Online Teilnahme:

https://zoom.us/j/95603412698?pwd=lWi9j5gEC1WV5VKIx8RbQOYKsaCJIQ.1

Meeting-ID: 956 0341 2698
Kenncode: 135860

Aaron Gluck-Thaler
Classification as Explanation: The History of Pattern Recognition in Three Parts 

Abstract
Patterns are a ubiquitous scientific object. Scientists across disciplines routinely recognize patterns in a wide range of social and physical phenomenon, from patterns in culture to speech, images, signals, and largescale datasets. This talk situates patterns and their recognition historically, focusing on three critical inflection points. In the early twentieth century, anthropologists working in the United States began conceiving of social life as organized in patterns. Following World War II, cyberneticists researched how patterns could be broken down into formalized rules. In the 1960s, a scientific field devoted to pattern recognition emerged. Its research soon became foundational to the fields of machine learning, machine vision, and artificial intelligence. Departing from the notion that pattern recognition is an inevitable or intrinsic facet of science, the talk foregrounds the contingency of pattern recognition as a technique for producing knowledge about the world.

CV
Aaron Gluck-Thaler is a PhD Candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and the 2024-2025 Tomash Fellow in the History of Information Technology at the Charles Babbage Institute. His research examines the history of surveillance and its relationship to scientific practice. Aaron’s research has been published in Technology and Culture and Surveillance & Society, among other venues. From 2022-2024, Aaron led the development of Surveillance: From Vision to Data, an exhibit on the history of surveillance held at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
Aaron holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, a MSc in the Social Science of the Internet from the Oxford Internet Institute, and a MSc in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Aaron’s research has been supported by the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the American Philosophical Society.