Philosophy of the Geosciences Group Co-Authors Paper, Speak at Conferences, and More

Members of Professor Alisa Bokulich‘s Phi-Geo Research Group published a co-authored paper on “Are We in a Sixth Mass Extinction? The Challenges of Answering and Value of Asking”. The paper started as a project of philosophy undergraduate (now alumna) Gloria Grand-Pierre, funded by the BU Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in the 2020-2021 academic year, and expanded to a group co-authored projected with graduate students Federica Bocchi, Leticia Castillo Brache, and Aja Watkins (pictured working together via Zoom). The paper is forthcoming in one of the top journals in their area, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

The Phi-Geo Research Group meeting via Zoom.

 

In addition, Professor Bokulich gave a keynote talk earlier this month on “C. S. Peirce, Gravity, Measurements, and the Philosophy of Metrology” at the Measurement at the Crossroads conference in Milan, Italy. Aja also gave a talk there, on “Climate Data and Paleoclimate Proxy Data,” and they met with Federica and graduate student Matilde Carerra, who were also in Italy at the time.

from left: Federica Bocchi, Matilde Carrera, Aja Watkins and Professor Bokulich in Italy.

Alisa and Aja then traveled to Ghent, Belgium for the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice conference, where Aja spoke on “Scale Models in Climate Science: Using Temporal Scaling to Identify a Paleoclimate Analogue,” and Alisa spoke on “Learning to Measure What Isn’t There: The Problem of Missing Time.”

Aja giving her talk, “Scale Models in Climate Science: Using Temporal Scaling to Identify a Paleoclimate Analogue,” at the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice conference in Ghent, Belgium.

Other exciting news from the Phi-Geo group is that Matilde, Leticia, Aja, and Federica all had papers accepted for the upcoming “Future of the Past” conference in Jerusalem, as well as online, next month.

“BU women in Philosophy of Science are raising the international profile of our program,” wrote Professor Bokulich of the incredible accomplishments of her team. As graduate student Joel Van Fossen described it in a recent tweet, these grad students are “phil of science rockstars,” perhaps with the “rock” pun intended!

The Department is thrilled and massively proud of the accomplishments of the Phi-Geo Research Group, and look forward to celebrating more as they continue their hard work!