Toward an integrated socio-epistemic narrative of the history of 20th century physics

One of the most recurring questions in the historiography of modern physics is how to address the dichotomy of universalism and contextualism in the exact sciences: while, on the one hand, exact sciences aspire to universality by virtue of their rigorous formal and experimental methods, on the other hand, like any human activity, they depend on situated historical and political contexts. How to tackle this question, both from the conceptual and methodological standpoints, has tremendous impacts on the narrative historians are able to reconstruct. 
In the talk, I will present two of my current projects in order to show the advantage of developing historical narratives that fully integrate the social and epistemic aspects of science. The first is the momentous return of Einstein’s theory of gravitation to the mainstream of physics in the post-WWII period, which has become known as the “renaissance of general relativity.” The second is the evolution of the refereeing practices employed by The Physical Review in a period of tremendous social transformations of the American physics community during the 1930s. 
I will conclude the presentation by discussing future research plans. It is proposed a new methodological approach based on the development and employment of concepts and tools of multi-level network analysis as powerful ways for modeling the historical dynamics of interconnected networks of very different nature (social, material, conceptual). This approach—combined with other digital humanities tools and traditional methods of the historian’s toolkit—will be applied to examine the history of international, nongovernmental scientific institutions, such as the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics and the European Physical Society, with a twofold goal: to understand how political and scientific factors shaped the activities of these institutions and, in turn, to elucidate the role such institutions played in the evolution of 20^thcentury physics. 

Roberto Lalli is a historian of modern physical sciences whose work focuses on the interconnections between social and epistemic factors in the production and circulation of novel products in theoretical physics as well as in the international standardization of scientific practices during the 20^thcentury. After having received a master degree in physics (2007), Roberto Lalli earned a PhD in International History at the University of Milan in 20011 with a dissertation on the controversial reception of relativity theories in France and the US. From 2011 to 2013, he has been a postdoctoral fellow at the STS Program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of David Kaiser. Since 2013 he is Research Scholar at the Department I of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has been a visiting researcher and lecturer in various international institutions, including the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, the Research Program on the History of the Max Planck Society, and the Technical University of Berlin. Roberto Lalli has published extensively on the history of relativity theories, on the inter-national and inter-institutional transfer of quantum theory, and on the evolution of editorial practices in physics publishing. Currently, he is elaborating new methodologies based on the concepts and tools of the network theory in order to jointly analyze the evolution of knowledge in physics, the creation of transnational scientific communities and the developments of scientific institutions.