Date/Time
Thursday
19 Sep 2013
4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Location
470 Stephens Hall

Event Type
Colloquium

Steven Shapin
Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

Taste is private and subjective. There is no way of knowing with certainty that what you taste is what I taste. But taste is also public and inter-subjective; we do have ways of talking about it with each other, and taste-talk varies in different historical periods and in different social and cultural settings. In this talk I will address these historically and sociologically varying ways of talking about the taste of wine. This includes the role of modern science in shaping talk about wine taste, and the role of modern market concerns in thinking about why we talk about taste as we now do.