Part III Manager: Helen Curry
MPhil Managers: Marta Halina and Staffan Müller-Wille
Part III and MPhil Seminars 2020–21
The Department's Part III and HPSM MPhil students must attend these seminars. They are not open to anyone else.
There will be four seminar groups, each of which will be assigned to a specific day; students will be notified of their group at the start of term.
The seminars will meet either in the Whipple Museum main gallery from 10–11am, Monday to Thursday, or on Teams; students will be regularly updated via email and Moodle as to the locations of that week's sessions.
Michaelmas Term
Weeks 1 and 2
12, 13, 21, 22 October
Marta Halina: Genesis and development of a scientific fact
- Fleck, Ludwik, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, F. Bradley and T. Trenn, trans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 [1935]), prologue and pp. 1–51
14, 15, 19, 20 October
Helen Curry: Histories of extinction
- Qureshi, Sadiah, 'Dying Americans: Race, Extinction and Conservation in the New World', in A. Swenson and P. Mandler (eds), From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c. 1800–1940, Proceedings of the British Academy 187 (2013), 267–286
- Sepkoski, David, 'Extinction, Diversity and Endangerment', in F. Vidal and N. Dias (eds), Endangerment, Biodiversity and Culture (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 62–86
- TallBear, Kim, 'Genomic Articulations of Indigeneity', Social Studies of Science 43 (2013), 509–533
Weeks 3 and 4
26, 27 October, 4, 5 November
Tim Lewens and Stephen John: Is, can or should science be 'value-free'?
- Douglas, Heather, 'Inductive Risk and Values in Science', Philosophy of Science 67 (2000), 559–579
28, 29 October, 2, 3 November
Nick Hopwood: Icons of knowledge
- Hopwood, Nick, Haeckel's Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), pp. viii–7, 201–216, 296–301 and notes
Weeks 5 and 6
9, 10, 18, 19 November
Simon Schaffer and Josh Nall: Instruments and empires
- Raj, Kapil, Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of Knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), chapter 6 ('When Human Travellers become Instruments: The Indo-British Exploration of Central Asia in the Nineteenth Century', pp. 181–222)
- Pang, Alex Soojung-Kim, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), chapter 5 ('Astrophysics and Imperialism', pp. 121–143)
- Anderson, Katherine, Predicting the Weather: Victorians and the Science of Meteorology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), chapter 6 ('Science, State and Empire', pp. 235–284)
11, 12, 16, 17 November
Anna Alexandrova: Evidence-based policy and its discontents
- Deaton, Angus, and Nancy Cartwright, 'Understanding and Misunderstanding Randomized Controlled Trials', Social Science & Medicine 210 (2018), 2–21
- Khosrowi, Donal, and Julian Reiss, 'Evidence-Based Policy: The Tension Between the Epistemic and the Normative', Critical Review 31 (2019), 179–197
Weeks 7 and 8
23, 24 November, 2, 3 December
Salim Al-Gailani: Covid-19 and the history of medicine
- Harrison, Mark, 'Pandemics', in M. Jackson (ed), The Routledge History of Disease (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 129–46, available on Moodle
- Greene, Jeremy, and Dora Vargha, 'How Epidemics End', Boston Review (30 June 2020)
- Jones, David, 'COVID-19, History and Humility', Centaurus 62 (2020), 370–380
25, 26, 30 November, 1 December
Hasok Chang: Realism, relativism and pluralism
- Chang, Hasok, 'Relativism, Perspectivism and Pluralism', in Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 398–406
- Chang, Hasok, 'Pragmatism, Perspectivism, and the Historicity of Science', in Michela Massimi and Casey D. McCoy (eds), Understanding Perspectivism: Scientific Challenges and Methodological Prospects (New York and London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 10–27
Lent Term
Weeks 1 and 2
25, 26 January, 3, 4 February
Staffan Müller-Wille: Natural history as a global science
- Stearn, William T., 'The Influence of Leyden on Botany in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', The British Journal for the History of Science 1 (1962), 137–158
- Safier, Neil, 'Global Knowledge on the Move: Itineraries, Amerindian Narratives, and Deep Histories of Science', Isis 101 (2010), 133–145
- Isayev, Elena, and Staffan Müller-Wille, 'Knowledge in Transit: Linnaeus's Laplandic Journey (1732)', 2020
27, 28 January, 1, 2 February
Sam Robinson: Science fact and fiction: histories of socio-technical futures
- Jasanoff, Sheila, and Sang-Hyun Kim, 'Containing the Atom: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Nuclear Regulation in the United States and South Korea', Minerva 47 (2009), 119–146
- Rees, Amanda, and Iwan Rhys Morus, 'Introduction: Presenting Futures Past: Science Fiction and the History of Science', Osiris 34 (2019), 1–15. See whole issue for more: 'Presenting Futures Past'
Weeks 3 and 4
8, 9, 17, 18 February
Jacob Stegenga: The sciences of sexual desire
- Lloyd, Elisabeth, 'Pre-Theoretical Assumptions in Evolutionary Explanations of Female Sexuality', Philosophical Studies 69 (1993), 139–153
- Stein, Edward, The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory and Ethics of Sexual Orientation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), introduction and chapter 7
- Stegenga, Jacob, Book Synopsis Draft
10, 11, 15, 16 February
Mary Brazelton: Decolonization and the history of science
- Deb Roy, Rohan, 'Decolonise Science: Time to End Another Imperial Era', The Conversation (April 2018)
- Murphy, Michelle, 'Some Keywords toward Decolonial Methods: Studying Settler Colonial Histories and Environmental Violence from Tkaronto', History and Theory 59 (2020), 376–384
- Walter Mignolo, 'Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom', Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (2010), 159–181
Weeks 5 and 6
22, 23 February, 3, 4 March
Matt Farr: The direction of time
- Price, Huw, and Brad Weslake, 'The Time-Asymmetry of Causation', in Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock and Peter Menzies (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Causation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 414–443
24, 25 February, 1, 2 March
Lauren Kassell: Medical records and digital humanities
- Kassell, Lauren, 'Casebooks in Early Modern England: Astrology, Medicine and Written Records', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88 (2014), 595–625
- Kassell, Lauren, Michael Hawkins, Robert Ralley, John Young, Joanne Edge, Janet Yvonne Martin-Portugues and Natalie Kaoukji (eds), 'Casebooks', The Casebooks of Simon Forman and Richard Napier, 1596–1634: A Digital Edition