Research in the history of modern acoustics

Abstract

In this article, Viktoria Tkaczyk, who leads the research team Epistemes of Modern Acoustics at the Max Plank Institute in Berlin, discusses the ongoing works, the research perspectives and the “sound” turn within history of sciences. She introduces her working team members and their research objects, which encompass a range of several works dealing with the situation of sound and music within the sciences since the Scientific Revolution. As she highlights the importance of some actors who tend to be omitted, she points out how another conception and history of sciences arose. She also shows how sound can be used, like Mach did for example, as a tool of knowledge in order to investigate fieldworks that might not be related to sound at first sight, or to build up laboratories, to produce new objects and so on. She draws a condensed survey of works, very little known in France yet, that combine History of Sciences, Sound Studies and Music Knowledge. Music and sound are addressed from the perspective of the history sciences, including measures and standardization; and simultaneously, the history of sciences is sort of considered through a “re-sonification”.