At some of the meetings of the Science Studies Group, one or two members of the group introduce themselves by telling the story of their past and current interests and researches as they might relate to some aspect of the history or philosophy of science, medicine, and technology and their social contexts.
Other meetings involve lectures, panel-discussions or round-tables on various special topics. Most of the discussions in the Spring of 2002 will be devoted to an exploration of issues regarding complexity and scale.
Feel free to suggest topics for discussion to Alfred Nordmann or Davis
Baird.
(revisit previous calendars: 1999/2000, 2000/2001)
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Tuesday September 4, 12:30 - Philosophy Department Reading Room, HuO 615 |
A discussion of Bill Joy's famous Wired-Magazine article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," followed by an informal Planning Meeting. Joy's article can be downloaded/printed from the Wired-website. |
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Wednesday, September 19, 3pm - Philosophy Department Reading Room, HuO 615 |
Jeeva Anandan (Physics and Philosophy) with a presentation on Hume, Causality, and Quantum Mechanics: David Hume (1711-1776) is generally considered the first and foremost critic of causality. According to Hume, all we can know is a constant conjunction of two events, but we cannot investigate the power of a cause to bring about its effect. Many believe that quantum mechanics reenforces Hume's skepticism (due to its supposed indeterminacy and its decidedly anti-metaphysical "Copenhagen Interpretation"). Jeeva will scrutinize, criticize, and endorse a version of these claims. |
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Thursday, October 11, 12:30 - Philosophy Department Reading Room, HuO 615 |
Revisiting a visionary classic. We will read and discuss Richard Feynman's 1959-lecture "There is plenty of room at the bottom." You can download an electronic copy or request a copy (rtf-file) from Alfred Nordmann. |
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Thursday, October 25, 12:30 - Philosophy Department Reading Room, HuO 615 |
A presentation by John Dean (Biology/Baruch Institute) Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna - and how biologists can tell its economic history: For more than 2,600 years, the bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus, Linnaeus, 1758) has been a renewable natural resource and sustainable fishery in the Mediterranean Sea. During that time, this great fish has provided the economic base for many Mediterranean coastal communities. The accumulated scientific evidence shows that modern development activities and current fishing practices threaten the bluefin tuna population of the eastern Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. - - The scientific, economic, and cultural analysis of these developments relies on the conceptions of sustainability, productivity, efficiency, etc. It turns out, however, that various disciplines apply these concepts to very different ends. . |
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Wednesday, January 30, noon, Preston Residential College Seminar Room |
An introduction to a proposed Center for the Philosophy and Ethics of Complexity and Scale (CPECS) - what kind of research opportunities does CPECS offer, how are these opportunities related to the interests of the Science Studies Group, to what extent will they foster dialogue between the humanities and the sciences? Davis Baird, RIG Hughes, George Khushf, and Alfred Nordmann will lead the discussion. |
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Thursday, February 7, 12:30, Preston Residential College Seminar Room |
A presentation by Stephen Fenner (Computer Science) on Computational Complexity. |
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Friday, February 15, noon, Preston Residential College Seminar Room |
(in association with the Anthropology Department and USC's Agency Group) A discussion with Stephanie Koerner (Philosophy and Archaeology/Anthropology, University of Manchester) regarding the philosophy of anthropology. It explores the three buzz-words Agency, Embodiment, and Material Culture and subjects them to a philosophical, perhaps also ideological critique. Is "agency" just another cover for individualistic conceptions of history or does it allow us to question and critique the very notion of "individualism"? Our starting point is a reading of John Barrett's "Thesis on Agency." |
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Monday, February 25, 3 to 5pm, Preston Residential College Seminar Room (on Greene Street across from Thomas Cooper Library) |
Round-table discussion with Townsend-Lecturer Graham Molitor (Public Policy Forecasting Inc., World Future Society) on Scientific Predictions of Social and Technical Change. Panelists include Walter Piegorsch (Statistics), Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy) and Kevin Lewis (Religious Studies), |
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Monday, February 25, 7 to 9pm, Law School Auditorium |
Annual Townsend Lecture on the Social Impact of the Biological Sciences (organized by USC's Biology Department): Graham Molitor (Public Policy Forecasting Inc., World Future Society) will speak about the Promises and Perils in the Future of Biotechnology. The presentation will be complemented by contributions from David Rembert and Loren Knapp (Biology) and by critical comments from Ed Munn Sanchez (Philosophy, College of Engineering). |
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Thursday, March 21, noon, Faculty House, conference room B |
A discussion of biological complexity and organisms as integrated wholes or morphogenetic fields that are best analyzed by theories of the emergence of order in complex systems. Reading: Chapter 8 from Gerry Webster and Brian Goodwin (1996) Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles in Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy) will begin the discussion with a presentation of the reading. |
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Friday, March 29, noon, Faculty House |
James M. Hughes (Ness, Motley Law Offices in Charleston) will lead a discussion on causality and evidence in science vs. law. Point of departure is the Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert opinion and how it impacted the admissability of scientific expert testimony. Jim Hughes is joined by Robin Wilson (USC School of Law). Our readings include a philosophical comment by Susan Haack and an essay by David Ozonoff. |
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[postponed] |
This year's 8th Annual Science Studies Lecture will be given by Robert Batterman (Ohio State University): Limiting Reductions and Emergence. While he will focus on the ray theory/wave theory correspondence, his discussion has bearing on the Philosophy of Nanoscience and the relationship between classical and quantum mechanics in the "correspondence limit" in which Planck's constant can be considered to be small. Batterman is author of The Devil in the Details : Asymptotic Reasoning in Explanation, Reduction, and Emergence (Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press, 2001). - This lecture is supported by the Colleges of Liberal Art as well as Science and Mathematics. It is co-sponsored by the Science Studies Group, thePhilosophy Department, USC's NanoCenter, and a grant from USC's Vice President for Research. |
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Tuesday, April 16, 12:30pm, Strom Thurmond Auditorium, Law School |
The Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Lecture 2002 on 'The Prospect of Human Cloning: Improving Nature or Dooming the Species?' is presented by Judith Daar (Whittier Law School). Judith Daar is Chair of the Reproductive Issues Subcommittee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association Bioethics Committee and served as an at-large member of the American Bar Association Coordinating Group on Bioethics and the Law. She frequently lectures on the legal and ethical implications surrounding human cloning and has published articles on cloning and related topics in the Houston Law Review, the University of California at Davis Law Review, the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, the American Journal of Bioethics, and the American Journal of Law and Medicine. Responding to the lecture will be Monsignor Thomas Duffy of Murrell's Inlet, SC, and Robert Best, Director of the Division of Genetics at the USC School of Medicine. For more information on the lecture, please visit one of these two websites. This event was organized by Robin Fretwell Wilson of USC's School of Law. |
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Wednesday, April 24, noon, Faculty House |
A discussion with Frank Berger (Biology) on complexity in cancer-research. The presentation will focus on the "network" of factors that affect the emergence and growth of tumors. However, it will also highlight the technical constraints that limit the analysis of this complexity. |
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Thursday or Friday, April 26, noon, Faculty House |
A discussion with Peter Machamer (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh). The recent essay Thinking about Mechanisms (co-authored by Machamer with L. Darden and C. Craver) is already proving highly influential in the philosophy of science. After many had maintained that the sciences of the 20th century no longer adhere to a mechanistic world-view, the three authors argue compellingly that all scientific understanding is, at bottom, an understanding of mechanisms. |
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Thursday, May 9, from 3:30 to 5pm, Room 409 of the Physical Sciences Building/Physics Department |
(in association with USC's NanoCenter) Four short presentations by Davis Baird, RIG Hughes, George Khushf, and Alfred Nordmann. Under the heading Four Philosophical Perspectives on Nanoscale Research, each 15-minute presentation outlines a research project, ranging from questions of instrumentation to issues of cosmology, from disciplinary configurations to cascading effects. |
Watch for regular updates of this calendar. Please share this information with anyone who might be interested.
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