Spring 2025 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.

Seminars will not be held on the following dates: 

  • 2/28/25
  • 3/7/25
  • 3/24/25

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. 

To learn more about MCPS-sponsored lectures, please visit their website

Upcoming Colloquium 

Henry Cowles, February 7, 3:35 p.m.

History, University of Michigan

Title: Ruff Love: Puppies, Toddlers, and B.F. Skinner
 
Abstract: Consider the toddler. Like kittens and puppies but unlike lobsters, fascists, and a host of other alien creatures, toddlers tend to induce positive affect from strangers and fierce devotion from familiars. This talk uses the attention and anxiety focused on kids and pets to open up a new history of science, capitalism, and the self in the modern United States. Some of the most popular methods by which Americans are trying to raise humans and non-humans today—from “clicker training” to attachment parenting—share a surprising origin: the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner. While Skinner’s approach is often dismissed for its failure, indeed refusal, to explain interiority or affect, his work undergirds much of the prolific (and profitable) advice literature we seek out to manage our most affectively potent relationships. This paper takes up that paradox by following the fading tracks of Skinnerian behaviorism from the dolphin tank and the psychiatric institution to the daycare and the dog park. In doing so, it offers a history of habit—both conscious and unconscious, internal and external, chosen and unchosen—as a means of linking our intimate interactions with loved ones to broader social and economic pressures of which we are often unaware. 
 
Puppy baby

 

Sandra Mitchell, February 14, 3:35 p.m.

History and Philosophy of Science, U Pittsburgh
 
Title: The Value-Free Ideal in Science: A Pragmatist Approach to Normativity
 
Abstract: The Value-Free Ideal, that the epistemic decisions in science should be free from the influence of social, cultural or political values, has been defended and challenged as the bulwark of objectivity. I will suggest that 
answering the normative question – should science aim to be value free? – requires a detailed explication. I will consider science to be a social practice, with attached role obligations, embedded in a larger, complex social system. A pragmatist approach to scientific norms (e.g. value-freedom, transparency) requires understanding their impact on practical experience. I will argue that a complex systems approach that identifies structural and functional networks and feedback dynamics in the formal and informal institutions that constitute a society can locate the sources of the values that guide scientific decisions and actions and expose causal pathways that permit focused criticism and the potential for effective change. I will illustrate with a case study of racial disparities in the National Institutes of Health funding decisions.
 Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science logo

 

Jared Richman, February 21, 3:35 p.m.

Department of English, Colorado College
 
A Charles E. Culpeper Lecture in the History of Medicine
 
Title: Disability, Representation, and the British Military
 
Abstract: Literature often casts soldiers and sailors as icons of fitness, yet few return from combat physically or mentally unscathed. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature is filled with impaired and disabled figures on the stage, in poetry, and in fiction. Taking account of ways in which European Enlightenment attitudes shaped conceptions of the body and human identity, this talk will trace representations of the British military through the lens of Critical Disability Studies. From Rochester to Austen, the myriad textual instantiations of deformity, illness, debility, and disability featured in eighteenth-century British literature shaped and reflected the experiences of disabled combatants in an era of global warfare. Marking the many military conflicts and the colonizing projects of Britain’s expanding empire in India, Africa, and the Americas, British writers marshaled the figure of the soldier again and again, 
using tropes of disability to interrogate British foreign and domestic policy, the Atlantic slave trade, class hierarchy, rural depopulation, and advancements in science, medicine, and industry. Viewing literary representations of the 
military from the perspective of disability, this talk will explore how images of British soldiers, sailors, and veterans shifted attitudes regarding health, technology, gender, race, patriotism, nationalism, and radicalism under the shadow of endless war and colonial exploitation.
 
 Thomas Rowlandson, entitled “Bath Races” (1810)

 

Callie H. Burt, March 21, 3:35 p.m.

Criminal Justice & Criminology; Center for Research on Interpersonal Violence (CRIV), Georgia State University
 
Title: The Promise and Perils of Polygenic Scores: A Critical Examination for Social Science Research
 
Abstract: Sociogenomics is poised to flourish, as social scientists can now incorporate polygenic scores (PGSs) into their research with relative ease. Scholars have touted the utility of PGSs for advancing understanding of human development and social behavior. I scrutinize arguments about the utility of PGSs for social science research. After overviewing the genetics underlying PGSs, I discuss limitations, focusing on confounding, causal inference, and biological unknowns. I consider the implications of these challenges for the interpretation and utility of PGSs. Additionally, I highlight the persistent reliance on a reductionist “genetics versus environment” framework underpinning many PGS studies. I conclude that caution and scrutiny around the use of PGSs in social science is warranted.
 Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science logo

 

Laura Hirshbein, March 28, 3:35 p.m.

University of Michigan
 
A Dorothy B. Bernstein Lecture in the History of Psychiatry
 
Title: "Lee Harvey Oswald and American Child Psychiatry, 1963-1983"
 
Abstract: TBA
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Sarah Cameron, April 4, 3:35 p.m.

History, University of Maryland
 
Title: TBA
 
Abstract: TBA
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Haixin Dang, April 11, 3:35 p.m.

Case Western University
 
Title: Open Peer Review and Transparency in Science
 
Abstract: The conventional wisdom about the power of transparency is that transparency generates accountability. Advocates of Open Science claim that transparency is the key to research integrity – open science results in better, more rigorous science. One proposal for making science more transparent is the implementation of open peer review. Conventional peer review occurs almost always pre-publication, with the referees' identities withheld, and the
referee reports are only read by the authors and editors. In contrast, open peer review can occur either pre- or post-publication, and the referee reports are published alongside the paper. Sometimes, the referees' identities are never blinded, or their identities are revealed at publication. Does open peer review result in better, more rigorous science? In this talk, I argue that this question should interest philosophers of science and that philosophy of science can
offer unique insights into the value of transparency. I will argue that transparency is not always a pure epistemic good. Transparency is costly. In fact, transparency and honesty can trade off against each other in surprising ways. Understanding these trade-offs can help us design better peer review systems that align with the epistemic goals of science. In conclusion, I argue for a pluralistic approach to reforming peer review in science.
 Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science logo

 

Paul Brinkman, April 18, 3:35 p.m.

North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
 
HSTM – Alumni Lecture
 
Title: Now is the Time to Collect: Museums & Salvage Zoology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.
 
Abstract: In the late nineteenth century, naturalists anticipated the extinction of innumerable wild animals due to the global spread of Western civilization. Economic development, especially land-intensive practices like farming, logging, ranching, and urban sprawl, was destroying or degrading natural habitats worldwide. Yet development was an integral part of that quintessential Victorian virtue: progress. Victorian naturalists, then, viewed extinction as the inevitable, if regrettable, byproduct of humanity’s advance. The demise of species was a pity, many naturalists agreed, but the loss was a small price to pay to maintain the pace of progress. To mitigate the problem of the loss of scientific data through extinction, museum zoologists assumed the role of salvaging the remnants of these threatened species – while they could still be acquired – and preserving them as museum specimens for all time. The scientific rationale behind salvage zoology was obvious: certain animals were doomed to extinction by the unrelenting spread of Western civilization. Zoologists, therefore, were obligated to harvest their specimens and keep them in museum collections as a permanent record of disappearing nature. The practice of salvage zoology had its heyday in the 1890s, then eventually gave way to conservation in the early twentieth century, as more and more naturalists prioritized
the saving of species over the taking of specimens.
Now is the Time to Collect bookcover

 
 


 


Yang Li - April 25, 3:35 p.m.

Department of History and Integrated Liberal Studies, UW-Madison

A Charles E. Culpeper Lecture in the History of Medicine
 
 
Title: TBA
 
Abstract: TBA
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Earlier Colloquium 

Paul Kreitman, January 24, 3:35 p.m.

East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University
 
Co-hosted by UMN Department of History
 

***CANCELED***
 

Title: Sovereignty & Biodiversity Conservation in Japan’s Ocean Borderlands
 
 
Abstract: Desert islands are the focus of intense geopolitical tensions in East Asia today, but they are also sites of nature conservation. In this global environmental history, Paul Kreitman shows how the politics of conservation have entangled with the politics of sovereignty since the emergence of the modern Japanese state in the mid-nineteenth century. Using case studies ranging from Hawai'i to the Bonin Islands to the Senkaku (Ch: Diaoyu) Isles to the South China Sea, he explores how bird islands on the distant margins of the Japanese archipelago and beyond transformed from sites of resource extraction to outposts of empire and from wartime battlegrounds to nature reserves. This study examines how interactions between birds, bird products, bureaucrats, speculators, sailors, soldiers, scientists and conservationists shaped ongoing claims to sovereignty over oceanic spaces. It considers what the history of desert islands shows us about imperial and post-imperial power, the web of political, economic and ecological connections between islands and oceans, and about the relationship between sovereignty, territory and environment in the modern world.
 
Japanese coast diorama

 

Whitney Barlow Robles, January 31, 3:35 p.m.

History, Dartmouth College
 
Title: The Anonymous Animal: Naming and Knowing in the Anthropocene
 
Abstract: Scientific nomenclature has a rich historiography. But what about the history of not naming species? Using the Comte de Buffon’s eighteenth-century description of an “anonymous animal” as a jumping-off point, this talk narrates the history of leaving species unnamed, considering the relationship between naming animals and killing them to generate so-called type specimens. I argue that type specimens, although a genuine innovation in the nineteenth century, did not solve the muddy underlying ontological problems tied to naming. As a result, the anonymous animal never disappeared. I draw throughlines between present-day systematics and earlier eras of natural history, with a particular focus on the work of nineteenth-century marine zoologist John Vaughan Thompson. Current debates over specimens and naming show a reprise of the Buffonian struggle to distill ever-shifting species into discrete categories and labels.
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