Schedule:
1pm Thursday 29th Jan 2009
Chiara Ambrosio -
From Similarity to Homomorphism: Towards a Philosophical History of Representation in Art and Science - 1880-1914.
Slides [.pdf, 1.2mb]
Audio [.mp3, 13.7mb]
The years 1880-1914 were a time of intense experimentation in the visual arts. Artists deliberately departed from a concept of resemblance at the basis of representation and proposed visual resolutions that verged on the conceptual. My research explores the interplay between artistic and scientific representations at the turn of the 20th century. I argue that science and technology acted as substantial challenges to the concept of resemblance in art and that the rhythm of scientific and technological discoveries between 1880 and 1914 paralleled a shift from a notion of similarity to one of homomorphism in the conceptualization of pictorial representation. Homomorphism denotes conceptual representations which dispense with a point-to-point correspondence between depicted objects and perceptual data.
Using four case studies - the photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the painters André Derain, Max Weber and Pablo Picasso - I propose that representative practice between 1880 and 1914 was strongly informed by experimental scientific practices and that the shift from figurative to conceptual representation in art was triggered by a more significant theoretical shift investing representation as a general philosophical notion. The aim of my study is thus to propose an original and systematic attempt to combine historical and philosophical accounts of artistic and scientific representations and lay the foundations for a philosophical history of representative practice.
1pm Thursday 12th February 2009
Irena McCabe -
The Atmospheric Science of John Tyndall, FRS (1820-1893).
Slides [.pdf, 390kb]
John Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain (1853-1887) succeeded M. Faraday (1791-1867) as resident professor in charge of the RI in 1867. In 1860s he identified greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, notably carbon dioxide and water vapour. He initiated research into the interaction of matter in gaseous phase and radiant heat. He developed entirely new experimental procedures for the purpose of working with gases, a desirable state of matter in which the intermolecular forces of cohesion play a relatively negligible role. Because of the intrinsic difficulties of working with gases, experimenting with them and forces of nature such as radiant heat, had been thought impractical. Through Tyndall's pioneering researches, the possibility of the scientific examination of the interaction of radiant heat with gases became a reality. Its application to the study of climate contributed to the establishment of meteorology on scientific basis. Tyndall's experimental procedures resulted in a novel approach whereby the atmospheric phenomena could be studied in the laboratory. The controversial mimicry of nature at the laboratory bench yielded consistent results, providing quantitative data which enabled the formulation of new laws feeding in turn theoretical speculations.
1pm Thursday 26th February 2009
Brendan Clarke - Causation and Mechanism.
Slides [.pdf, 573kb]
Causation is often linked with the concept of mechanism. There are many competing and well developed accounts. But it is not my intention to give a conventional review of the nature of mechanism. Instead, and I hope in keeping with the aims of this seminar series, I'll stick to shakier ground. My primary motivation is a desire to better understand causation in medicine, so I will focus on a number of unanswered questions about mechanism of a primarily methodological flavour. These include:
- 1. Many philosophical examples of mechanism are kept simple. While there are good reasons for employment of such toy examples-not least clarity-the majority of mechanisms encountered in medical situations are exceptionally complicated. Does this present a difficulty for most philosophical accounts of mechanism? Or is there no principled distinction between how we approach a simple versus a complex mechanism?
- 2. Following on from 1., how might we begin to construct mechanisms? What, if any, is the role of plausible assumptions, 'black boxes' and argument from analogy in making useful mechanisms? Similarly, what is their role in making mechanisms useful?
- 3. One aspect of complexity is that mechanisms have to accommodate a degree of variability between cases. So for instance, a general mechanism for a disease should include features such that we can place individual cases of that disease within it. But this presents difficulties. For instance, how can we accommodate cases where the causation has taken an unusual or difficult path? For instance, taking a large overdose of either alcohol or paracetamol usually causes liver injury. Yet there are cases where an individual who has taken a simultaneous overdose of both escapes any ill effects. In fact, combinations of the two may 'cancel each other out'. So how can a general mechanism for liver disease in overdose be constructed while accommodating these sorts of unusual causal situations? To lapse into the appropriate jargon, how can mechanisms deal with both type- and token-causation?
- 4. How do mechanisms tie in with other sorts of causal evidence? For instance, many causal claims in medicine seem to rely on various sorts of statistical evidence. But how does this sort of difference-making evidence fit in with the general type of dependency relations that mechanisms apparently consist of.
1pm Wednesday 18th March 2009
Richard Milne - What makes a medicine? Biopharming and becoming pharmaceutical
1pm Thursday 26th March 2009
David Teira Serrano - Choosing expert statistical advice
Sometimes a policy maker has to take a decision on the basis of a statistical figure. Calculating this figure is usually beyond the ability of the policy maker and it is thus commissioned to an expert in an inferential technique. Often there will be more than one expert in a given technique or various experts in different statistical methods to calculate this figure. The epistemic problem in these situations is how can the policy maker remain a novice in statistics and yet make a justified judgment about the relative credibility of rival statistical experts. I will discuss some possible criteria to justify the choice of an statistical expert (namely, Alvin Goldman's), testing them in a couple of case studies (from Ted Porter and Eric Brian).
1pm Thursday 21st May 2009 - Note change of venue for this session only. To be held in Rockefeller 337 (on the third floor of the Rockefeller building at B3 on this map)
Kajsa-stina Magnusson - Social Capital in a Knowledge-based Economy: The Social Shaping of Nanotechnology R&D.
The purpose of this paper is to create an understanding for how the knowledge-based economy may be shaped by 'social capital' on a national level despite regional discussions and agenda setting, taking the governance of nanotechnology R&D as an example. Through focusing on social capital such as collective values, trust in science and technology, and civic engagement, the study aims both to bring a new dimension to current STS research on nanotechnology, and to attempt to fill a gap left in economic development research due to insufficient quantitative data (Fagerberg and Srholec 2008). Hence, the findings will rest primarily on qualitative empirical research, which has been carried out through a series of interviews with stakeholders (representing academia, government, industry and society) within nanotechnology R&D in Finland and the UK.
Fagerberg, Jan & Srholec, Martin "National innovation systems, capabilities and economic development", Research Policy 37 (2008), pp. 1417-1435
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News:
- March 2009 - Call for contributions for WIPS 2010