The HPS Seminar Series

The Business of Science: Changing Perspectives of Scientific Practice
Carmelina Contarino, University of Melbourne
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In the last 15 years, the Metascience reform movement has built its own platforms, research centres, associations, and conferences. It has reached into the machinery of research governance, from revised review procedures at the NIH to a Metascience Unit inside the UK government. Yet the community that built this infrastructure has no settled account of itself. It has no membership list, no defining journal set, and contested boundaries. Confusing those boundaries further, many of the people doing the work of Metascience sit within their own disciplines or within the broader scientific ecosystem and do not consider themselves to be Metascientists. This community is the subject of my thesis: who belongs to it, how it came to take its present shape, and why its members work on the problems they do, with the people they do. I investigate how technology has shaped this community, its reforms and its infrastructure. 
This seminar traces how the community came to take its present shape: from the plural traditions of methodological critique, through the catalysts that turned decades of critique into a reform movement, to the infrastructure that the community has since built. Whether technology drove that development or merely enabled it turns on a distinction the literature does not yet supply. A conceptual framework is introduced to operationalise the term tech-driven, separating innovations that are practice-driven (whether or not they are enabled by technology) from those that are tech-driven. Who belongs is an empirical question before it is a definitional one: the seminar closes with a pilot social network analysis that identifies the field's canonical core.
 
Advisory Committee: A/Prof François Schroeter (Chair); Dr Martin Bush (Principal Supervisor); Professor Fiona Fidler (Co-Supervisor); Dr Marc Cheong (Co-Supervisor)


Carmelina Contarino is a Graduate Researcher in the MetaMelb Research Lab and History and Philosophy of Science program at the University of Melbourne. Her research falls within the STS tradition and focuses on the Metascience community, its shape, practices, conventions, and resulting infrastructure. Carmelina’s PhD thesis, The Business of Science: Changing Perspectives of Scientific Practice, asks: How have tech-driven processes shaped the development of the Metascience community? Her thesis incorporates ideas and traditions from both her academic and business management experience. Carmelina is a Research Associate at the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics (CAIDE), and she tutors across the University in subjects spanning AI, Ethics and the Law; The Ethics of AI; and Science, Philosophy and Society. She has served as a board member of the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-research and Open Science (AIMOS) and as treasurer of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS).

From prediction markets to capability markets: epistemic extractivism in Generative AI
Glen Berman, University of Melbourne
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Some Generative AI (GenAI) platforms are introducing advertising into their conversational interfaces, others have committed not to. We use this divergence as a starting point, and argue that it obscures a deeper convergence: all major GenAI platform operators instrument the interfaces through which users interact with GenAI models, and all are positioned to develop and monetise AI capability products from the records this instrumentation produces. Drawing on analysis of the infrastructure that standardises and structures the recording of GenAI interactions, alongside industry documentation, research, and reporting, the paper surfaces interaction telemetry data as a distinct data object in the political economy of GenAI: a record of the cognitive processes materialised at the GenAI interface. We identify two forms of extraction co-constituted with this data object. Behavioural extraction, continuous with surveillance capitalism, captures user states for the prediction and shaping of user behaviour. Cognitive extraction, in contrast, captures teleological labour -- the labour through which users cajole GenAI platforms into doing what they want -- and refines this into AI capability products. In this context we draw on Grosfoguel's account of the appropriation of knowledge from marginalised communities to argue that cognitive extraction is an example of epistemic extractivism, and anticipate that its impacts will similarly be patterned by colonial legacies. Cognitive extraction, we argue, adopts and extends the logics of colonisation, positioning human reasoning as a labour source to be extracted, and labour markets as a stock to be depleted. We conclude by outlining research directions for the study of epistemic extractivism in GenAI.
 

Glen Berman recently joined the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the MetaMelb research group, where he is studying the genealogy of metascience. Earlier this year, he completed his PhD at the Australian National University. His thesis explored the construction of AI as a materially and symbolically significant research field, drawing on STS and Infrastructure Studies approaches. Alongside his thesis research, he has examined evaluation practices within the AI field, looking particularly at the taxonomies and tools that shape what counts as evidence about AI systems' effectiveness and effects. He has previously held research positions at the ANU HASS Digital Research Hub and Google Research. His work has appeared in Big Data & Society, Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society, and AI & Society, as well as at CHI and AIES.

Nomic Eliminativism: Writing the Last Chapter of the Laws of Nature Biography
Cristián Soto, Universidad de Chile
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This article revisits and further develops nomic eliminativism, which is the view that argues for dispensing with laws of nature both in science and in our philosophical understanding thereof. This encompasses eliminating laws as an ontological presupposition, as well as the law-parlance associated with it. After briefly mentioning early motivations for nomic eliminativism, we explore a novel avenue for abolishing laws of nature: viz., laws may become ontologically redundant by following one or more of the many roads of 19th-century ethers. After developing our argument, we shall notice that, unsurprisingly enough, various forms of resistance to nomic eliminativism quickly emerge, particularly since laws are deeply entrenched in our scientific worldview. Some would claim that we should remain respectable naturalists, hence restricting ourselves from imposing constraints on scientific practices. Others would claim that the expression law of nature is not as muddled as to risk undermining our understanding of scientific practices. Yet still others will submit that nomic eliminativism fails to be pluralist enough. In responding to these concerns, we shall systematize results promoting a philosophical understanding of science without laws.


Cristián Soto is Ph.D. in Philosophy at SHAPS, UniMelb (2016). He completed a postdoc as Newton International Fellow for the British Academy of Humanities based at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences, London School of Economics, England (2022-2024), where he continues to be part of the Alumnus Programme until 2026. He is also Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile. His research focuses on HPS-oriented studies on laws of nature, metaphysics of science, and scientific pluralism.

Clinical Narratives and Diagnostic Logic: The Epistemology of the Diagnostic Encounter: Navigating Utility and Epistemic Erasure in Australian Clinical Practice
Hafsa Kediye, University of Melbourne

While psychiatric classification is often framed around the pursuit of biological validity or clinical precision, the historical trajectory of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) demonstrates a different trajectory. Drawing on epistemological and historiographical frameworks within the philosophy of psychiatry, this paper examines how the DSM evolved into an 'administrative ontology': a classificatory apparatus whose authority is sustained primarily by its institutional utility rather than its explanatory power. Through an analysis of the DSM-5 validity crisis, the collapse of neuroscientific expectations, and the manual’s function as an indispensable 'contact language' across legal, insurance, and healthcare frameworks, this talk explores the structural path-dependence of diagnostic classification within Australian clinical practice. Ultimately, it considers how this institutional entrenchment configures clinical practice and shapes the parameters of diagnostic classification for practitioners and patients alike.

Hafsa Kediye is a Master’s candidate in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. Drawing on her background as a registered psychologist, her research investigates the diagnostic logic, epistemological limits, and administrative utility of psychiatric classification. Her project critically examines how standardised diagnostic manuals structure clinical reasoning and shape access within Australian healthcare and administrative frameworks.
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Disgust and parasite avoidance
Philippa Nicole Barr, Australian National University​

At first glance, disgust would appear to be a spontaneous and immediate reaction to a perceived threat. Yet it is also learned over time, and can even be unlearned, in that it is possible to challenge an understanding of what is disgusting.  This paper will use examples from the shift in response to uncertainty in medical knowledge during the first outbreak of plague in Sydney as well as 19th century anti-spitting and tuberculosis prevention campaigns, to argue that disgust has a kind of plasticity that has been mobilised to change practices following the development of new epidemiological knowledge. While disgust may have resulted from an evolved predisposition which protected humans from toxicity, it is now adapted to distance us from an array of perceived threats, many of which are not pathogenic and can be operationalised to regulate behaviour.  Methodologically, this paper attempts the use of examples from medical history to present the way in which disgust responds to cultural and epistemological change. It uses this evidence to intervene in debates regarding parasite avoidance theory, which posits that the disgust reaction evolved to support parasite avoidance. 

Philippa Barr is a multilingual researcher and professional with extensive experience in technology, academia and healthcare services across Australia and Europe. Her first book, Uncertainty and Emotion in the 1900 Sydney Plague, was published by Cambridge University Press in April 2024. Her current research project employs a historical phenomenological approach to demonstrate how air pollution crises in northern Italy have heightened atmospheric awareness and prompted interventions that have transformed aesthetics and perceptions without substantially improving air quality. She has taught and published in medical anthropology, urban studies, global health, and the history and philosophy of science and emotion. Through her professional work, she has led strategy and research for products, campaigns, and services across the not-for-profit, government, and commercial sectors, with particular expertise in healthcare and emergency response. She is currently affiliated with the Australian National University and is working in the government sector. 

No Seminar this week

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Working through Context: A Study of Contextual Explanation in History and Philosophy of Science
Samara Greenwood, University of Melbourne​

HPS scholars routinely use historical context to help explain scientific developments, yet how such explanations work remains unclear. What counts as context? When does contextualisation become explanatory, and where does individual agency fit? My thesis examines these questions through an integrated historical and philosophical approach. Alongside three close case studies, I develop a framework for robust contextual explanation centred on the concept of ‘interacting lifeworlds.’ In doing so, I demonstrate how science, context and agency are deeply intertwined, and how scientific actors situated across multiple social worlds can develop distinctive perspectives from which to rethink and rework traditional epistemic boundaries.

NB: This is a PhD Completion Seminar

Samara Greenwood is a PhD candidate in HPS at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the roles played by values and social context in the development of science. She is also Vice-President of the Australasian Association for History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science  (AAHPSSS) and founding producer of The HPS Podcast.

Epigenetics and responsibility: Are prospective parents morally obligated to avoid epigenetic “risks”?
Courtney McMahon, Monash University​

Advances in the field of epigenetics have attracted much attention over the last several decades. Epigenetics, the study of the gene-environment interaction, is linking lifestyle factors, such as diet and stress, to health outcomes in our offspring and even subsequent generations. This has given rise to scholarly debate about whether individuals who plan on having children have a moral obligation to avoid epigenetic risks in order to prevent harms to future generations – captured in the term “epigenetic responsibility”. In this presentation, I explore two reasons why individuals do not possess such a responsibility. First, focusing on epigenetics studies in animals, I show how unsupported claims about the relevance of findings in animals to humans have led to widespread misunderstanding about the salience of epigenetic risks in humans. In fact, the field in general still lacks sufficient evidence for many epigenetic effects in humans that have been observed in animal species. Second, epigenetic processes are so complex that it is virtually impossible for individuals to foresee how their actions might impact the health of future generations. If individuals cannot reasonably foresee the effects of their actions on their future children’s health, then they cannot be considered responsible for preventing such effects. I conclude by offering some remarks about parental responsibility, and some suggestions for future debate on the ethical implications of epigenetics.

Courtney McMahon recently completed their PhD at the Monash Bioethics Centre, and have a background in bioethics and philosophy. They are interested in questions of reproductive responsibility and other ethical issues related to technological and scientific advances in human reproduction, particularly from a feminist standpoint. Much of their work engages with feminist ethical theory such as the ethics of care and empathy, and tackles questions of responsibility in the context of structural injustice. Their PhD was part of a project investigating the ethical implications of epigenetics for antenatal care in Australia. Specifically, the thesis focused on the implications of epigenetics for intergenerational responsibility, especially on the part of pregnant people.

Some Epistemological Problems for Some Priority Claims: The Case of Janet and Freud
Thomas Spiteri, University of Melbourne​

Priority claims are often framed as questions of historical adjudication. But determining who first made a discovery—who influenced whom, whose contribution was obscured by institutional standing or later reputation, and so on—also involves sociological considerations (Merton 1957, 1968; Schaffer 1986). Philosophical work on discovery has unsettled this picture further, raising questions about what qualifies as a discovery in the first place and how the term is properly applied (Arabatzis 2006), as well as whether questions about the standing of a claim can be separated from the practices that produced it (Schickore and Steinle 2006). To say that X discovered object Y before Z often presupposes that object Y is the same object. This presupposition comes under strain where the material investigators work with does not itself determine the object at issue, and where objects are individuated through the practices directed at them – a characteristic predicament in psychology, where research objects are distinctly “epistemically blurry” (Feest 2011, 2025). The dispute between Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud over the discovery of pathogenic traumatic memory is one such case, where “discovery” is particularly epistemologically fraught. Historiographical accounts have sought to restore Janet's place in the history of psychology by establishing his priority and documenting Freud's indebtedness to his work (Ellenberger 1970; van der Kolk and van der Hart 1989; Craparo et al. 2019). I do not dispute this historical reconstruction. Rather, I argue that reconstructing Janet's and Freud's investigative systems alongside the difficulties posed by the material to which their practices were directed, makes the claim that they were "discovering" the same object difficult to sustain.

Thomas Spiteri is a PhD candidate in the History and Philosophy of Science program. His research explores the ways in which knowledge has been generated in the "psy" disciplines – i.e., psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis – and is interested in the conditions that allow for certain epistemic activities and claims to be made possible.

C.L.R. James, anti-psychiatry and the emergence of psycho-colonialism
James Bradley, University of Melbourne​

 
For a long time, I have struggled to connect my PhD research—Cricket, Class and Colonialism—with my current interests. Recently, however, an unexpected avenue opened up linking this early work to the history of the psych-sciences in the late twentieth century.
My original research compared two elite cricket clubs and their reciprocal influence on their respective societies. I was particularly focused on how these institutions developed and deployed biopolitical concepts like Anglo-Saxonism in pre-WWI settings. Little did I know this would eventually bridge my past and present research agendas.
The central figure of this seminar paper is the Trinidadian Marxist C.L.R. James, a foundational thinker in post-colonial theory. While perhaps best known to the wider public as the author of the cricket masterpiece Beyond a Boundary, he led an extraordinary life whose influence has only deepened since his death in 1989.
Today, I will trace the vital connections between James, transcultural psychiatry, and the anti-psychiatry movement. This centres on his participation in the 1967 Dialectics of Liberation Congress and his response to Stokely Carmichael’s radical espousal of Black Power. In the process, I will explore how James’s views aligned with the emergence of Fanon’s vision of psycho-colonialism and the Laing-Cooper model of anti-psychiatry.

James Bradley is a senior lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne, where he teaches ‘Genetics, Biopower and History’ and ‘Minds and Madness’. He also teaches an elective in the online Master of Psychiatry: ‘History and Philosophy of Psychiatry’. Over the course of his career, he has researched across a wide number of fields including the histories of cricket, tattooing, medical professionalisation, alternative medicine and convict transportation to Australia. He is currently working on two projects. The first is a biography of Charles Bell, a nineteenth-century anatomist and surgeon most famous for his discoveries in the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. This will provide a window on the complex interplay of romantic culture and scientific thought in the 19th century. The second is a collaboration with Jas Flore: an oral history of post-war Australian psychiatry, which will chart how massive changes in the specialism were experienced by psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and others.

                         
                          Honours Theses Presentation

1) Portrayals of science in boardgames: Two case studies
Isabel Natividad

The games that people play are intrinsically linked with the culture and society that surround them. Boardgames themed around science offers a unique look into the cultural and societal perceptions surrounding science. This thesis will be looking at Galileo Galilee and Inventions: Evolution of Ideas, to tap into the perspectives imbued in the two boardgames, investigating underlying values and understandings of science that are not immediately apparent. Galileo Galilee shows a disconnect between the outward beliefs about science and the underlying values that actually govern how science is portrayed. This is contrasted by Inventions which pushed the underlying goals of Galileo Galilee into the forefront and allows for a more direct analysis of the portrayal of science in pop culture and in the public sphere. Both of these boardgames portray a dissonance between the front facing and underlying goals and values within science. 

Isabel has a background in History and Philosophy of science, having completed her bachelor in 2025 and commenced  honours in 2026. She is passionate about media, especially boardgames which has led her to her thesis topic and allowed her to combine two of her interests through her honour’s project.


2) The First World Congress of Psychiatry: A snapshot of ideas about psychiatric progress
Liz Maxwell

International congresses provide arenas in which knowledge can be built and the boundaries of a discipline can be negotiated. The First World Congress of Psychiatry took place in 1950 in Paris and was shaped by postwar internationalism and efforts to use psychiatric knowledge to explain the Second World War and prevent future political unrest. The Congress sought to progress the psychiatric discipline as a legitimate, cosmopolitan, scientific field, as well as the progression of psychiatric knowledge. This was reflected through the articles featured in the Congress Newspapers, and the speeches from the congress organizers. Furthermore, there were attempts to integrate biological and psychological approaches to aetiology, nosology, and treatment. Through analysis of the Congress Newspapers and the Congress Proceedings, the thesis argues that there was a stronger emphasis on psychiatric progression being tied to somatic interventions like shock therapies, and physiological explanations. In contrast, psychoanalytical treatments and explanations were presented more as a part of psychiatry's history, rather than of its progress, and was framed as less scientific. Ultimately, this thesis explores how understandings of scientific progress at the First World Congress of Psychiatry contributed to the construction of psychiatry's disciplinary responsibilities and its scientific identity in the postwar period. 

Liz did her undergraduate degree in psychology, majoring in neuroscience. She became interested in how knowledge was legitimised in psychiatric history in a year 3 HPS subject.


3) Steering social consequences of technology: two case studies
Tige Sixel Miller 

In “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” (1980), Langdon Winner argues that technologies are not simply politically neutral artifacts mouldable to our desires, but can themselves embody, stabilise and reproduce particular forms of political power and social organisation. According to Winner, this embodiment can be a result of design choices or an inherent property of a particular technology, but once a technological infrastructure is built its consequences can be deeply entrenched. Consequently, Winner warns against a “technological somnambulism” in which society sleepwalks through its relationship with technology without critically evaluating or actively steering technological development. This thesis examines two cyberneticians who attempted such steering in the 1960s and 1970s. Stafford Beer's Project Cybersyn in Chile (1971–1973) and Viktor Glushkov's proposed All-State Automated System (OGAS) in the Soviet Union were partially constructed blueprints for national computer networks to manage socialist economies. Reading both these individuals and their projects through Winner's framework, I explore what shaped their respective technological politics and how they attempted to encode these politics into their designs. Cybersyn aimed to promote decentralised management, worker participation and Chilean technological independence under democratic socialism. OGAS, which was never entirely built due to political and bureaucratic resistance, was designed to be more hierarchical, all-encompassing (though anonymised) in its data collection, and was driven by the telos of historical materialism. I argue that both cases reveal how difficult it is to build a distinct political vision into technological infrastructure. Rather than reforming the political structure around them, as its designers had hoped, each project was steered toward meeting that structure’s existing needs and limits. In practice, Cybersyn was centralised and top-down in its use due to economic limitations and the climate of crisis in which it operated. OGAS was fractured into separate systems that suited the existing power balance of the competing Soviet ministries and bureaucracies that claimed authority over economic management. Therefore, if we are to steer the social consequences of technology, as Winner urges, we must first be able to steer the institutions in which the technology is built, as visionary technological design alone is insufficient.

Tige is a Graduate Diploma (advanced) student in the History and Philosophy of Science with a background in Physics. He is interested in the ideas and forces that drove our transition into a digital culture, or “information age,” and the implications of this transition on our understanding of society and on ourselves as individuals. He also has an interest in art history, enjoys drawing and playing music.


4) Epistemological significance of the speculative aspects of mental illness—the case of depression
Georgia Gillies

This thesis is a critical examination of the shifts in psychiatry that historians have marked as important in shaping modern day clinical depression. Drawing on insights from philosophy of psychiatry, this thesis makes an ontological claim and a historical claim. Firstly, if we take depression to be an interactional kind with its causes both underdetermined and overdetermined, I argue an implication of this is that subsequent classifications and constructions about depression are speculative theories as opposed to pieces of evidence. Secondly, I argue that the speculative element of these theories and categorisations has been obscured in favour of presenting certainty: speculative theories of depression have been naturalised into ‘hard facts’. I trace three historical particulars in demonstrating this point: the shift away from the endogenous/exogenous model of depression, the emergence and legacy of the serotonin theory and the development of anti-depressant treatments.

Georgia is a HPS honours student at the University of Melbourne. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Philosophy) in 2025. Her academic interests are the philosophy and history of psychiatry, epistemology, STS and science communication. Outside of academic interests, she enjoys bouldering and playing music.


5) Wellness and Surveillance
Will Bennett
 

Wellness, over the 20th and 21st centuries, has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. In the U.S., tech companies have begun providing various technologies to help individuals track their wellness. Oura, a Finnish company, offers one of the most popular wellness products: the Oura Ring. However, its recent connections to the U.S. military and Palantir call into question the technology's capacity. Using Foucauldian theories to analyse the self-tracking and surveillance habits encouraged by Oura’s ring and app design, this paper will highlight how the Oura ring, and the wellness industry, can be used by the military to shape people’s ideas and practices around health and wellness.
 

Will studied a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Philosophy and Anthropology,

before pivoting to a Graduate Diploma in History and Philosophy of Science, both at the University of Melbourne. Will is currently undertaking the Graduate Diploma of Arts (Advanced), under the supervision of Jacinthe Flore.