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2005–2006 Annual Report

The Center for Philosophy and History of Science followed its traditional mission of offering a forum for graduate and postgraduate scholarly exchange concerning all aspects of the philosophy and history of science. Individual reports from the Center’s faculty, included below, demonstrate the breadth of research that the Center supports. The Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science hosted its 46th annual session, which featured 59 speakers, including Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Robert Root-Bernstein, Denis Walsh, Richard Lewontin, Scott Gilbert, Steven Shapin, John Stachel, Ruth Millikan, Don Howard, Jeffrey Bub, Wojciech Zurek, and Janet Browne. Colloquia topics ranged from medical curriculum reform to the foundations of quantum information and entanglement, from philosophy of chemistry to the phenomenology of science, and focused portraits of Gödel, Einstein, Waddington, J. J. Gibson, Levinas and Darwin. The Colloquium plays an important role in bringing together members of the Boston University community and scholars from around the world to foster exchange about the nature of science and its place in culture.

The Center continued with three new initiatives in its scholars program which began in 2004:

Exchange Program with The Cohn Institute for History of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University. The Center launched an exchange program between faculty and graduate students from Tel Aviv University and Boston University in September, 2004. Prof. Anat Biletzki visited during the spring semester, and two graduate students, Rami Kaplan and Tal Arbel pursued their research to complete their Master’s degree.

Postdoctoral Fellowship. The Center sponsored two postdoctoral fellows this year: Andrea Grignolio continued his research on the history of immunology and molecular biology, and Chalmers Clark taught medical ethics in the Department of Philosophy and completed various projects in bioethics.

Dissertation Fellowship. The Center sponsored two doctoral candidates from the Department of Philosophy this year: Gal Kober and Constantinos Mekios. Kober formulated a dissertation project in the philosophy of biology; Mekios studied the philosophy of systems biology. Both worked under the supervision of Prof. Alfred Tauber.

Center Members

Directors

Alfred I. Tauber
Director

Prof. Tauber published Patient Autonomy and the Ethics of Responsibility in November (The MIT Press) and three papers related to it: 1) “Seeking medicine’s moral glue,” American Journal of Bioethics, 6: 41-44, 2006, and 2) “Medicine as a moral epistemology,” Multidisciplinary Approaches to Theory in Medicine. R. Paton and L. McNamara (eds.) Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006, pp. 63-88; 3) “The Reflexive Project: Reconstructing the moral agent,” History of the Human Sciences, 18:49-75, 2006. He and Dr. Richard Cooper are preparing a selection of papers for publication in Academic Medicine arising from the Boston Philosophy of Science Colloquium, “Values, ethics, and medical science: The new medical school curriculum,” which was held September 22-23, 2005. Tauber’s major research effort has been directed at a new monograph project, tentatively titled Science and its Reasons, Reason and its Values. This study characterizes science in its broadest philosophical context. Building on the division of science’s purpose – mastery of nature and metaphysical wonder – Tauber explores the history and philosophical foundations of each endeavor with an emphasis on the issues raised in the recent Science Wars: Under the rubric of what he calls a “moral epistemology,” the relation of facts and values are described in the dual contexts of science addressing both its pragmatic concerns and its deeper metaphysical agenda. Public lectures: 1) “Taking medical ethics seriously,” Boston Philosophy of Science Colloquium, September 12, 2005; 2) “Science and reason, faith and reason: A Kantian perspective,” The Herbert H. Reynolds Lectureship in the History and Philosophy of Science, Baylor University, January 31, 2006; 3) “Jewish memory and Jewish history: The case of the wandering Jew,” The Center for Jewish Studies, Baylor University, February 2, 2006; 4) “Science and it’s reason; Post-positivist views,” Department of Philosophy, Hebrew University, March 22, 2006; 5) “Revisiting Emerson’s ‘Declaration of Independence,’” Phi Beta Kappa Oration, Tufts University, April 30, 2006; 6) “Identity politics in medicine and bioscience,” Commencement address at Tufts University School of Medicine, May 21, 2006. As a Sackler Fellow of The Institute for Advanced Studies, Tel Aviv University, Dr. Tauber taught a graduate seminar at the Cohn Institute for the History of Science and Ideas in the Spring of 2006: “Science and values: A post-positivist approach.” During his stay at Tel Aviv University, Dr. Tauber continued an on-going scientific collaborative project concerning the self-organization of complex systems. One publication has been published arising from this project: ben Jacob, E., Shapira, Y. and Tauber A.I. “Seeking the foundations of cognition in bacteria: From Schrödinger’s negative entropy to functional information,” Physica A, 359:495-524, 2005. Three book reviews were also published: Thoreau’s Living Ethics. Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue by Philip Cafaro. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2004. Environmental Ethics 27:441-4, 2005; 2) Emil von Behring. Infectious Disease, Immunology, Serum Therapy by Derek S. Linton. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2005. New England Journal of Medicine 354:535-6, 2006; 3) Allergy: The History of a Modern Malady by Mark Jackson. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. JAMA 295:2190-2, 2006.

Prof. Cohen published: Editor (with Helena Gourko) Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought by David Zilberman (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume 243; Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2006). Editor (with R.M. Brian) Hans Christian Oersted and the Romantic Quest for Unity (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, volume 241; Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2006). Lectures: Sept 29-Oct 1 Plenary Lecture "Otto Neurath: Economics in Context" at a conference at the Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna, concerning the publication of Otto Neurath Economic Writings 1904-1945 edited by R.S. Cohen and Thomas Uebel (Vienna Circle Collection, volume 23; Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2005). Academic activities: continuing senior member of Seminar on Psychotherapy, Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School continuing establishing archive at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center for records of the first 40 years of the BU Center for Philosophy and History of Science, for Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science book series, for Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, and for R.S.Cohen's personal papers, with selection at the University of Vienna.

Visiting Professors

Anat Biletzki
Visiting Professor, Tel Aviv University

Professor Biletzki will be at the Department of Philosophy (as Findlay Visiting Professor) and at the Center (as Visiting Professor) for the whole of 2006. During the spring semester (2006) she worked on an article for the Routledge Handbook of Peace and Conflict Studies (eds. Charles Webel and Johan Galtung), titled “The Language-Game of Peace”. In May she presented a somewhat more localized version of the paper in a talk – “’Peace’ as a language-game of the 21 st century” – given at the International Conference on Ethics and Politics held in Crete. Her work in Boston will be centered on the philosophical foundations of Human Rights in general (on which she will be teaching a graduate seminar in the fall 2006 semester), and the implications of this philosophical perspective for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She is also completing a manuscript on “De-transcendentalizing Religion: Hobbes and Wittgenstein”, which, although nominally different from the on-going research on the philosophy of Human Rights, is not unconnected: religion is one of the factors which can thwart the universalism demanded by human rights. Hobbes and Wittgenstein might provide a linguistic and communal response to its challenges.

Visiting Scholars

Tal Arbel
Visiting Scholar, Tel Aviv University

During Arbel’s stay in Boston (September 2005 – June 2006), she completed a Master's thesis on the recent history of mobility regimes in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) – a surprisingly neglected aspect in the literature about the Israeli system of rule in the OPT. Particular attention was given to the vast deployment of military roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the West Bank during the last decade, in an attempt to show that what is defined as the Checkpoint Apparatus is not only another expression, dimension or result of Israeli occupation; but a prime example of its current methods of activity and hence the key to deciphering its logic. Arbel set out to develop some of the requisite conceptual tools, which she hopes will be useful in framing similar empirical realities, especially in contemporary "ex-territories" of the nation-state. A unique opportunity to present parts of her work came as a workshop on 'Comparative Military Occupations' that took place at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in February 2006. Discussions that took place during the workshop and on other occasions throughout her stay have enriched her historical knowledge and helped in further honing her ideas. Tal Arbel will be enrolled at Harvard University, as a PhD student, as of the fall of 2006.

Rami Kaplan
Visiting Scholar, Tel Aviv University

Kaplan’s academic year as a visiting scholar at the Center for History and Philosophy of Science at BU is approaching was spent successfully completing the writing of his master theses, in a scope of 120 pages, concerning the philosophy of corporate social responsibility. Additionally, Ihe’s currently engaged in co-writing of a book chapter, together with a colleague-professor from UMass Boston.


Postdoctoral Fellows

Andrea Grignolio

In October 2005 Dr. Grignolio gave a talk at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science titled “Informational Models in 1950s Selective Theories of Antibody Formation”. In the subsequent months, he wrote an extensive article, “Informational Models and the Origin of Clonal Selection Theory”, which summarizes 15 years of immunological records on information and linguistic analogies. In the tradition of the oral history of science and in line with his attempt to offer a historical reassessment of the founding theory of modern immunology (clonal selection theory), he recently spent a week in Denver, Co, to interview Prof. David W. Talmage. Prof. Talmage is the last living member of the three CST proponents. The transcription of the interview, the personal records and the neglected role played by Talmage will be summarized in a forthcoming article.

Chalmers Clark

Dr. Clark came to the Center for Philosophy and History of Science in September 2005 and during his stay taught Medical Ethics, History of Science, and the Ethics of Healthcare to BU undergraduates.  In the course on the Ethics of Healthcare, Dr. Clark developed a new course based on his research on trust relations in medicine.  The course surveyed issues of trust in physician-patient relations, biomedical research, and public health.  Along with teaching at BU, Dr. Clark was invited to speak at Yale University on three occasions.  First on the ethics of a duty to treat (re: the impending avian flu epidemic), second on the philosophy and ethics of facial transplantation, and third, the philosophical history of bioethics (presented to incoming interns in the Center for Bioethics at Yale).  Dr. Clark also has an article written this year forthcoming from the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine ("Of Epidemic Proportions.  Physicians, Public Trust, and Personal Risk").  This year Dr. Clark further pursued a grant project funded by the Donaghue Foundation on "The Ethics of Role Conflicts and Role Priorities in New Research in Intractable Epilepsy."  This study is being done in conjunction with Dr. Clark's grant partner (principal investigator of the epilepsy study), Dr. Robert Duckrow, MD, of Yale University.  During the year, Dr. Clark also maintained participation in Dr. Robert Levine's Research Ethics Working Group, at Yale, which is studying the Ethics of Developing a Mucosal Immunity Vaccine for HIV/AIDS.

Dissertation Fellows

Constantinos Mekios

Constantinos Mekios is a graduate student at the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. During the academic year 2005-2006, and with the support of a fellowship from the Center, he continued working toward the conclusion of a study focusing on the philosophical issues that are raised by the methodological features of the emerging systems approach in Biology. Mr. Mekios successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, titled “Approaching organisms as systems: a critical study of the method of Systems Biology” in July of 2006.

Gal Kober

During the 2005-06 academic year Ms. Kober formulated a dissertation project in the philosophy of biology. Her dissertation, which she is expected to be complete by summer 2007, will focus on the category of species in evolutionary biology, assessing its metaphorical status and exploring the possibility of a biology without species. At the July 2005 meeting of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology at Guelph, Canada, Ms. Kober spoke on teleology as a whole-part effect in biology. Earlier that summer, her paper Deep Ecology and Spinoza’s Naturalism was accepted to the conference Nature in the Kingdom of Ends/The Nature of Spaces at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík, which she eventually did not attend. In October ‘05, Ms Kober moderated a session of the C. H. Waddington Centenary Celebration meeting of the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science. During the Fall semester Ms. Kober participated in Professor Denis Walsh’s Philosophy of Biology seminar at MIT. In January 2006 Ms. Kober published a review of the book edited by William A. Dembski and Michael Ruse, Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA on the design/evolution debate. In April ‘06, she gave a paper titled “The Essence of Species” in the graduate students’ talk series at the department of philosophy at Boston University. Her review of Eccy De Jong’s “Spinoza and Deep Ecology, Challenging Traditional Approaches” will appear in the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal in November ‘06.

During the 2005-2006 academic at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, Aczel finished writing his book titled The Artist and the Mathematician. This book concerns the relationship between modern art and mathematics, as well as the secret French mathematical group called Nicolas Bourbaki, which exerted its influence on much of mathematics in the early twentieth century. This book will be published by Avalon Books in September 2006. In addition, he delivered a number of papers and lectures at international conferences and meetings. These include the following: October 8-19, 2005, Aczel participated in the International Pendulum Conference in Sydney, Australia, and delivered a paper titled “Leon Foucault and the Proof of the Rotation of the Earth.” October 26-November 14, 2005, he participated in the Festival della Scienza in Genoa, Italy, an international city-wide science festival at which many leading scientists spoke (including Sir Roger Penrose, Astronomer Royal Martin Rees, and others). Aczel delivered a talk titled “Chance: the Science of Probability,” by invitation. On February 23, 2006, he gave a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, titled “Descartes’ Secret Notebook,” which was based on his book of the same title, published last September and written while he was with the CPHS. On February 27, 2006, Aczel gave a lecture at the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, again titled “Descartes’ Secret Notebook”. March 20-April 3, 2006, he was in Antalya, Turkey, conducting research related to observations taken during the total solar eclipse that took place on March 29, 2006, with an international group of astronomers. Throughout the period starting in February 2006, he has been working on his newest book, The Jesuit and the Skull, about the discovery of Peking Man in Zhoukoudian, China, in the 1920s. This book will be completed in February 2007.

Miriam Balaban

As Secretary General of the European Desalination Society, Editor in Chief of the journal Desalination (published by Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam), and President of the International Federation of Science Editors, Dr. Balaban has continued to pursue effective processing and management of water supplies worldwide. Her efforts include lecturing, editing, and organizing numerous conferences and committees; the year’s events included June 7–10, 2004, IWA specialty conference on Water Environment—Membrane Technology,Seoul, Korea, International Advisory Committee; June 16–18, Fouling and Critical Flux: Theory and Applications, Lappeenranta, Finland; July 15­–17, Coordinator of course on: Thermal desalination processes L’Aquila University and European Desalination Society, L’Aquila, Italy; August 28–September 3, World Renewable Energy Congress VIII, Renewable Energy Option, Security, Innovation and Sustainability, Denver, CO, Member of Steering Committee; September 19–24, IWA 4th World Water Congress, Marrakech, Morocco; September 26–28, Seminar in Environmental Science and Technology; Evaluation of Alternative Water Treatment Systems for Obtaining Safe Water Organized by the University of Salerno with support of NATO Science Programme Fisciano (SA), Italy, Editor of proceedings; September 28–October 1, Euromembrane 2004, Hamburg, Germany, Session chairman; October 9–12, Second Israel-Palestinian International Conference on Water and Life in the Middle East, Rome; October 10–13, IFSE 12 12th Conference of the International Federation of Science Editors Future Trends in Science Editing and Publishing, Bringing Science to Society, President of the Federation, Merida, Mexico; November 15­–17, International Water Association--European Desalination Society, Membranes in Drinking and Industrial Water Production, L’Aquila, Italy; December 18–19, Third Workshop European Desalination Society and Water Science and Technology Association, Future Research and Capacity Building in Desalination, Bahrain; November 29–December 2, Third EDS-WSTA workshop, Research and Capacity Building, Bahrain; March 16–17, 2005, Aachen Membrane Colloquium, Aachen, Germany; April 19–21, UNESCO and the Ministry of Water and Environment of Yemen Regional Technical Workshop, Yemen; May 22–25, European Desalination Society conference Desalination and the Environment, La Spezia, Italy.

Lin Chun

Dr. Lin Chun has been working on a book concerning methodological issues in social sciences since last year. The book is contracted with World Scientific and is scheduled to complete by September 2006. Meanwhile, she presented three conference papers in the summer of 2005 in Beijing (on state owned enterprises reform and the question of privatization), Hangzhou (on a balance sheet of the legacies of the Chinese revolution), and Tianjin (on the Chinese model of modern development). The papers have subsequently been published, respectively, in two influential books (Social Science Academic Press, 2006; Zhejiang University Press, 2006) and a high profile magazine (Dushu 4, 2006), in Chinese. Her new book, The Transformation of Chinese Socialism, is out from Duke University Press in May 2006. Dr. Lin continues to benefit from valuable intellectual support provided by and through the Center, for which she remains most grateful.

Debra Daugherty

Ms. Daugherty gave a talk entitled “Scientific Modeling: Toward a Philosophy of Condensed Matter Physics” for the Friday seminar series of the University of Chicago’s Committee for Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science. She also continued work on her doctoral dissertation entitled “Modeling Phase: Scientific Modeling and the Philosophy of Condensed Matter Physics.” The body of the dissertation consists of historical essays on the modeling of phases and phase transitions; the first and last chapters frame the historical essays within the philosophical context of recent discussions of modeling as a scientific practice distinct from that of fundamental theorizing (e.g., Models as Mediators, Dappled World, Explaining Science, Science Without Laws). She argues that modeling practices are generally non-theoretic (in the sense that they are not derived from fundamental theory) and yet principled or rule-governed rather than ad hoc. Hence, modeling is a practice “autonomous” from fundamental theorizing that has principles of its own; these principles require examination if a philosophy of disciplines dominated by modeling such as condensed matter physics is to be had.

Dr. Gorelik has published an article "Matvei Bronstein and quantum gravity: 70th anniversary of the unsolved problem" in Physics-Uspekhi 2005, vol 48, no 10, and "Andrei Sakharov" in Encyclopedia of ScienceTechnology, and Ethics (Ed. C. Mitcham. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005). He finished his comparative-history project "A Russian-American Perspective on the Fathers of the H-Bombs" and presented its first part at the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, April 24, 2006. He published book reviews of "Zeldovich: Reminiscences" (Physics Today, August 2005) and A Kojevnikov's "Stalin's Great Science: The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists" (Physics World, November 2005). He also published a few articles on the history of science in Russian popular science magazines Prirdoda and Znanie-Sila, and continued his major project of a social biography of Lev Landau. Dr Gorelik's homepage at BU site http://people.bu.edu/gorelik/ presents his publications and other activities.

Helena Gourko

Gourko continued to work on the theory of divine onomatology having completed a manuscript for publication in the USA (“Divine Onomatology: Naming God in Imyaslavie, Symbolism, and Deconstruction”.) At this point Gourko is exploring possibilities of its publication and contact various publishing houses. Her other research project – analysis of modal methodology of David Zilberman and publication of his major works – is now at a stage of exploring possibilities for publishing his manuscript on cultural tradition. Books published in 2006: (1) Helena Gourko. Divine Onomatology. Minsk: Econompress, 2006, 448 pp. Hardcover. ISBN: 9-8564-7936-3. (In Russian). (2) Helena Gourko (transl., coed.), Robert Cohen (coed.). Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought. Series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science , Vol. 243. Zilberman, David B. Springer, 2006, VIII, 273 p., Hardcover. ISBN: 1-4020-3339-7. A book accepted for publication late in 2006: Helena Gourko: Modal Methodology of David Zilberman. Minsk: Econompress, 517 pp. (tentatively). (In Russian)

This past year Dr. Greeley has continued her research into the neurodynamics of the emotional controls of attention in the cognitive generative learning process, the process that generates a strategy to find a solution to an open-ended problem. She is especially interested in a systems approach to neuroscience rather than a unit study approach. Towards this end, she has developed a methodology that will allow social science disciplines to graphically probe systems by adaptation of a nonlinear dynamics methodological technique, Ruelle and Taken's Theorem Protocol, which allows the system to be graphically studied in four dimensions, including time, and adds another methodological tool to qualitative research methods ["Probability Attractors, A Visual Analysis Methodology Adapted from Ruelle and Taken's Theorem [RTT] Protocol for Qualitative Systems Research," 2005], and which will be of heuristic value to the social sciences, including education and psychological medicine. Also towards this end, she is working on incorporating the findings of contemporary systems neuroscience to enrich contemporary educational philosophy and psychology, using an ethnographic analysis of excellent elementary school classrooms that delineates factors that keep students from being lost in the classroom. She continues to attend conferences and edit articles in the area of neuroscience and neurophilosophy.

Stefania Jha

This year, on the invitation of the journal, Jha completed editing and writing parts of the special issue of Perspectives on Science on Imre Lakatos’ philosophy of mathematics and science in the Hungarian context. All authors of this special issue are Hungarian and most of the papers were translated. The issue presents previously unexplored aspects and contexts of Lakatos’ work, steering clear of his politics. The purpose of the issue is to show new research by Hungarian philosophers and historians of science, especially lines not beholden to standard schools. Jha’s other project on Eugene Wigner’s Polanyian epistemology is scheduled to be completed this summer. (Wigner was Polanyi’s doctoral student in physical chemistry in the Hungarian émigré community in Germany in the late 1920s) She explored Wigner’s claim that his epistemology of Quantum physics is Polanyian by analyzing the Wigner-Polanyi correspondence between 1960-1972 on the topic of epistemology. This project is part of ongoing research into the phenomenon of early and mid- twentieth century ‘Hungarian scientific geniuses’ (most of whom were of Jewish origin), and the scientific, philosophical and historical contexts and personal-mentoring networks which made this phenomenon possible. Her hypothesis is that integration of supposed ‘incompatibles’ on various fronts have played a large part in this phenomenon. Jha have given a talk at Brandeis on the historical background of the creativity of some of these scientists. In the fall she will continue to work on the problem of incompatibles and practical judgment. She plans to make use of her knowledge of Hungarian and familiarity with the topic of ‘Hungarian scientific geniuses’ to add to early and mid-twentieth century Hungarian intellectual history.

Emily Kutash

Dr. Emilie Kutash   has received word that her paper” Proclus and Contemporary Physics “will be published in a book on Science and Neoplatonism by  the University Press of the South and that her paper, on Time and Eternity  in Proclus will be published in an anthology by Palgrave Macmillian Press. Time has been spent this year on upgrading these papers for publication. This June she presented a paper on the  Sublunary gods in Proclus at the ISNS meeting in Quebec and will be presenting one in January at the San Diego meeting of the American Philological Association on a related topic. The book Proclus in and out of Context was completed this year and she is seeking  a publisher. “What did Plato Read?” was reviewed and rewritten according to the suggestions of the International l Plato Society Journal and has now been resubmitted for consideration. It  contains a discussion of the possible extant literature in the f scientific and technical fields of the sixth to fourth centuries that Plato may have had access to  in areas of musicology, mathematics, astronomy and related fields. Anceint science continues to be a strong interest of mine.

Lee McIntyre

Dr. McIntyre published two books and one article this year. The first book is an anthology co-edited with Eric Scerri (UCLA) and Davis Baird (University of South Carolina) entitled Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline (Springer, 2006), which appears as Volume 242 of the series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. The second book is entitled Dark Ages: The Case for a Science of Human Behavior (MIT Press, 2006). The article is “Redescription and Descriptivism in the Social Sciences” and it was published in the journal Behavior and Philosophy. Several projects are forthcoming, including a specially edited issue of Synthese that will be devoted to topics in the philosophy of chemistry, which should appear in the spring of 2007. This volume will include two articles by Dr. McIntyre: “Emergence and Reduction in Chemistry: Ontological or Epistemological Concepts” and “The Philosophy of Chemistry: Ten Years Later,” as well as articles by Nalini Bhushan, Roald Hoffmann, and Jeff Ramsey. Another forthcoming project is an article on “Logic” for the newly revised International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Macmillan). Dr. McIntyre continues to teach at Simmons College and is at work on a new book.

Enzo De Pellegrin

Dr. De Pellegrin has continued to prepare an archival transfer of the Center’s historical material to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. The material, deposited at the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science, is related to the history of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science, the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, the Vienna Circle, and the development of logical positivism in the United States. De Pellegrin writes on early analytic philosophy. His research focuses on the philosophies of Rudolf Carnap (late 1920s, early 1930s), Moritz Schlick, Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein (early and late). He is a post-doc fellow at the department of philosophy at Harvard and prepares a translation of Zermelo's foundational papers into English.

Associated Faculty

Alisa Bokulich

Professor Alisa Bokulich was the principle investigator on a National Science Foundation Conference Award that helped fund a two-day Boston Colloquium session on the Foundations of Quantum Information and Entanglement, which brought together a dozen of the top physicists and philosophers of physics working in this area. She published two articles: “Heisenberg Meets Kuhn: Closed Theories and Paradigms,” forthcoming in Philosophy of Science, and a review article entitled “The Evolving Concepts of Nature, Time, and Causation” for the journal Metascience. She was also invited to give a talk at the 33rd Annual Philosophy of Science Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and spoke on the question “Can Classical Structures Explain Quantum Phenomena?”

John Stachel

Prof. Stachel had a miraculous year of his own as an expert on Einstein studies. Stachel’s lectures Given in 2005-2006: June 4-6: Einstein Centennial celebration, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, Talk on “Einstein’s Miraculous Year”. July 7-8: Bern, Meeting of the History Section of the European Physical Society, talks on “Did Mileva Einstein Discover Relativity?” and “Albert Einstein: A Man for the Next Millennium?”. July 11: Paris: Opening Address (in French) at Public Part of Conference on “Le Siècle d’Einstein”. July 18-22: Paris: Opening Address at Scientific Part of Conference on “Le Siècle d’Einstein,” “Biography and Opening,” 18 July 9:30-10:20. July 24-30: 22nd Int’l. Congress on History of Science, Beijing. Public Congress Lecture at Beijing University “Einstein: A Man for the Millennium”. August 5, Beijing Normal University: Lecture to joint meeting of Physics and Philosophy Departments: “General Covariance and Its Generalization as a Criterion for Quantum Gravity”. August 6, Beijing, Philosophy of Science Section, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, talk on: “Structure, Individuality and Quantum Gravity. September 5-8: “Albert Einstein Annus Mirabilis Celebration,” Donostia Int’l Physics Center, San Sebastian– “Einstein the Citizen” Thursday, Sept. 8 19:30 (closing talk). September 10, Oviedo, Spain: Closing Talk at Spanish Relativity Meeting for Einstein Centenary: "Einstein: A Man for the Next Millennium?". September 28, CUNY, New York: Marx Wartofsky Memorial Lecture: “External vs Internal Relations, States vs Processes: Some Old Philosophical Problems in New Physical Clothes”. September 29, Princeton: Talk and book signing for new edition of “Einstein’s Miraculous Year” at University Book Store. October 14-15, Colgate College: Annual Meeting of New York Section of APS. After Dinner talk October 14 on “Einstein: The Man Behind the Myths”. October 23, Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics, Waterloo: Einstein Centennial, talk on “Einstein’s Miraculous Year,” and participate in round table on Einstein. October 20-21, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY: Talk at a Symposium on General Relativity: "Einstein’s Odyssey: From Special to General Relativity. November 6: Genoa, Italy, evening lecture as part of the annual Festival della Scienza. Oct. 28-8 November, "Einstein's Miraculous Year”. November 15-18: Abijan, Nigeria, First Conference of African Physics Students, Keynote address: "Physics of Underdevelopment and the Underdevelopment of Physics". November 17-19: International Congress of Philosophy, Catholic University, Brago, Portugal, talk on ”What is Creativity: The Example of Einstein”. December 5, 2005, Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: "Einstein: A Man for the Next Millennium?”. December 13, 2005, The 2005 Annual Dibner Library Lecture National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Washington, D.C.:"1905: Einstein's Miraculous Year". January 26, 2006, Texas A & M: "Einstein: The Man Behind the Myths". February 21, 2006, University of Texas at Austin: "Einstein's Odyssey: From Special to General Relativity". April 10, 2006, Symposium on "Phenomenology and Philosophy of Science," Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: "Hermann Weyl's Changing Concept of Mathematics". May 4, 2006, Symposium on Advanced Computational Electromagnetics (ACE) '06, Metcalf Hall, Boston University: "The Generally Covariant Form of Maxwell's Equations". Articles Published in 2005-2006: "Structural Realism and Contextual Individuality," in Yemima Ben-Menahem, ed., Hilary Putnam ( Cambridge University Press 2005), pp. 203-219. "Fresnel's (Dragging) Coefficient as a Challenge to 19th Century Optics of Moving Bodies," in A.J. Cox and Jean Einsenstaedt, eds., The Universe of General Relativity (Einstein Studies, vol, 11) (Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhäuser 2005), pp. 1-13. "Development of the Concepts of Space, Time and Space-Time From Newton to Einstein," in Abhay Ashtekar, ed., 100 Years of Relativity/Space-Time Structure: Einstein and Beyond ( Singapore, etc.:World Scientific 2005), pp. 3-36. "Structure, Individuality and Quantum Gravity," in D.P. Rickles, S. French and J. Saatsi, eds., Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity (Oxford University Press 2006), in press. "The Hole Argument for Covariant Theories," GRG Journal General Relativity and Gravitation (with Mihaela Iftime), in press.