< Colloquia

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science

1999–2000

40th Annual Program

September 27, 1999
From Laboratory to Product: Conceptual Strategies in Industrial Innovation
Moderator: Deborah Stroud, Massachusetts General Hospital
James Utterback, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Industrial Innovation: A Historical Perspective
John Bush, Gillette Company
The Technology of Technology Management:
A Practitioners Perspective
Gerald Gordon, Boston University
Science and Technology Management:
The Individual and the Organization

October 12–13, 1999
Epistemological Musings
Vadim Sadovsky, Institute of Systems Research, Russian Academy of Science
Alexandre Bogdanov's Empiriomonism and Tektology
Karl Popper and Russia
Evolutionary Epistemology

October 21, 1999
Intuition in Mathematics
Moderator: David Kazhdan, Harvard University
Charles Parsons, Harvard University
The Obviousness of Elementary Arithmetic
Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University
The Theory-Ladenness of Intuitions

November 2, 1999
On Mathematical Modeling of The Mind
Moderator: Robert Richardson, University of Cincinnatti
Sunny Auyang
A Mathematical Model of Intentionality
John Symons, Boston University
Emergence, Causality and Mathematics in the Brain Sciences
Stephen Grossberg, Boston University
How the Cerebral Cortex Works
Marvin Minsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Large Scale Models of Mind

November 10, 1999
The Epistemology of Testimony
Catherine Elgin, Harvard University
Word Giving, Word Taking
Adam Seligman, Boston University
Trust, Confidence and Testimony
Nicholas Ashford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Science and Values in Legal Proceedings
Scott Brewer, Harvard University
Building Epistemic Ladders between Non-experts:
Some Methodological Questions

December 1, 1999
Inductive Metaphysics: Why Philosophers Should
Take Another Look at Quantum Mechanics
Commentator: John Stachel, Boston University
Christoph Lehner, Einstein Papers Project, Boston University

January 24, 2000
Poincaré On Convention
Commentator: Judd Webb, Boston University
Yemima ben Menachem, Hebrew University

February 2, 2000
Hobbes On Science
Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv University
Hobbes on Language
Bernard Gert, Dartmouth College
Hobbes on Rationality
Richard Tuck, Harvard University
Hobbes on Skepticism

February 14, 2000
The Robert S. Cohen Forum: Reflectons on Twentieth Century
History and Philosophy of Science
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.

Moderator:   Robert S. Cohen, Boston University
I.B. Cohen, Harvard University
From Context to Construction:
Changing Alliances in the History of Science
Arthur Fine, Northwestern University
TBA

Gerald Holton, Harvard University
What Happened to Clio-Urania?
Hilary Putnam, Harvard University
TBA
Patrick Suppes, Stanford University
Philosophy, Physics and Psychology:
A Twentieth Century Tale of Entanglement

March 27, 2000
Husserl’s Logical Investigations
Introduction: Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University
Dagfinn Føllesdal, Stanford University
First Investigation
Gail Soffer, New School for Social Reserach, New York
Second Investigation
 John Drummond, Fordham University and St. Mary’s College
Third Investigation

J.H. Mohanty, Temple University
Fourth Investigation
Richard Cobb-Stevens, Boston College
Fifth Investigation
Robert Sokolowski, The Catholic University of America
Sixth Investigation

April 24–25, 2000
Untimely Musings: Nietzsche's and The Ideal of Scienctific Truth
Moderator: Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
S e s s i o n  I
Holger Schmid, University of Halle-Wittenberg
Nietzsche’s Critical Path and the Highway of Science
Barry Allen, McMaster University
Science in the New Century: Banal Utopia or Tragic Recompense?

S e s s i o n  II
Robert Pippin, University of Chicago
Gay Science
Robin Small, Monash University, Australia
Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Indifference
Walter Zimmerli, Phillipps University, Marburg
Nietzsche’s Philosophy as Criticism of Truth and Science

S e s s i o n  III
Daniel Conway, Pennsylvania State University
How Nietzsche Became What He Was—and Was Not
Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State University
Nietzsche and Anthropology

S e s s i o n  IV
Richard Schacht, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Nietzschean Cognitivism
Babette Babich, Fordham University
Nietzsche’s Critique of Truth as the Link Between Analytic and
Continental Modalities of Philosophy Round-table Discussion

May 3, 2000
Max Planck and The Quantum
Sponsored by Dibner Fund, through the Dibner Institute
for the History of Science and Technology
Moderator: Laszlo Tisza, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emeritus
Michel Janssen, Boston University
Planck’s Derivation of His Black Body Radiation Law Revisited
Edvard Jurkowitz, University of Chicago
Helmholtz, Planck and Berliner Theory
Olivier Darrigol, CNRS, Paris
The Centenary of What? The Historians Disagreement over
the Meaning of Planck’s Quanta

Dieter Hoffman, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
The Institutional and Experimental Background of Planck’s Radiation Law
Jürgen Renn, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Exploring the Limits of Classical Physics:
Planck, Einstein, and the Structure of a Scientific Revolution
John Stachel, Boston University
Wien and Einstein React to the Planck Spectrum: Where is the Discontinuity?