< Colloquia

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science

2003–2004

44th Annual Program

September 17, 2003
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory:
A Tribute to Stephen Jay Gould
Moderator: Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
Ernst Mayr, Harvard University
Memories of Stephen J. Gould
Elisabeth Lloyd, Indiana University
Hierarchical Selection Theory
Richard Lewontin, Harvard University
What Should Evolutionary Theory Be Trying to Explain?
Lynn Margulis, University of Massachusetts
Propinquity of Descent of Genome Acquisition

September 29, 2003
Fifty Years of the Molecular Revolution:
Ethics and Policy
A Boston University Symposium
Co-sponsored by the Dibner Fund through the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
Moderator: Alfred I. Tauber, Department of Philosophy
George Annas, Health Law Department
James Watson, Shirley Temple Black, and Claude Vorilhon:
The Ghost of DNA Ethics Past and Prospects for the Future
Michael Baram, School of Law
Bentham and Biotechnology
Charles Cantor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Genetics and the Future of the Human Species

Hans Kornberg, The University Professors and Biology Department
Tampering with Our Food
Joseph Loscalzo, Department of Medicine
DNA and Research Involving Human Subjects:
New Heresies in Natural Philosophy
Charles DeLisi, College of Engineering
Can the Past Continue to Inform the Future?

October 10–11, 2003
Thomas Reid and the Sciences
Co-sponsored by the Reid Society and the Humanities Foundation, Boston University

Moderator: Knud Haakonssen, Boston University
John P. Wright, Central Michigan University
Causality, Common Sense, and Science in Reid and His Successors
Lorne Falkenstein, University of Western Ontario
Reid and Smith on Visual Localization
Aaron Garrett, Boston University
Priestley on Reid, or How Not to Be a Unitarian of the Mind

James Harris, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford
Reid on the Character of a Science of the Mind
Benjamin Redekop, Kettering University
The Rise of Modern Science and the Problem of Common Sense Experience
Paul Wood, University of Victoria
Thomas Reid and the Tree of the Sciences

Follow-up Seminar
Participants include M. A. Stewart, University of Aberdeen,
and Rebecca Copenhaver, Lewis and Clark College.

October 22, 2003
Putnam on the Fact/Value Distinction
Moderator: Stanley Rosen, Boston University
Yemima Ben-Menahem, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Language of Freedom
Juliet Floyd, Boston University
“The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” in Historical Context
Charles Travis, Northwestern University
Prudence and Particularity

Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
The Call for a Moral Epistemology
David Wiggins, Oxford University
Outwards from the Entanglement Thesis:
Generality, Universality,
and Disagreement in Ethics
Hilary Putnam, Harvard University
Concluding Comments

November 3, 2003
Chirality in Kant and Contemporary Physics
Moderator: Alisa Bokulich, Boston University
Anja Jauernig, University of Notre Dame
Chirality and Transcendental Idealism
Alfredo Ferrarin, Boston University
Geometric Space, Lived Space in Kant
Nick Huggett, University of Illinois at Chicago
The Regularity Account of Space

November 10, 2003
No Knowledge Without Self-Knowledge?
Philosophy and Truth in McCarthyite America
Co-sponsored by the Dibner Fund through the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology

Moderator: Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University
John McCumber, University of California at Los Angeles

November 17, 2003
Reflexivity Redux
Moderator: Allen Speight, Boston University
Roger Smith, Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Moscow
Does Reflexivity Separate the Human Sciences from the Natural Sciences?
Klaus Brinkman, Boston University
Reflexivity, Reflection, Language and Thought:
Self-Organization and Organization of Self
Jill Morawski, Wesleyan University
Reflexivity and the Psychologist

December 1, 2003
The Young Einstein: Poetry and Truth
(First of the Einstein Centennial Series)
Co-sponsored by the Center for Einstein Studies

Moderator: Robert S. Cohen, Boston University
John Stachel, Boston University

January 26, 2004
Physics in Conflict: The Case of Leibniz Cookies
or Fig Newtons
Co-sponsored by the Dibner Fund through the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
Moderator: George Smith, Dibner Institute for the History of Science
and Technology and Tufts University
Judson Webb, Boston University
Newton on Time and the “Philosophy of Clockwork”
Samuel Levey, Dartmouth College
Leibniz to the Limit
Robert Iliffe, Imperial College
Dis-connecting Newton? The Unitary Author and
the Science-Religion Relationship in Newton’s Work

February 9, 2004
The Fate of Inflationary Cosmology
Moderator: Peter Bokulich, Dibner Institute for the
History of Science and Technology
Christopher Smeenk, University of California at Los Angeles
Taking the Measure of the Universe: Probabilities in Cosmology
David Kaiser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Whose Mass Is It Anyway? Forging the Interface
Between Particle Physics and Gravitation
Alexander Vilenkin, Tufts University
Eternal Inflation
Alan Guth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Inflationary Cosmology and the Accelerating Universe

February 23, 2004
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 more than thirty years.

Ethics of Psychopharmacology
Moderator: Gary Belkin, Harvard University
Susan Lanzoni, Boston University
Authenticity and the Contours of the Self
Peter D. Kramer, Brown University
Against Depression
Paul Roazen, York University
The Vitality of Neurosis

March 1, 2004
A Comparative Perspective on Medieval Scientific
Translation Movements:
The Invention of “Hebrew Science”
Co-sponsored by the Dibner Fund through the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology

Moderator: Simon Keller, Boston University
Thomas Glick, Boston University

March 15, 2004
Genes and Human History
Co-sponsored by the Dibner Fund through the
Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
Moderator: Peter Schwartz, Boston University
David Reich, Harvard University

April 2, 2004
Spinoza’s Naturalism
Moderator: Henry Allison, Boston University
Aaron Garrett, Boston University
Spinoza the Natural Historian
Don Garrett, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
and New York University
Spinoza’s Incremental Naturalism about the Mind and Imagination
Michael Della Rocca, Yale University
Naturalism and the Two-Fold Use of the Principle
of Sufficient Reason in Spinoza
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, Yale University
The Two Faces of Spinoza’s Naturalism

April 12, 2004
Whither Public Health?
Moderator: Gary Belkin, Harvard University
David Rosner, Columbia University
Trials and Tribulations: Science and History in the Courtroom—
The Case of Lead Poisoning and Public Health
David Ozonoff, Boston University
W(h)ither Public Health

April 21, 2004
Whitehead and Constructivism
Moderator: Bruno Latour, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines
Isabelle Stengers, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Commentator: Robert C. Neville, Boston University