< Colloquia

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science

1997–1998

38th Annual Program

September 22, 1997
In Memoriam: Marx Wartofsky
Moderator: Joseph Polak, Hillel Foundation, Boston University
Carol Gould, Stevens Institute of Technology
Embodied Politics
Gregg M. Horowitz, Vanderbilt University
Art as a Reflective Praxis
Gary Smith, Einstein Forum, Potsdam
Towards a Cultural Historical Epistemology of Dreaming

Moderator: Robert S. Cohen, Boston University, Emeritus
Stephen Toulmin, University of Southern California
“Representations” in the Natural Sciences
John Stachel, Boston University, Emeritus
Critical Realism
Alasdair MacIntyre, Duke University
Naturalizing and Historicizing Normativity

September 25, 1997
The Fate of Melancholy in the Age of Depression
Moderator: Robert S. Cohen, Boston University, Emeritus
Michael Vincent Miller, Boston Gestalt Institute
Depression and Disappointment: A Melancholy View of Love
Jacques Hassoun, Cercle Freudien, Paris
The Cruelty of Depression: On Melancholy
Marianne Kardos, Harvard Medical School
Melancholy and Depression: To Treat or Not to Treat

September 29, 1997
Implications of Human Cloning: A Boston University Workshop
Cosponsored with the Health Law Department, Boston University School of Public Health.
Moderator: Michael Grodin, School of Public Health, Department of Philosophy
George Annas, School of Public Health and School of Law
Charles Delisi, College of Engineering
Ruth Hubbard, Department of Molecular Biology, Harvard University
David Roochnik, Department of Philosophy
Roger Shattuck, The University Professors, Emeritus
Alan Speight, Department of Philosophy and Core Curriculum

October 9, 1997
Fun and Games: Windows Into The Mind
Dwayne Carpenter, Boston College
What’s Luck Got To Do with It?: Games and Gambling in Medieval Spain
John Kidd, Boston University
Joycean Mind at Play

November 5, 1997
Philosophy of Chemistry: An Emerging Discipline
Lee McIntrye, Colgate University
The Emergence of the Philosophy of Chemistry
Erwin Hiebert, Harvard University, Emeritus
The Self-Image of the Chemist as Philosopher-Historian

Japp Van Brakel, University of Leuven
Chemistry and Sellars’s Manifest Image
Steve Weininger, Worchester Polytechnic
Butlerov’s Edict: The Timeless, the Transient and
Representation of Chemical Structure
Jeffry Ramsey, Oregon State University
Realism, Essentialism and Intrinsic Properties:
The Case of Molecular Shape

November 20, 1997
Thomas Kuhn Beyond His Domain:
Influences in The Humanities and Social Sciences
Moderator: Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
Meera Nanda, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Incommensurable Cultures and Their “Ethnosciences”
Jeffrey Mehlman, Boston University
A French Resistance?
Caroline Jones, Boston University
Paradigms Lost: The Artworld and Kuhn

Glenn Loury, Boston College
Progress and Its Discontents:
Conformity and Change in Economic Science
Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard University
Kuhn’s Impact on the Practice of Science

December 2, 1997
Making Medical Decisions at The Bedside: Critical Questions
Jerome Kassirer, New England Journal of Medicine
How Do Physicians View Their Decisions?
Carmi Margolis, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
Do Algorithms and Guidelines Limit Thinking?
Shimon Glick, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel
Does Medical Ethics Affect Individual Decision Making?

Stephen Pauker, New England Medical Center
Is Decision Analysis Relevant at the Bedside?
Richard Kopelman, New England Medical Center
How to Use the Bedside to Teach Clinical Decision Making
Arthur Elstein, Abraham Lincoln School of Medicine, University of Illinois
Has Decision-Making Psychology Impacted Bedside Choices
by Patients and Physicians?
Susan Pauker, Harvard Medical School
How Should the Patient be Involved in Clinical Decision Making?

December 8, 1997
Can Science Explain Intentionality?
Karl Pribram, Stanford University, Emeritus
Consciousness, Experience and Intentionality
Michel Baranger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chaos and Poincaré’s Intentionality: A Physicist’s Perspective
Hubert L. Dreyfus, University of California at Berkeley
Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation

Walter Freeman, University of California at Berkeley
The Biology of Consciousness and Intentionality
Mriganka Sur, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Representation and Reconstruction in Sensory Perception
Tien Yu Cao, Boston University
Can Science Explain Intentionality?

January 21, 1998
Theories of Meaning
Moderator: W.V. Quine, Harvard University, Emeritus
Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University
Donald Davidson, The University of California at Berkeley, Emeritus

February 5–April 21, 1998
The Robert S. Cohen Forum: Contemporary Issues in Science Studies
The Forum, an annual lecture series, explores selected controversies in philosophy, history, and sociology of science that provide wide resonances in other academic disciplines. In an intellectual context accessible to the nonspecialist, a single theme is discussed with the aim of establishing the foundations, conceptual boundaries, and interdisciplinary implications of the given topic. This series is named in honor of Professor Robert S. Cohen, who founded the Boston Colloquium and served as its director for over thirty years.

Alberto Cambrosio, McGill University
On the Coexistence of Different Time Frames in Historical Accounts
of Scientific Practices
Eileen Crist, Virginia Polytechnic
Method and Knowledge in Natural History
Thomas Glick, Boston University
Contextualizing Scientific Ideas: The Comparative Method
Allan Brandt, Harvard University
Constructing Disease in the Historiography of Medicine
Lily Kay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Book of Life? How DNA became a Language
Barbara Rosenkrantz, Harvard University, Emeritus
Reconstituting Resistance: The Ecological View from
Theobold Smith (1859–1934) to René Dubos (1901–1982)
Larry Holmes, Yale University
Tracking the Investigative Trail: Where It Can Lead
Peter Keating, Montreal University
Consequences in Historical Epistemology for the History
and Sociology of the Biomedical Sciences
Philip Pauly, Rutgers University
High Culture and Fish Culture: Thoughts on the Cultural Foundations
of American Biology
Angela N. Creager, Princeton University
Experimental Systems and Models in Twentieth-century Biomedicine
Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
Historiography after Kuhn:
From Metaphysical Musings to Laboratory Practices

April 23, 1998
Origins of Analytic Philosophy
Moderator: Burton Dreben, Boston University
David Pears, University of Oxford
Concerning Origins and Traditions
P.M.S. Hacker, University of Oxford
Frege and the Early Wittgenstein

Juliet Floyd, Boston University
On the Theory of Symbolism, 1879–1930
Peter Hylton, University of Illinois at Chicago
Frege and Russell
Cora Diamond, University of Virginia
To be announced

May 5, 1998
When Einstein Got The Wrong Result:
The Case of The Einstein/Besso Manuscript
Michel Janssen, Boston University