Reading group in History and Philosophy of Science

Coordinated by Charles Wolfe

All meetings are on Thursday at 10:15 in Carslaw 437 (Charle's office), usually fortnightly but pay attention to the schedule as it may change.

Semester 1, 2009

Date Article Presenter
April 9 A paper on free will and behavioural genetics

 

Allan McCay
April 30 Georges Canguilhem
Machine and Organism
Contact Charles for PDF

 

Ian Wills
May 28
(TBC)

Christina Chimisso
Writing the History of the Mind. Philosophy and Science in France, 1900-1960s
Ashgate, 2008

Here are some links to articles by Chimisso that appear in the book in modified forms:

The Identity and Routes of Philosophy of Science

The mind and the faculties: the controversy over 'primitive mentality' and the struggle for disciplinary space at the inter-war Sorbonne

From phenomenology to phenomenotechnique: the role of early twentieth-century physics in Gaston Bachelard's philosophy

 

Charles Wolfe Sean Dyde
TBA

J.B. Shank
The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment
Chicago, 2008

Link to online purchase

Related reading:

"There Was no such Thing as the 'Newtonian Revolution,' and the French Initiated it." Eighteenth-century Mechanics in France before Maupertuis

 

Charles Wolfe & David Gilad

Semester 2, 2009

TBA

Suggestions for further readings

Texts remaining to be chosen (feel free to suggest others):

  • Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity
    (New York: Zone Books, 2007)
  • Timothy Lenoir, The strategy of life: teleology and mechanics in nineteenth century German biology
    (Kluwer, 1982)
  • Keith Thomas, Man and the natural world: changing attitudes in England 1500-1800.
    (London : Allen Lane, 1983)
  • Porter, Roy & Teich, Mikuláลก (eds), The Scientific revolution in national context.
    (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
    we can divide this up, it's a series of independent pieces.
  • Steve Fuller's Kuhn vs Popper.

Archive of texts discussed