The Second Annual Mary Hesse Lecture at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, was delivered by Helen Longino (Stanford University) on Thursday 23 October 2025 at 3.30pm in the Babbage Lecture Theatre. It was followed by a drinks reception in the Whipple Museum.
Professor Longino's lecture was entitled: 'How scientific plurality and sociality enhance scientific objectivity'.
Abstract
We are urged to trust science because it is objective. Efforts to support the objectivity of scientific inquiry, however, often make assumptions that ultimately fuel skepticism about the very possibility of such objectivity. One is a commitment to scientific monism: the idea that scientific inquiry, properly pursued, should result in a single, comprehensive, account of a given domain or even of the natural world, tout court. A second is commitment to any of a variety of Individualist epistemologies, all informed by the principle that scientific knowledge is the outcome of cognitive processes realized by single individuals. Abandoning monism and individualism may complicate our conception of objectivity. Nevertheless, embracing pluralism and the sociality of knowledge in their stead enables a more robust account of the trustworthiness of science.
Helen Longino
Helen Longino is Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Emerita, at Stanford University. Her teaching and research interests are in philosophy of science, social epistemology and feminist philosophy. Her publications include Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 1990), The Fate of Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 2001) and Studying Human Behavior (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Mary Hesse
Professor Mary Hesse (1924–2016), along with Gerd Buchdahl and Michael Hoskin, made our department into a well-respected teaching organisation within the Natural Sciences Tripos; and her widely acclaimed publications did much to establish its international reputation. Mary was an incisive and cogent lecturer, and an inspiring and generous supervisor. Her career provided a model for women in academia, in times when it was even more difficult for them to gain the recognition they deserved for their work.