- Campuses :
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3:30 - 5:30 pm Friday January 23rd, 2009
131 Tate Lab of Physics, University of Minnesota
Douglas Allchin, Program in History of Science, Technology, and Medicine & Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science
Abstract Boyle's law is the epitome of science in the classroom. Yet using recent philosophical perspectives on scientific laws, one can see that Boyle's law is not universal or invariant, as implied by the term 'law'. Indeed, Boyle's law—and other scientific "laws"—are not lawlike at all. In addition, from a cultural studies perspective, we might also examine why we teach laws in science and what it means to name them after someone. Science studies thus seems critically poised to inform science education. Indeed, properly understood, it might well lead us to revolutionize what and how we teach.
Naomi Scheman, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies & Philosophy, University of Minnesota
Abstract Why does objectivity matter? I argue that its importance stems from epistemic dependency: we are irremediably dependent on others, including institutionally accredited experts, notably scientists, for much of what we need to know. Objectivity is supposed to allow scientists to serve as generic knowers, in part by bracketing the influence of social location. But traditional accounts of objectivity leave unexamined factors crucial to the actual trustworthiness of scientific claims: (1) broader questions of the trustworthiness of the institutions within which science is done; and (2) the relevance of diverse social locations for understanding how the world works.
Alan Gross
Department of Communications Studies, University of Minnesota
Abstract My current work focuses on the interaction of words and images in the creation of meaning in the sciences. Since the majority of scientific texts—from laboratory notebooks to published papers—consist of both words and images, an examination of their interaction seems a worthwhile means of illuminating scientific meaning. I approach the problem from the point of view Peirce's semiotics viewed within the framework of a general theory of cognitive processing, Allan Paivio's Dual Coding Theory. I ground my work in the philosophy of science of Martin Heidegger, a philosophy that, unlike analytical philosophy, does not privilege the proposition; rather, it places 'seeing as' at the center of the scientific enterprise.
"Thinking Through Science: Philosophical Perspectives on Biology, Geography and History"
Spring Science Studies Symposium of McKnight Summer Fellows, University of Minnesota
Alan C. Love, Department of Philosophy
Abstract Although reduction clearly concerns spatial dimensions, such as relations between macroscale and microscale properties, at least three relevant temporal dimensions can be distinguished: historical, iterated compositional, and emergent process. The first two are prevalent in prior philosophical discussions but the third is surprisingly absent given its centrality in experimental biology. This neglected dimension is shown to be more appropriate for the representation of time in reductive explanations of development. My analysis uncovers an array of previously unrecognized questions about reductionism that revolve around potentially competing explanatory preferences and the diversity of temporal measures available to investigators.
Arun Saldanha, Department of Geography
Abstract There has been a comeback in understanding human migration through biogeography, as can be seen in popular authors like Jared Diamond. This paper will tentatively suggest some ways that the concept of population in Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky can aid in studying shifts in the patterns of settlement and long-distance control in our species. For instance, there was a rapid change in the ways that populations around the Indian Ocean world related with Holland around the turn of the seventeenth century. Historians usually attribute this shift to the Dutch accumulation of cartographic and economic information about the region. They find a environmentalist framework such as Diamond's overly reductionist, incapable of explaining forces such as monopoly capitalism or religious zeal. This paper will argue that to properly understand the spatial functioning of colonialism, an adapted biogeographical notion of "population" can still be useful. For humans, however, empirical due needs to be given to factors such as money and maps, as such communication channels are necessary for spurring movement and social organization. Causality does not go one-way from the biophysical to the cultural as in Diamond, but only emerges through and within uneven webs in which culture and biology are already entwined.
J. B. Shank, Department of History
Abstract What are the new trends in Galileo studies? None, I would suggest, because work on Galileo remains trapped, as it has been for three quarters of a century, in the modernist narratives of the "Scientific Revolution." These narratives also continue to anchor the modernizing project of mainstream history and philosophy of science (HPS), for ever since the founding fathers of the discipline institutionalized Galileo as the father of modern science by making him a central pillar in the discipline-defining edifice of the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution (modernity through the passage From Galileo to Newton in Hall's classic formulation), writing about Galileo has essentially worked to reproduce the discipline of HPS through a continual reenactment of these founding stories of origin. Is it possible to liberate Galileo studies from the echo chamber of this discipline-bound conceptual framework? My paper explores these possibilities by asking whether there are alternatives to the "Galileo, First Modern Scientist" framework, and by exploring the implications of breaking free from this discipline-defining and modernity-enacting hermeneutic.
C. Kenneth Waters, Department of Philosophy
Abstract Inflated accounts of knowledge in genetics and genomics are reinforced by the epistemological idea that successful research is organized by comprehensive theoretical frameworks that identify fundamental entities and processes. According to this epistemology, the success (or failure) of genetics and genomics depends on a comprehensive, theoretical framework that identifies the fundamentals of heredity and development. In this paper, I advance a deflationary epistemology for understanding genetics and genomics. Research in these sciences, I contend, is organized around investigative strategies involving the manipulation of a broad range of biological processes; it is not structured by comprehensive theorizing about the fundamentals of information, genetic programs, or developmental systems.
3:30 - 6:00 pm Friday May 9th, 2008
131 Tate Lab of Physics, University of Minnesota
The research presented at this symposium was funded by the McKnight Summer Fellowship program
Time and Relativity Symposium
October 25–27, 2007
Co-sponsored by: Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, Department of Philosophy, Program in History of Science and Technology, University of Minnesota.
