Category Archives: Science

Infinite Idealizations in Science [CFP]

8-9 June, 2016 · LMU, Munich

Infinite idealizations are assumptions that play an important role in physics, biology, economics, and many others sciences. Putative examples include an infinite population size in population genetics, an infinite number of components in the theory of phase transitions and an infinite number of persons consuming an infinite number of (infinitely divisible) goods in large-scale economic models. Although these idealizations are generally uncontroversial in the scientific community, they have been at the center of recent philosophical debates about reduction, explanation and the status of models in science. Yet, philosophers of the particular sciences addressing these issues have largely kept within the confines of their own specialist literature. One of our goals for the conference is to bring philosophers of physics, biology, economics, etc. together in conversation about infinite idealizations, thereby mapping what similarities and differences such idealizations may have across these fields.

Some of the questions this workshop aims to explore include (but are not limited to):

  • Are infinite idealizations compatible with reduction?
  • Can a model invoking an infinite idealization have explanatory power?
  • What explains the success of theories that appeal to infinite idealizations?
  • Are infinite idealizations compatible with scientific realism?
  • Are infinite idealizations substantially different from other idealizations?
  • Should infinite idealizations be understood as approximations?

find out more….

Orra W. Hitchcock, Lady Slippers, c. 1817-1818, watercolor on paper. Deerfield Academy Archives [https://acdc.amherst.edu/collection/asc]

 

Picturing The Body In The Laboratory [conference] // Berlin, 6-7 Nov 2015

Genesis and topicality of evidence-oriented imaging in institutions of the long 19th century and today

6-7 November 2015
Humboldt University, Berlin
Image Knowledge Gestaltung, Interdisciplinary Laboratory,
Sophienstr. 22a

“Our aim is to investigate the particular role of the image in evidence production around 1900 in order to sharpen our understanding of the ground laying concepts for today’s epistemic role, limitations as well as of the convenience of laboratory work. Specifically we want to know: what is it exactly that makes the image so attractive around 1900? What can the image do that the word cannot? And does this also apply to the images described that cannot lay claim to any kind of material evidence in the form of a trace? Is there a particular obstinacy in these evidence-oriented images in terms of the Bildakt? Are these images »actors« in a way that is specific to this kind of image (Mitchell 2006)?

One of our particular focuses of interest is the role played by the technical means of producing the traces or images. What are the implications of the technology that developed at this time for evidence orientation? Do we find similar – or which other – principles at work in laboratory evidence technologies in the 21st century? What higher-order similarities does a transdisciplinary examination of different media reveal?”

…find out more

 

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Cultural history of science on traces of the body in the lab around 1900

10.00 Registration, Welcome address & Coffee

10.30 Keynote Barbara Orland (University of Basel)
Seeing the Building Blocks of the Human Body. The Biopolitics of Microphotography 1840–1870

11.30 Short Coffee Break

Panel 1

moderator: Ann-Cathrin Drews (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)

11.40 Bettina Bock von Wülfingen (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
The New Cell Staining Techniques since the 1870s and their Role in Conceiving Sex/Gender in the Cell

12.20 Marietta Kesting (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Creating Photographic Identification

13.00       Lunch

14.00 RESUMÉ 1

Panel 2

moderator: Mark-Oliver Casper (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)

14.30 Sophia Kunze (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Necessary Reduction of Complexity or Dubious Essentialisation? Reception of Natural Scientific Knowledge in the History of Arts

15.10 Wolfgang Schäffner (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Schreber’s Evidence

15.50 Bettina Uppenkamp (Dresden University/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Evidence and Identification. On the History of the Fingerprint

16.30RESUMÉ 2

17.00 Finish
Organisational remarks. Snacks and nibbles and move to
> Lecture Hall 2094, Main Building, Unter den Linden 6

19.00 Keynote Peter Galison (Harvard University)
The Conviction of Scientific Images

Natural Sciences and Laboratory Traces Today

> Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Main Building, Seminar Room 2093,  Unter den Linden 6

9.30    Welcome Coffee

10.00Keynote Soraya de Chadarevian (UCLA)
»It is not enough, in order to understand the Book of Nature, to turn over the pages looking at the pictures. Painful though it may be, it will be necessary to learn to read the text.«
Visual Evidence in the Life Sciences, c. 1960

Panel 3

moderator: Kathrin Friedrich (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)

11.00 John Nyakatura (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Trace, Experiment, Inference: Images and the Generation of Knowledge in Paleobiology

11.40 Anelis Kaiser (University of Bern)
Sex/Gender in the Brain: From Voxels to Knowledge

12.20 Thomas Stach (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung)
Traces, Data, Facts: How Morphology Generates Evidence

13.00 Lunch

14.00 RESUMÉ 3

Panel 4

moderator: Markus Rautzenberg (FU Berlin, mecs Lüneburg)

14.30 Dieter Weiss (University of Rostock)
Superresolution Microscopy and the Discovery of Nano-Machines in Living Cells

15.10 Anne Dippel (HU Berlin/Image Knowledge Gestaltung, FSU Jena, Leuphana Lüneburg),
Lukas Mairhofer (University of Vienna)
Believing the Pattern. A conversation on Traces in Physics

16.30 RESUMÉ 4
Coffee and Goodbye
(brief organisational authors meeting)

[download programme]

 

[new book] Ignazio Licata · “Sistemi Caotici”

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Ignazio Licata, member of our honorary board, has just published a new book on chaotic systems.

I. Licata, "Sistemi caotici", Aracne Editrice LR

“L’effetto farfalla, i frattali e l’immaginario generato dalla teoria del caos sono ormai una consolidata presenza nella cultura contemporanea. Durante gli anni Ottanta tra gli stessi specialisti si era diffusa l’idea che la fisica non–lineare potesse costituire la base di una teoria dell’organizzazione che avrebbe permesso di estendere il sogno determinista di predire praticamente qualunque cosa, dai sistemi biologici ai mercati finanziari. Passò dunque l’idea che l’incertezza era vinta, tranne qualche remota zona quantistica. È maturata piuttosto la convinzione che la non–linearità è un ingrediente nei processi di amplificazione dell’informazione e della formazione di strutture, ma va immersa in una più generale teoria dell’emergenza, ancora in costruzione, che riguarda le relazioni sistema–ambiente, il ruolo delle fluttuazioni dissipative, l’ergodicità e l’interfaccia classico–quantistico. Adesso che il tempo degli slogan è passato, ci sembra utile offrire al lettore e agli studenti un’introduzione sobria alla fisica del caos.”

Ignazio Licata
Sistemi Caotici
ISBN 978-88-548-8444-1, 17 x 24 cm, 80 pp, 8 € (pdf for 4,80€)

 

 

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2015

Is the 21st annual international, interdisciplinary conference on the fundamental questions connected with conscious experience. It will be held in Helsinki  (June 9th – 13th, 2015)

Matteo Bultrini - EpifaniaGregory Bateson: ”The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”

Topical areas include neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, biology, quantum physics, meditation and altered states, machine consciousness, culture and experiential phenomenology. Cutting edge, controversial issues are emphasized.

Held annually since 1994, the TSC conference is organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in different locations

more: http://www.helsinki.fi/tsc2015/