Fall 2024 Colloquium Series
About
This series is jointly hosted by the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science (MCPS), the Program in History of Science and Technology, and the Program in the History of Medicine. Each semester we invite scholars from around the country and the world to present on scholarship in the history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine.
Lectures begin at 3:35pm in 216 Pillsbury Drive (formerly Nicholson Hall), Room 125 on the East Bank of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus.
At this time, all events will be in-person unless otherwise stated. Some events may be subject to change. Please check back for updates or contact [email protected] for more information.
Learn more about MCPS-sponsored lectures.
Earlier Colloquium
JP Gamboa, September 13, 3:35pm
Title: Informative for Whom? The Concept of Information in Neuroscience
Abstract: According to the standard view in the mind and brain sciences, goal-directed behavior depends on the brain’s ability to store and process relevant information. Despite its ubiquity, this idea is hardly perspicuous. Aside from the fact that competing definitions of ‘information’–some formal, some qualitative–have been advocated, there is no reason to expect that the term ‘information’ is used in the same way across different sciences. In this talk, I begin by examining how neuroscientists appeal to information when interpreting their neural data. I then argue that such interpretations promote a “feeling of understanding” without providing any further insight into how behavior depends on neural activity.
Regina Kunzel, September 20, 3:35pm
216 Pillsbury Drive, Room 35 (formerly Nicholson Hall)
Title: In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life
Abstract: Beginning in the mid-20th century, psychiatrists diagnosed homosexuality and gender variance as mental disorders that they claimed to be able to treat and “cure.” That stigmatizing diagnosis sanctioned larger structures of discrimination and cast a stigmatizing pall over queer and trans people for decades. It also granted psychiatrists tremendous authority, underwriting their collaborations with the US state and strengthening its carceral apparatus. Drawing on a collection of previously unexamined case files, Kunzel explores the significance of the encounter between psychiatry and queer and gender-variant people.
Melissa Reynolds, September 27, 3:35pm
Title: ‘Englishing’ Natural Knowledge: Antiquarianism and Exceptionalism in Elizabethan Science.
Abstract: Between 1400 and 1600, English readers gained increasing access to practical medical and scientific knowledge, first in vernacular manuscript collections, and later in inexpensive, printed books. As I argue in my first book, Reading Practice: The Pursuit of Natural Knowledge from Manuscript to Print, engagement with this knowledge—much of it very old—in recipes, prognostications, almanacs, and other pragmatic texts, encouraged English readers to see themselves as adjudicators and even progenitors of knowledge in their own right. This talk, however, drawn from the final chapter of the book, illustrates how Elizabethan readers reinterpreted the contents of fifteenth-century manuscripts to invent an “English” history of medicine and science and to argue for the supremacy of English ingenuity. While the democratization of medical and scientific knowledge in manuscripts and printed books did encourage an emergent culture of scientific curiosity among English readers, in this talk I argue that these same books also became sources for those who would use nature to define categories of exclusion.
Samantha Muka, October 4, 3:35pm
Assistant Professor, School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Stevens Institute of Technology
Title: Building a coastline: The Texas Coastal and Marine Council Artificial Reef Program, 1971-1985
Abstract: Texas has an extensive artificial reef system. In 1971, the state began formally planning and constructing large underwater installations meant to attract fish and increase diving tourism. This reef system, built initially out of used car tires, and subsequently retired WWII ships and decommissioned oil regs, continues to serve as the basis for coastal infrastructure in the state today.
This talk uses this reef system to examine how states made early decisions about underwater development and how those decisions have subsequently shaped coastlines. Using the records of the Texas Coastal and Marine Council (TCMC), we can better understand how formal decisions regarding infrastructure were made. These records, which contain correspondence, recorded meetings, and publications, show how stakeholders shared information and made decisions about the relatively new process of building this underwater system. Studying the TCMC can help historians of science expand understandings of early conservation and engineering in the marine environment.
Lauren Ross, October 11, 3:35pm
Title: Types of Causation in the Life Sciences
Abstract: In the life sciences, identifying causal systems is important for many goals, including explanation, prediction, and efforts to change and control outcomes in the world. One challenge for serving these goals is that causal systems in these areas are extremely varied in ways that have been difficult to capture. We often lack clear, consistent labels for different types of causation and reference to all causal systems as “mechanisms” can make these differences harder to specify. This talk provides a novel framework for capturing different types of causation and causal systems that are commonly found in the life sciences. It shows how these types have implications for the explanations we provide, the methods we use to study these systems, and for the unique functions and behaviors they produce.
Shigehisa Kuriyama, October 18, 12:15pm **New time**
A Charles E. Culpeper Lecture in the History of Medicine & Co-sponsored by the Center for Premodern Studies
Title: "The Great Forgetting" --or the one thing that everyone should know about the history of medicine--
Patrick McCray, October 25, 3:35pm
Abstract: To say that computers today are everywhere is an observation that verges on the obtuse. However, this assertion carries the burden of a significant historical question: How did this technological revolution happen? One powerful catalyst was, ironically, one of the oldest information technologies in the modern world: books. Computers had to be both popularized and popular (the two are not the same) before they became omnipresent. Books were an essential ingredient in this process.
My forthcoming book, titled README, offers a literary history of computers and computing between the end of World War Two and the dot-com crash that marked the first few years of the 21st century. In my talk, I will do three things: I’ll give an overview of the larger research project; I’ll present some examples of how books give insights into particular historical moments in the history of computers, the history of books and publishing, and American culture in general; and, finally, I’ll raise some questions the evolving relationship between writers and technology at a time when computers themselves have become authors of a sort.
Aleta Quinn, November 1, 3:35pm
Title: Communities of Community Science
Abstract: Community science refers to participation of people who are not professional scientists in science as researchers. In this talk I discuss the development of large, stable platforms that support community science projects. I argue for a fully social model of community science, addressing philosophical questions about objectivity, epistemic trust, and transparency.
Edward Halley Barnet, November 15, 3:35pm
Title: The Tone That Makes Life: Fibre Vibrations in Early Modern Medicine
Abstract: For around 150 years, the fibre lay at the forefront of European medicine. It was the anatomical foundation of both plant and animal bodies. It was the locus of both motion and sensation: it was for physiology what the line was for mathematics. It was also capable, at least according to many physicians, of a seemingly improbable motion: vibration. Tension, tone, and vibratory motion were regular features of medical, natural philosophical, and literary accounts of the human body in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Many authors - medically-trained and otherwise - went so far as to describe the body as a stringed musical instrument, whose notes conveyed sensations and ideas. Others, including the renowned doctor Hermann Boerhaave, rejected the possibility of fibre vibration as an anatomical impossibility. My talk will investigate this medical and philosophical clash between proponents and opponents of fibre vibration, while also asking more fundamental questions about the observability of living bodies and the embodiment of thought.
Andrew Lea, November 22, 3:35pm
Title: Doctor’s Order: Managing Medical Information in the Twentieth Century
Abstract: Doctors have struggled with the problem of information overload for centuries. Their lamentations grew particularly loud over the course of the twentieth century, as therapeutic preparations and medical publications began to proliferate like never before. A core strategy for grappling with the information-saturated environment involved the creation of personal filing systems: physicians developed and shared elaborate systems that included journal reprints, interesting patient cases, clinical notes, and other sources that could span dozens of filing cabinets. In this talk, I explore the material culture and moral economy that supported these filing systems in twentieth-century medicine. I ultimately demonstrate how physicians, in implementing filing systems, curated different discovery environments that influenced their thinking, identity, and practice. A historical perspective illuminates the enduring yet evolving ways in which seemingly banal reference systems—from textbooks to AI—have profound impacts on medical care.
Lydia Crafts, December 6, 3:35pm
Title: Reframing “Guatemala’s Tuskegee”: Revolution, Eugenics, and Experimentation in the Ten Years of Spring.
Abstract In the 1940s, U.S. and Guatemalan doctors working with the Pan American Sanitary Bureau intentionally infected at least 1,308 Indigenous and other marginalized Guatemalans with three sexually-transmitted infections (STIs)—syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid. The doctors hired women registered as sex workers as well as syringes to transmit the disease. The researchers wanted to test whether various chemical prophylaxis solutions would prevent the spread of disease. They did not obtain informed consent to infect people with deadly diseases, nor did they provide them with available treatments. The doctors then tried to hide their research, even as they gossiped about the experiments among themselves. The public only learned about these experiments in 2010 when the United States revealed what had happened to the public and apologized to Guatemala, immediately spurring international condemnation. Many of the same USPHS doctors who conducted research in Guatemala had also participated in the infamous syphilis study in Tuskegee, Alabama. Informally in the United States and Latin America, many began to refer to the experiments as “Guatemala’s Tuskegee.” Yet in this talk, I will draw upon archival documents and oral histories to highlight the Guatemalan perspective of these experiments. During the Guatemalan Spring (1944- 1954), doctors sought to build an able-bodied and homogenous race. To build the revolution within the context of stark global inequality, Guatemalan doctors wagered with human beings. In so doing, they also augmented their own positions within international health and drew themselves more closely to the U.S. research infrastructure, even as they ironically aimed to establish their sovereignty.
Felipe De Brigard, December 13, 3:35pm
***CANCELED***
Title: The mirage of big-data phrenology
Abstract: The goal of mapping psychological functions to brain structures has a venerable history. With the advent of neuroimaging techniques, this elusive goal regained vigor and became the main purpose of cognitive neuroscience. Unfortunately, as the field continues to develop, the ideal of finding one-to-one mappings from psychological functions to brain areas looks increasingly unrealistic. In the past few years, however, many cognitive neuroscientists have advocated for mining large sets of neuroimaging data in order to find the elusive one-to-one mapping. One recent strategy, proposed by Genon and colleagues (2018), constitutes one of the most concrete proposals for discovering the mappings from brain regions to cognitive functions by using big-data repositories of neuroimaging results. In this paper we offer several challenges for their proposal and argue that big-data approaches to finding one-to-one mappings between brain regions and cognitive functions suffer from significant difficulties of their own.