For a History of Human Rationality: An Interview with Lorraine Daston, 2024 Balzan Prize for History of Modern and Contemporary Science

In his interview with Prizewinner Lorraine Daston (2024 History of Science), Luca Sciortino explores the central questions of her work, illustrating her vision of the history of science while expanding and clarifying some of her research findings to shed light on problems that afflict humanity today.

On 21 November 2024, in Rome, the historian of science Lorraine Daston was awarded the Balzan Prize for History of Modern and Contemporary Science, one of the world’s most prestigious academic awards. Administered by the International Balzan Prize Foundation, this award honours the work of scholars with internationally outstanding achievements.
The General Prize Committee recognized Professor Daston «for the extent, originality and variety of her work, which has drawn on a wide range of scientific fields to highlight the mental representations and values underlying research activity».
Daston has mainly explored concepts – such as probability, evidence, rationality, objectivity and many others – which shape our practices of knowledge, structure our thought and constitute the conditions of the possibility of our experience. For Daston, these organizing concepts – as we may call them – come into being through specific historical and social processes, and change and get their meaning from the uses we make of them in a certain period of history.

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