Seminars take place on Thursdays from 3.30pm to 5pm in the Hopkinson Lecture Theatre (unless otherwise stated).
Organised by Ahmad Elabbar.
Easter Term 2026
30 April
Arts School Lecture Theatre A
Greg Lusk (Durham University)
Social values in scientific information: value plurality and the democratic view
The value-laden nature of scientific information suggests that when such information influences democratic decision making, the embedded social values do as well. This creates a problem when deploying science within decision making in a democracy: the people or their representatives should determine which values guide decision making, not scientists. Value laden scientific information can therefore undermine the legitimacy of democratic decisions. Philosophers of science have only recently begun to take this problem of legitimacy seriously.
This talk will explore this emerging area of 'political philosophy of science' with a particular focus on the political legitimacy of value-laden scientific information within decision making. I will present the inaptly named 'democratic alignment view' and attempt to defend it against recent challenges. These challenges claim that the view does a poor job of accommodating value-plurality and would further marginalise minority views. I argue that the democratic alignment view has the resources to meet these challenges, and there are significant benefits to retaining it.
7 May
Patrick M. Duerr (University of Tübingen)
Scientific fruitfulness – the virtue of promising speculation
Practising scientists at the frontier of knowledge production face the challenge of having to decide which theories and models to adopt and work on. That is, they must identify auspicious novel hypotheses in order to further pursue, elaborate and refine them. But how to spot fruitful or fertile ideas – and conversely by what principles to weed out unpromising ones – especially when they are still in a more speculative or fledgling stage, with no conclusive evidence available yet? Notwithstanding its significance for scientific practice, fruitfulness has received less philosophical attention than it deserves. Building on seminal thoughts by Thomas Kuhn and Mary Hesse, I will advance the debate by developing what I will refer to as the EPTQ-model of fruitfulness. It moots an explication of the concept and function of fruitfulness in forward-looking phases inquiry – the 'context of pursuit' (Laudan) – rather than those in which one seeks to ascertain confirmation, empirical adequacy, or truth, on the basis of actual achievements. The EPTQ-model conceives of fruitfulness as the potential for scientific innovation, and distinguishes among four 'dimensions': prospects of expanding (E) an idea's domain, an idea's plasticity (P) and resources for natural evolution and adjustments, portable 'techniques' (T) and principles, and, finally, the questions (Q) that gave rise to an idea. The model aspires to both descriptive and normative adequacy, and I will make a case for this in part by drawing on several examples from past and present physics. The EPTQ-model is intended as a contribution within an integrated HPS. It will, I hope, provide useful tools for both historiographical analysis as well as for understanding controversies in current science.
14 May
Monica Garcia-Salmones Rovira (Maastricht University)
Nature and law
The paper engages initially with ideas about nature of three natural philosophers who were deeply impactful in the Early Scientific Revolution, Robert Boyle, the seventeenth-century inaugurator of the science of chemistry, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, authors well known both to an audience of lawyers and of scientists. The paper places emphasis in the fact that Hobbes, Boyle, and Locke were not merely natural lawyers, but natural philosophers. Natural philosophers were not either what today we call scientists. In his Introduction to the Philosophical Works by Isaac Newton, Andrew Janiak explains that the difference between the notions of 'natural philosophers' and 'scientists' is that the latter is a much more modern term, from around the mid-nineteenth century, apparently coined by William Whewell, for people practising science. Differently, natural philosophers studied nature, practised experiments, and discovered things like the laws of gravity, but also 'discussed many aspects of human beings, including the psyche and how nature reflects its divine creator'. Natural philosophers worked to develop a comprehensive view of nature. Therefore, the notion of natural philosophers already suggests 'interdisciplinarity' and a broader outlook, both empirical and existential in their analysis of problems. The paper investigates the impact that this modern notion of nature developed in the Scientific Revolution has had in the way we think today about law.
Tuesday 19 May, 5.00–6.30pm
Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Adyeeri Kembabazi (University of Warwick)
'Reservoirs of venereal diseases': women and medico-moral discourses in Idi Amin's Uganda
For many Ugandans, Idi Amin's rule is an unfinished chapter that continues to shape political discourse about the way the state relates to its citizens. Despite being one of the most documented figures in history, sensationalized media portrayals and limited archival sources have obscured many facets of his rule. Scholarship has often focused on high-profile events like the expulsion of Asians but like many authoritarian leaders, Amin was deeply invested in imposing moral order, enacting a series of decrees between 1971 and 1977 which aimed to reform the behavior of Ugandans. This 'anti-immorality' campaign led to the arrest, imprisonment, and forced treatment of many Ugandans, predominantly women. The campaign garnered support from unexpected places, including medical professionals, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens. In this talk, I examine the anti-venereal disease decree, which Amin enacted in 1977 to address what he and medics believed was a venereal disease epidemic caused by immorality. I examine the campaign against venereal diseases as a political, medico-moral, and epidemiological project, socially constructed, but with real consequences for women. This campaign found support among medical and public health officials whose agendas intersected with moral reform efforts, framing venereal diseases through a gendered moral lens, echoing colonial precedents.
21 May
Rosanna Evans (Fitzwilliam Museum)
Policy vs. passion: British science teaching cultures and practical work, 1944–1988
The history of British school science has been long neglected. As compulsory state education expanded post-World War II, secondary school has become the only ubiquitous and formative science experience for British society. As individuals' science capital informs public understandings of science, including global pandemics and the climate crisis, inquiries into science classroom practices and experiences are much warranted.
So what evidence remains? Schools have never had the resources to keep records. Recent histories have investigated policy and curriculum change without assessing the implementation of these changes by teachers, or their interpretation by students, despite contemporary science education studies acknowledging dissonance between policy and curriculum and implementation.
Between a blend of object biography and oral history, this seminar will surface in-school experiences of science practical work from post-war Britain, illustrating how impactful teacher and student behaviours, classroom cultures, and teacher's identities are on students' learning as well as underlining why this close-up perspective should be an essential feature of histories of science education.
28 May
Issa Kohler-Hausmann (Yale University)
Defining and detecting discrimination: a new way forward
One of the predominate conceptions of discrimination in law and social science defines it causally. Something is discrimination on the basis of, e.g., race or sex only if the outcome would not have occurred had the person been, or been perceived to be, a different racial or sex category. This counterfactual definition has been embraced by the United States Supreme Court in interpreting federal anti-discrimination statutes and the Equal Protection Clause, and it structures much of the methodological work of social scientists, causal inference researchers, and computer scientists who design studies and make policy-relevant empirical claims.
But this definition is indeterminate and it suppresses assumptions that must ground any definition of discrimination. Using examples from law and social science, I show how the causal definition does not yield determinate designations of discrimination so much as it expresses the analyst's prior sociological and normative commitments.
I close by arguing that any account of discrimination must confront two foundational questions. The first is sociological: What is the category on the basis of which the conduct is said to be discriminatory? The second is normative: What constitutes fair or just treatment in light of the nature of that category? Disagreement over these questions is currently obscured by conclusory doctrinal labels or methodological terms. Because any definition of discrimination inevitably embeds answers to these questions, those answers must be made explicit.
4 June – Thirtieth Annual Hans Rausing Lecture
CANCELLED