Seminars and reading groups in Lent Term 2025

• Research Seminars
  • Departmental Seminars
  • The Anthropocene
  • Coffee with Scientists
  • Cabinet of Natural History
  • AD HOC (History of Chemistry)
  • History of Medicine
  • CamPoS
• Reading Groups
  • Calculating People
  • Teaching HPSTM Today
  • Pragmatism Reading Group
  • History and Philosophy of Physics Reading Group
  • Science Fiction & HPS Reading Group
  • HPSTM in East Asia
  • Values in Science Reading Group
  • Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction
• HPS Workshop
• Postgraduate Seminars
• Language Groups

 

Departmental Seminars

Seminars take place on Thursdays from 3.30pm to 5pm in the Hopkinson Lecture Theatre, unless otherwise stated.

Organised by Rosanna Dent.

23 January

PhD Showcase

This showcase of five-minute flash talks will give a lively and swift overview of ongoing research by HPS PhD students.

30 January

Katherine Furman (University of Liverpool)
Pulling away from science, epistemic self-reliance, and the tale of Thabo Mbeki

When relations between science and society are going well, members of the public can straightforwardly use scientific information in their decision-making. When things go awry and trust breaks down, people seek out substitutions to fulfil the epistemic functions that trust in science previously satisfied. One way to do this is to adopt a DIY approach and 'do your own research'.

Plenty has been written philosophically on the phenomenon of 'doing your own research', mostly from and about north American and western European contexts. The implied epistemic agent is typically someone who values autonomy in the extreme, is deluded about their own capacities, has a contrarian character, and may enjoy the novelty of figuring things out for themself. However, if we change the cases, 'doing your own research' may look different.

In this talk, I provide a detailed case study of Thabo Mbeki and his AIDS denialism. Thabo Mbeki was South Africa's president from 1999 to 2008, and when he began his political career, he completely accepted the mainstream scientific position on HIV/AIDS. However, Mbeki began to distrust this science as he came to suspect that it was premised on racist values. He engaged in substantial independent evidence-gathering and developed AIDS policies on that basis, with tragic consequences. Mbeki's story is undoubtedly a cautionary tale against 'doing your own research', but he is far-removed from the parody of an autonomy-obsessed agent, dabbling in science for the fun of it. He is deeply invested in the success of his country and its people, and he takes this role extremely seriously. In fact, it seems that it is the seriousness of his commitments that lead him astray.  

Overall, this talk hopes to provide a slightly different story about 'doing your own research'. It also aims to highlight how the selection of cases for philosophical analysis can substantially alter how we understand the phenomenon under study, and so choosing cases should be approached with care.

6 February

Matthew Eddy (Durham University)
Recalculating equality: data, race and environmental health models in 19th-century West Africa

This paper examines the relationship between data and disease in the mid-19th-century British colony of Sierra Leone through the eyes of the black physician James Africanus Beale Horton (1835–1883). A native of Sierra Leone and a distinguished graduate of two British medical schools, Horton sought to arrest the alarming ascent of racialised medical information gathering systems that framed the delivery of public health and wellness for both African and European inhabitants who lived across the 3,000 miles of West African coastline controlled by Britain. Concentrating on the historical context that enabled Horton to use his robust knowledge of medicine, environmental science and statistics to promote health equity within British West Africa and within the Global South more generally, I suggest that he was especially keen to challenge the proliferation of incomplete, inaccurate or irrelevant medical information by collecting and disseminating climatology and mortality 'counter data' that revealed the true causes of health and illness.

13 February

Jim Secord (HPS, Cambridge)
Science as communication

Science is a form of communication, but its analysis from this standpoint has often been fragmented between diverse approaches and specialties, from textual criticism and media sociology to book history, citation analysis and translation studies. As a result, work not devoted to these subjects often implicitly treats the communicative dimension of science as an afterthought, managed after the main work is done. This talk aims to bring communication to the centre of our understanding of science. My goal is not to offer a unified overview of the vast literatures on pragmatics, translation, visual culture, the philosophy of linguistics and other areas, but to point to practical perspectives that might help in interpreting science at every stage as communicative action.

20 February

Miriam Solomon (Temple University)
On conceptual engineering in psychiatry: is it time to eliminate or reappropriate the category of psychiatric disorder?

The concept of psychiatric (mental) disorder became widespread in the late 20th century, as a sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical, extension of the more general category of physical disease. It has facilitated medicalization of some psychological conditions, such as those listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM). At the same time, it has generated controversy about the scope and consequences of its applicability. 'Psychiatric disorder' has become a 'hembig' concept: one with normative (hegemonic) content, ambiguous meanings, and wide (big) scope. This has led to ongoing uncertainty and disagreement about what falls under the scope of psychiatric disorder. Many proposed definitions are circular. Practical consequences of these 'hembig' characteristics include inappropriate stigmatization, patient refusals of diagnoses, uncertain eligibility for healthcare and disability accommodations, concerns about overdiagnosis, and worries about elite capture of resources. I will argue that understanding the evolving meaning of 'psychiatric disorder' is helpful as a preliminary to recommendations about how to go forward with (or without) this concept.

27 February

Neil Safier (Brown University)
Where is Amazonia on display (today)? A global approach to understanding Amazonian collections

Over the past several decades, significant changes have taken place in the way that the Amazon River region has come to be understood across a range of disciplines. In the field of anthropology, interventions by anthropologists Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Philippe Descola, as well as Indigenous knowledge-keepers including Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Ailton Krenak, have transformed the academic (and public) understanding of how Amerindian communities perceive and describe their own histories in equatorial South America, and beyond. Amazonian archaeology, in the work of Anna Roosevelt, Eduardo Neves, and Denise Schaan, among many others, has likewise revealed new ways of understanding the relationship between physical remnants of communities past and the longer histories of habitation and engagement within the vast and diverse Amazonian ecosystem. Even more recently, Amazonian artists from Peru to Venezuela and Brazil have engaged in a creative and politically ambitious rethinking of colonialism within the broader Amazon basin, presenting their work at venues from Braunschweig to Vienna and from Princeton to Venice. And mega-exhibitions like that of Sebastião Salgado's 'Amazonia' or the even more recent 'Amazonias: El Futuro Ancestral' (CCCB, Barcelona) have helped bring the visual lexicon of Amazonian rivers, forests, and communities to even more global audiences.

Today, Amazonia is being presented and displayed like never before in its history: in the news media, in scholarly books and publications, in museums, in political discourse, and in visual art. How are we to understand this visibility historically, especially through the presence of Amazonian objects and collections in museums and art exhibitions, and given the multidisciplinary and transgeographical nature of the region? What historically have been considered the confines of 'Amazonia' as a concept and what kinds of discourses exist that place different kinds of objects, works of arts, and histories together under a single category of 'Amazonia' today? This presentation aims to present the broad outlines of an interdisciplinary research project that will examine Amazonia historically, materially, and ideologically in museum collections around the globe. As digital repatriation comes to be better understood, what role/place/function does it have for the Amazon River region in particular? How do these politics change across the range of media, across geographical frontiers, and distinct legal and ethical regimes of this megaregion? As we contemplate these questions, are there particularly good scholarly models we can use to understand the historical processes of collecting Amazonia in the present day?

6 March: Cambridge Lecture in the History of Medicine

Keith Wailoo (Princeton University)
Unnecessary sleep: opium, the trial of Ann, and the therapeutic dilemma of slavery

As global opium markets expanded in the 19th century, the drug presented a deep therapeutic dilemma. Valued for vanquishing pain and inducing sleep, opium also heightened fears about its habit-forming capacity. Prized amid recurring cholera epidemics, opium products also provoked worry over their capacity to poison and kill. This talk – previewing my next book – examines a single murder trial of an enslaved girl in 1850 Tennessee, accused of using opium to kill the infant child of her master. At issue in the case was her knowledge of the uses and misuses of laudanum, an opium concoction. The case sheds light on an unexplored aspect of the nineteenth-century opium dilemma – the interplay of vital need and fear of poisoning as manifest in the context of US slavery. The case also illuminates how the courts waded into this therapeutic dilemma – how law and medicine interacted in adjudicating questions of knowledge, intent, culpability, and the maintenance of social order as opium found its way onto the North American slave plantation.

13 March

Venue: Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science

Ekaterina Babintseva (Purdue University)
Creativity for the information age: making up minds and machines in the United States and the Soviet Union

In the mid-20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union came to believe that the future of each country hinged on capable technoscientific workforce. To cultivate such workforce, researchers in both countries suggested using special pedagogical computers, which were seen as more effective instructors than human teachers. At the same time, in the 1960s and the 1970s, both American and Soviet societies saw the rising urgency of the concept of creativity, defined as the capacity for technoscientific ingenuity. This talk begins by examining how researchers in the US and the Soviet Union approached the task of turning the computer, a rule-bound machine, into the instrument of cultivating creative thinking. In doing so, scholars employed formal approaches to modelling human reasoning developed by artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners and cognitive scientists in the US and the USSR. Pedagogical computing, therefore, became the site where many approaches to AI were tested and perfected. Eventually, some researchers involved in pedagogical computing turned to artificial intelligence research, where they sought to replicate computationally what they had come to define as the core of human intelligence. This talk treats US and Soviet pedagogical computing as converging efforts in optimizing and managing human cognitive resources under late capitalism and late socialism. Tracing the lineage between pedagogical computing and artificial intelligence in the US and the USSR, I demonstrate how in both countries, artificial intelligence was a managerial science of cognitive resources predicated on state and industry efforts to mold societies with science and technology.

 

The Anthropocene

The Anthropocene (climate histories) seminar offers sessions in the related fields of climate history and Anthropocene studies. Meetings are held on Thursdays at 1pm–2pm in Seminar Room 2. All are welcome!

Organised by Fiona Amery, Alexis Rider and Richard Staley.

30 January

Samuel Grinsell (University College London)
The southern North Sea in modernity and the Anthropocene: fishing, space, and journeys in transdisciplinarity

Histories of modernity have often centred the nation or the empire. When they have turned to transnational matters these have often been studied at oceanic or global scales. This project, instead, starts from a smaller transnational body of water: the southern North Sea, and its Dutch, English and Flemish coasts. It traces how histories of slavery, docks, fishing, migration and infrastructure reshaped the southern North Sea in the long nineteenth century, and the marks left behind in the cities and landscapes of the region today. In this talk I will explore what it means to put particular sites at the heart of global histories of the environment, and argue for a more transdisciplinary approach to history that can think simultaneously about processes of making historical space and contemporary experience of space. This will involve considering how infrastructural changes in the nineteenth century expanded fishing into a system of extraction from seas to land, and examining how this leaves its mark in the built environment, with a particular focus on Grimsby and its place in infrastructures of modernity. I will suggest that the Anthropocene creates an urgent need for histories that can not only enliven our sense of the past but also position our present as a moment of open contestation where the past is enlisted in support of rival visions of the future.

13 February

Semih Celik (University of Exeter)
To conserve or not to conserve? Anthropocenic conflict and competition in Marmara Lake wetlands from late Ottoman times to the present (1850–2025)

During the late 19th century hydrographic instability led to increasing levels of deterioration and desiccation of inland wetlands across the Ottoman Empire, drawing the attention of various previously unheard-of actors. These actors used the new ecological and legal regimes to reclaim vast swathes of desiccated wetland basins. Similarly, Marmara Lake – a wetland ecosystem over 8000 years old, located in the hinterland of one of the most vibrant port cities of the eastern Mediterranean – became the focus of intense scrutiny. Debates over its biodiverse ecosystem and natural history accompanied economic evaluations and reclamation plans.

Whereas dozens of wetland reclamation projects with varying success rates were implemented across the empire from the 1880s to the 1920s, the Marmara Lake wetlands were spared and conserved due to a unique constellation of actors and their interpretations of these wetlands' natural history and of their legal status. The Marmara Lake wetlands endured until 2019, when consecutive dry seasons and the mismanagement of nearby dams, as well as illegal cultivation on their basin led to their desiccation. The ensuing conflict gave rise to what has been called the first climate mitigation lawsuit against the Turkish state, triggering yet another significant episode in the history of the wetlands and the Anthropocene in this region.

This talk examines the developments surrounding the Marmara Lake wetlands over the last century to complicate the history of the Anthropocene in West Asia from its early decades marked by dramatic shifts in perception of and management of the environment to the present day, highlighting the non-linear trajectories that have come to define the Anthropocene.

27 February

Marianna Dudley (University of Bristol)
Electric wind: renewable energy history in the Anthropocene

This paper will explore the role of energy history in shaping understandings of the Anthropocene, and consider how wind energy – widely seen as a solution to climate-change inducing carbon emissions – has historically been intertwined with fossil fuels. It will argue that different wind energy imaginaries reflected wider environmental, political and social concerns in modern Britain. Can this history enrich current thinking, and future energy planning?

13 March

José Luis Granados Mateo (University of the Basque Country and University of Cambridge)
Intellectual histories of the Anthropocene: a plea for presentist historiography and pluralist geology

In this seminar, I will explore the intellectual histories of the Anthropocene, focusing specifically on its scientific conceptualisation – both as a change in the Earth System and as a (rejected) proposed new formal unit of geological time. Since the term began to gain prominence within the Global Change community around 2000, its scientific framework has been accompanied by historical narratives, often written by the scientists themselves. These narratives have led to the development of historiographies that are anachronistic, teleological, and lack a thorough critical engagement with the implicit assumptions embedded in the discourse.

The project of formalising the Anthropocene as a geological epoch later involved professional historians of science, with significant contributions from the Anthropocene Curriculum project, initiated by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG). However, I will argue that much of the work conducted so far has promoted an uncritical vision of the Anthropocene concept itself.

An alternative historiography is both possible and necessary. I will illustrate this through the case of the Anthropozoic Era, proposed by the geologist Antonio Stoppani around 1873. Rather than dismissing it as a 'precursor' or a 'mistaken forerunner', I will argue that it could have been considered a concept with sufficient stratigraphic merit to warrant consideration for formalisation. Drawing on Hasok Chang's proposals, I will advocate for the History and Philosophy of Science to conduct science through alternative means, recovering past theories that remain pertinent to the present, challenging accepted orthodoxy, and fostering a more pluralistic approach to science.

 

Coffee with Scientists

The aim of this group is to explore and enhance the interface between HPS and science. Although many of us in HPS engage closely with scientists and their practices, we could benefit from more explicit discussions about the relationship between HPS and science itself, and from more opportunities for HPS-scholars and scientists to help each other's work.

We meet on Fridays, 3.30–5.00pm in Seminar Room 2. Further information, any reading materials, and links for online meetings will be distributed through the email list of the group. Please contact Hasok Chang (hc372) or Marta Halina (mh801) if you would like to be included on the list.

14 February

Nicholas Humphrey (Emeritus Professor of Psychology, London School of Economics)
The evolution of sentience

7 March

Robert Asher (Associate Professor and Curator, University Museum of Zoology)
Group selection and Ronald Fisher

 

Cabinet of Natural History

This research seminar is concerned with all aspects of the history of natural history and the field and environmental sciences. The regular programme of papers and discussions takes place over lunch on Mondays. In addition, the Cabinet organises a beginning-of-year fungus hunt and occasional expeditions to sites of historical and natural historical interest, and holds an end-of-year garden party.

Seminars are held on Mondays at 1pm in Seminar Room 1 unless otherwise stated.

For further details about upcoming events, or to be added to the mailing list for the Cabinet of Natural History, please contact Mika Hyman.

27 January

Jeremy Schneider (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Blumenbach's fossils: teaching extinction in 18th-century Göttingen

3 February

Benjamin Hegarty (Kirby Institute)
Anthropology's queer histories: John Layard's homosocial milieu and encounters in the field in Atchin (1914–15) and Cambridge

10 February

University of Cambridge HPS MPhil Flash Talks
A showcase of research from MPhil students focusing on history of natural history

17 February

Leonardo Ariel Carrió Cataldi (French National Centre for Scientific Research)
Time, science and empire: cosmography and navigation in the Iberian monarchies in the 16th century

24 February

Justine Holzman (Princeton University) and Amelia Urry (HPS, University of Cambridge)
A polar conversation: studying the histories of the Arctic and Antarctic

3 March

Isobel Newby (University of Leeds)
'Making sense' of the prion hypothesis: theory and practice, 1996–2004

10 March

Alexander van Dijk (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Paradise lost: fashioning the East Indies aboard a VOC ship in 1623

17 March

Jim Endersby (University of Sussex)
Hybrid futures: unnatural acts in American gardens

 

AD HOC

AD HOC (Association for the Discussion of the History of Chemistry) is a group dedicated to the history of chemistry. While our main focus is historical, we also consider the philosophical, sociological, public and educational dimensions of chemistry.

AD HOC has been meeting in various configurations since the summer of 2004, first at UCL and then also in Cambridge since 2010. Since 2008 our activities have been generously supported by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC).

This term we will hold hybrid meetings, on Mondays, 5.00–6.30pm in the Board Room and online. The links for joining the online meetings, the exact specification or copies of the readings, and all updates on future activities will be circulated to the mailing list of the group. If you would like to be on the list please email Hasok Chang (hc372) or Mika Hyman (mjh291).

10 February

Emma Spary (History, University of Cambridge)
Food chemistry in Enlightenment France

24 February

Paulina S. Gennermann (Recent History, Philipps-University Marburg)
Synthesising vanillin

3 March

Carolyn Cobbold
The history of food dyes

10 March

Mika Hyman (HPS, University of Cambridge)
The discovery and early development of sucralose

 

History of Medicine

Seminars are on Tuesdays from 5.00 to 6.30pm in Seminar Room 1 unless otherwise stated. All welcome!

Early Science and Medicine

Organised by Philippa Carter and Emma Perkins.

4 February

Nuno Castel-Branco (All Souls College, Oxford)
'The Earth is a Heaven, and a New Heaven': revisiting early modern science and Catholic theology

4 March

Anuj Misra (Freie Universität Berlin)
Concrescence in Mughal India: astronomical encounters at royal courts

18 March

Ruth Sargent-Noyes (National Museum of Denmark)
What Descartes's woodblock cutter knew: excavating knowledge from early modern images

History of Modern Medicine and Biology

Organised by Salim Al-Gailani, Rosanna Dent, Nick Hopwood, Staffan Müller-Wille and Dmitriy Myelnikov.

11 February

Elisabeth Yang (University of Leeds)
Constructing moral and proto-scientific babies: the medical and scientific enterprise of infancy in 19th-century America

25 February

Ann Kelly (University of Oxford)
Along the thread of the mosquito ovary: apprehending malarias lost and regained

11 March

Miles Kempton (Christ's College, Cambridge)
How TV made The Naked Ape

Generation to Reproduction

Organised by Philippa Carter, Nick Hopwood, Salim Al-Gailani, Rosanna Dent, Staffan Müller-Wille and Dmitriy Myelnikov.

28 January

Emily Baughan (University of Sheffield)
Neonates and neoliberalism in contemporary British history

18 February

Emma Kalb (Universität Bonn)
'Cut off from lineage': castration and childlessness in Mughal South Asia

 

CamPoS

CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) is a network of academics and students working in the philosophy of science in various parts of the University of Cambridge, including the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Faculty of Philosophy. The Wednesday afternoon seminar series features current research by CamPoS members as well as visitors to Cambridge and scholars based in nearby institutions. In the 2024–25 year, CamPoS is being organised by Miguel Ohnesorge (mo459).

Seminars are held on Wednesdays, 1.00–2.30pm in Seminar Room 2.

29 January

Andrew Buskell (Georgia Tech)
Overlooked phenomena and cross-cultural databases

5 February

Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (Athens University)
The constitution of science

12 February

Miguel Ohnesorge (HPS, Cambridge)
'Universal' gravitation? Generalisation and evidence in celestial mechanics

19 February

Stephanie Harvard (University of British Columbia)
Trustworthiness, moral epistemic-duties, and public health guidance: the case of wildfire smoke

26 February

Alessandra Basso (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Values in measurement: alternatives to democratic alignment in economic inequality metrics

5 March

Arthur Harris (Darwin College, Cambridge)
Causal explanation in the Mechanica in the Aristotelian Corpus

12 March

Aja Watkins (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Trust in the fallible: lessons from uncertainty management in the environmental sciences

19 March

Oscar Westerblad (University of Iceland)
Progress is plural because science is social

 

Calculating People

Calculating People is a reading group that examines contemporary social sciences with a special focus on their methodological controversies. All postgraduate researchers are welcome to join, but participants undertake to do the readings ahead of time and endeavour to attend all meetings. The format is in-person.

The meetings take place fortnightly on Thursdays, 1–2pm in the Board Room. Organised by Anna Alexandrova.

23 January

Bacevic, Jana. 'What is social science if not critical?' The British Journal of Sociology (2024).

6 February

Bennett, Andrew, and Benjamin Mishkin, 'Nineteen Kinds of Theories about Mechanisms that Every Social Science Graduate Student Should Know', in Harold Kincaid, and Jeroen Van Bouwel (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science (2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Feb. 2023).

20 February

Gaukroger, Stephen. The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1739–1841. Oxford University Press, 2016. Introduction (discussion chaired by Tvrtko Vrdoljak).

6 March

Gaukroger, chapter 1: 'Dichotomies of Understanding'.

 

Teaching HPSTM Today

This group addresses issues of pedagogy and curriculum in HPS after the discipline’s global turn. It builds on the work of two earlier reading groups in the department, 'Decolonise HPS' (2019–23) and 'Teaching Global HPSTM' (2023–24). Last year, we organised a series of meetings with similar departments around the world to discuss questions of institutional resources, curricula, grand narratives, and intellectual traditions which underpin the teaching of History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine (HPSTM) in different contexts. This year, we will continue to organise such hybrid meetings, and will also hold sessions focused on developing courses, writing syllabi, and teaching with material culture.

Meetings will be held on Fridays, 2.00–3.30pm in the HPS Board Room in the academic year 2024–25. All are welcome.

7 February

We will be joined (in person) by Raphael Uchôa (University of Coimbra) to discuss the film Não haverá mais história sem nós (No More History Without Us), which he co-wrote with the director Priscilla Brasil.

21 February

We will be joined (in person) by Dr Elise Burton (University of Toronto) to discuss her work, her role as co-editor of Isis, and her perspectives on teaching global HPS. Suggested readings:

• Burton, Elise. 'Narrating ethnicity and diversity in Middle Eastern national genome projects'. Social Studies of Science 48, no. 5 (2018): 762–786.
• Gannett, Lisa. 'Making populations: bounding genes in space and in time'. Philosophy of Science 70, no. 5 (2003): 989–1001.

14 March

We will be holding a syllabus workshop and hope to gather a small group of students and postdocs who are each willing to share in advance a draft of a course syllabus that they have designed themselves. The workshop session will then provide participants with an opportunity to receive feedback on their draft from teaching faculty in the Department.

 

Pragmatism Reading Group

The Pragmatism Reading Group is held on Mondays at 12noon–1pm in the Board Room.

Organisers: Damon Kutzin (dtk23) and Niall Roe (nrr32)

Fruitfulness and heuristic appraisal in science

"All pragmatists will further agree that their method of ascertaining the meanings of words and concepts is no other than that experimental method … being itself nothing but particular application of an older logical rule, 'By their fruits ye shall know them'."
— Charles Peirce, A Survey of Pragmatism, 1907

It is well known that pragmatism draws our attention towards experiential results. But, regarding scientific theories, pragmatists also insist upon the importance of another kind of result, fruitfulness. Peirce had a word for a related concept: "uberty", meant to designate reasoning that is "gravid with young truth" but has yet to be tested empirically. More recent philosophy of science discusses a related concept, "heuristic appraisal", or a forward-looking evaluation of the promise, usefulness, or potential fruitfulness of a theory. This semester, we will read a selection covering both topics with an eye towards understanding this value in scientific inquiry.

27 January

Peirce, C.S. (1913). 'An Essay toward Improving Our Reasoning in Security and in Uberty'.

3 February

Rescher, N. (1976). 'Peirce and the Economy of Research', Philosophy of Science, 43(1), pp. 71–98.

10 February

Folger, R., Stein, C., Andriese, N. (2022). 'Abduction and Creative Theorizing'. In: Magnani, L. (eds) Handbook of Abductive Cognition. Springer, Cham.

17 February

McMullin, E. (1976). 'The Fertility of Theory and the Unit for Appraisal in Science'. In: Cohen, R.S., Feyerabend, P.K., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht.

24 February

Nickles, T. (1989). 'Heuristic Appraisal: A Proposal', Social Epistemology 3 (3): 175–88.

3 March

Whitt, L.A. (1992). 'Indices of Theory Promise', Philosophy of Science, 59(4), pp. 612–634.

10 March

Nolan, D. (1999). 'Is Fertility Virtuous in Its Own Right?', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 50(2), 265–282.

17 March

Ivani, S. (2019). 'What We (Should) Talk About When We Talk About Fruitfulness', European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9, 4.

 

History and Philosophy of Physics Reading Group

Tuesdays, 2–3pm in the Board Room

Organised by Hasok Chang (hc372), Richard Staley (raws1), and Neil Dewar (Faculty of Philosophy, nad42)

28 January

Chapters 8 and 9 of Joseph D. Martin, Solid State Insurrection: How the Science of Substance Made American Physics Matter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018)

11 February

'Conclusions' in Joseph D. Martin, Solid State Insurrection; meeting with Joseph D. Martin

25 February

Henri Poincaré, 'Experiment and geometry' (Chapter V of Science and Hypothesis)

11 March

Olivier Darrigol, 'Geometry, mechanics, and experience: a historico-philosophical musing'. European Journal for Philosophy of Science 12, 60 (2022)

 

Science Fiction & HPS Reading Group

This reading group uses science fiction (and its associated genres, such as fantasy, speculative fiction, and dystopia) as a lens to explore themes in the history and philosophy of science. We investigate a wide range of topics, from aliens and AI to time travel and transhumanism. Our goal is to both deepen our understanding of topical SF themes and to explore, methodologically, how SF can interact with HPS. How can SF illustrate and enlighten our philosophical concepts? How can we use SF as a resource for our histories?

Our weekly readings usually consist of one short story, with optional secondary sources – such as scientific articles, historical discussions, and philosophical analyses – provided for interested readers. We meet fortnightly on Tuesdays, usually from 3pm–4pm. All are welcome!

Organised by Mallory Hrehor (mh2217) and Nikki Levesley (nml46).

Our theme for this term is New Worlds & Alien Symbiosis.

4 February, 1pm, Seminar Room 2

'Bloodchild' (1984), Octavia Butler
Optional reading: Ferreira, M.A. (2010). 'Symbiotic Bodies and Evolutionary Tropes in the Work of Octavia Butler'. Science Fiction Studies, 37(3), 401–415.

18 February, 3pm, Board Room

'Questions Asked in the Belly of the World' (2021), A.T. Greenblatt
Optional reading: Suárez, J. (2018). 'The Importance of Symbiosis in Philosophy of Biology: An Analysis of the Current Debate on Biological Individuality and its Historical Roots'. Symbiosis, 76(2), 77–96.

4 March, 3pm, Board Room

'Strange Dogs' (2017), James S.A. Corey
Optional readings: Grewell, G. (2001). 'Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future'. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 55(2), 25–47.

14 March, 1pm, Board Room

Special Session with Atmospheric Humanities Reading Group
The Purple Cloud (1901), M.P. Shiel

 

HPSTM in East Asia

This group meets fortnightly on Wednesdays, 11.00am–12.00noon in the Needham Research Institute Board Room (8 Sylvester Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AF) to focus on questions relating to the history of science, medicine and technology in East Asia.

Sessions will be a mix of formats, including close readings, discussions, presentations and paper workshops, and will offer a forum for conversations and dialogue between researchers from different perspectives, backgrounds, and disciplines. All are welcome!

Organised by Zhiyu Chen, Zhilin Chu, Arthur Harris and Fu Ge Yang.

29 January

Non-sciences? Redefining science and medicine in East Asia

12 February

Borderlands? Redefining the geographical boundaries

26 February

Technologies? Redefining modernity and traditions

12 March

Philosophies? Redefining epistemology and thoughts in East Asia

 

Values in Science Reading Group

We meet on Wednesdays, 11.30am to 12.30pm (unless otherwise stated) in Seminar Room 1. Organised by Monte Cairns and Florence Robinson Adams.

29 January, 11am to 12noon

Buskell, A. 'Ontic Risk and the Culture Concept'. Special session with author in attendance. Draft to be circulated.

5 February

Srinivasan, A. (2019). 'Genealogy, Epistemology and Worldmaking', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 119:2.

12 February

Risjord, M, Khalifa, K, & and Millson, J. 'Thick Concepts and Impartiality'. Draft to be circulated.

19 February

Lepoutre, M. (2023). 'Political Understanding'. British Journal of Political Science 53:2.

26 February

Yoshida, K. (2012). 'Repoliticising Philosophy of Science: A Continuing Challenge for Social Epistemology'. Social Epistemology 26:4.

12 March

Ludwig, D. 'Science and Justice: Beyond the New Orthodoxy of Value-Laden Science'.

19 March

Greenwood, S. 'The Problem of Context Revisited: Moving Beyond the Resources Model'.

 

Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction

Cambridge Reproduction invites all Cambridge researchers to attend a twice-termly reading group to engage with classics and new work across disciplines – all with a central theme of reproduction.

Tuesday 11 February, 12.30pm

Led by Graham Burton (Professor of the Physiology of Reproduction)
Room CGO9, Student Services Centre

Tuesday 4 March, 12.30pm

Led by Helen Charman (Faculty of English)
Room CG18, Student Services Centre

 

HPS Workshop

Fridays, 5–6pm in the Board Room
Organised by by Niall Roe (nrr32) and Mallory Hrehor (mh2217)

The HPS Workshop seeks to break the isolation of postgraduate research and encourage collaborative thinking by allowing students to present work in progress in a supportive seminar environment. The workshops will have alternate sessions focusing on Philosophy and History, but interdisciplinary presentations are always welcome.

Students are invited to present on any aspect of their research that they are grappling with or desire feedback on, including:

• Unpacking complicated sources, concepts, or archives
• Presenting drafts of chapters, conference papers, or publications
• Proposing new ideas or strategies towards HPS research


The session is composed of two parts: ~30 minutes where the speaker outlines their work (indicating areas that they would like feedback on) and ~30 minutes of discussion.

 

Postgraduate Seminars

Jokes in the Sciences

Lent Term 2025: Fri 2pm, weeks 1–8 (8 one-hour seminars) in Seminar Room 2
Edwin Rose, Mika Hyman and Nick Jardine (leaders)

Seriousness is a word we tend to connect with the sciences. But over the ages many have interpreted playfulness as crucial for scientific advancement, while still more have viewed scientists and their activities as humorous. These sessions explore humour in the history and philosophy of science from the sixteenth century to the present, covering a broad range of physical and life sciences ranging from astronomy, natural philosophy and natural history in the early modern period through to early twentieth century geophysics. Understanding humour and 'jokes' in the sciences gives a new perspective on knowledge production in its social context, casting light on a whole range of motivations, interests and influences.

24 January: Marta Halina, 'What is humour?'

31 January: Nick Jardine, 'Kepler's jokes, both serious and facetious'

7 February: Patricia Fara, 'Seeing jokes / telling stories'

14 February: Thomas Banbury, 'Heraldry and parody in the history of science'

21 February: Mika Hyman, 'Joking, tickling, and laughter in early modern medicine'

28 February: Staffan Müller-Wille, 'Linnaeus on humans and apes'

7 March: Edwin Rose, 'Poetic humour in the sciences'

14 March: Jim Secord, 'Caricatures of the future: visual satires of science in the Age of Revolutions'

Ideologies of Science

Lent Term 2025: Thu 12noon, from week 5 (4 one-hour seminars) in Seminar Room 1
Nick Jardine (leader), with Anna Alexandrova, Stephen John, Sam Phoenix Clarke, Peter Rees

These seminars will explore rival conceptions of the nature of science and of its social and political roles. Ideological conflicts to be considered include: Philip Kitcher and his critics on science, feminism and democracy; the Society for Freedom in Science vs socialist visions of the functions of science; radical agnostic John Stuart Mill vs conservative Anglican William Whewell on the methods of natural science and its proper place in education; liberal Ernst Mach vs conservative Catholic Pierre Duhem on the history and prospects of the sciences; and the 'two cultures' controversy sparked off by C.P. Snow, champion of science education, and F.R. Leavis, champion of literary education.

20 February

Nick Jardine
Science, Policy and Education: Whewell vs Mill; Mach vs Duhem

Following some remarks on the various senses in which histories, philosophies and sociologies of science may be considered as ideological, the seminar will discuss the rival views of  'founding fathers' of HPS concerning the nature of science and its proper roles in social improvement and education:

• The empiricist philosophy of science of John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), liberal individualist, protagonist of utilitarian ethics, promoter of women's rights, educational and social reformer
  vs
  The idealist history and philosophy of science of William Whewell (1794–1866), Tory pillar of the Anglican establishment and fierce opponent of such radicals as Mill.
• The critical empiricism of the Austrian social-democrat Ernst Mach (1838–1916)
  vs
  The conventionalism of the French Catholic, nationalist and conservative Pierre Duhem (1861–1916)

27 February

Nick Jardine
The Two Cultures: Huxley vs. Arnold and Snow vs. Leavis

We shall look at two debates about the roles of science and the humanities in our culture, both focussed on educational policy. In the first, 'Darwin's bulldog', T.H. Huxley, and the Schools Inspector and Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Matthew Arnold, politely disagree over the extents to which classical and scientific education are conducive to 'a critical and discerning approach to life'. In the second, the scientific administrator and novelist C.P. Snow and the literary critic F.R. Leavis clash intemperately over the cultural status of literary intellectuals ('effete' and 'reactionary' according to Snow) and scientists ('robustly heterosexual' and 'with the future in their bones', again according to Snow).

6 March

Sam Phoenix Clarke and Peter Rees
Freedom and Planning in Science

Mid-twentieth century Britain saw heated confrontation between advocates of governmental control and planning of science and defendants of the freedom and autonomy of the sciences. This seminar will consider the advocacy of planning by the socialists of the Visible College and the defence of autonomy by the Society for Freedom in Science.

13 March

Anna Alexandrova and Stephen John
Science, Democracy and Feminism in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy of Science

In the last twenty years, there has been a resurgence of interest within analytical philosophy in the intersections within politics and science. In this session, we trace two important lines of concern. First, Philip Kitcher's Science, Truth and Democracy, which introduced the influential concept of 'well-ordered science', prompted a reappraisal of the ways in which scientific research should be under social control. Second, insights from feminist epistemology and philosophy have increasingly been used to rethink the ways in which science is gendered. Both of these trends intersect with a third, sprawling literature questioning the (allegedly) once mighty 'value-free ideal' for science. In discussion, we will consider how well Kitcher's proposals stand up in light of the fragility of liberal democracy, and discuss the bold claim put forward by Elizabeth Anderson that scientific research guided by feminist principles may be not just politically but scientifically responsible.

 

Language Groups

German Therapy

German Therapy is an informal reading group, and all levels are welcome. This is an opportunity, among other things, to understand how Germans turn verbs into nouns and adjectives and back again, create new concepts by combining words and adding various prefixes and suffixes, and always place the verb at the very end of long and complicated sentences made up from a hierarchy of clauses. We will be translating and discussing German sources chosen by participants as relevant to their research, 'bei Kaffee und Kuchen'.

To be added to the mailing list, or to suggest a text, please contact Brian Li (bskl3) or Staffan Müller-Wille (sewm3).

The group will meet in Lent Term 2025 weekly in the Board Room, Fridays, 11am–12noon.

Latin Therapy

Latin Therapy is an informal reading group. All levels of Latin are very welcome. We meet to translate and discuss a text from the history of science, technology or medicine. This is an opportunity to brush up your Latin by regular practice, and if a primary source is giving you grief, we'd love to help you make sense of it over tea and biscuits!

To be added to the mailing list, or to suggest a text, please contact Thomas Banbury or Debby Banham.

In Lent Term 2025 we will meet weekly on Fridays, 4–5pm in the Board Room.