Department of History and Philosophy of Science

MPhil and Part III seminars

Part III & MPhil Manager: Hasok Chang

The Department's MPhil and Part III students are expected to attend these seminars, which meet on Wednesdays at 3pm. They are not open to anyone else.

During the first term, and during the first two weeks of the second term, the seminars are led by different senior members of the Department and focus on selected readings in history and philosophy of science and medicine. Readings for these seminars are listed below. During the rest of the year, the seminars provide opportunities for students to present their own work.

The seminars in the first two weeks of Michaelmas Term will be for the whole group. Subsequent seminars will run twice, in consecutive weeks. The Part III and MPhil Manager will assign everyone to one of two seminar groups, each following its own schedule, to ensure an even distribution of seminar participants.

Michaelmas Term

Week 1

Scientific Progress (Hasok Chang, Part III and MPhil Manager)

  • Popper, K, 'The rationality of scientific revolutions', in Ian Hacking (ed), Scientific Revolutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 80–106
  • Kuhn, TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1996, 3rd ed.) Chapter XIII: 'Progress through revolutions', pp. 160–174 (mandatory). Optional, but strongly recommended: Chapter X: 'Revolutions as changes of world view', pp. 111–136

Week 2

Scientific Imaging (Simon Schaffer, Director of Graduate Studies)

  • Shapin, Steven, 'The politics of observation', in Roy Wallis (ed), On the Margins of Science (Keele: University of Keele, 1979), pp. 139–178 or in HM Collins (ed), Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: A Source Book (Bath: Bath University Press, 1982)
  • Lynch, Michael, 'Discipline and the material form of images', Social Studies of Science 15 (1985), 37–66
  • Beaulieu, Anne, 'Images are not the (only) truth', Science, Technology and Human Values 27 (2002), 53–86
  • Latour, Bruno, 'Drawing things together', in M Lynch and S Woolgar (eds), Representation in Scientific Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), pp. 19–68

Weeks 3 and 4

Race, Sex and Evolution (Jim Secord, Head of Department)

  • Darwin, Charles, Evolutionary Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 231–347; this includes chapters 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 19–22 of The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1st ed, 1871), as well as reviews
  • Richards, E, 'Will the real Charles Darwin please stand up?', New Scientist 100 (1983), 884–887
  • Desmond, Adrian, 'Darwin the abolitionist', Prospect (Feb. 2009)
  • Richards, R, Review of C Darwin, The Descent of Man, ed by J Moore and A Desmond, British Journal for the History of Science 39 (2006), 615–617

Material Culture and Museums (Liba Taub, Director and Curator of the Whipple Museum)

  • Bennett, Jim, 'Early-modern mathematical instruments', in press
  • Arnold, Ken, and Thomas Söderqvist, 'Medical instruments in museums: immediate impressions and historical meanings', in press
  • Schaffer, Simon, 'Easily cracked: scientific instruments in states of disrepair', in press

Weeks 5 and 6

Biomedicine (Nick Hopwood)

  • Oudshoorn, Nelly, Beyond the Natural Body: An Archeology of Sex Hormones (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 42–81 (notes pp. 158–61)
  • Epstein, Steven, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 181–234 (notes pp. 407–17)

Models and Idealization (Anna Alexandrova)

  • McMullin, Ernan, 'Galilean idealization', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985), 247–273
  • Cartwright, Nancy, 'The vanity of rigour in economics: theoretical models and Galilean experiments', chapter 15 of Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 217–235
  • Weisberg, Michael, 'Three kinds of idealization', Journal of Philosophy 104 (2007), 639–659

Weeks 7 and 8

Knowledge in Transit (Nick Jardine)

  • Secord, J, 'Knowledge in transit', Isis 95 (2004), 654–72
  • Bleichmar, D, 'Atlantic competitions: botany in the eighteenth-century Spanish empire', in J Delbourgo and N Dew (eds), Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 225–52
  • Pimentel, J, 'Across nations and ages: the creole collector and the many lives of the Megatherium', in S Schaffer and others (eds), The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach MA: Science History Publications, 2009), pp. 321–53
  • Useful context for the pieces by Bleichmar and Pimentel is provided by the introductions to the edited volumes in which they appear.

Medicine, Anatomy and Images (Karin Ekholm)

  • Jones, Peter M, 'Image, word and medicine in the Middle Ages', in Jean Givens, Karen Reeds and Alain Touwaide (eds), Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550 (Aldershot: Variorum, 2006), pp. 1–24
  • Kemp, Martin, '"The mark of truth": looking and learning in some anatomical illustrations from the Renaissance and the eighteenth century', in WF Bynum and Roy Porter (eds), Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 85–121

Lent Term

Weeks 1 and 2

Theory Choice (Tim Lewens, Director of Graduate Studies)

  • Duhem, Pierre, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1914; 2nd ed, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), Pt II, Chapter VI: 'Physical theory and experiment', pp. 180–218
  • Lipton, Peter, Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd ed, London: Routledge, 2004), Chapter 4: 'Inference to the best explanation', pp. 55–70 and Chapter 9: 'Loveliness and truth', pp. 142–163

Foucault (John Forrester, Head of Department)

  • Foucault, Michel, The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception (London: Tavistock, 1973), Chapter 8, pp. 124–148
  • Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish (London: Allen Lane, 1977), pp. 195–228, section on 'Panopticism'
  • Foucault, Michel, 'Nietzsche, genealogy, history', in Paul Rabinow (ed), The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), pp. 76–100
  • Foucault, Michel, 'About the concept of the "dangerous individual" in nineteenth-century legal psychiatry' [1978] in James D Faubion (ed), Michel Foucault: Essential Works, 1954–1984. Vol. 3: Power (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2001), pp. 176–200