In the mid-nineteenth century, scholars and scientists created the most ambitious, expensive, and labor-intensive projects ever designed: they invented Big Science and Big Humanities and the model of project-driven research still dominant today. Yet these projects were not designed to make discoveries in the present but to lay down archives for future discoveries, much like large-scale digital projects in the sciences and humanities today.

Prof. Lorraine Daston delivered this lecture on Monday, March 6, 2017, as part of the University of Warwick's Distinguished Lecture Series.

Abstract and audio.