The INHIGEO Annual Conference for 2025 was scheduled as follows:
2025 – 50th INHIGEO Symposium, New Zealand, Dunedin in association with the 27th International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST). The Congress was held as a hybrid event, in person and online: delegates registered for virtual participation were able to both present and participate online.
INHIGEO organized three thematic sessions or symposia.
SYMPOSIUM 33 – INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEFS ABOUT THE EARTH: AN OPEN HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUE
Symposia leads: Martina Kölbl-Ebert, Ezio Vaccari.
Geological materials and geological phenomena are part of human resources and environment in all cultures and from the earliest times of human existence to the present. Use of materials, observation of landscape and encounters with various geological hazards has shaped human experience, knowledge, mythology and spirituality everywhere, before, outside and beyond a contemporary and ideally but often not truly trans-cultural scientific worldview. A compared history of the knowledge and the interpretations of natural phenomena related to the Earth’s surface within cultures in different historical ages and in several parts of the world (in particular Asia, Oceania, America, Africa) is still very little developed in the historiography of sciences.
While the extent of mythological ‘proto-geological’ views or ideas in the Ancient and Classical world in Europe and the ‘Near East’ has been recently studied to some extent, as in the case of seismic and volcanic phenomena, the perception of ‘geological’ phenomena within indigenous communities outside this limited region is still wanting extended investigations, in order to address a long-standing desideratum within the historiography of the geological sciences. Sources include the use of archaeological tools, objects of material culture, as well as oral history.
SYMPOSIUM 34 – THE GEOLOGICAL NOTEBOOK: REFLECTIONS IN THE FIELD
Symposia leads: Kathleen Histon, Carol Bacon
The aim of this symposium is to focus on an aspect of the history of formulation of ideas and development of theories within the geological sciences, that of looking for traces of their elaboration within the geological field observations in notebooks of naturalists/geologists. Apart from observations and sketches of features seen and places visited, such evidence may often be denoted just by a question mark next to the notes or a scribble on a sketch.The focus of this symposium was on one aspect of the history of idea formulation and theory development in the geological sciences: the search for traces of their development in geological field observations and in the notebooks of naturalists/geologists. In addition to observations and sketches of observed features and visited locations, such evidence can often be indicated simply by a question mark next to the notes or a scribble on a sketch.
The notebook is often where the person elaborates ideas, interpretations and theories centred around what they have observed and exchanges with locals or other travellers. Sometimes notes may be flanked by reference to specific correspondents and questions to pose and circulate in future correspondence. They may refer to literature read associated to the local geology/studies and to other areas with which to compare what has been seen.
Thematic presentations ranging from the 18th to 20th century touched upon and opened discussion by the panel of the following topics:
• How do the published theories/observations compare/differ from the reflections in the field?
• Is there a change over time from geological notes within travel diaries and journals of naturalists to the more specific notebook reserved for geological observations during individual field surveys and institutional mapping campaigns, i. e. national geological surveys?
• What role do drawings, cross-sections, sketches, etc. (drawn directly in the field or also later during the fieldtrip / travel play in the development and the definition of a visual language of geology?
SYMPOSIUM 50 – GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND EMPIRES: CONNECTIONS FORGING THE PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
Symposia lead: Thomás Haddad, Silvia Figueiroa, Marianne Klemun.
This symposium, jointly organized by the Science and Empire Commission and the International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences (INHIGEO), aimed to analyze and discuss the multiple connections between colonial empires and geosciences, in order to advance our understanding of this interplay. The surveying and exploitation of natural resources in colonial spaces has been one of the defining features of imperialism since the overseas expansion of the modern period. We see imperialism as more than a set of political, economic, and military phenomena. It was a complex ideology that found widespread intellectual, cultural, and technical expression in the era of European world domination. Imperial power, whether formal or informal, and research in the natural sciences were closely interdependent, especially in the nineteenth century. In this context, the resources of the “mineral kingdom”, whether minerals, rocks, soil, water, or fossil fuels, were the object of extreme attention and intense extraction, mobilizing people and knowledge, native and Western, scientific and technological, which promoted the expansion of colonial projects. The deep interdependence between sciences, technologies, cultures, (geo)politics, economics, and institutional arrangements, to name but a few aspects, becomes explicit in an almost didactic way when we take geosciences as an object. How were places, beliefs, and experts connected through different modes of knowledge production (maps, congresses, etc.), and how did the knowledge produced circulate between them and between different empires? The contributions gathered here covered a wide geographical range, both on the continent and at sea, and involved different colonial powers, aiming to offer insightful, fresh perspectives and narratives on the subject.
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