(revisit last year's calendar 1999/2000)
| Wednesday, September 20, 3:30pm - Belk Auditorium | As part of the Women's Studies Research Series there will be a presentation by DeAnne K. Hilfinger Messias (a new faculty member at Women's Studies and the College of Nursing) entitled "Research as the Co-Creation of Stories: Feminist Narrative Interpretations": Torn between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, Nursing Science has developed original qualitative methods of its own... |
| Tuesday, September 26, 12:30pm - Preston College Seminar Room | Loren Knapp (Biological Sciences) talks about "The Genome Projects: Raids on the Library of Life": The human genome project has global reach and significance. This talk/discussion will focus on what a genome is and how the total library of human genetic information (or any other species) is expressed and routinely manipulated (for better or worse) in efforts to understand the complexity of the molecular basis for life. At stake in this project (and for us as a society) are ownership of genes and their products, protection of privacy in the face of predisposition for disease, control and limits on the augmentation of genetic inheritance, and the setting of the stage for linkage of biotechnology with nanotechnology. |
| Tuesday, October 24, 12:30pm - Preston College Seminar Room | William Hrushesky (VA Hospital) discusses Clinical Investigation: Our discussion will try to delineate the boundaries and overlaps of medical practice and medical research within the context of human experimentation. The mechanics of hypothesis generation, study design, data analysis will be outlined as a background to the rigorous protections afforded to human subjects by the common rule and other universally accepted guides for the conduct of human research. The practical implementation of these principles through the local investigational review board (IRB) will be explained. Obvious and more subtle conflicts of interest associated with medicine in general and clinical research in particular will be made explicit. Different ways of avoiding, and dealing with these conflicts will be explored. |
| Tuesday, November 14, 12:30pm - Preston College Seminar Room | Henry Cribbs (Philosophy) will talk about Representational Restructuring: An Essential Heuristic for Scientific Discovery: Three case studies of the discovery process in science will be introduced - early Mendelian genetic theory, metabolic processes, and chemical component discovery by a computer model. Each of these studies illustrates that "representational restructuring" is a common and useful heuristic for scientific discovery. I suggest an even stronger view: The restructuring of how the problem is represented is not only a common and useful technique for discovery. Due to limits of human psychology, it is essential for discovery. I will finallydiscuss how this need for representational restructuring has concrete implications for the social organization of the discovery process. |
| Wednesday, January 31, 12:15pm - Preston College Seminar Room | Peter Sederberg, Leslie Jones, and Doug Williams present A New Model for Science Teaching at USC - a model that can be extended to "research based"-learning also in the social sciences and the humanities. |
| Tuesday, February 13, 12:30pm - Preston College Seminar Room | From Estuary to Laboratory - undergraduate scientists Brandy Glett* and Jaclin Durant from USC's MARE research initiative will discuss how they establish a scientific laboratory within a large coastal estuary. By demarcating the laboratory, are they also separating out, within themselves, the scientist from the environmentalist? They will be joined by Doug Williams and Stefka Nikolova Eddins* (Marine Science and Honors College), by Alfred Nordmann* (Philosophy) and Christopher Preston (Philosophy/School of the Environment). [*present in spirit but not in body] |
| Thursday, Feburary 22, 8pm - Nickelodeon Theatre at the corner of Main and Pendleton Streets | The McCollege Tour: University, Inc. & The Subtext of a Yale Education. These visual essays by Kyle Henry and Laura Dunn provide a perfect opportunity to continue last year's Science Studies discussion of The Kept University. The filmmakers are present to discuss their film at the Nickelodeon. Each film deals with similar issues, but focuses them through different struggles and perspectives. Subtext chronicles a year in labor strikes at Yale and documents both economic and philosophical disparities of an undergraduate education at one of the wealthiest universities in the fourth poorest city of the US. University, Inc. deals with the closing of a repertory film program as a paradigm for interrogating the corporate ideology now guiding the nation's largest public university, the University of Texas-Austin. These films are brought to Columbia as part of the SC Art Commission's Southern Circuit Tour. |
| Tuesday, February 27, 3:30 to 5pm Preston College Seminar Room | Roundtable discussion with Robert Proctor (author of Value-Free Science? - Purity and Power in Modern Knowledge; Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know About Cancer; The Nazi War on Cancer; Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis). The panel will focus on Recent Theories of Human Recency: "The prehistory of tools, bodies, and beliefs will forever remain a fertile field for projection and wishful thinking" (Robert Proctor). What makes us believe that humans became human "only" some 50,000 years ago? How do such questions get decided, what is at stake? Was Lucy a female Australopithecene or a woman? Does human recency emphasize the animal in our humanity (not long ago we weren't human at all) or does it deemphasize our biological differences (we are all just human, there was no time to become distinct)? To see what difference these questions make, Proctor discusses different lines of reasoning that range from the UNESCO response to Auschwitz in its 1952 statement on race to the recent findings of molecular anthropology. Tom Burke (Philosophy), Anna Krylova (History), Tom Leatherman (Anthropology), Nawin Mishra (Biology) participate in the questioning. The discussion is organized by Leslie Jones (Honors College) and Tom Lekan (History). |
| Tuesday, February 27, 7pm - Law School Auditorium | Robert Proctor (University of Pennsylvania) will hold the Townsend Lecture on the Social Impact of the Biological Sciences. His topic is Racial Hygiene: How Doctors and Biomedical Scientists Organized Hitler's Progams of Mass Murder (organized by USC's Department of Biological Sciences). |
| Friday, March 23, 12:30 to 2pm - Faculty House | Luncheon with David Lindberg (Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin and former President of the History of Science Society) on the role of history and philosophy of science in the (undergraduate) curriculum. This roundtable discussion aims to explore prospects for History and Philosophy of Science at USC. Participation in this luncheon is possible on a space-available-basis only. If you are interested, contact Davis Baird. |
| Friday, March 23, 6:30 to 7:30pm - Russell House Theater | David Lindberg (Department of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin) speaks about The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Scientific Tradition: Augustine, Roger Bacon and the Handmaiden Metaphor ["philosophy is the handmaiden of science"]. This is a keynote lecture at the conference "North and South: Identity, Imagination and Memory in Medieval and Renaissance Culture." It is organized by numerous faculty members from USC and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University. |
| Saturday, March 24, 3:30 to 5:45pm - McMaster Auditorium, Room 214 | The conference also features a session on Philosophy and History of Science. The presenters are Jan Opsomer (Department of Philosophy, USC) with a paper entitled From Greek to Roman Stoicism, Graziella Federici Vescovini and Orsola Rignani (University of Florence) with a paper on Biagio of Parma's (Doctor Diabolicus) Astrological Materialism, and Richard Lemay (City University of New York) who speaks about Gerard of Cremona and the Organization of Translators: Arabic to Latin. |
| Friday, April 6 - 4pm, place tba (Gambrell 152) | The Philosophy Department sponsors a lecture by Joseph Allen Cain (Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London). Was nature his laboratory? Joe Cain will discuss "George Simpson's Use of His 1939 Venezuela Expedition." The talk is preceded by a 3:30 reception in the Philosophy Department. For further information (also on lunch and dinner meetings with the speaker) contact Chris Tollefsen. |
| Thursday, April 12 - 12:30, place tba | The Seventh Annual Science Studies Lecture will be delivered by Babak Ashrafi (MIT's Dibner Institute). He will talk about Virtual Weapons Laboratories. |
| Friday, April 13 - time and place tba | A presentation by this year's Science Studies Lecturer Babak Ashrafi (MIT's Dibner Institute) on the History of Quantum Field Theory. |
| Tuesday, April 17 - 12:30pm, Preston College Seminar Room | A presentation by Austin L. Hughes (Biology) develops some of the question raised in the Fall by Loren Knapp. It also continues the discussion of laboratory research and its transformation through computer modeling. The topic is "Reconstructing Genomic Evolution": As complete genomic sequences become available for a variety of organisms, we are beginning to be able to address questions of how genomes have evolved. Computational analysis of molecular sequence data will play a key role in answering these questions. |
| Wednesday, April 18 - 4pm, Jones Physical Science Center Rogers Room PSC 409 | Dr. Naseem Rahman (Chair of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Trieste, Italy and Director, International Centre for Complex Systems) will give a talk "Epistemology and Methodologies for Complex Systems": The history of the study of complex systems vis-a-vis study of simple systems a la Hamiltonian with Classical and Quantum Mechanics will be sketched. Modern developments will be outlined. Engineering systems, biological, geological, and ecologically complex systems are classic examples where the methods of treating problems of complex systems find the most rewards. The common thread for research in all these fields will be pointed out. (Organized by USC's Physics Department) |
| Friday, April 20, 4pm - Gambrell Hall, Room 250 | Victoria Davion (University of Georgia, Athens; editor of Ethics and the Environment) delivers the lecture "Coming Down to Earth on Cloning: An Ecofeminist Perspective" (organized by Philosophy and the School of the Environment). |
| Thursday, July 26, 12:30pm -Physics Dept. Conference Room, PSC 404A | Visiting from the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Philosophy of Science, Stephan Hartmann (Philosophy Department, University of Konstanz; Physics Department) gives a presentation on "Explanation, Reduction, and Fundamental Physics." He will focus on the use of Effective Field Theories in physics and explore its implications for reductionism. |
Links:
This page last updated July 18, 2001. It is maintained by the Philosophy Department. © 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina. Credits.