“What Science Knows will appeal to anyone who wants a sound, readable, and well-paced introduction to the intellectual edifice that is science. On the other hand it will not please the enemies of science, whose willful misunderstandings of scientific method and the relation of evidence to conclusions Franklin mercilessly exposes.”
Closing Date for Submissions/Registrations: November 1.
AAPNZ2009 will be held at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand from the evening of Monday, December 7 to Thursday, December 10. The Conference will end with the Conference Dinner, to be held on the evening of Thursday December 10.
Registrations and submissions in all areas of philosophy are invited. Please visit the following website for details: http://www.aap-conferences.org.au/.
For information about accommodation in and travel to Palmerston North, please see the Conference Venue section of the website.
If you have any other enquiries, please address them to the conference organiser, Bill Fish, at w.j.fish@massey.ac.nz
As part of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA) to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of the telescope History and Philosophy of Science at UNSW is holding "The Re-Trial of Galileo."
Cast includes:
Former Premier Bob Carr, Julian Burnside QC, Anna Katzmann SC, Professor Maurice Finocchiaro, Professor Fred Watson, Monsignor Tony Doherty, Dr. Paul Collins, Dr. Charley Lineweaver and ABC presenters including Robyn Williams, Alan Saunders and Geraldine Doogue.
http://hist-phil.arts.unsw.edu.au/galileo_trial/
This event is being filmed by the ABC Compass Program to be shown as an hour long special in early 2010.
Date: Monday 26th October 2009 6:30pm
Venue: Sir John Clancy Auditorium (Gate 9), The University of New South Wales, Kensington campus, Sydney, 2052
RSVP: www.trybooking.com/BPL by 15th October 2009.
Further information: Rebecca Straker (02) 9385 8512
http://hist-phil.arts.unsw.edu.au/galileo_trial
Interdisciplinary Conference, organised by the Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University, November 12-14, 2009 at Sparkle Helmore Lecture Theatre, Law School
The call-for-paper deadlines have been extended until September 30
1. Keynote Speakers
Peter Godfrey-Smith (Philosophy, Harvard)
Dalton Conley (Sociology, NYU)
Paul Seabright (Economics, IDEA, France)
Brian Boyd (English, Auckland)
2. The Origin Cycle
In addition, the conference will host the Australian premier of “The Origin Cycle”: a connected series of compositions written for and to passages of the Origin, and sung by Jane Sheldon. More details on this unique event will be provided in the next CFP/conference information notice.
3. Registration.
There is no fee for conference attendance. But space at the lecture theatre is limited, so those intending to attend should e-mail Professor Kim Sterelny (kimbo@coombs.anu.edu.au) to notify him of your interest. If lack of space is a problem, he will let you know.
4. Papers.
Themes for the Conference may include (but are not restricted to): evolution and complexity; evolutionary models of cultural change; the cultural importance of Darwinian ideas; the role of primate legacies in human social worlds. Contributed papers are invited: they should be of about 40 minutes duration, allowing about 20 minutes for questions/discussion. Those offering a paper should e-mail Sterelny ((kimbo@coombs.anu.edu.au)) with a brief abstract and a brief biographical note (a link to an academic website suffices) so he can group similar-themed papers together. Offers should reach him by September 30 (for preference); he will confirm acceptance early October.
5. Accommodation.
There is a reasonable amount of accommodation available on campus at University House and Liversidge. (There may be somewhat cheaper, but less upmarket accommodation available at the various student halls of residence). But this can be booked out quite early. So those intending to come are urged to book early (http://accom.anu.edu.au/UAS/186.html; http://www.anu.edu.au/unihouse/)
Publication
Selected papers will be published in a special issue of European Journal for the Philosophy of Science (subject to the usual refereeing process). The submission deadline is 1 July 2010. The maximal paper length is 7000 words.
Graduate Fellowships
A few travel bursaries for graduate students are available (up to 200 €). If you wish to be considered please submit a CV and a travel budget in addition to your extended abstract.
Hosted by the Monash University School of Philosophy & Bioethics, as part of its Philosophy in Australasia project.
Saturday, August 22, 11:30am-12:30pm, ACMI cinema 2
John Armstrong (University of Melbourne), “Searching for Civilisation”
What is civilisation, really? It can mean a lot of different things: technlology, art, medicine, education, cooking, economic or political progress; and sometimes it has been a fig leaf for imperialism. I want to get beneath the surface: What are the more personal issues at stake here? Why should civilisation matter to me? I trace the idea to its core: the hope of integrating material needs and ‘higher longings’ (beauty, love, wisdom). But is this hope realistic? This is a great issue of both private life and public culture.
Sunday, August 23, 5:30-6:30pm, ACMI cinema 1
Neil Levy (University of Melbourne, and Oxford Centre for Neuroethics), “Free Will and the Brain”
Articles in popular science frequently claim that scientists have shown that there is no such thing as free will. The findings upon which these claims are based are often interesting, as I will show, but they don’t threaten the existence of free will in any way. Nevertheless, I will argue that we can learn a great deal about human decision-making processes, and the ways in which they go awry, from the sciences of the mind. I will show how we can use cognitive science to understand the loss of self-control in pathological cases like addiction as well as in more ordinary cases.
Saturday, August 29, 2:30-3:30pm, ACMI cinema 1
Michelle Boulous Walker (University of Queensland), “Reading Essayistically: Toward an ethics of reading and an open-ended philosophy”
An exploration of what an open-ended philosophy might be from the perspective of how we read. If reading is a performance that can be judged in ethical terms, then reading essayistically (or in the mode of the essay) suggests a model of open-ended rumination that takes its time and returns – time and time again – to the matter at hand. Such a reading thwarts our modern preoccupation with speed and haste, and opens us to the wondrous space of a slow engagement that welcomes thought. Just as the essay engages its topic in ways that meander luxuriously through time and space, so too does reading essayistically open philosophy – or thought – to an indeterminate space from which the ethics of a “receptive attitude” or “patient attention to the other” may emerge. As such, philosophy can be enticed to relax its anxiety to know and to know fully (in the manner of the neurotic), and come that bit closer to being an infinite and wondrous engagement with life.
Sunday, August 30, 3:30-4:30pm, ACMI cinema 1
Russell Grigg (Deakin University), “In the Name of the Father: understanding monotheism and fundamentalism”
Why have the reports of the death of God turned out to be greatly exaggerated? Why has the appeal of religion proved so tenacious? I will discuss some of the deep psychological reasons for the continuing hold that religion, specially monotheism, has over the human mind. I would like to offer some ideas about the psychological forces behind two recent phenomena: the rise of fundamentalism and the emergence of new forms of spiritualism.
For more details about the Festival, and to make bookings, please go to www.mwf.com.au < http://www.mwf.com.au> .
PG released a nice HTML version today of Mendelism (1911) by the Cambridge biologist with the enshrined name, Reginald Crundall Punnett.A curious thing in the history of human thought so far as literature reveals it to us is the strange lack of interest shown in one of the most interesting of all human relationships. Few if any of the more primitive peoples seem to have attempted to define the part played by either parent in the formation of the offspring ...
Email me (Chris) if you need a copy of Chapters 1 and 2. An electronic version of the text is available on the Sydney Uni library site, though the interface strikes me as suitable for searching but designed to frustrate rather than facilitate actual reading.
Citation: J. Woodward. Making Things Happen: A Theory of Causal Explanation. Oxford University Press, New York, 2003
Adult moths can remember their "childhoods" as caterpillars, a new study has found. Recently scientists trained tobacco hornworm caterpillars in the lab to avoid a nail polish-like odor delivered in association with a mild shock. [...] As adults, they also avoided the nail-polish odor—showing that they had retained their larval memory.
Judging from their depiction in the vernacular literature, inventors in early modern London were about as well regarded as Wall Street executives are in the United States today. Seventeenth-century stage comedies, poems and pamphlets present, on the whole, a distinctly negative attitude—a cynical and derisive attitude—towards technological inventors. One character type in particular that embodied this negative stereotype: the projector (or projectress)—“one whose head is full of projects”. Following the literary trail of the projector brings the historian to a little-used vantage point from which to consider the place of invention and inventors in the culture of the period. Far from being the exclusive domain of savants, it seems anyone might try his or her hand at invention. Reports and claims about new inventions were commonplace—common enough, at least, to be the subject of parody. And inventors themselves were closely associated with the Crown, capital investment schemes, and, above all, the much maligned patent system. Overall, what we get is a clear picture of the challenges that would have been faced by anyone seeking to establish authority, expertise, or trustworthiness in the realm of technology-making. On a different level, this vantage point is in direct contrast to that which one obtains by following the trail left by the influential work of Francis Bacon and Samuel Hartlib. Opposing they may be, the two perspectives were undoubtedly in dialogue. I would argue that these widespread negative portrayals of invention are key to explaining why Baconian rhetoric gained the force that it did among the elite of mid-seventeenth-century London.
In September the weather usually breaks suddenly, and there falls generally very considerable rains. When the weather breaks many fall sick, this being the time of an endemical sickness, for seasonings, cachexes, fluxes, scorbutical dropsies, gripes, or the like which I have attributed to this reason. That by the extraordinary heat, the ferment of the blood being raised too high, and the tone of the stomach relaxed, when the weather breaks the blood palls, and like overfermented liquors is depauperated, or turns eager and sharp, and there's a crude digestion, whence the name distempers may be supposed to ensue.Among the most deadly and universal diseases is Seasoning, which appears seasonally in July and August and affects nearly all new arrivals from Europe.
There is an extraordinary article by the sociologist of science Harry Collins in Nature last week.
Collins argues that social scientists and humanists have undermined public confidence in science to such an extent that we now have some serious social and political problems as a result of this. He presents himself as the sensible middle way between science worship and science scepticism. Frankly, this is a bit like Martin Luther offering to 'mediate' in the thirty years war.
The elephant in the room here is traditional, mainstream history and philosophy of science, so Collins has to pretend that for the past thirty years the only people in humanities and social science writing about science have been people like himself. He does this by describing traditional HPS as a ‘first wave of science studies’ which was superceded by people like him in the 1970s. This 'earlier' approach was a product of post-Second World War confidence in science, and culminated with Karl Popper (he suggests it was his work that really sank Popper!)
The villains of Collins' article are 'postmodernists' whose relativism has sapped public confidence in science. He claims that he was simply misinterpreted by these people to support their case.
In a breathtakingly self-serving twist Collins gives as an example of 'postmodernism' "a philosopher acting as an expert witness in a court case in the United States [who] claimed that the scientific method, being so ill-defined, could support creationism". The person in question is, of course, Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, who has since written a book defending his position at the trial. Fuller has degrees in History and Sociology and in History and Philosophy of Science. For twenty-one of the past twenty-four years he has held appointments in Sociology or Science and Technology Studies. Philosophers of science were actively involved in the trial as witnesses and advisors, but all on the other side.You have to give it to Collins for chutzpah, but it would be a travesty if he were to succeed in getting this fantasy accepted by scientists.
The lecture that Michael gave in the Sydney Ideas series is now available on the ABCs internet TV channel Fora: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/
The Social Function of Self-Representation: From Adam Smith to Cognitive Neuroscience
Dominic Murphy
Unit for History & Philosophy of Science, University of
The HPS Research Seminars will take place, as always, on Mondays at 6, in Carslaw 450 (the Faculty of Science meeting room).
