Research>

1997-1998 Annual Report

Alfred I. Tauber
Director
Professor Tauber published The Generation of Diversity. Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (Harvard University Press, 1997) with Scott H. Podolsky. This study is a comprehensive examination of the major developments in post-World War II immunology and completes a trilogy of monographs tracing the development and structure of immunological theory from the late 19th-century until 1980. Professor Tauber also completed Confessions of a Medicine Man, An Essay in Popular Philosophy, which will be published by The MIT Press in the fall of 1998. This is a narrative with three threads: a historical review of the ethical structure of contemporary medicine; a philosophical critique of medical ethics; and a narrative of personal experiences.

Other projects include the editing of Elie Metchnikoff’s evolutionary biology papers with Helena Gourko and Don Williamson; a series of studies on the cognitive modeling of immune theory with Eileen Crist; and a new venture in exploring the philosophical significance of Henry David Thoreau.

Oral presentations included:

“Post-Kuhnian Reflections” delivered February 5, 1998 at the Boston Colloquium of Science, “Comparative Historiography in the Life Sciences.”

“A Philosophical and Historical Review of the Immune Self” presented June 5, 1998, at “Immunology: Historical Issues and Contemporary Debates,” Musee Claude Bernard, Saint Julien en Beaujolais, France.

“Nietzsche’s Ideality of Health,” given June 12, 1998 at the symposium “L’utopie de la Santé,” Cerisy de la Salle, France.

Robert S. Cohen
Director, emeritus
Professor Cohen continues his active editorial project in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (Kluwer Academic Publishers), editing and translating The Law of Causality and Its Limits, by Philipp Frank, co-editing (with Dimitri Ginev) Issues and Images in the Philosophy of Science, co-editing (with Gen-Ichiro Nagasaka) Japanese Studies in Philosophy of Science, and supervising as General Editor: Vienna Circle Collection (9 vol.). He actively participates in Dr. Gourko’s project (see below) concerning the Zilberman archives and is co-editing a book on Zilberman’s Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought; Zilberman’s book The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought, co-edited by Professor Cohen, was published in 1998 in Russia.

He has lectured at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), and the Open Society (Moscow), at the Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi (India), and the Indian National Institute for Science and Technology Studies (New Delhi), at the International Workshop on Logical Empirism in North America (LENA), and Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science.

Professor Cohen continues his activities as a Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science (Boston University), as Secretary of the Boston Philosophy of Science Association, and a Member of the Governing Board of the Einstein Forum (Potsdam-Berlin). In 1998 Professor Cohen was honored by initiation of “The Robert S Cohen Forum: Contemporary Issues in Science Studies” as part of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science.

Helena Gourko
Research Associate
Dr. Gourko (Associate Professor, Belorussian University, Minsk) is continuing research on the late philosopher David Zilberman, with particular reference to his modal methodology, and to the concept of analogy in Indian and Western philosophical thought.

Together with Professor Cohen she is editing a translation of Zilberman’s Analogy in Indian and Western Philosophical Thought (to be published by Kluwer Academic Publishers). Translation of another book by Zilberman, The Birth of Meaning in Hindu Thought, written and published in English, was completed by Dr. Gourko and published in Russia (Moskva: Editorial URSS, 1998). Publication of this book was subsidized by a grant from the Russian Humanities Foundation.

Together with Professor Tauber, Dr. Gourko continues translating and editing the key evolutionary biology papers of the Russian scientist, Elie Metchnikoff. In addition to these scholarly activities, she has been the administrative assistant of the Center, organizing the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science.

Research Fellows

Miriam Balaban
Dr. Balaban leads the first international school for scientific editing at the Consorzio Maria Negri School for Scientific Communication in Italy. She is the editor of Desalination and Symbiosis, and serves as president of the International Society of Scientific Editors Associations.

Robert Becker
Dr. Becker concentrates his research activities on clinical, social and psychological implications of Alzheimer’s Disease. In the 1997–98 academic year he published:
“Alzheimer’s Disease: Pharmacological Therapy” (with Giacobini, E., in Neuroscience Encyclopedia, 2nd Ed., Amsterdam, Elseveier).

“Metrifonate Treatment Enhances Acquisition of Eyeblink Conditions in Aging Rabbits” (with Kronforst-Collins, MA, Morierty PL, Ralph M, Schmidt B, Thompson LT, Disterhoff, JF, in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, 56(1).

Management of Alzheimer’s Disease: Community Based Care for Patients and Families (with Vicari S, in Home Health Care Consultant).

“Quality of Life Assessment in Dementia Drug Development: Position Paper from the International Working Group on Harmonization of Dementia Drug Guidelines” (with Whitehouse PJ, Orgogozo MJ, Gauthier S, Pontecorvo M, Erzigkeit H, Rogers S, Mohs RC, Bodick N, Bruno G, Dal-Bianco P., in Alzheimer’s Disease and Associated Disorders, 11 (Suppl.3) 56–60).

Together with Ezio Giacobini, Dr. Becker organized the Fifth International Springfield Symposium on Alzheimer’s Disease (Geneva, Switzerland, April 15–18, 1998).

Leon Chernyak
Dr. Chernyak’s current research interests are focused on a study of biological teleology. This analysis is built on a contrast between Aristotle and Kant, which he believes has relevance to theoretical biology in general, and immunology and evolutionary biology in particular.

Dr. Chernyak continues to work on his book about Kant’s teleology and its grounding in Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. He applies ideas developed in this text to the relationships between set theory and the theory of categories in modern mathematics, and dialectical interplay between algebra and geometry in the history of mathematics. These two topics are being investigated in collaboration with Arkady Berenstein (Cornell University), and are planned to be published (under the title The Eidos of Mathematics).

Lin Chun
Dr. Lin taught several courses in political science and Chinese studies at the Department of Government, at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she holds a faculty position. She has also continued her work in the foundations of the social sciences, and is currently conducting research for her book on the transformation of Chinese socialism.

Dr. Lin has delivered lectures at the workshop of prominent Chinese philosophers and historians organized by the China Cultural Association in Beijing to discuss her paper on “alternative modernity” (January 1998), and presented a paper at the Stockholm University “Struggle for Recognition” Conference (October 1997).

Her recent publications include:

“A Critique of Hobsbawm’s Short 20th Century”, in R.Hwang, ed., Historical Communism and Post-Marxism, 1998 (Taipei), and in Z.Zheng, ed., Farewell to the 20th Century, 1998 (Beijing).

“A Sober Minority”, Dushu, no.4, 1998 (will be reprinted in Li, ed., A Silent Majority (Beijing).

Dr. Lin is editing three volumes of selected essays on China for the “International Library of Politics and Comparative Government” (Ashgate Publisher, 1999), and is a book review editor for Political Studies (British Association for Political Science). She also assists Professor Cohen in his editorial activities.

Genady Gorelik
Dr. Gorelik continues to concentrate his research on the role of Andrei Sakharov in the development of the Soviet Thermonuclear Program, specifically the H-bomb and is finishing a book, Andrei Sakharov: The Political Transformation of a Theoretical Physicist (contracted by W.H. Freeman Publishers).

His broader interests are in theoretical physics and the history of physics. This year Dr. Gorelik published:

“Fundamental Politics of Fundamental Physicist” (Priroda, 1998, no.5).
“Tragic Decades in Igor Tamm’s Life” (Kapitsa, Tamm, Semenov (v ocherkah i pis’mah), Moscow, Vagrius-Priroda, 1998).
“Pressure of Light and Pressure of Circumstances” (Znanie - Sila, 1998, no.5).
“How Klim Voroshilov Failed to Save Soviet Physics” (Znanie - Sila, 1998, no.1).
“Three Sorts of Marxism in the Soviet Physics in the 1930s” (Il Saggiatore, 1997, no.7, in Japanese).
“The Top Secret Life of Lev Landau” (Scientific American, August 1997).
“Ernst Mach and Problem of Dimensionality of Space” (Issledovaniya po istorii fiziki i mekhaniki, 1993–1994, Moscow, 1997).
“Tamm and Landau: Theorists in Soviet Practice,” Znanie - Sila, 1997, N2, p. 142–148 (in Russian).

He took part in two conferences with papers:
“Andrei Sakharov: from Theoretical Physics to International Politics” (International Conference “History of Nuclear Weapons and Their Role in International Politics, Philipps-Universität, Germany, July 1997), and “Andrei Sakharov: from Russian Theoretical Physics to International Practical Humanics” (International conference “Physicists in the Postwar Political Arena: Comparative Perspective, University of California, Berkeley, January 1998).

Thanks to a travel grant from IREX, Gorelik made a 3-week trip to Russia to meet with colleagues of Sakharov and to give a talk at the Lebedev Physical Institute (FIAN) in Moscow (April 1998).

Lillian Greeley
In the past year Dr. Greeley worked primarily on research pertaining to a book she is writing with Walter J. Freedman, The Neurophilosophy of Intentionality, an Inquiry into the Relationship of Dynamical Neuroscience and Metaphysics.

Dr. Greeley, working in collaboration with David B. Yaden, a researcher at UCLA, has also continued her research of developing protocols to analyze written and spoken texts with chaos analyses techniques.

Dr. Greeley is currently preparing several papers on the feasibility of a technique she has developed to map the literacy learning process of pre-schoolers, on correlation between implicit cognition and consciousness, and on cognitive generative learning processes. In December 1997 she co-organized a conference, “Can Science Explain Intentionality?” (Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science).

Thomas Winner
Professor Winner continues to be active in semiotics. His research activities are primarily related to finishing a book, The Czech Avantgarde between Two World Wars. Professor Winner consults for the Central European University Research Support Scheme, the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Slavic Review, Harvard University, Masaryk University, Charles University, and Emory University.