Understanding Conceptual Renewal and Institutional Innovation in the Modern World

On October 12-13 "'Academic Revolutions?' Understanding conceptual renewal and institutional innovation in the Modern World" conference was held in IGITI. The goal of the conference was to discuss issues in such fields as the history of natural and social sciences and humanities as well as contemporary sociology of knowledge and sociology of ideas in their application to changes in scientific outlook and academic practices since the early modern period, including the Big Science and the trends of the twenty-first century.

The conference continued a series of international workshops and conferences organized by the Center for the history of ideas and sociology of knowledge (IGITI, NRU HSE) in recent years (Intellectual history vis-à-vis sociology of knowledge: between models and cases, 2014; Social and human sciences on both sides of the ‘iron curtain’, 2013, among others). Similarly to previous meetings, it brought together leading scholars from around the world dealing with the history of social sciences and humanities.

The centennial of the 1917 Russian Revolution was a good occasion to discuss the social and cultural dimensions of changes in natural and human sciences and to study the links between political contexts and epistemological frameworks of knowledge production. Among other things, the following issues were discussed: How revolutionary were / can be / should be the ideas of academic revolution? Do social and political changes function as decisive tests that lead to scholarly controversies being ‘closed’? Can revolutions be fruitfully studied as experimental phases and modes of academic development? What conceptual language can we use to discuss the negative aspects (‘failures’, ‘mirages’, ‘dead-ends’ etc.) of revolutionary development, on the one hand, and the positive / objective role of ‘counter-revolutionary’ actors, groups and factors?

See the conference programme.