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Department of History and Philosophy of Science

 

Seminars and reading groups in Michaelmas Term 2025

 

Departmental Seminars

With the exception of the Mary Hesse Lecture, seminars take place on Thursdays from 3.30pm to 5pm in the Hopkinson Lecture Theatre.

Organised by Rosanna Dent and Ahmad Elabbar.

23 October – Mary Hesse Lecture

3.30–5pm in the Babbage Lecture Theatre

Helen Longino (Stanford University)
How scientific plurality and sociality enhance scientific objectivity

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.

30 October

Simon Schaffer (University of Cambridge), Richard Dunn (Science Museum, London), Alexi Baker (Yale Peabody Museum), Rebekah Higgitt (National Museums Scotland), Sophie Waring (Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret, London)
The Board of Longitude: Science, Innovation and Empire – book launch event

The Board of Longitude was one of Georgian Britain's most important scientific institutions. The Board developed in the eighteenth century after legislation that offered major rewards for methods to determine longitude at sea: the enterprise came to support the work of navigators, instrument-makers, clockmakers and surveyors, as well as a host of other artisans and schemers. Its activities also included computation and publication of the Nautical Almanac and establishment of the astronomical observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. This new book, published by Cambridge University Press, uses the rich archives of the Board, now available online, to shed new light on colonial and exploratory projects in the Pacific and the Arctic, as well as tracing the projects of practitioners often lost to history. A round-table discussion involves the authors of the book and offers the opportunity for discussion of the significance of these histories during a period of major industrial, imperial and technological development.

6 November

Eran Tal (McGill University)
When is measurement good? Evidence, validity, and values

The quality of a measurement procedure may be evaluated, among other criteria, by (i) the quality of knowledge it produces about the measurand, (ii) the relevance of its results for guiding human decision making and action, and (iii) the desirability of its impacts on individuals, society, and nature. These criteria are compatible in principle, but their application involves conflicting commitments regarding the aims and methods of measurement. I call these distinct sets of commitments 'modes of measurement quality evaluation', and show that value trade-offs are insufficient to reconcile them. I illustrate these claims using examples from the contemporary measurement of time and mental health.

13 November

CANCELLED

20 November

Kevin C. Elliott (Michigan State University)
Institutionalizing values and science: the strengths of standardization in troubled times

There has been increasing interest in the 'values and science' literature on the ways that organizations and institutions mediate and promote the influences of values in scientific research. The present paper builds on this recent focus by exploring the value-laden nature of the standards (e.g., rules, norms, guidelines) used to guide research. The paper examines previous scholarship on the epistemic and ethical benefits and disadvantages associated with standardization, thereby highlighting the importance of analyzing the conditions under which specific kinds of standardization are most likely to be justifiable. It argues that the benefits of standardization are particularly salient during 'troubled times' like the present, when there are significant political and economic forces promoting the manipulation of science for desired ends. Finally, drawing on examples from the field of toxicology, the paper suggests a set of principles for pursuing standardization in ways that take advantage of its epistemic and ethical benefits while lessening its weaknesses.

27 November – Anita McConnell Lecture

Paola Bertucci (Yale University)
Navigating origin stories: the mariner's compass as a narrative instrument

This lecture traces the afterlife of a man who never lived: Flavio Gioia, the supposed inventor of the mariner's compass. Born from a sixteenth-century translation error, Gioia lived for centuries on the printed page as a mythical figure representing European ingenuity. His fabricated existence reveals how print culture produced what might be called predigital hallucinations – errors that circulated so widely as to harden into truth. By following Gioia's existence through encyclopedias, treatises, and national rivalries from the sixteenth century into the early twentieth, the lecture examines how origin stories about navigation turned invention narratives into moral geographies of civilization.

 

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, Richard Staley and Amelia Urry.

16 October

Jaco de Swart (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Cleaning a dark matter experiment

Laboratory sciences crucially depend on experiments being clean. But what is clean? In this talk, I open up versions of clean relating to different ontological registers, and trace the material practices of cleaning as they are attuned to experimental specificities. My case is the XENONnT experiment in the Gran Sasso Mountains of Italy which is meant to detect dark matter in the form the hypothetical WIMP – the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. This experiment is clean when it is 'free from signals that mimic dark matter'. In practice, such cleanliness has been difficult to achieve – soaps may be radioactive, steel may spread electronegativity, and humans are altogether dangerously filthy. And because, at least thus far, dark matter remains elusive, it is impossible to tell whether the meticulously cleaned detector is adequately clean. Additional cleaning efforts will make the detector sensitive to neutrino particles: a background that cannot be cleaned away. As the experimenters dread the possibility that this means their experiment will end in limbo, other physicists are now trying to detect other hypothetical dark matter particles with other kinds of experiments, requiring other kinds of cleanliness. The XENONnT experiment itself, meanwhile, has had to ensure that it does not interfere with environmental cleanliness, as per the demands of the surrounding society.

30 October

Amelia Urry (Magdalene College, Cambridge)
The scientist as 'data archaeologist'

The idea of 'data rescue' has produced popular imaginations of the juxtaposition of the high-tech climate scientist, equipped with instruments and isotopes, with the dusty historical world of logbooks, diaries, newspapers, and other archival materials. Yet large-scale 'data rescue' initiatives such as ACRE and MEDARE represent just one approach that climate scientists can take to the materials of the past. Indeed, if all 'climate scientists are historians' (Edwards 2010) then we might assume archival practices to be widespread within these disciplines as well, encompassing such practices as reanalysis, reconstruction, and historical mapping.

The case of Antarctica adds some new dimensions to the questions raised by data rescue, notably by looking down into ice rather than into weather systems moving high above – and by looking to the recent past of scientific activity as a source of old data that might be useful for answering contemporary questions about climate change and the fate of the ice sheets. Overall, I argue that the framework of 'rescue' or 'salvage' of data can obscure the layered interpretive work scientists perform when faced with historical data. I propose instead the term 'data archaeology', which can illuminate the ways in which data are actively re-constructed from traces through a combination of technical precision and anthropological analysis of the context and conditions of these traces. There is no 'pure' or 'raw' data to bring up from the shipwreck of the past, only a human-made record of scientific activities that must be interpreted through imaginative, empathetic processes.

13 November

Lena Ferriday (King's College London)
Ore bodies: the proximate meetings of miners and metals in nineteenth-century Cornwall

How has the extraction of metals physically impacted local communities in the past? What has extraction historically meant when it is felt through the body? How have diverse ways of knowing been historically produced in extractive contexts?

In this paper I explore some historical entanglements between Anthropocenic activities and the human body, mobilising nineteenth-century Cornwall as a case study. Industrial extraction has infamously wielded environmental consequences across multiple scales. At a planetary level we see air and water pollution, the destruction of local habitats and biodiversity and soil degradation. At a local level, excavating pits and constructing buildings reorganised Cornwall's physical geography, and the extracted ores themselves transformed the region's ecology: tin tailings contaminated waterways, copper and zinc slag was toxic to vegetation around the mine's surface. But the effects of these industries on local communities can be traced to an even more granular level, by attending to moments of individuals' tangible corporeal interactions with these processes. This paper argues that site of the body is a central analytic for exploring Anthropocene histories. It does so by articulating metalliferous mining as a practice that involved diverse bodies to laboriously extract minerals from rock, a process that was enacted upon human bodies, and a process that can thereby be further understood by positioning embodied encounter as the object of historical analysis.

27 November

Catherine (Catie) Peters (College of William and Mary and ACLS Fellow)
Laboring neighbors: Afro-Asian ecologies of post-emancipation Guyana 

The global imperative of climate change has tended to overlook the histories of laboring peoples in geographies like coastal Guyana. Within twelve years of legal emancipation in 1838, Afro-Guyanese residents purchased twenty-four abandoned coastal estates in collectives up to 168 persons. As part of this significant land movement, emancipated women, men, and children seized the opportunity to live together according to their own means of structuring value. They wagered their ecological knowledge – and particularly their experience managing water – to recast plantation land into self-governing villages.

My talk draws from the third chapter of my book manuscript Laboring Neighbors: Afro-Asian Ecologies in the Colonial Caribbean, which tells the story of abolition and indenture through the ecologies where indentured Asian migrants and Afro-descendant residents lived and strategized in spite of these institutions. By establishing Black sociopolitical strategies after abolition, such as land purchase and collectivity, I explain that indentured South Asian and Chinese men and women arrived as neighbors to Afro-Guyanese landowners. I argue that Chinese and South Asian peoples learned from and exchanged localized environmental knowledge with Black and Indigenous peoples, an approach that diverges from post-emancipation discourses of labor scarcity and ruin.

 

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 in Seminar Room 1. Please note the different times. 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.

31 October, 3.30–5.00pm

Zoltan Dienes (Professor of Psychology, University of Sussex)
Phenomenological control in the laboratory

21 November, 11.00am–12.30pm

Katie Attwell (Professor, School of Social Sciences, Political Science and International Relations, University of Western Australia)
Vaccine communication and policy

28 November, 11.00am–12.30pm

Oliver Vitouch (Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Klagenfurt, Austria)
'Behavioural epidemiology': what triggers and enables large-scale behavioural change?

 

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.

For further details about upcoming events, or to be added to the mailing list for the Cabinet of Natural History, please contact Melissa Altinsoy or John Schaefer.

13 October

Mika Hyman (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Seeking immunity: cacao research and the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture 1930–1940

20 October

Ewa Zakrzewska (History, EUI)
Making communication common: information architecture, classificatory schemes and reference aids in the repositories of early scientific societies

In this talk I'd like to share my work-in-progress on designing shared information environments in European academic societies between 1600 and 1750, as illustrated by their repository projects and designs of research infrastructure. Specifically, I'll be bringing material evidence of methods of referencing, categorising and browsing in early scientific archives into the spotlight to ask whether it can illuminate 17th-century concerns about commitment to theory and communication strategies in the face of natural-philosophical divides. How do you break free of the constraints imposed by 'complete schemes of opinion' (scholastic taxonomies and over-theorised explanations), while preserving a pragmatic order in a gathered body of experiments, observations, and records? In a time of debates over the possibility of adopting a universal framework of meaning and translating it into infrastructural tools aiding communication, undermined by divides and nuances in natural-philosophical schools, how do you make repositories an effective working tool? By posing these questions and presenting preliminary archival findings, I invite the Cabinet to join me in considering strategies of enabling open-ended, indeterminate search in the age of classificatory controversies in natural philosophy, and ensuring purposeful communication across different schools of thought in science and natural philosophy as evidenced by the material shape of repositories.

27 October

Bronte Evans Rayward (Geography, University of Cambridge)
Practical environmental narratives: managing land in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)

In this presentation, I will reflect on the historical development of British settler colonial activities on the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and how these interacted with commodity narratives in the British-claimed Antarctic region. Utilising agricultural research, local periodicals, and other archival material, I will narrate the social and environmental impacts of local political uncertainties about landscape management and sovereignty, and its unfolding over a period of time. I will argue that this uncertainty enabled a discourse of pragmatic landscape management. This local emphasis on pragmatism in the Islands conflicted with idealism and international cooperation promoted in British Antarctic political negotiation from the mid-twentieth century. I examine how these contexts interacted to shape stories of environmental research and conservation in the Falkland Islands. Local interest in the Islands' native environments transitioned post the 1982 conflict from a hobby to a complex component of local identity. Personalities speaking directly to British Antarctic history mediated and influenced this shift, suggesting the importance of taking a regional and relational perspective. To conclude, I offer some observations about the contemporary relationships between environmental conservation practice and local identity.

3 November

Nathan Cornish (History and Digital Humanities, University of Southampton)
Resurrecting the list: exploring Coimbra Botanical Garden in 1800 through multi-species network visualisation

In 1800, Kew Gardens received a full catalogue of the plants at Portugal's only university botanical garden through Joseph Banks' network in order to facilitate the exchange of plants. This catalogue represents a rare opportunity to visualise and analyse the garden not only through the structure of taxonomic arrangement but also as an environmental node in a colonial network of plant exchange. Network analysis used as a speculative and creative tool enables different ways of seeing the garden that highlight the physical connections of plants moved within the network of botanical study. Building on this methodology looks towards ways of precisely and creatively understanding the environmental history of imperial science at a larger scale than following the stories of individual plants.

10 November

Maya Juman (Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge)
Viral ghosts and specimen hosts: pathogen detection in natural history museum collections

Natural history collections are a valuable but largely untapped resource for studying emerging infectious diseases across space, time, and host species. However, the detection of viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi in museum specimens is highly contingent on collection, preservation, and storage practices. In this seminar, I will discuss two case studies of retrospective viral discovery from my own research, including the detection of SARS-related coronaviruses and zoonotic poxviruses in archival bat and rodent tissues, respectively. In doing so, I will also explore the downstream implications of political and historical collecting context for data retrieval from museum specimens.

17 November

Kate Hooper (Independent Researcher)
Who was Henslow?

Kate Hooper has just published her first book, Who Was Henslow?, a biography of John Stevens Henslow. This year marks the bicentenary of Henslow being appointed Professor of Botany in Cambridge, in 1825.

Kate enjoyed a 37-year career as an NHS doctor. However, her love of plants begun with her own small patch of garden aged five in Hertfordshire, developing her own garden to studying Garden Design and horticulture part-time at Writtle and West Anglia Colleges respectively. Having founded Perfect Circle Designs in 2002, she designed and landscaped gardens in the UK and France with her business partner. She enjoys gardening with her husband in the mild dry climate of South Cambridgeshire.

Following the birth of her first grandson, Kate hung up her stethoscope in 2022. She was delighted to be accepted both as a Volunteer Garden Guide and Herbarium Volunteer at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. It was then she began to ask questions about Henslow. Why did he take on the Chair of Botany when he was already Professor of Mineralogy? How did he manage to persuade the University to buy 40 acres of land in central Cambridge for the study of botany? Why did he move his family to a small parish in Suffolk, before the new Botanic Garden opened? Despite a lifelong desire to travel why did he forego the chance to join the Beagle voyage of 1831? (He let his most famous student, Charles Darwin, travel instead.) As a devout Christian, how did he react to Darwin's famous book, On the Origin of the Species?

24 November

Liz White (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Biblio-botany: early modern gardens in print and material culture

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries bore witness to a delicate symbiosis between books and plants. New printing technology meant that information could be disseminated to a generation for whom botany was emerging as a discipline of its own, not merely as a subcategory of medicine. Herbals by the likes of Brunfels, Fuchs, Dodoens, Mattioli and Gerard were popular compendia for all manner of domestic uses, and their woodcut images, powerful surrogates for the plants which were difficult to transport from country to country. During this period of experimentation and discovery, gardening became an 'art' which could bring one closer to God, the very first gardener. Botanical imagery and horticultural metaphor suffused all areas of public and domestic life, including literature, stagecraft, needlework, religion and politics. Gardens both as ideas and as physical spaces formed vital centres of socio-economic life in Renaissance England, functioning as sites of storytelling and scandal, politics and poetry, profits and pleasures.

1 December

Thomas Banbury (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Christ and the mangrove: theology and botany in early modern Brazil

The colony of 'France équinoxiale' existed for only around four years (1612–15) in what is now the Brazilian state of Maranhão. Amongst the building of fortifications and looming war with the Portuguese, a group of French Capuchin friars arrived to preach to the native Tupinamba peoples, and conduct natural historical enquiries into the region's plants, animals and insects. The results were two comprehensive travel accounts by Fr. Claude d'Abbeville and Fr. Yves d'Évreux, detailing their extensive contact with the locals, which were suppressed for political reasons by the French government in 1615. Nevertheless, the works show the influence of a tradition of Franciscan education in both natural philosophy and the teaching of religion, which, I argue, creates a direct connection between the medieval bestiary tradition and the teaching of catechism by analogy. Drawing on the work of Charlotte de Castelnau-L'Estoile and Hélène Clastres, I explore how these projects of collecting local nature and converting local peoples worked in concert to foster a localised form of theological teaching, which used native flora and fauna to explain complex theological matters.

 

AD HOC

AD HOC (Association for the Discussion of the History of Chemistry) is a group dedicated to the history of chemistry. AD HOC has been meeting in various configurations since the summer of 2004, at UCL and Cambridge. Since 2008 our activities have been generously supported by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (SHAC).

While our main focus is historical, we also consider the philosophical, sociological, public and educational dimensions of chemistry. This year we are interested in exploring the connections between chemistry and various other areas of science and life. We begin with the theme of chemistry and the environment this term.

Our meetings will be on Mondays, 5.00–6.30pm in the HPS Board Room and online. The links for joining the online meetings 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).

3 November

Anna Marie Roos (University of Lincoln)
will discuss her 'Van Helmont, Salts, and Natural History in Early Modern England', chapter 3 of The Salt of the Earth: Natural Philosophy, Medicine, and Chymistry in England, 1650–1750 (Brill, 2007), pp. 47–107.

17 November

Richard Staley (HPS, University of Cambridge)
will lead the discussion of Matthew Shindell, 'From the End of the World to the Age of the Earth: The Cold War Development of Isotope Geochemistry at the University of Chicago and Caltech', in Naomi Oreskes and John Krige, eds., Science and Technology in the Global Cold War (MIT Press, 2014), pp. 107–40.

1 December

Sabine Clarke (University of York)
will give a talk on 'Testing toxins: how the history of engineering can help explain how dangerous chemicals get into use'.

 

History of Medicine

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

Early Science and Medicine

Organised by Philippa Carter and Emma Perkins.

21 October

Martha McGill (English, University of Cambridge)
Memory, cognition and selfhood in early modern British life writing

4 November

Eva Johanna Holmberg (University of Helsinki)
Experiencing and alleviating pain in a settler colony: Jamestown, 1607–1610

2 December

Mark Jenner (University of York)
A press of death and prices? Reframing London's Bills of Mortality

History of Modern Medicine and Biology

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

14 October

Avey Nelson and Kate O'Riordan (University of Sussex)
Thylacine stories: mapping de-extinction

11 November

Timothy Sim (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Dengue in Campaign City: the spectacle of mosquito control in postcolonial Singapore

25 November

Miguel Garcia-Sancho (University of Edinburgh)
Genetics, infrastructure and historicity in the quest for the 'stolen babies' of Spain

Generation to Reproduction

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

28 October

Tatjana Buklijas (University of Auckland)
The fetus and the lamb: clinical trials and reproductive risks since the 1960s

18 November

Róisín Donohoe (National Library of Ireland)
Devotion and deliverance: childbirth in middle English manuscripts

 

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.

Seminars are held on Wednesdays, 1.00–2.30pm in Seminar Room 2. Organised by Matt Farr.

15 October

Andre Curtis-Trudel (University of Cincinnati)
Hacks and explanations via program execution

This talk is about hacks – seemingly ad hoc, unprincipled bits of code used to make a program run more efficiently, or, in some cases, simply run at all. Hacks are exceedingly common, but their philosophical significance has not been fully appreciated. First, using an infamous hack for computing fast inverse square roots as a motivating example, I sketch an account of what it is to explain how hacked programs work. On this account, we cannot explain how a hacked program works without reference to facts about a system's computational architecture and notation. Then, I suggest that this has ramifications for accounts of computational explanation that foreground a system's abstract causal structure or its semantic properties. The ramification is that these accounts are in trouble.

22 October

Aditya Jha (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Do mathematical explanations impose a necessity on the natural world?

Do some physical facts have a mathematical, as opposed to causal, explanation, and do these physical facts obtain from a degree of (mathematical) necessity stronger than that of contingent causal laws? In this talk, I focus on an influential account of mathematical explanations by Marc Lange, and argue that purported mathematical explanations are actually causal explanations in disguise. I show that such explanations are no different from ordinary applications of mathematics, as they work not by appealing to what the world must be like as a matter of mathematical necessity but by appealing to various contingent causal facts.

29 October

A.C. Paseau (University of Oxford)
Is historical mathematics largely true?
(Joint work with Fabian Pregel)

Historical mathematics is widely regarded as a repository of truths. It would seem unusually sceptical to deny that, say, early Chinese, Babylonian, or Greek mathematicians established many truths about numbers and shapes, such as Pythagoras' Theorem or instances of it for specific right-angled triangles. But is this assumption correct, and if so, what exactly justifies it?

To test the assumption, I raise and address a series of objections to it. I'll look at two case studies in particular, both involving apparently extra-mathematical beliefs that 'infect', or in some way threaten the truth of, older mathematics. The first is 18th-century geometry, and the second 19th-century matricial algebra.

5 November

Tom McClelland (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Does artificial creativity require artificial consciousness?

AI has displayed notable originality across the domains of art, science and gaming. But is it right to say that such machines are creative? This question is bound up with other challenging questions about the capacities of artificial systems. Human creativity typically involves some conscious experience of the creative project. If consciousness is necessary for creativity then a case could be made that these (presumably) unconscious machines are not really creative. I argue that there is no compelling case for thinking that consciousness is generally necessary for creativity. However, lessons learned from this discussion suggest that a more localised claim about aesthetic creativity has greater promise. I argue that consciousness is required for creativity in aesthetic tasks. If an AI lacks consciousness then it is incapable of aesthetic experience, and without aesthetic experience it cannot engage in aesthetic creative projects.

12 November

Michael Bycroft (University of Warwick)
The myth of the naïve empiricist

The naïve empiricist is a stock figure in the humanities. According to legend, the naïve empiricist believes that knowledge is a direct result of experience, unmediated by theories, interests, instruments, or human labour. That this is indeed a legend – that it bears little resemblance to what the historical empiricists actually wrote – is known to scholars of Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte, Ernst Mach, Rudolf Carnap, and the like. There has been much revisionist literature on these and other empiricists in recent decades. But there has been no attempt to weave together the revisionist studies into a single story about European empiricism over the last four centuries. I argue that we can tell such a story by turning the legend on its head. The history of empiricism is the history of efforts to show just how indirect is the relationship between experience and knowledge. This has implications for a range of projects in the humanities that have taken the myth of the naïve empiricist for granted.

19 November

Rebecca Jackson (Durham University)
The Apgar score, construct realizations, and the scale of clinical judgments

The history of the Apgar score, an index of overall infant wellbeing just after birth, can help philosophers understand why instrument validation often seems to come short in practice and why clinicians continue to 'misuse' standardized instruments. I propose extending concerns about measurement realization (as being an integral part of epistemology of measurement) to constructs – that is, construct realizations. This involves including a new domain for operational coherence – clinical judgments – which themselves have a scale which may differ from the property we believe ourselves to be measuring. When the main purpose of a measuring practice is to arrive at this kind of clinical judgment, the scale of possible judgments (or courses of care) becomes how we experience the outcome of the measuring process itself. From the scale of possible judgments which results from measurement outcomes, we can deduce the construct as it is actually experienced by those involved. To understand measurement validation practices of the past or present, we must concern ourselves with construct realization; that is, what the construct actually turns out to be as it is experienced by patients, providers, and health systems.

26 November

Hasok Chang (HPS, University of Cambridge)
Kuhn and Feyerabend on pluralism, education and history

The monism inherent in Kuhnian normal science was abhorrent to Feyerabend, who advocated pluralism about the content and methodology of science and other systems of knowledge. This conflict was articulated most clearly in Feyerabend's letters to Kuhn critiquing a draft of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he also accused Kuhn of disguising his normative philosophy as history. One important place where monism and pluralism clash is education. Feyerabend, Popper and others argued that Kuhn's notion of normal science advocated dogmatic science education that would stifle democracy and innovation.

The Kuhn–Feyerabend conflict was actually not as severe as it may appear: Feyerabend respected the autonomy of diverse cultural and epistemological traditions, which are often monistic within themselves; Kuhnian revolutions require the presence of competing paradigms during periods of extraordinary science. Pluralism can accommodate local monism, allowing the advantages of both the liberal epistemology of Feyerabend and the discipline of Kuhnian normal science. Maintaining multiple paradigms within a field of study produces the benefits of toleration while keeping the advantages of normal science within each paradigm. However, a more mature pluralism would also facilitate productive interactions between different systems of practice. In science education, too, it is possible to ameliorate dogmatism while respecting the necessities of professional training. Tolerant pluralism is already present in science education to a surprising extent, and we can strengthen it, and also introduce interactive pluralism.

3 December

Rosa W. Runhardt (Radboud University)
A conceptual framework for reactivity in social scientific measurement

Reactivity takes place when being measured or categorized affects a subject's attitudes and behaviour to such an extent that it affects results in their (subsequent) measurement or categorization. Think, for example, of higher education institutions hiring temporary staff with the sole purpose of receiving a higher score on performance indicators. Or consider the effects that the act of filling out a quality of life survey may have on how a respondent ranks their quality of life compared to others. Although researchers and methodologists commonly think of reactivity as a source of measurement error, this presentation shows that some quite extreme reactive changes may be legitimate, in the sense that the measurement results before and after the shift are both accurate to the measurand. While the presentation starts from recent considerations in the psychometric literature on response shift, it shows that these considerations cannot be extended easily to social scientific phenomena. To fill this gap in the literature, the presentation presents a tailored inventory of the different types of reactivity in social scientific measurement, as well as a conceptual framework for distinguishing which type of reactivity is legitimate, based on specific properties we believe the measurand to have.

 

Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group

Thursdays at 10–11am in the Board Room.

Organisers: Johanna Silva-Stüger (HPS) and Zdenka Brzović (Clare Hall)

This term the Philosophy of Medicine Reading Group will be reading Madness: A Philosophical Exploration by Justin Garson, fresh off the press with OUP. We will be meeting weekly to read clusters of related chapters (on average 40 pages to read per weak).

Anyone is welcome to attend. We especially invite philosophers, historians, and psychiatrists. We hope to see you there!

Reading schedule

Part I: The Dual Teleology of Madness

  • 16 October: Introduction, Chapters 1–2
  • 23 October: Chapters 3–4

Part II: Madness and The Sound Mind

  • 30 October: Chapters 5–6
  • 6 November: Chapters 7–8
  • 13 November: Chapters 9–10

Part III: Madness and The Goal of Evolution

  • 20 November: Chapters 11–13
  • 27 November: Chapters 14–15, Epilogue

If you are curious whether this book is for you:

 

Philosophy of Experimentation Reading Group

This reading group explores philosophical topics related to scientific experimentation. We meet on Thursdays from 11am to 12noon in the Board Room. All welcome!

Organised by Cameron Dashwood (cdd39) and Niall Roe (nrr32).

We will be kicking things off this term with Ian Hacking's 1983 classic Representing and Intervening – or at least the second half of it, Part B: Intervening. The plan is to read one chapter per week. As some of these chapters are quite short, we can supplement them with responses and critiques from other philosophers, based on the interests of the group (these additional readings will be circulated on the group mailing list).

16 October

Chapter 9, 'Experiment'

23 October

Chapter 10, 'Observation'

30 October

Chapter 11, 'Microscopes'

6 November

Chapter 12, 'Speculation, calculation, models, approximations'

13 November

Chapter 13, 'The creation of phenomena'

20 November

Chapter 14, 'Measurement'

27 November

Chapter 15, 'Baconian topics'

4 December

Chapter 16, 'Experimentation and scientific realism'

 

History of Science in Latin America Reading Group

During Michaelmas 2025, we will be exploring STS/HPS literature related to infrastructures in Latin America. We will meet in the Board Room on a biweekly basis on Thursdays at 1–2pm: 9 October, 23 October, 6 November, 20 November.

To receive readings, updates and other relevant events, please join our mailing list by sending an email to sympa@lists.cam.ac.uk with the following subject line: subscribe hps-hissla

 

Global HPS

This year we are turning our attention to methodology in HPS after the discipline's global turn, and building on the work of earlier groups: 'Decolonise HPS' (2019–23), 'Teaching Global HPSTM' (2023–24) and 'Teaching HPSTM Today' (2024–25). We will focus on different approaches to doing HPS, informed by intellectual lineages from different areas of the world.

Meetings will be held every other Friday, 2.00–3.30pm in the Board Room in the academic year 2025–26. All are welcome. Please contact Rosanna Dent (rd736) or Lewis Bremner (lb988) for more information.

17 October

We will have a visit from independent scholar Marissa Mika, to discuss her new work on the deeper historical context for the recent dismantling of USAID and PEPFAR, including integrating ethnography and history and understanding our bodies as instruments.

31 October

  • TallBear, Kim. 'Standing With and Speaking as Faith: A Feminist-Indigenous Approach to Inquiry'. Journal of Research Practice 10, no. 2 (2014): Article N17.
  • Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. 'The Gift of Shame'. Postmedieval (Basingstoke, United Kingdom) 11, nos. 2–3 (2020): 318–25.

14 November

Liboiron, Max. Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021. 'Introduction' and Chapter 1: 'Land, Nature, Resource, Property', pp. 1–79.

28 November

Liboiron, Max. Pollution Is Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021. Chapter 2: 'Scale, Harm, Violence, Land' and Chapter 3: 'An Anticolonial Pollution Science', pp. 81–156.

 

History and Philosophy of Physics Reading Group

We meet fortnightly on Mondays at 10am in the Board Room.

Organised by Hasok Chang, Neil Dewar and Richard Staley.

This term we focus on the work of Ernst Mach and the recent scholarship that has developed new interpretations of this significant critic of Newtonian mechanics, prominent early positivist, and foundational scholar in history and philosophy of science. Each meeting we'll pair aspects of Mach's work that display the evolution of his work and interrelations between research in psychophysics and physics with examples of recent philosophical and historical scholarship, inviting participants to help shape our agenda through the term by selecting work they'd like to discuss from two recent volumes edited by John Preston and Friedrich Stadler:

Which of the many individual contributions would you like to discuss in company?

20 October

In this meeting we introduce Mach's first general argument against the mechanical world view, incorporating his earliest formations of an operational definition of mass, and key critiques of Newton's law of inertia, and discuss John Preston's account of Mach.

3 November

In this meeting we discuss the last two sections on mechanical physics and Mach's argument that the logical root of the theorem of excluded perpetual motion predates the mechanical view.

17 November

In this meeting we consider Mach's primary presentation of his work in psychophysics and his account of the relations between physics, physiology and psychology.

  • Ernst Mach, Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations (The Open Court Publishing Company, 1897 [1886]), focusing on 'Introductory Remarks: Antimetaphysical', pp. 1–26 and 'The Chief Points of View for the Investigation of the Senses' pp. 27–40.
  • Selected reading.

1 December

Here we study the two sections of Mach's well-known historico-critical study of mechanics on which most commentators have focused (following the lead of Albert Einstein), Mach's critique of Newton's concepts of absolute space and time.

 

Pragmatism Reading Group

The Pragmatism Reading Group is held on Mondays at 11am–12noon (from 20 October) in the Board Room.

Organiser: Niall Roe (nrr32)

This term we will be reading C.S. Peirce's 1877–78 Popular Science Monthly series: Illustrations of the Logic of Science. This series is made up of six papers, listed below. For our first six meetings, we will read these papers in order. For our final meeting, we will consider how the series hangs together. For this final meeting we will be aided by Peirce's own reflections on Illustrations, written in the last decade of his life.

The Illustrations papers are based on drafts from 1872, written in the midst of the Metaphysical Club discussions from which Pragmatism is said to have originated. However, substantial portions of the published versions were drafted while Peirce was overseas on assignment for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, in the midst of scientific investigation. I hope in our meetings we can explore both of these contexts. The first two papers – The Fixation of Belief and How to Make our Ideas Clear – are often read as an introduction to pragmatism. This is due in part to William James, who in 1898 referred to them as the first printed articulation of the idea (James, 1898, What Pragmatism Means). Here we will read them in light of the series they introduce. When Illustrations is read as a whole it presents a wide ranging, nuanced and informed discussion on the nature of scientific investigation.

The main readings are available in a nicely edited volume, and as originally published. I suggest reading from the edited volume.

Reading schedule

20 October: The Fixation of Belief

27 October: How to Make our Ideas Clear

3 November: The Doctrine of Chances

10 November: The Probability of Induction

17 November: The Order of Nature

24 November: Deduction, Induction, and Hypothesis
[Note: this meeting will be held in Seminar Room 1]

1 December: Reflection on the series as a whole (specific reading TBD)

 

History and Philosophy of Biology Reading Group

This reading group meets both in person and online to explore classic works in theoretical and philosophical biology. Our aim is to revisit influential texts and discuss their continuing relevance to contemporary debates. In previous terms, we have read The Strategy of the Genes (1957) by C. H. Waddington and Order and Life (1936) by Joseph Needham, as well as organised visits to historically significant sites such as the Strangeways Research Laboratory and the Needham Research Institute.

This Michaelmas Term, we will be reading Susan Oyama's The Ontogeny of Information (2000). This landmark book helped shape the field of Developmental Systems Theory, addressing questions about the interplay of genes and the environment, the 'nature versus nurture' debate, the role of order, constraints, and contingency, as well as the meaning (and limits) of the concept of information. By revisiting Oyama's work at a time when information theory and technology are rapidly transforming, we hope to uncover new perspectives on the dynamics of living systems on both developmental and evolutionary timescales.

We will meet every other Monday, 1–2 pm (13 Oct, 27 Oct, 10 Nov, 24 Nov and 8 Dec). If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please email Cassandra (zy322@cam.ac.uk).

 

Normative Theory and AI Research Group

We are happy to announce the launch of the Normative Theory and AI Research Group. This group will bring together researchers from across the University to explore the application of normative theory to contemporary issues in AI. Normative theory pertains to all forms of evaluation and encompasses ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, legal philosophy, social philosophy and more.

We meet weekly 11.00–12.30pm on Tuesdays in full term in Michaelmas 2025 at St John's College. For our first term we will join forces with the long-standing Mental Sciences Club and offer a weekly series of Explainer sessions. In each of these sessions an expert will offer a primer on a specific theme at the intersection of normative theory and AI. This will be followed by general discussion of relevant issues. See the term card for the full schedule.

Our first session will take place on Tuesday 14 October in the Lightfoot Room (Old Divinity School), St John's College, where Dr Claire Benn will lead a session on ethics and the concept of normativity.

The group is led by Claire Benn (CFI), Jessie Munton (Philosophy) and Tom McClelland (HPS). You can join our mailing list to get more information.

 

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.

This term's meetings are on Tuesdays at 12.30pm in the Student Services Centre. See the Cambridge Reading Group on Reproduction page for more information and to sign up.

14 October

Shobi Nagraj (Public Health & Primary Care, University of Cambridge)
Women's health across the life course

25 November

Natalie Morningstar (Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
Life unsettled: debating abortion in the US Supreme Court and the Irish Citizens' Assembly

 

History of Science and Medicine in Southeast Asia Reading Group

The History of Science and Medicine in Southeast Asia Reading Group welcomes all participants to attend on a regular or drop-in basis. For reading group sessions, we invite participants to read at least two of the three suggested readings. PDFs of the readings will be circulated to the mailing list in advance of each session. Please email either convener (Zhi-Yu Chen and Katherine Enright) with any questions or to be added to our mailing list.

Tuesdays at 2pm in the Board Room

14 October

Introduction session – themes in history of science and medicine in Southeast Asia

28 October

Shaping food labour, programmes, and markets in post-independence Malaysia – talk by Kar Yern Chin (History, University of Cambridge)

11 November

TBD – by Yunting Gu (Fudan University)

25 November

Public health in Singapore – discussion led by Timothy Sim (HPS, University of Cambridge)

 

Atmospheric Humanities Reading Group

The Atmospheric Humanities Reading Group meets once a fortnight, on Tuesdays at 3.00–4.30pm, online except for the fourth meeting.

We explore aspects of the air, climate, and atmosphere in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Scholars working in HPS, history, philosophy, English, geography, and atmospheric and allied sciences are very welcome to join us to discuss a set of pre-circulated readings. To be added to the mailing list to receive readings and Teams links, please contact Thomas Banbury (tjb98@cam.ac.uk).

14 October – 'Imperial weather'

28 October – 'Atmospheres and violence'

11 November – 'Bodies, atmosphere, and war'

2 December (in person) – 'Sharing new writing'

 

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. Participants endeavour to read the articles ahead of time. The format is in-person.

The meetings take place on Tuesdays, 3–4pm in the Board Room. Organised by Anna Alexandrova.

14 October

Runhardt, R.W., 'Categorizations qua conventions: measuring the arbitrariness of scientific categorization', Philosophical Studies (2025).

4 November

Sebastian Rodriguez Duque, Eran Tal, Skye Pamela Barbic, 'The role of ethical and social values in psychosocial measurement', Measurement, Volume 225, 2024, 113993.

11 November

Huneman, Philippe, 'What kind of epistemology for network analyses?', Synthese 206 (3) (2025):1–30.

2 December

Nelson, Nicole C., 'The methodologists: A unique category of scientific actors', Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6 (2020): 20–33.

 

HPSTM in East Asia

This group meets fortnightly on Wednesdays, 11am–12noon in the Needham Research Institute (8 Sylvester Road, Cambridge, CB3 9AF) – and virtually – to focus on questions relating to the history of science, medicine and technology in East Asia.

Enquiries about the group and the mailing list should be directed to Zhi-Yu Chen, Zhilin Chu or Fu Ge Yang.

15 October

Introduction to East Asian History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine

29 October

Reading the Body: Physiognomy, Phrenology, and the Human Sciences in East Asia

12 November

Quackery? Commerce and Medical Authority in East Asia

26 November

Workshop on Animals in East Asian Medical History

 

Values in Science Reading Group

We meet on Wednesdays at 11am in Seminar Room 1. Organised by Monte Cairns and Ahmad Elabbar.

Longino's project (evidence, value-freedom, feminist science, and the 'theoretical virtues')

15 October

22 October

29 October

Supplementary readings:

5 November

Issues and debates generated by Longino's project

12 November: Is Longino's justification for diversity in science really epistemic, or is it ultimately political?

19 November: Internal tensions between Longino's social norms for objectivity

26 November: Can/should individual scientists 'take up' criticism?

Supplementary reading:

3 December: Can 'values' be rejected on empirical grounds? Does this follow from Longino's account of evidence?

 

HPS Workshop

Fridays, 5–6pm in the Board Room
Organised by Solomon Hajramezan (sh2328)

The HPS Workshop seeks to break the isolation of postgraduate research and encourage collaborative thinking by allowing students to present works-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

Aims and Methods of Histories of the Sciences

Michaelmas Term 2025: Thu 12noon, weeks 1–4 (4 one-hour seminars) in Seminar Room 1
Nick Jardine (leader)

These postgraduate seminars will consider aspects of the history, aims, methods and current problems of the history of science. The opening session will give an overview of the formation of history of science as a discipline and of the range of recent approaches. Subsequent sessions will discuss the pioneering work of Hélène Metzger on the purposes of history of science, the relations between history and philosophy of science, and uses of histories of the sciences by scientists.

Print & Material Sources

Tuesdays, 3.00–4.30pm

Cambridge holds some of the world's most important material sources for the history of science, and, in this seminar series organised by the Whipple Museum and Library, we'll explore them with the guidance of those who know them best.

 

Language Groups

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 Michaelmas Term 2025 we will meet weekly on Fridays, 4–5pm in the Board Room. The first meeting will be on Friday 17 October.

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