Past Speakers
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Science Pure and Impure:
Doing Science in an Age of Public Scrutiny
Co-sponsored with: Duke University Center for European
Studies
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| Panelists include:
Steven Epstein, Professor of Sociology at the University of California at San Diego Professor Epstein is the author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1996), a study of the politicized production of knowledge in the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. His current research examines the politics of identity and difference in biomedical research in the United States. He is investigating the origins and consequences of recent U.S. policy changes designed to improve the health care of women, members of racial and ethnic minority groups, children, the elderly, and others by incorporating them in greater numbers within medical research populations. He is studying a range of new federal requirements for the inclusion of diverse groups in NIH-funded clinical studies and in trials of new drugs submitted to the FDA for approval. He is interested in how the biomedical research establishment responds to external challenges from identity-based social movements and their representatives, seeking to understand how biomedicine becomes an arena in which ideas about bodies and differences are defined and contested.
Professor Lévy-Leblond is the co-editor (with Enrico E. Beltrametti) of Advances in Quantum Phenomena: Proceedings of an International Course Held in Erice, Sicily, February 16-18, 1994, Vol. 347. This work incorporates papers from the 1994 meeting, representing a broad review of contemporary experimental work on quantum phenomena, emphasizing state-of-the-art experimental science. He is also co-editor (with Marcello Cini) of Quantum Theory without Reduction. He is founder and editor of Alliage (culture-science-technique). While publishing on theoretical physics, he has also published on the sociology of science: L'Esprit de sel: science, culture, politique (Paris: Seuil,1984) and La Pierre de touche: la science à l'épreuve (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), as well as on the notion of scientific thought: Aux contraires: l'exercice de la pensée et la pratique de la science (Paris: Gallimard, 1996).
Dominique Pestre, Director of Studies at L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes
enSciences Sociales (EHESS) and Director of the Centre Koyré.
Professor Pestre is co-editor of Science in the Twentieth Century (with
John Krige), in which 50 international scholars address the key issues
of images of science; science and the social fabric; science, scientists,
and
David Bell, Professor of Romance Studies
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"Science Pure and Impure: Doing Science in an Age of Public Scrutiny"
Over the past two decades, science studies have demonstrated how scientific
research is influenced by government funding decisions, relations among
scientists, laboratory structures, and the like. The notion of "pure"
science must be tempered by these analyses, which suggest that in many
ways the margin of maneuver for scientists engaged in basic research is
more
restricted than might be suggested by scientists' description of their
own activities. Increasingly, moreover, the public in advanced democratic
societies is demanding accountability from scientists. If science
is the motor of progress it sometimes claims to be, why should scientists
not turn all of their attention to solving daunting everyday problems that
have a
direct impact on people's lives: disease, ecological menaces,
weather prediction, for example? The Center for French and Francophone
Studies of Duke University and The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
in Science and Cultural Theory, and the Center for European Studies will
bring together scientists and scholars of science from France and the United
States to
discuss how the relation between scientists and an increasingly demanding
public is having an impact on scientific research and to explore how public
demand forces scientists to communicate with public constituencies in new
and different ways.
"La Science pure et impure: faire de la science à l'ère du soupçon"
Depuis plus de vingt ans maintenant, les études sur la sociologie
de la science ont montré comment la recherche scientifique est influencée
et dirigée par les décisions de politique nationale, par
les rapports entre les chercheurs, par la structure des laboratoires, et
par bien d'autres forces. La notion d'une science "pure" doit certainement
été repensée à la suite de ces analyses.
En particulier, la marge de manoeuvre des chercheurs scientifiques qui
sont engagés dans des activités de recherche
fondamentale est plus restreinte que l'on ne le croit généralement.
D'autant plus que le public des sociétés démocratiques
avancées commence à faire pression sur les chercheurs
scientifiques. Si la science est le moteur du progrès, comme
certains voudraient le faire croire, alors pourquoi est-ce que les chercheurs
scientifiques ne consacreraient pas toute leur attention et toutes leurs
ressources aux problèmes quotidiens très graves qui ont un
rapport direct avec la vie des citoyens: la maladie, les menaces
écologiques, la prévision métérologique, par
exemple? Le "Center for French and Francophone Studies" de
l'Université de Duke, avec le "Center for Interdisciplinary
Studies in Science and Cultural Theory" et le "Center for European Studies"
réuniront des chercheurs scientifiques et des historiens de la science
venus de la France et des Etats-Unis pour une table ronde dont le sujet
sera le rapport entre les chercheurs et un public de plus en plus exigeant.
Comment est-ce
que le public influence la recherche scientifique et comment est-ce
que les chercheurs scientifiques répondent à cette pression
en communicant avec ce public? Y a-t-il des formes nouvelles de communication
entre les groupes concernés?
(The above artwork is entitled "Auto-Flagellator" by Steven
Geiger)
| BIOLOGY AND CULTURE |
| Susan Oyama, Professor
of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; author of The Ontogeny
of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution:
"Ontogeny and Phylogeny: A Case of Metarecapitualtion?"
(November 20, 1991)
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| Richard Lewontin, Professor
of Zoology, Harvard University; author of Human Diversity; co-author
of The Dialectical Biologist and Not in Our Genes: Ideology and
Human Nature:
"Biology as a Social Weapon" (January 22, 1992)
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| Robert Boyd, Professor
of Anthropology, UCLA; co-author of Culture and the Evolutionary Process
"Models of Cultural Evolution" (March 11, 1992)
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| THE RHETORIC OF SCIENCE |
| Brian Rotman, Mathematician
and Cultural Theorist; author of Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of
Zero and Ad Infinitum...The Ghost in Turing's Machine: Taking God
out of Mathematics and Putting the Body Back In :
"Circa 2,000" (April 2, 1992)
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| SYMPOSIUM ON MATHEMATICS AND POST-CLASSICAL THEORY (October 30, 1993) |
| Andrew Pickering, Professor
of Sociology, University of Illinois; author of Constructing Quarks
(1984); editor of Science as Practice and Culture (1992):
"Concepts: Constructing Quarternions" |
| Arkady Plotnitsky, Professor
of English and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania; author
of Reconfigurations: Critical Theory and General Economy (1992),
In the shadow of Hegel: Complementarity, History, and the Unconscious
(1993), and Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology after Bohr and Derrida
(1994):
"Complementarity and Idealization" |
| Brian Rotman, Professor
of Mathematics; independent scholar; author of Signifying Nothing: The
Semiotics of Zero (1988) and Ad Infinitum: The Ghost in Turing's
Machine-Taking God Out of Mathematics and Putting the Body Back In (1993):
"Mathematical Writing, Thinking, and Virtual Reality" |
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John Smyth, Professor of Literature and Languages at Bennington College; author of A Question of Eros: The Theory and Practice of Irony (1986) and The Habit of Lying (and Fundaments of Fiction): "Fundaments and Iterates (A Glance at Sunset in Wittgenstein, Shakespeare, Beckett, Cicero and Frege, and a Foray into Games)" |
| Commentaries presented by Robert Bryant (Professor of Mathematics), Owen Flanagan (Professor of Philosophy and Psychology; author of The Science of the Mind (1991) and Consciousness Reconsidered (1992)), David Morrison (Professor of Mathematics), and Roy Weintraub (Professor of Economics; editor of Toward a History of Game Theory (1992)) |
| Malcolm Ashmore, Professor
of Social Sciences, Loughborough University of Technology, United Kingdom;
author of The Reflexive Thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
(1989)
"The Theater of the Blind: Debunking and the Social Production of Nonexistence" (November 16, 1993) |
| Philip Mirowski, Professor
of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, Notre Dame University;
author of Against Mechanism: Protecting Economics From Science (1988),
More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics (1989); editor
of Natural Images in Economics: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw (1994):
Colloquium: "Passing Around the Gift: From the Economists to the Anthropologists to the Philosphers" (March 17, 1994), Commentators: Professors Valentin Mudimbe and Ken Surin (Program in Literature) |
| Maria Christina Magro, Visiting Scholar, Fall 1994 (Biological roots of language and cognition, works of Maturana) |
| Derek Bickerton, Professor
of Linguistics, University of Hawaii, author of Roots of Language
(1981) and Language and Species (1990)
"Perspectives on Human Language Ability" (November 1, 1994) |
| Simon Le Vay, Chair
of the Board of the Institute of Gay and Lesbian Education (possible biological
correlates of sexual orientation):
"Queer Science: The Uses and Abuses of Research
into Homosexuality" (December 1, 1994)
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| SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE |
| Karin Knorr-Cetina,
Professor of Sociology and member of the board of directors of the Institute
for Science and Technology Studies, University of Bielefeld, Germany; author
of The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981), Science Observed
(1983), and Epistemic Cultures (Contemporary social theory, sociology
of culture/science and technology/knowledge, methods and methodology, sociology
of organizations, public policy and social change):
"Theoretical Constructionism" (February 1995) |
| Colloquium on "Models
and Methods in Contemporary Science Studies" (April 19, 1995)
Michael Callon, Professor, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Ecole des Mines, France "Four Models for the Dynamics of Science" Karin Knorr Cetina, Professor of Scoiology and Science Studies, University of Bielefeld, Germany"The Care of the Self and Blind Variation: An Ethnography of the Empirical in Two Sciences" |
| Opening Session at a
Conference on "Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork in Culture" (April 21, 1995)
"The Culture of Science" Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Literature Program,
Duke University, Moderator
"The Irruption of Non-Humans into the Human Sciences: Some Lessons Drawn from the Sociology of Science and Technology" Jonathan Culler, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cornell University, respondentKarin Knorr Cetina, Professor of Sociology and Science Studies, University of Bielefeld, Germany "Theoretical Constructionism: Machines of Knowledge and the Archaeology of Social Domains" |
| ALTERNATIVES TO REPRESENTATIONAL MODELS OF COGNITION |
| Rodney Brooks, Professor
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT
(Mobile robots, humanoid robots, Mars Rover research, mine clearing robots,
microrobots):
"Insect Robots and Their Humanoid Progeny: Technology,
Science, and Philosophy" (April 10, 1996)
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| RECONFIGURING THE TWO CULTURES (1996-1997) |
| Trevor Pinch, Science
and Technology Studies at Cornell University
"The Golem of Science: One Way to Learn to Love
Science" (February 18, 1997) (1996-1997)
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| Lorraine Daston, History
of Science, Max Planck Institute, Berlin
"What Kind of a Culture is Science?" (March 7,
1997)
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| Bruno Latour, Sociology
of Science, Ecole National Superieure des Mines, Paris
"Why has Reality Become an Object of Belief and
an Article of Faith?: A Commentary on Plato's Gorgias (March 24,
1997)
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| Isabelle Stengers, Philosophy
and History of Science, Free University of Brussels
Colloquium: "Science Wars: What About Peace?" (with Bruno Latour and others)(March 25, 1997), Commentator: Robert Brandon (Philosophy) |
| Mario Biagioli, History
of Science, Harvard University
"Stress in the Book of Nature: The Supplemental
Logic of Galileo's Mathematical Realism" (April 7, 1997)
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| Steven Shapin, History
and Sociology of Science, University of California, San Diego
"Proverbial Philosophy: Science and Common Sense
Once More" (April 21, 1997)
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| Arkady Plotnitsky, Visiting
Scholar, 1997-98 (History of literary criticism; modern critical theory;
continental philosophy; philosophy and literature; British Romanticism;
European Romanticism; Russian literature; philosophy and criticism; literature
and science; theories of history)
Courses Taught: "Paradigms of Modern Thought. Ghosts of Modernity, Spirits of Postmodernity: Science, Technology, Literature, Philosophy, Culture"; "National Identity: Exiles and Boundaries Within" |
| Terrance Deacon, Associate
Professor of Biological Anthropology, Boston University; Research Fellow
in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School; Author of The Symbolic Species:
The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain (1997), focusing on the
evolution of the brain and human language abilities
"A Symbol Problem: Computation and Representation-A
Biological Perspective" (February 26, 1999)
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| Brian Cantwell Smith,
Professor of Cognitive Science and Computer Science; Adjunct Professor
of Philosophy; Assistant Director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana
University at Bloomington; Author of On the Origin of Objects (MIT
Press 1996); Co-founder (with Jon Barwise, Barbara Grosz, and John Perry)
of the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University;
Co-founder (with Severo Ornstein, Laura Gould, and Lucy Suchman) and first
President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Colloquium on "Rehabilitating Representation: Intentionality in an Era of Embodied Cognition" (April 10, 1999), Commentators: Professors David Sanford (Philosophy) and Ken Surin (Program in Literature) |
| James Elkins, Associate
Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago (co-sponsored with the Duke University Department
of Art and Art History)
"The Unrepresentable: The Concept of the Sublime in Painting, Astrophysics, Genetics, & Particle Physics" (February 14, 2000) |
| Michael Tomasello, Co-Director,
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; Author of The Cultural
Origins of Human Cognition (Harvard University Press, 1999); Co-author
(with Josep Call) of Primate Cognition (Oxford University Press,
1997); Editor of The New Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Functional
Approaches to Language Structure (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998).
"The Human Adaptation for Culture" (February
24, 2000)
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| Marc Hauser, Professor
of Psychology and Neuroscience, Harvard University; Author of Wild Minds:
What Animals Really Think (Henry Holt Publishers, January 2000), The
Evolution of Communication (MIT Press: 1996); Co-author (with M. Konishi)
of The Design of Animal Communication (MIT Press, 1999).
"To Understand the Human Mind, Don't Study Humans:
3 Problems" (April 21, 2000)
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