< Colloquia

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science

1998–1999

39th Annual Program

September 24, 1998
Conceptual Origins of Science in Antiquity
Moderator: David Roochnik, Boston University
Emilie Kutash, Boston University
The Developing Sciences in Antiquity
Helen Lang, Trinity College
Place, Surface, and Form: Limits for Physics, Mathematics, and Metaphysics

Johannes Fritsche, The New School for Social Research
Aristotle’s Physics
John McGinnis, University of Pennsylvania
Aristotle’s Method of Scientific Investigation and Beyond

September 25, 1998
Consequentialism and The Right and The Good
Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, Boston University and
supported by the Boston University Humanities Foundation
Moderator: Charles L. Griswold, Jr., Boston University
David Wiggins, New College, University of Oxford

October 7, 1998
Debating the Biology of Language
Moderator: Bruce Fraser, Boston University
Terrence Deacon, Boston University
The Symbolic Species
Steven Pinker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Evolution of Language and Mind

October 8, 1998
The Scientific Image in Early Modern Philosophy
Moderator: Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University
Justin Broaches, Brown University
Experiment and Thought-Experiment in Descartes and Boyle:
Sensation and the Nature of Matter
Judson Webb, Boston University
Groping for Something Modern in Science and Philosophy:
Descartes and J.B. Morin
Roger Ariew, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Leibniz on Natural Curiosities

Jerome Lettvin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Applied Metaphysics
Aaron Garrett, Boston University
Where Is the Science in Spinoza’s Scientia Intuitiva?
Kenneth Winkler, Wellesley College
Making the Sensible Intelligible: Cudworth and Locke on Matter

November 12, 1998
Thoreau’s Natural Philosophy
Moderator: Robert S. Cohen, Boston University
Laura Dassow Walls, Lafayette College
A Material Faith: Thoreau and the Science of Life
Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
Thoreau’s Notion of Time: An Ontology, a Metaphysic, an Ethic

Lawrence Buell, Harvard University
The Egocentrists’ Thoreau
Leo Marx, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Ecocentrists’ Thoreau
Daniel Peck, Vassar College
Thoreau’s Landscape: Two Visions of Nature

December 7, 1998
The Boundaries of The Human Sciences
Moderator: John Clayton, Boston University
Roger Smith, Lancaster University, Emeritus
The History of the Human Sciences as a Human Science
Bruce Mazlish, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Uncertain Sciences

Irving Velody, University of Bristol
To be announced
Michael Fisher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Human Sciences: An Anthropologist’s Perspective
Michael Martin, Boston University, Emeritus
Verstehen and the Boundaries of the Human Sciences

January 25, 1999
Does Time Flow??
In Memory of Milic Capek
Moderator: Abner Shimony, Boston University, Emeritus
Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University
Time’s Passing
Palle Yourgrau, Brandeis University
Kurt Gödel: Time Travel and the Ideality of Time
Michel Janssen, Boston University
The Twin Paradox and an Unorthodox Solution to the Problem of Absolute Space

January 29–February 9, 1999
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.

Naturalism and Its Discontents
Moderator: Steven Horst, Wesleyan University
Part I
Joseph Rouse, Wesleyan University
Should Nature Be “Naturalized”?
Jaegwon Kim, Brown University
Naturalism: Its Sources, Status, and Claims

Steven Horst, Wesleyan University
Naturalism in the Philosophy of Mind:
Archeology and Critical Analysis
William Bechte, Washington University
Imaging the Mind
Abner Shimony, Boston University, Emeritus
The Intellectual Responsibilities of Naturalism

Part II
Lenny Moss, Northwestern University
Philosophical Anthropology, Old and New
Kenneth Schaffner, George Washington University
Construction, Connection, and C. Elegans:
What the Worm Can Tell Philosophers
Evelyn Fox Keller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Making Sense of Life: Explanation in Developmental Biology

Part III
Michael Ruse, University of Guelph
A Naturalistic Approach to the Philosophy of Science:
An Evolutionary Case Study
David Depew, University of Iowa
Complexity, Epigenesis, and the Future of Naturalism
Robert Richardson, University of Cincinnati
Infelicities of Evolutionary Naturalism

March 30, 1999
The Galileo Affair From John Milton to John Paul II
Supported by the Dibner Fund, through the Dibner Institute for
the History of Science and Technology
Moderator: John Stachel, Boston University
Commentator: Mario Biagioli, Harvard University
Maurice A. Finocchiaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

April 27, 1999
Norms of Language
Moderator: Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University
Ruth Millikan, University of Connecticut
Why There Are No Rules of Language
Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburgh
Normativity and Modality

May 3, 1999
Michael Polanyi Reconsidered
Moderator: Gerald Holton, Harvard University
Richard Gelwick, University of New England, College of Osteopathy
Tacit Knowing and Artificial Intelligence
Charles Lowney, Boston University
Polanyi and Wittgenstein
Stefania Jha, Harvard University
Polanyi’s Conception of Judicial Attitude
Philip Mullins, Missouri Western State College
Polanyi on Science Policy

May 9–10, 1999
Science Without Freedon in The Twentieth Century
Moderator: Yakov Rabkin, Montreal University
Yakov Rabkin, Montreal University
Science and Totalitarianism: Readjusting the Agenda
Genady Gorelik, Boston University
Authority in Physics in the Authoritarian State
Slava Gerovich, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Transition of Science from Stalin to Khruschev: Cybernetics
Alexei Kozhevnikov, The American Institute of Physics, New York
The Collectivization of Soviet Physics

Moderator: Loren Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Benoit Massin, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris)
Successes and Failures in the Nazification of the Content of Science
Mitchell Ash, University of Vienna
Scientific Changes in Germany: 1933, 1945, and 1990

Moderator: Loren Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mark Walker, Union College/Harvard University
Human Origins and National Socialism
Richard Beyler, Portland State University
The Quest for an Antimaterialist Science in Germany in the Twentieth Century
Dieter Hofmann, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
German Physical Society in Nazi Germany