ESPCI web site
The historical study of recent times presents two specificities in addition to those of the digital media : (1) a lack of historical distance with in counterpart a temporal intimacy ; and (2) a close interaction between past and present that may lead to confusions between sociology and sociological legitimation, between science policy and lobbies, or between history and memory. Besides, several characteristic trends of recent sciences challenge the building of their memory : overspecialization of scientific practices, for example in the case of nanosciences ; reciprocally the emergence of transversal and generic objects which cannot be reduced to disciplinary knowledge they are linked to, like integrative simulations, stem cells, model-animals, bio-chips, molecular machines, carbon allotropes, and so on ; the short-term perspective which decreases the duration and blurs the discourse of collective memory ; the prospective, if not utopian, orientation of the discourses of promotion and vulgarization of sciences, which makes difficult the inscription of these new research fields within traditional framework.
Tools for Memory and Sources for History
