< Colloquia

Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science

2004–2005

45th Annual Program

September 20, 2004
Trust in the Medical Setting: The Challenge of Corporate Interests
Moderator: Adam Seligman, Boston University
Alfred I. Tauber, Boston University
Introduction: The Moral Calculus of Trustworthiness
Mark Hall, Wake Forest University
Trust, Law, and Medicine
Russell Hardin, New York University
Trust in Organized Medicine
Wendy Mariner, Boston University
Trust in the Managed Care Medical Setting

September 27, 2004
The Impact of Microscopy and Telescopy on 17th-century Philosophy
Moderator: Aaron Garrettn, Boston University
Catherine Wilson, University of British Columbia
Enthusiasm and Resistance: Philosophers’ Reactions to Early
Microscopical Discoveries
Roger Ariew, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Scholastic Responses to Galileo's Telescopic Observations
Daniel Garber, Princeton University
Microscopical Eyes and the Metaphysical Imagination:
Locke and Leibniz on the Sub-Visible

October 5, 2004
The Seven Virtues of Biographies
Moderator: Alfred Tauber, Boston University
Thomas Söderqvist, University of Copenhagen

October 14, 2004
The Overdue Intellectual Rehabilitation of Boris Hessen:
Marxist Historiography of Science
Moderator: Nir Eisikovits, Boston University
Gideon Freudenthal, Tel Aviv University

October 22, 2004
Seventeenth-Century Mathematics and Its Philosophical Context
Moderator: Judson Webb, Boston University
Mark Wilson, University of Pittsburgh
A Clockwork Universe
Ken Manders, University of Pittsburgh
Descartes’ Early Mathematics and Reading the Regulae

November 8, 2004
Maimonides: Philosopher and Scientist
Commemorating the 800th anniversary of the death of Moshe ben Maimon, more commonly known as Maimonides, this colloquium is jointly sponsored with Boston University’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies.

Moderator: Steven Katz, Boston University
Kenneth Seeskin, Northwestern University
Maimonides’ Doubts about Astronomy
Josef Stern, University of Chicago
In the Inner Chamber of the Ruler’s Palace: Maimonides’ Physics
Diana Lobel, Boston University
Maimonides and the Sufi Strand in Jewish Thought
James Robinson, University of Chicago
Maimonides and Maimonideanism in Southern France:
On the Growth and Development of a Philosophical Tradition
Fred Rosner, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
The Medical Legacy of Maimonides
Carlos Fraenkel, McGill University
Philosophy and Revelation in Alfarabi and Maimonides
Michael Zank, Boston University
Arousing Suspicion Against a Prejudice:
Leo Strauss and the Study of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed

November 22, 2004
Wittgenstein and the Inexpressible
Moderator: Robert Briscoe, Boston University
Avner Baz, Tufts University
Wittgenstein, Cavell, Travis, and the Conditions of ‘Saying That’
Juliet Floyd, Boston University
Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Showing vs. Saying
Warren Goldfarb, Harvard University
Showing

December 6, 2004
The Einstein Centenary
(Second of the Einstein Centennial Series)
Moderator: Debra Daugherty, Boston University
John Stachel, Boston University
Einstein’s Miraculous Year
Alberto Martínez, California Institute of Technology
Creative Moment: Making Special Relativity

January 31, 2005
What is the Real Logic of Quantum Theory?
Moderator: Peter Bokulich, Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
Jaakko Hintikka, Boston University

February 14, 2005
Structural Approaches in Philosophy of Physics
Moderator: Debra Daugherty, Boston University
Michela Massimi, Cambridge University
Structural Realism: A Neo-Kantian Perspective
Katherine Brading, University of Notre Dame
Structuralism and the Objects of Physics
Alisa Bokulich, Boston University
A Structural Approach to Intertheoretic Relations
Elena Castellani, University of Florence
Structures and Duality
Elaine Landry, University of Calgary
Shared Structure Need Not Be Shared Set-Structure

February 25, 2005
The Findlay Lecture: Nature and Value
Moderator: Charles Griswold, Boston University
Kenneth Winkler, Wellesley College and Spring 2005 John Findlay Visiting Professor at Boston University

March 21, 2005
The Robert S. Cohen Forum: Contemporary Issues in Science Studies
Challenges from Philosophy of Science for Philosophy of Mind
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 co-founded with Professor Marx Wartofsky the Boston Colloquium and served as its director for more than thirty years.

Moderator: Stephen Grossberg, Boston University
Steven Horst, Wesleyan University
Beyond Reduction: What Can Philosophy of Mind Learn
From (Recent) Philosophy of Science?
Michael Silberstein, Elizabethtown College
Resisting Neo-Scholasticism With Explanatory and
Ontological Pluralism in Mind
William Bechtel, University of California San Diego
Reducing Psychology while Maintaining its Autonomy
via Mechanistic Explanations
Peter Godfrey-Smith, Australian National University and Harvard University
Theories, Models, and the Philosophy of Mind
Paul Churchland, University of California San Diego
Functionalism at Forty: A Critical Retrospective

April 3, 2006
Darwin: Class, Race, and Gender Equality
Moderator: Andrew Berry, Harvard University
Joy Harvey, Independent Scholar
Brains, Blood, and Beauty: Darwin’s Correspondents on Race, Gender, and Class
Diane Paul, University of Massachusetts
Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, and the Origins of the Modern Nature-Nurture Debate
Janet Browne, University College London
The Natural Economy of Households: Charles Darwin’s Account Books

April 10, 2006
Phenomenology and Philosophy of Science
Moderator: Mirja Hartimo, Tufts University
Judson Webb, Boston University
Geometry and the Crisis of European Sciences
John Stachel, Boston University
Hermann Weyl’s Changing Concept of Mathematics
Walter Hopp, Boston University
Foundationalism, Phenomenology, and the Sciences
Richard Cobb-Stevens, Boston College
Husserl’s Incomplete Philosophy of Science

April 24, 2006
Russian and Chinese Fathers of the H-Bomb
Moderator: Priscilla McMillan, Harvard University
Gennady Gorelik, Boston University
A Russian-American Perspective on the Fathers of the H-Bombs
Tian Yu Cao, Boston University
Mao, Qian, Yu, and the Genesis of China’s H-Bomb