News for August 2010

History, Cognition, and Visualisation in Science: The David Gooding Memorial Meeting

• Event Location: Bath, UK
• Sponsor(s)/Host Institution(s): University of Bath
• Event Contact E-mail Address: tweney@bgsu.edu, FJames@ri.ac.uk
• Event Web Site: http://www.clarity-support.co.uk/DCGMM.htm
• Event Start Date: 09/22/2010
• Event End Date: 09/23/2010
• Registration Deadline: 09/13/2010

A conference in memory of David C. Gooding's contribution to the understanding of science will be held. In recognition of his many contributions, papers will be given by speakers who knew David and by those whose work reflects his spirit of creative inquiry into the nature and practices of science.

David Gooding (1947-2009) received his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from Oxford University. But his many contributions transcend any easy disciplinary boundaries. His papers and books in the history of science, philosophy of science, cognitive science, and the social studies of science brought new awareness of the nature and sources of Michael Faraday's work, and, more generally, of the role of experimentation and visualization in theory development in science. His methodological approaches pioneered and extended the use of diagrammatic representations of scientific thinking, the computer simulation of scientific thinking, and revivified historical, historical-cognitive, and philosophical approaches.

We believe a conference that celebrates and extends knowledge of scientific thinking is the best memorial for this outstanding scholar and thinker. Please join us.

For further details, contact the conference organizers, Frank A.J.L. James (FJames@ri.ac.uk) and Ryan D. Tweney (tweney@bgsu.edu), or visit the website

The Authority of Science: 4th Sydney-Tilburg Conference on the Philosophy of Science

The Authority of Science
University of Sydney, Australia
8-10 April 2011
Conference Website

Abstracts due: 15th October 2010

4th Sydney-Tilburg conference on the philosophy of science

Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, The Netherlands
Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science, University of Sydney, Australia

From climate change to the classification of illegal drugs the extent to which scientific opinion should prevail over other voices in determining public policy is hotly contested. What is it about the nature of science that confers epistemic authority on scientific opinion, and what are the scope and limits of that authority?

The aim of this conference is to direct the attention of philosophers of science and epistemologists back to this question, and to remind ourselves that the founders of philosophy of science saw this as a fundamental question for scientific epistemology. We believe that recent developments in philosophy of science offer new resources to address the question in ways that have direct relevance to the practice of contemporary science and its application in public policy.

Keynote Speakers:

• Sir Peter Gluckman FRS (Head, Centre for Human Evolution, Adaptation and Disease, Liggins Institute, University of Auckland and New Zealand Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor)
• Christian List (Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, London School of Economics)
• Theodore L. Brown (Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Suitable subjects for submitted papers would include:

• History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS) perspectives
• Epistemology of complex systems modelling
• Epistemology of highly mediated observation
• Philosophical foundations of statistics and decision theory
• Epistemology of translational research
• Integrating philosophy of science into scientific practice
• Philosophy of science in science education

Situating Science News and Call for Workshop Proposals

"Situating Science: SSHRC Knowledge Cluster for the Humanistic and Social Study of Science"

Contents:

• News
• Lecture Series announcement
• Call for Workshop Proposals

News

Our 7-year project to create a network of activities and partnerships around the social study of science has been progressing well. We're just finish off our third year of activities, and we can boast a number of very successful workshops, conferences, lecture series, summer school, plus a revamped website with database! http://www.situsci.ca

The summer has been busy with a great lineup of workshops from last year, "Scientific Models and Simulations" Workshop (May, University of Toronto) and "The Role of Thought Experiments in Empirical Investigations" (June, Dalhousie University).

We also had stellar lineups for an "Objectivity" conference in Vancouver and an exciting international "Circulating Knowledge, East and West" conference in Halifax. We look forward to "Making Knowledge: Science, Art, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe" Workshop at McGill University in September. Among other things, the Centre is also supporting the annual Canada Science and Technology Museum summer institute, Rob Wilson’s Atlantic Region Philosophers Association visit for their annual meeting in October, many local "Node" events, another national lecture series (below) and another lineup of workshops (below).

Lecture Series Announcement

ointly with the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs (CCEPA), "Situating Science" is organising a national public lecture series: "Science and its Publics", with lectures on the public space of science in politics, media and civil society.

The series will be opened here in Halifax in early October. We will be teamed with the new national "Canadian Science and Media Centre" to help launch the local Atlantic chapter: http://www.sciencemediacentre.ca/smc/. For the event we will be holding a panel discussion on science and journalism, moderated by Jay Ingram of the Discovery Channel (confirmed) with local representatives of science and media.

Teamed with the Making Publics project (MaPs: http://makingpublics.mcgill.ca/) the series will continue during the November HSS/PSA annual meeting in Montreal, setting the stage for exploring the context of "publics".

The series plans to travel to Toronto, Ottawa-Halifax, Vancouver and Edmonton-Calgary, touching on the role of consensus, bridging the lay-expert divide, the role of museums and public translation of medical knowledge. Stay tuned!

Call for Workshop Proposals

Situating Science is pleased to announce the 2010-2011 call for Workshop Proposals (on our website and below).

Deadline: Oct. 1, 2010

Please disseminate to departmental and associated listservs and websites. We appreciate your support. More information about Situating Science is available on our new website: http://www.situsci.ca.

Situating Science: Cluster in the Humanist and Social Studies of Science

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS:

Situating Science is a SSHRC-funded Strategic Knowledge Cluster, mandated to build networks among scholars, Canadian and international, in the various disciplines engaged in the humanistic and social study of science and technology, and to engage the work of these scholars with the wider Canadian public.

Situating Science is soliciting workshop proposals for the 2010 - 2011 academic year. Up to two workshops will be funded (up to $10,000 each). Workshop topics should fall under one of the four themes of the Cluster:

• Science and its Publics
• Historical Epistemology and Ontology (including philosophy of science)
• Material Culture and Scientific/Technological Practices
• Geography and Sites of Knowing

Detailed information on the themes can be found at http://www.situsci.ca. The themes are intended to be broad and flexible. If in doubt as to whether your proposed topic fits within one of the themes, contact your local SituSci organisers or the SituSci central office (contact info below).

In accordance with SituSci’s mandate, organisers are encouraged to seek inter-disciplinary participation (from within and/or outside the academy), and, where feasible, include a public component to their event. We also entertain proposals that include plans for an associated pedagogical component (e.g., 2-3 day "school").

The Cluster will provide financial and organisational support, with the expectation that organisers will leverage additional funding from partnering institutions.

The Proposal should be no more than three pages, including:

• Workshop title
• Cluster theme under which workshop falls
• Short description of workshop
• Possible participants
• Preliminary budget
• Potential sources of outside funding
• Possible inter-disciplinary partnerships (e.g., museums, journalists, etc.)
• Preliminary plans for involvement of students
• Possible date

Proposals and queries are to be sent to the local SituSci organiser:

• West Coast: Alan Richardson, UBC: alanr@interchange.ubc.ca
• Alberta: Robert Smith, U. Alberta: robert.smith@ualberta.ca
• Saskatchewan: Larry Stewart, U. Saskatchewan: l.stewart@usask.ca
• Ontario: Bernie Lightman, York U.: lightman@yorku.ca
• Quebec: Yves Gingras, UQAM: gingras.yves@uqam.ca
• Quebec: Nicholas Dew, McGill: nicholas.dew@mcgill.ca
• Atlantic: Melanie Frappier University of King’s College: melanie.frappier@ukings.ns.ca
• Atlantic: Letitia Meynell, Dalhousie University: letitia.meynell@dal.ca

Or to the SituSci central office at: situsci@dal.ca (902 422-1271 x 200)

The deadline for submissions is Friday, October 1, 2010.

Metaphysics & the Philosophy of Science Conference

Presented by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto and the Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine, University of Chicago

13-15 May 2011, University of Toronto

This conference will examine ground-level debates about metaphysics within the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology as well as broader methodological questions about the role of metaphysics in the philosophy of science. Participation is open and welcome from all parties to these questions: from those who hold that metaphysics must have a place within the philosophy of science, to those who hold it should not.

Plenary Speakers

• Craig Callender (University of California, San Diego)
• Anjan Chakravartty (University of Toronto)
• Katherine Hawley (University of St. Andrews)
• Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
• James Ladyman (University of Bristol)
• Kyle Stanford (University of California, Irvine)
• Michael Strevens (New York University)
• Robert Wilson (University of Alberta)
• C. Kenneth Waters (University of Minnesota)

For more information and a Call for Papers: see http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/mhs016/MPSC2011/
For general conference inquiries: mpsc2011@gmail.com

PSA2010 Preliminary Program

The preliminary program for PSA2010 is now available here. I hope you'll agree that the PSA2010 Program Committee, chaired by Steve Downes, has assembled a first-rate program of excellent papers and symposia. Note that this is a preliminary program; corrections and questions should be sent to Steve Downes at s.downes@utah.edu.

Gary Hardcastle

David Hull (1935-2010)

I first met David Hull in the fall of 1968, at the first meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, being held in Pittsburgh. He was one of a very few people, including Ken Schaffner, Marjorie Green, and (although still a graduate student) Bill Wimsatt, who were breaking away from the hegemony (I've always wanted to use that word!) of the physical sciences and turning to the biological sciences as sources of great philosophical interest. I was five years younger than he, far behind him in accomplishments (he had already published several major papers), and very nervously about to give my first presentation at a professional meeting. No one could have been kinder or more supportive than he, and we started a friendship that was never marred by an unkind word, a friendship that ended yesterday with David's death at the age of 75 from pancreatic cancer.

David Hull was a graduate of the program in History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, and when I first met him was a junior member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He stayed there for twenty years, moving then to Northwestern University, from which he retired ten years ago. David was deeply influenced by two of his teachers at IU, Norwood Russell Hanson and Michael Scriven. Not only did they instill in him a lifelong belief that philosophy of science must be complemented by the history of science -- his first book-length publication, Darwin and His Critics (1973), was an edited volume of scientific responses to Darwin's Origin of Species -- but also they made him somewhat wary of the then- dominant, logical empiricist philosophy (as exemplified by the writings of Ernest Nagel and Carl Hempel).

It would perhaps be too strong to say that David was an anti-reductionist and a holist -- he always had too much down-to-earth common sense to embrace a philosophy that at times veers towards the neo-vitalistic -- but would not be entirely inaccurate to say that there was a flavor of these positions about his work. With respect to reduction, his second book, the very influential The Philosophy of Biology (1974), took a strong stand against the belief that Mendelian genetics is simply something that pops out deductively from molecular genetics. David saw the relationship as far more complex and messy than this, and thought that this was but the tip of an iceberg on which the whole logical empiricist Titanic was doomed to crash. He never had much sympathy for those of us who, like Procrustes cutting off his victim's feet to fit the bed, would push and mold and lop and trim our science to fit our preconceived philosophical notions.

(If you hear echoes of a junior Michael Ruse being suitably chastised by an older friend, you hear correctly. We never ever quarreled but rarely if ever agreed philosophically. I am reminded of Charles Darwin's comment about his close friendship with his fellow magistrate and constant dining companion, Brodie Innes, the vicar of Downe. Darwin said that on one memorable occasion they found themselves in agreement and spent the rest of the meal in astonished silence, convinced that the other was very ill!)

With respect to holism, David's inclination this way came through most strongly with his strong support for zoologist Michael Ghiselin's thesis that species are not classes but biological individuals in their own right. David defended this position with much vigor, bringing both historical and philosophical arguments to bear on the topic. But this was more than something of technical interest to him. David was gay, and proudly so. For him, the species-as-individuals thesis was intensely personal. If you categorize species in terms of groups of reproductively connected organisms (the so-called "biological species" definition), then you are not only turning your back on their past (which as a Darwinian David thought inappropriate) but you are making the condition or criterion of species membership something to do with interbreeding. As a gay man, David was not interesting in interbreeding actually or potentially -- and said so, strongly, many times. (It was a theme behind his presidential address to the Philosophy of Science Association.) Species as individuals pays attention both to history and to the inherent worth of every part of the group, whatever their breeding habits or inclinations may be.

David Hull was a fully paid up member of what one might call the "Chicago School" of evolutionary epistemologists -- other members being historian Robert J. Richards, philosophers Bill Wimsatt and Stephen Toulmin, and social psychologist Donald Campbell. This is the position that sees scientific-theory change as being analogous (perhaps even at one with) biological change -- you have new ideas (mutations), competition between them (struggle), and then one being chosen (selection), and so change occurs (evolution). David used this philosophy as the ground for his major work on the debates about systematics. Science as a Process (1988) was based not only on a deep understanding of the relevant science but also on detailed interviews that he had had with leading controversialists. What was particularly interesting was the way in which David introduced sociological ideas about the influence of older scientists on younger scientists and about how this was a reciprocal relationship, with the younger scientists needing support and the older scientists needing people to carry on their thinking. In a cultural sense we are all selfish genes, doing what we do in order to maximize our representation in the next generations.

David may or may not have been right about all of this. What I can say is that absolutely none of it applied to him. He worked non-stop for the good of the profession, sitting on one boring committee after another. He read one piece of work after another, always sending back detailed comments no matter how awful the piece may have been. He ran a series on the conceptual foundations of science for Chicago University Press, a series that produced a dazzling number of really important books. He encouraged and criticized and promoted the work of others without cease. Entirely typically, for example, when he and I edited the Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, he insisted that we not be contributors but that we make the space for a couple of younger philosophers. And he did it all entirely out of Humean sentiment, because he loved other people.

With the coming of HIV, the 1980s was a very stressful time for the gay community. Many of David's friends fell sick and died. These included his lover Dick Wellman. David cared for many of the sufferers and then, as the epidemic died down somewhat, rebuilt his life and carried on, still helping and sponsoring younger people both in the profession and in the gay world of Chicago. There was no reason to feel sorry for him but I sensed that old age started to come rather more quickly than he or his friends had anticipated. He was happy to retire at 65 (in 2000) and although he kept up some writing, it was never again done with the intensity of youth. One happy consequence was that now he was more willing to take vacations for their own sake and he and I enjoyed several together, to France, to Mexico, to Britain. On some of the trips, I took along my then-teenage daughter Emily and they were firm friends.

David Hull was short. I doubt he stood five foot three in his stocking feet. He was the biggest man I ever knew.

Shortly after the Beagle voyage, Charles Darwin dashed up to Scotland to look at the celebrated "roads" of Glen Roy, a valley just off the Great Glen on the west of Scotland. Everyone knew that these roads were the remains of beaches formed by a large body of water. The question was whether this was a lake or the sea, and in either case where is it now? Darwin was convinced that it was the sea and that it is gone because the land has risen. This would support Charles Lyell's "grand theory of climate," which saw the surface of the globe rather like a giant waterbed, with one area sinking and another area rising in unison. Darwin wrote a paper to this effect with all sorts of ad hoc hypotheses showing why we do not find the expected evidences of marine animals. A year or two later, the then-Swiss (later American) ichthyologist Louis Agassiz came up to Glen Roy and at once showed that there had been a glacier, now melted, that held in a lake. Darwin was absolutely and completely wrong (as he later somewhat reluctantly admitted).

This photo is of the two of us, David Hull on the left and Michael Ruse on the right, taken in 2005 at the mouth of Glen Roy in Scotland. We had driven up to look at the Glen, in pouring rain, along a very narrow and winding road. Suddenly it all opened out and we could look down the valley. There indeed were the roads, incredibly impressive even in the bad weather. (You can just see them to the left in the photo.) It was a great thrill but we did not linger!

Michael Ruse

Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy
Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science
Diffenbaugh 001c
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-1500

Integrated History and Philosophy of Science (&HPS3)

Indiana University Bloomington

This September 23-26, the Indiana University Department of History and Philosophy of Science will host a three day conference on "Integrated History and Philosophy of Science." This is the third in a series of meetings devoted to the topic, and it coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the Indiana HPS Department. The paper topics range from a discussion of seventeenth-century comet theory to history and philosophy of contemporary embryology. For complete information on the conference, including the program, abstracts of papers, and details on lodging, go to http://www.indiana.edu/~andhps/.

Please note that the block of hotel rooms reserved for the conference will be released in mid-August. If you are planning to attend, we urge you to make your booking as soon as possible.

Questions can be directed to:

• Jutta Schickore jschicko@indiana.edu
• Amit Hagar hagara@indiana.edu
• Bill Newman wnewman@indiana.edu