News and Events

Symposium organised by Catherine Kendig at ISHPSSB 2025 Conference. 

How does dirt become soil? Categorizations of soil in the agricultural sciences.

Panel, at the 2025 ASFS AFHVS Conference

Epistemic and ethical functions of categorizing and tool use in the agricultural sciences

Catherine Kendig,“Normative categorization of traits in food and agricultural breeding and testing practices”

Paul B. Thompson, “Social ontologies of risk in farming and agricultural Science”

Özlem Yilmaz Silverman, “Categories of plant mineral nutrients and their role in plant nutrition experiments”

Talk at the 10th &HPS Conference, CalTech, CA

Why Soil Matters to Plants and Plants Matter to Soil: Examining Categorizations of Plant-Soil Relations in the Early Twentieth Century

Conceptualizing plant-soil relationships: 

an integrated history and philosophy of plant nutrition approach  

Soil is a complex ecosystem with a multitude of components—plants being a crucial one. Scientists from different disciplines including those in the soil, agricultural, and biological sciences study plant-soil relations in diverse ways, and their practices involve category-making activities. These disciplines have sometimes neglected each other’s work; other times, they have paid attention and aimed for more comprehensive understandings. In either case, these relationships affected their practices significantly. By investigating plant nutrition and soil chemistry research in the early twentieth century, I examine the interactions between these disciplines and the ways they approach their specific problems, which are (in one way or other) connected to plant-soil relations. I will reflect on how these diverse conceptualizations have given shape to the contemporary understandings of plants and soil.