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Past Seminars 2024

Thursday 24 October

HPS PhD Candidates Confirmation Seminars

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​Carl Sciglitano

From Glass to Pixels: The Shaping of Astronomical Practices in the Transition to Digital Photography

Many people who talk about the transition from analogue to digital photography label it a "Revolution" and remark on how quickly it all happened. However, it took 30 years for the digital camera to be embedded in most observatories, and even today, some astronomers still use glass photographic plates as part of their research. So what really did change? A lot has been written about the digital technology itself, but very little is understood about how it affected the people using it. My research looks at this transition from a material perspective, exploring the ways the new technology shaped astronomer's daily work, the practical experience of their jobs, their routines, and their epistemology. 

 

Carl Joseph Sciglitano is a current PhD student in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. After completing his Master's degree in Science (Astronomy) at Swinburne University in 2018, Carl became interested in the relationship between scientists and technology. He completed his Advanced Diploma in Arts (HPS) in 2023.

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Aseera Shamin

Powering Equitable Futures: A Cross-National Study into the Intersections of Environmental Justice, Citizen Science and Just Transitions

 While the need to transition to renewable energy sources is widely accepted to be crucial in the face of the global climate crisis, it is equally important to ensure such a transition takes place in an equitable and just manner. My work extends on the research trajectory established by Benjamin Sovacool, highlighting the necessity of transformative and intersectional research that pluralises energy justice both methodologically, through the use of human-centered methods of data collection, and conceptually, by including more intersectional understandings of justice. Existing frameworks of energy justice demonstrate Western-centric notions of ethics, embedded with patriarchal, colonial, and racial legacies. I propose a conceptual framework to rethink the various constituents of energy justice from local community perspectives. Through this, justice is reconfigured from an analytical tool to a set of criteria that can actively shape decision-making. This approach would foster a more inclusive and equitable understanding of renewable energy’s societal impacts through a democratic negotiation of rights and risks. Distinct case studies from Victoria, Australia, and Tamilnadu, India will be examined to illustrate the complexities in characterising the concept of energy justice as a whole. How intersectional issues - such as indigenous, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives - affect the siting of utility-scale wind, solar, and biomass projects is the subject of focus. Ultimately, this research aims to complicate present energy justice frameworks, ensuring that diverse voices are prioritised in the transition toward sustainable energy systems.

 

Aseera Shamin is a first-year PhD researcher in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne and is part of the Melbourne Climate Futures Academy. Aseera's thesis aims to disentangle the relationship between energy justice, power, and social dynamics in renewable energy production in localised contexts by considering both upstream and downstream siting of clean energy projects. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Global Studies, minoring in Political Science and Sociology from the National University of Singapore, and a Master of Environment (Climate Change) from the University of Melbourne. 

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Thomas Spiteri

Knowing the Mind Through Its Ailments: A History and Philosophy of Cases in the Psy-Sciences
The use of cases as a scientific approach for generating knowledge has been re-evaluated by historians and philosophers of science since John Forrester's (1993) suggestion that it was overlooked in Hacking's scientific "styles project" (2002). Following this, some philosophers have sought to articulate the epistemic value of the case method (see Morgan, 2010; 2020). However, the broader scholarship in the history and philosophy of science has largely neglected to provide examples or analyse how the case method has contributed to psychological knowledge.

This research positions the case method as a vital "style" of scientific inquiry within the history of psychology’s knowledge base. It is motivated by discussions surrounding the replication crisis, particularly Feest’s (2019) claim that the inability to replicate certain psychological findings should be expected, given the complexity of the mind and the intricate relationship researchers have with it. Such characterisations reveal the limitations of psychology's preferred quantitative methods, suggesting that alternative approaches, like the case method, warrant a more thorough reconsideration as legitimate means for discovery, concept generation, understanding and explanation.

Focusing on the case method's contributions to memory studies, this research will examine Freud and Breuer's (1895) interdisciplinary impact through their conceptualisation of “repression.” They utilised the case method not only as a “site of evidence” for their phenomenon but also as a broader framework for understanding the nature of the psyche and their discipline. This talk will look into the dynamics of the case and its components, addressing what constitutes a case—specifically, the data related to the object and the underlying assumptions necessary for knowledge to emerge. By doing so, it aims to help clarify the epistemic functions of cases, exploring the kind of epistemic power they possess and the rationale behind this methodological preference in contrast to qualitative methods.


Thomas Spiteri is a PhD candidate in the History and Philosophy of Science program. His research interests are in the history and philosophy of the human sciences. His thesis explores the ways in which knowledge about the mind is generated from case studies in the "psy" disciplines – i.e., psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis – and is interested in the preconditions that allow for certain epistemic activities and claims to be made possible. 

Thursday 17 October

Errors & Misconduct in Biomedical Research

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Elizabeh Bik

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​Even after peer-review and publication, science papers could still contain images or other data of concern. If not addressed post-publication, papers containing incorrect or even falsified data could lead to wasted time and money spent by other researchers trying to reproduce those results. Several high-profile science misconduct cases have been described, but many more cases remain undetected.
 
Elisabeth Bik is an image forensics detective who left her paid job in industry to search for and report biomedical articles that contain errors or data of concern. She has done a systematic scan of 20,000 papers in 40 journals and found that about 4% of these contained inappropriately duplicated images. In her talk, she will present her work and show several types of inappropriately duplicated images and other examples of errors or research misconduct. In addition, she will show how to report scientific papers of concern, and how journals and institutions handle such allegations. Finally, she will address the growing problems of 'paper mills', for-profit networks that produce and sell large amounts of low-quality or fake papers

Wednesday 9 October

Toxic Legacies in Broken Hill

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Lilian Pearce (La Trobe)

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Lead has been mined in Broken Hill since 1884, and the health risks to miners and their families have been understood for almost as long. A series of reports beginning in 1893 and a Royal Commission in 1914 outlined the prevalence and paths to prevention of lead poisoning, though subsequent behaviour change was limited. Today, lead exposure still forms a ‘public health problem of global dimensions’, impacting human and non-human life. This paper presents a history of the ways in which lead has been mobilised, responded to, and permitted in Broken Hill. It articulates the experiences of those living in relationship with enduring environmental toxicity and explores the ways in which the mining industry has repeatedly abdicated responsibility, and governments have normalised risk. Settler-colonial ideas of progress and profit work to permit ongoing violence, violence which is distributed unevenly across lines of race, class, age and gender. This work contributes to urgently needed research on health and justice in mining communities, to care for those impacted, and to inform more equitable transitions.

Dr Lilian Pearce is an award-winning environmental humanities scholar working across fields of environmental history, human geography and political ecology. She is a lecturer in environmental humanities at La Trobe University’s Centre for the Study of the Inland. Her interdisciplinary place-based research focuses on two key areas: Environmental histories of contaminated sites, and Environmental policy to support healthy Country and communities. She holds a Bachelor of Science with honours (UTAS) and a PhD in environmental history (ANU).

Wednesday 2 October

Playing with paper dolls: the evolution of cancer cytogenetics as a clinical laboratory science

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Lynda Campbell (HPS Melbourne)

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n 1972, Janet Rowley, mother of four boys and part-time researcher at the University of Chicago, was sitting one evening at her dining room table cutting out chromosomes from photographs taken of leukaemia cells. She arranged the chromosomes in pairs and noticed that two of them seemed to have exchanged parts of their long arms, forming a translocation. She had to admonish her boys not to upset the table; they referred to her occupation as their mother “… playing with paper dolls.” Rowley had identified a critical step in the development of leukaemia. And she had done it from home on her dining room table.
Cancer cytogenetics, the study of chromosomes within cancer cells, can be traced back to 1960. It developed in parallel with molecular biology and yet it was never seen as worthy of much interest. Molecular biologists, in particular, regarded it as lesser. Cytogeneticists were labelled merely “stamp-collectors.” And with every new molecular biological technical advance, came the assumption that cytogenetics would be superseded. It was an observational science in the era of experimentation and so regarded as old-fashioned and “unscientific.” It was also practiced for the most part by women.
I will explore the evolution of the techniques, taxonomy and discoveries that created the discipline of cancer cytogenetics and the roles played by women in that evolution.
 
Lynda Campbell is a graduate student in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne MB BS in 1977 and after training as a haematologist headed the Victorian Cancer Cytogenetics Service at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne until her retirement in 2015. She obtained a Diploma of the History of Medicine from the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London in 2016.

Wednesday 11 Sept

Microbial Determinism

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Zeb Jamrozik (Oxford/ Monash)

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Microbial determinism is the view that infectious diseases and/or or epidemics are primarily (or wholly) caused–or “determined”--by microbes. This is analogous to genetic determinism, the view that human characteristics (phenotypes) are primarily (or wholly) caused–or “determined”– by genes (genotypes). In this paper I argue that, like genetic determinism, microbial determinism is false, ubiquitous, and ethically problematic.  Microbial determinism is false because infectious diseases and epidemics are always caused by interactions between host factors (e.g., the properties of human beings infected by microbes), social factors, environmental factors, and microbial factors. Among other things, this can be illustrated by the fact that similar microbes are associated with widely divergent outcomes in different individuals, populations, or seasons. Yet deterministic language about microbes is ubiquitous, such as when people speak of a “deadly” virus although most people infected with the virus survive. Microbial determinism can therefore lead to unjustified privileging of (the causal power of) the properties of microbes over the properties of the hosts, societies, and environments in which infections occur. In this paper, I explore microbial determinism by identifying central doctrines of germ theory that contribute to deterministic concepts of infectious disease and considering alternative views. I then discuss practical implications and identify areas for additional scientific and philosophical work on the interactions between microbes and other factors associated with infectious diseases.

Euzebiusz (Zeb) Jamrozik trained in medicine, epidemiology, and philosophy. His research primarily focuses on philosophical and ethical issues related to infectious diseases. Current appointments include a fellowship at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, as well as honorary appointments at University of Melbourne and Monash University. He is co-editor-in-chief of Monash Bioethics Review.

Wednesday 4 Sept

Canine cognitive studies: Can they help us rethink biomedical research?

Jane Johnson (Macquarie University) 
 
There are compelling ethical and epistemological reasons why research on animals intended for human clinical benefit should change. To date, the practice of animal research has been overwhelmingly dominated by consequentialist approaches, operationalized via the 3Rs (to Reduce, Replace and Refine the use of animals in research). Although the 3Rs may appear laudable and progressive, they generate significant challenges, including around implementation. I want to argue instead for a relational approach to animal research. Focusing on relations brings to the fore issues that have not been adequately considered in animal research, including regarding the vulnerability and dependence of animals. To unpack these issues and how they might be adequately addressed in research with animals aimed at human clinical benefit, I will focus initially on research in a different area, namely canine cognition. The growing body of work with dogs highlights promising approaches that attend to animal vulnerability and dependence in ways that are suggestive for biomedical research.
 
The paper will begin by briefly outlining the reasons why the practice of animal research should change, and articulating the vulnerability and dependence of research animals. I then turn to the case of cognitive research on dogs, and demonstrate how this research elevates consideration of the vulnerability and dependence of dog research subjects. Finally, I consider how lessons learned from this research might be applied to biomedical research with animals more generally, attending to both the strengths but also the limitations of this proposal.

Jane Johnson is an ARC Future Fellow and field philosopher in the Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University. She researches ethical and epistemological questions in science and medicine, and currently has 2 main funded projects - an ARC DP 'Support or sales? Medical device representatives in Australian hospitals' and her Fellowship on 'Rethinking animal research: Developing a novel ethical framework'. Jane's work is driven by a commitment to the vulnerable and to research that improves lives.

Wednesday 21 August

Engineering Ecocide is Morally Wrong​

Chris Lean (Macquarie University) 
 
Recently philosophers have argued that genetically engineering predators to become herbivores is a morally viable option (Bramble 2020; Pearce 2015). Others have argued that high fecundity high mortality life strategies should be engineered into low fecundity low mortality breeding life strategies (Johannsen 2017). This is part of a larger movement in philosophy, untethered to the realities of biology or human society which has looked to intervene to remove predators from the wild (Mackaskill and Macaskill 2015; MacMahan 2015; Nussbaum 2022). This movement has been closely aligned with the TESCREAL movement and has been highly influenced by antinatalist philosophy.

While Delon and Purves (2018) provide a solid critique of interventions to alleviate animal suffering, focusing on ecological resilience I think a stronger rejection of these views needs to be made. These interventions are not possible due to the basic structure of population biology and will result in rolling extinctions and animal suffering in different forms. The policies proposed would amount to ecocide, if successful, and even if they are failures the act to try these interventions will undermine the norms and justification of conservation. Ultimately, this ideology establishes damaging precedents for human society fostering dystopian futures. 

Christopher Lean is a Research Fellow within the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University, working with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology. His primary research areas are philosophy of the life sciences (biology, ecology, medicine) and ethics (bioethics, environment, technology). Recently, he has been writing about the role of biotechnology in conservation, invasive species, novel ecosystems, and synthetic biology. His research has been featured in the New York Times, awarded the Australian Association of Philosophy Media Prize, presented at the Woodford Folk Festival, and helped create a biotechnology start-up. 

Wednesday 14 August

Quantifying the human: values in measurement or measuring value?

Cristian Larroulet Philippi (Cambridge)
Quantitative measurement in the human sciences remains controversial. Are depression scales, intelligence tests, etc. valid measurement instruments? Do they deliver quantitative or merely ordinal information? I discuss two approaches for understanding practices of quantitative measurement. One uses causal notions to characterize the attribute at stake and to understand how it relates to measurement indications. It aims at standard epistemic desiderata in science (discovery, explanation, prediction) and offers good answers to traditional worries about human attributes (namely, are they really quantitative?) and about their measurement instruments (namely, are they valid?). A second approach uses the notion of value (Hausman 2015) to make sense of quantification practices. This approach does not resemble what scientists think of their measurement practices: it is not designed for the testing of tentative concepts but rather to standardize political decision making. This approach, I argue, is the most plausible candidate for making sense of some human sciences’ measurement practices as quantifying anything. Such is the case for measurements that (i) combine distinct dimensions of the phenomena at stake and (ii) for which we don’t observe serious efforts aiming at embedding such measurements in predictive and explanatory networks. I illustrate with two examples: depression severity (HAMD) and the Human Development Index (HDI)

Cristian Larroulet Philippi is a research fellow in history and philosophy of science at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. He finished his PhD at HPS Cambridge in 2023. Both his PhD dissertation and current research focus on the challenges around quantitative measurement in the social sciences (including economics and parts of medicine). His research interests also include how do values enter into the practice of science and causal methodology. He previously studied and did research in economics.

Wednesday 7 August

A good death at any age - the role of medicine in managing death as a social event

Kerstin Knight (University of Melbourne)

This work in progress paper will examine notions of what we might think constitutes a good death. The term 'any age' is chosen deliberately for its vagueness as it incorporates the notion of historical epochs as well as person ages, both of which are relevant in recognizing death as a social event rather than individual event.
I will draw on some case vignettes and some of my prior work concerning advance care planning in order to draw out why it is important to view death as a social event and then explore what this might mean for the role of medicine in managing the dying process with particular respect to assisted dying both in adults and in neonates.
 
​Kerstin has been a medical practitioner for 30years and completed her PhD in philosophy at the University of Melbourne on the topic of advance care planning in 2017. She has taught in philosophy, bioethics and social sciences at many universities in Victoria and now holds a position as lecturer in HPS at Melbourne university, where she is a member of the newly formed medical humanities research group. Her latest project looks at the ethics of withholding artificial nutrition and hydration in neonatal palliative care. Other research interests concern the topic of value emergence, Buddhist metaphysics and metaphysics of personal identity.

Wednesday 24 July

Assessing computational reproducibility: Fidelity, tensions, and implications

Steven Kambouris (University of Melbourne)

Computational reproducibility is a frequently extolled ideal in science, but how is it achieved in practice? How often do scientists fulfil the requirements for computational reproducibility checks (i.e., data and code sharing), and when they do, how accurate are the reproductions? Have incentives (e.g., badges) been effective at improving reproducibility? The first two parts of my thesis address these questions empirically, using examples in ecology and psychology. In the third part (the focus of this seminar), I examine how the concept of computational reproducibility is used by scholars in HPS and meta-research communities and describe tensions between the different accounts.

Steve is a PhD student in the interdisciplinary MetaMelb Research Initiative (enrolled through the School of Agriculture, Food & Ecosystems Sciences). His work is best described as “research on research”. He has examined the computational reproducibility of work in ecology, psychology, and other fields. He is also a Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research. This is Steve’s PhD competition seminar.

Wednesday 29 May

Histories of non-human time

Marilyn Stendera (University of Wollongong)

In this paper, I want to explore how various aspects of time – including ways of tracking, measuring, and marking it; and models of memory and anticipation – have been used to conceptualise the relationship between human and non-human parts of nature, especially non-human cognisers. Drawing together parts of a potted history of the philosophy of time with recent discourses about the boundaries of cognition, my account will focus on three interrelated points: Firstly, that whether a particular way of thinking about time is more cyclical or more linear has had a significant bearing on how different types of organism are said to fit into it. Secondly, that temporal capacities have been a particularly important consideration in how various philosophical and scientific inquiries define cognitive complexity and delineate human from non-human cognition. And finally, that all these factors come together in contemporary discourses about the outer reaches of cognition, including debates about the models of explanation that are best suited to inquiries into which organisms should be counted as cognisers.

Marilyn Stendera is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Wollongong. She previously taught at Deakin, Monash and the University of Melbourne, where she also completed her PhD. She works primarily in phenomenology, the philosophy of cognition, and the history of philosophy, and is particularly interested in the history, cognitive significance, and political functions of time. Her first book, Heidegger’s Alternative History of Time, was co-authored with Emily Hughes (York) and has just been published by Routledge.

Wednesday 2 May

Medical Humanities x HPS ECR Panel

A ticket to colonial anthropometry: A case study of registration of prostitution and lock hospitals in the Nineteenth Century Madras

Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan (La Trobe University)

This presentation examines registration tickets which indicate the presence of anthropometric undertones in lock hospital discourse in colonial India. Throughout the nineteenth century, women suspected of practising prostitution in India were registered under a local lock hospital and given a registration ticket. These tickets on their own might seem insignificant to the arguments on lock hospitals, as indeed has been argued by historians such as Erica Wald. However, these documents give new details of the functioning lock hospital system in Madras. At first glance, the ticket's purpose seems to be record-keeping and surveillance but this paper will argue that registration tickets in lock hospitals functioned not just as tools of surveillance but also as a medium to study Indian women’s bodies and in that way highlight the presence of anthropometric undertones within lock hospital registration systems. I argue that by pointing out the physical difference between Indian and European bodies the colonial government tried to mark Indian women’s bodies as deviant and hence justify surveillance over them. However, I shall also show that this linking of physical characteristics to the moral character was not only introduced by colonialism but was already present within Indian society to categorise caste hierarchies. This physiognomic categorisation intensified in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under colonialism where the physiognomic categorisation of lower caste women or men by upper caste and elite men had a 'scientific' validation in the form of anthropometry.

Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan is a Lecturer in History at La Trobe University and she did her PhD in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. Her thesis examined the control of venereal disease and sexual surveillance in colonial South India. Divya is currently working on a project on the history of cancer and cancer therapies in India.

Choreographies of health and hygiene: Scientific approaches to dance and the body in modern Australia

Averyl Gaylor (University of Melbourne)

Scientific and medicalised discourses of the body informed dance practices in modern Australia. Across different dance methods and contexts, this paper traces the way such discourses were leveraged to legitimise dance as not only a codified and technical artistic practice, but also, a crucial practice of health that could discipline the body towards a more ideal form. This paper explores, in particular, the way theories of mechanisation and scientific management coalesced in dance producing ‘choreographies of health and hygiene’ that prescribed particular kinds of movement and corporeal forms, which functioned to render some bodies as moral and others as pathological and in need of intervention and reform. In doing so, this paper offers a new perspective on the pivotal role of dance in relation to histories of hygiene and health in modern Australia.

Averyl Gaylor graduated with a PhD in History from La Trobe University in December 2023. Her PhD project explored the medicalisation of dance and its influence on notions and aesthetics of the perfectible body in modern Australia. Currently, Averyl is working as a research centre administrator at Melbourne Law School while she continues to pursue interdisciplinary research projects in the medical humanities. 

Wednesday 15 May

Evolved Gender Roles:A cultural adaptation to coordinate the division of labour

Cordelia Fine (HPS, University of Melbourne)

In debates about gender roles, evolutionary accounts are pitted against social constructionist accounts. In this talk I will propose a gender constructionist account of gender roles – not as a rival to an evolutionary account, but as an evolutionary account. This will build on the suggestion that gender roles evolved as a cultural adaptation to coordinate the division of labour, while drawing on the sociological concept of gender structure. I will also address two common objections to social constructionist accounts: that they are a theoretical impossibility; and that they are undermined by evidence from clinical populations with disruptions to early gonadal hormones.

Cordelia Fine is Professor in the History & Philosophy of Science program in the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her academic work and other writing can be found at cordelia-fine.com.

Wednesday 8 May

Beyond Dichotomies: Embracing an Integrated Approach to Social Relationships

Lucia Neco (Philosophy, University of Western Australia)

If there is any hope to build a unified account of sociality that is able to describe the fundamental components of social systems—whether involving humans, non-human entities, or a combination thereof, as suggested by recent work on multispecies interactions—we need a clear concept of social relationships. For many social scientists and philosophers, social relationships are essentially mind-dependent, subjective, and restricted to human beings. They are part of a realm that is not relevantly dependent on or constrained by physical or biological properties; they are not part of the “fabric of the world.” As a consequence, they cannot be compared to the interactions of “objectively defined individuals”, such as animals, that are described as inflexible, programmed, and completely constrained by these properties. In this paper, I challenge this false dichotomy that contrasts subjectivity and objectivity, humans and nonhuman entities, and the corresponding sciences that study them—namely, the social sciences and natural sciences. I shall defend the claims that (a) social relationships are essentially constituted by (interdependent) objective and subjective components and (b) that they are not restricted to human beings. My approach avoids extreme positions by recognizing that social relationships are both facilitated and constrained by biological properties, subject to evolutionary pressures. However, they cannot be reduced to these properties as they require an active individual, an agent, who is able not only to interact but to track and respond flexibly to their interactions. By embracing an interdisciplinary and nonreductive approach to social relationships, we pave the way for a unified account of sociality that has the potential to contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of social behavior. 
 
Lucia is a philosopher and biologist fascinated by the philosophical underpinnings of the biological, cognitive, and social sciences, especially in the realms of social behavior and culture. She is currently the Project Coordinator and a Research Associate for the "Keeping Kinship in Mind" Project, coordinated by Prof. Rob Wilson at the University of Western Australia. Additionally, she actively contributes to the Philosophical Engagement in Public Life (PEiPL) network and engages in initiatives related to Philosophy for Children (p4c) in Perth, Australia.

Wednesday 1 May

After Haraway: Re-examining Feminism & Primatology in 1970s USA
 
Samara Greenwood (HPS, University of Melbourne)

A longstanding concern for philosophers, historians and sociologists of science is to assess the ways in which broad contextual changes, such as the rise of social and political movements, come to impact science. One well-known study is Donna Haraway’s Primate Visions (1989), which in part examined interactions between feminism and primatology in 20th Century USA . One of Haraway’s key claims was that second wave feminism played a pivotal role in destabilising established narratives around female primates and gender within the discipline. However, Haraway’s explicit aim was not to provide a disinterested or objective account of events but rather to playfully blend multiple genre’s, including science fiction, cultural studies, and political activism to further challenge conventional Western accounts of primates, science, and gender.
 
In re-examining this case, my purpose and approach differ. My aim is to more systematically assess the impact of second wave feminism on both the practices and products of primate science. I specifically focus on the first phase of engagement, spanning 1970 to 1975. In analysing this initial phase, I first outline primatology’s ‘research repertoire’ before the influence of feminism. I then examine interventions produced by four central feminist-scientists, reviewing the motivation, production, and reception of their work. I also demonstrate how, over time, the outcomes of their interventions lost connection to their feminist roots as they became normalised into the revised repertoire of the discipline. From this analysis, I make two key claims. First, I argue that, despite being primarily considered a social and political movement, second wave feminism’s intellectual, epistemic, and cognitive dimensions must be fully appreciated to understand its impact on primatology. Second, I contend that, contrary to expectation, there is strong empirical support for Haraway’s most controversial claim - that second wave feminism impacted primate science in more profound ways than even its central actors have claimed.

Samara Greenwood is a PhD Candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. Samara’s thesis explores the impact of changing social contexts on the practices and products of science, drawing on a range of historical case studies. Samara also co-hosts The HPS Podcast where she interviews leading scholars from around the world.

Wednesday 25 April

Trust, explanation and AI 

Samuel Baron (Philosophy, University of Melbourne)​

The use of AI systems for decision-making is widespread. Many of these systems are opaque: no one understands how they work. This has led to a call for explainable AI. One of the reasons cited in favour of explainability is trust: explainability is thought to be necessary for trust in AI. I argue against this claim: for a range of different types of trust, either explanation is not necessary or, if it is, the type of trust that calls for explainability is not appropriate for AI.
 
Sam Baron is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His research lies within metaphysics and philosophy of science. He has particular interests in the metaphysics of quantum gravity, in explanation within mathematics and in explanainability in artificial intelligence. He has held positions at the University of Sydney (2013-2014), the University of Western Australia (2014-2019) and the Australian Catholic University (2020-2023). He is the recipient of two large grants from the Australian Research Council to study the nature of time in philosophy and physics, and currently holds a grant with the Icelandic Research Fund to study the nature of philosophical progress (with Finnur Dellsen, Insa Lawler and James Norton). He is an executive member of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and a member of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney.

Wednesday 17 April

Using Large Language Models to identify genetic essentialist biases 
 
Ritsaart Reimann, (Macquarie University & University of Sydney)

Philosophers, Social Scientists and Psychologists have converged on the idea that genetic information is interpreted and communicated through a particular conceptual lens. When traits are thought to be caused by genes, people tend to succumb to essentialist and deterministic thinking, which does not occur when traits are thought to be caused by environmental factors like lifestyle and diet. Using corpus analysis and machine learning classification we investigated whether Australian print media outlets were communicating about genetics in an essentialist and deterministic way. Here, I present some preliminary findings from our study.

Ritsaart is currently completing his Doctorate at Macquarie University. He’s primarily interested the epistemic dynamics and implications of digital information spaces, with an emphasis on the downstream consequences of misplaced trust.

Wednesday 10 April

Indigenous Astronomy as Complementary Science

Gerhard Wiesenfeldt (HPS, University of Melbourne)
 
In recent years, indigenous natural knowledge has been studied by a fair amount of academic research in various disciplines both within science and outside. While indigenous knowledge as an object of academic research seems to be well established, the status of indigenous knowledge within academia is less clear. Is it supposed to be treated as a different kind of knowledge system with comparable validity to scientific knowledge, possibly even to the point that research expands on that knowledge? Or should it remain purely an object of study, research should thus be confined to reconstructing and interpreting indigenous ways of knowing? Or should the status of indigenous knowledge be different?
 
The presentation will look at these questions and discuss whether it might be useful to use Hasok Chang’s notion of ‘complementary science’ to understand the role of indigenous knowledge in scientific research. The presentation will focus on astronomical knowledge, I will argue that there are two reasons why astronomy is particularly suited to explore the relation between indigenous knowledge and modern science. One reason is that astronomy is exceptional among the sciences with never having received a fundamental epistemic rupture in its practice, the other lies in the well established notion of cultural astronomy, which can serve both as a stepping stone and as a stumbling block when trying to understand indigenous astronomy.

Wednesday 27 March

How an agential account of biological individuality can come apart from concepts of the organism

Rebecca Mann (HPS, University of Sydney)
 
The central aim of this paper is to connect the problem of biological individuality with the increasing interest in minimal accounts of agency   This paper develops two main claims.

(1) We should have an agential account of biological individuality in addition to an evolutionary and organismal one.

(2) This account of agential individuality comes apart from concepts of the organism (and evolutionary individual), as motivated by the case of eusocial insects, specifically looking at the European Honey bee Apis mellifera. 

Rebecca Mann is a PhD Candidate in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at The University of Sydney. Rebecca’s thesis explores the intricacies of the concept of biological individuality and its use across disciplines, including biology, philosophy of biology, and metaphysics. Rebecca also has a Bachelor of Genetics with Honours from the Australian National University and a Diploma of Arts (Philosophy) from The University of Sydney. Rebecca has a keen interest in odd biological entities, with a particular fascination for social insects like the honey bee.

Wednesday 20 March

VY-Bayes: A robust Bayesian approach to statistical hypothesis testing

Geoffrey Robinson (CSIRO, retired)

I believe that the foundations of statistical inference have been in what Kuhn (1970) would call a "crisis" for approximately 100 years. I believe that current approaches to statistical hypothesis testing are unsatisfactory in most situations, even the most mundane. My suggested way forward is first to argue that Bayes factors are not a reliable measure of strength of evidence, particularly when we have little prior information. Instead, we should use what I call "VY-Bayes factors".  These can be regarded as an answer to the question "What is the expected strength of evidence contributed by the current data in the context of other likely data?"  I consider that this new method of assessing strength of evidence is better than the methods advocated by the classical school of inference, is better than relying on interval estimation, and would be useful as a standard method for assessing what has been called "statistical significance" (although this term is becoming unfashionable).  I have only recently become confident that I know where I am going.
 
Two situations will be discussed in detail. The first is where a single random variable with unit variance is observed and we wish to test whether the population mean might be zero. The second is a large longitudinal study of the effects of hormone replacement therapy where we are interested in testing whether hormone replacement therapy might increase the rate of coronary heart disease.

Wednesday 13 March

The Two Truths: "Harmonizing" Catholicism and Science

Sarah Walsh (History, University of Melbourne) 
 
This paper examines the interconnections and relationship between Catholicism and eugenics in early-twentieth-century Chile. Specifically, it demonstrates that the popularity of eugenic science was not diminished by the influence of Catholicism there. In fact, both eugenics and Catholicism worked together to construct the concept of a unique Chilean race, la raza chilena. It will argue that a major factor that facilitated this conceptual overlap was a generalized belief among historical actors that male and female gender roles were biologically determined and therefore essential to a properly functioning society.

Dr Sarah Walsh is Lecturer in History in the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She received her PhD in Latin American history from the University of Maryland, College Park. She specializes in the history of the human sciences in Latin America with an emphasis on race/ethnicity and gender. Dr Walsh has held positions at the University of Sydney, the Universidade de Lisboa, and Washington State University and her book The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.

Wednesday 6 March

Robert Lee and his Undisciplined Medical Self: Life Writing and Technologies of Self in the Early Victorian Medical Profession

James Bradley (HPS, University of Melbourne)

Robert Lee, anatomical discoverer and early obstetrician, was a divisive figure who, for much of his professional life, mismanaged his reputation. This article explores the connections between Lee’s life, one of his diaries and the subject-making and ethical uses of life writing. Lee used the diary to record his reading of the lives of fellow professionals, copying out passages from biographies, memoirs and obituaries, which he augmented with personal knowledge. Thus, as well as developing a critique of the medical profession’s failure to accommodate research and consultation, life writing allowed him to make sense of his own professional suffering by describing the struggles of others. But reading biographies combined with writing a diary laid bare a series of character flaws. Despite the moral self-auditing that was fundamental to the diary’s purpose, an unruly rather than a disciplined professional subject emerged, illustrating the limitations of his diary as a ‘technology of self’.

James is a senior lecturer in the history of medicine at the University of Melbourne. He started his career at the Wellcome Unit, University of Glasgow, but for the last two decades has been teaching and researching in Australia. Recent publications have included work on Darwin, ECT, and pedagogy. He is currently writing a biography of Charles Bell, while also musing about the nature of identity and its relationship to the self.
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