The final 2017 Conference Timetable and Program are now available here.
If you are attending and have not yet paid, please do so from here. Don't forget to buy tickets to the Conference Dinner on Friday night as well!
See you all there!
Castration will turn you into a real man
The important historian of sexuality Theo van der Meer from Amsterdam is coming to USyd soon to present some of his work. I am sure many of you will be interested in attending. His paper is entitled “Castration will turn you into a real man”: Surgical castration of sex offenders in The Netherlands, 1938-1968". I am sure it will be of interest to historians, lawyers, criminologists, HPS and gender studies people alike.
He will present at Wednesday 26 April, 2-4pm at New Law Annex SR 444, Eastern Ave.
Further details about Theo and his work are available at:
https://wordvine.sydney.edu.au/files/1900/16221/
Ivan Crozier
HPSSS blogs, lists and department information needed
You will note that under the About→Resources menu, we have three pages:
These are as complete as we can make them, but members will have more information to add.
Please email John Wilkins, Webmaster, with the details and he will add them to our lists.
Seminar: Bias, random error, and the variety of evidence thesis
THE UNIT FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Held in conjunction with the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science
SEMESTER one
RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES
MONDAY 13th MARCH 2017
Barbara Osimani, PhD
Assistant Professor
Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Bias, random error, and the variety of evidence thesis.
In this talk I analyse the two main research strategies advocated by opposing schools in medical methodology (“evidence elitism” and “methodological pluralism”) and underscore their epistemological underpinnings, with a particular focus on the role of reliability and varied evidence in the two camps.
Since the latter strategy can be made more general by appealing to the Variety of Evidence Thesis, I analyse this thesis and its diverse versions, by delving in particular on the one presented by Bovens and Hartmann (2003), where the interaction of reliability and replication in hypothesis confirmation has an essential role in defining the epistemic value of varied evidence vs. replication.
I then present Claveau’s variation of this model (2013), which models unreliability as systematic error (bias), and go on to propose a model (Osimani, Landes forthcoming), where a distinction is made between random and systematic error. This delivers results that contrast with both Bovens and Hartmann (2003), and Claveau (2013): when evidence is highly biased relatively speaking (bias much larger than random error), then confirmation is greater for varied evidence. This is in conflict with Bovens and Hartmann results where the VET failed for unreliable evidence (in their sense of unreliability). Furthermore, when evidence is only weakly biased, then the model favors replication; and for low values of both kind of errors, the area where VET fails become negligible.
Although the VET fails in all models, it does so under different conditions in each of them, which are especially linked to how reliability, dependence of observations, and consistency are modeled. This demands for a further clarification of these notions both in scientific practice and in formal epistemology.
DATE: Monday 13th March 2017
TALK TIME: 5:30 PM
LOCATION- CCANESA MEETING ROOM, MADSEN BUILDING
CAMPERDOWN CAMPUS
Best access to CCANESA is from the Eastern Avenue entrance of the Madsen Building. When you enter you will be on the 3rd floor. Please proceed across the foyer and take the stairs on the right up one floor. The door to CCANESA will be straight ahead on this landing
All Welcome | No Booking Required | Free
PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR ANY CHANGES TO VENUE OR TIME
sydney.edu.au/science/hps/
Memorial Service for Homer Le Grand
Dear colleagues,
Last month the Monash community was very saddened to hear of the passing of Emeritus Professor Homer Le Grand. Professor Le Grand, whose tremendous contributions were touched upon in my email of 19 January, was Dean of our Faculty of Arts from 1999 to 2006, as well as Dean of Science in 1999 and 2000.
A memorial service for Professor Le Grand will be held on Friday 3 March at 1.30pm in the Monash University Religious Centre, Clayton Campus.
Refreshments will be available after the service, in the Monash Staff Club.
The family of Professor Le Grand have requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Homer Le Grand Student Assistance Scholarship scheme.
Information regarding campus parking and shuttle bus transport on the day of the service is set out below.
Regards,
Professor Margaret Gardner AO
President and Vice-Chancellor
2012 Dyason Lecture
Professor Warwick Anderson, (ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor, Sydney) will deliver the 2012 Dyason Lecture:
Fashioning the Immunological Self: The Biological Individuality of F. Macfarlane Burnet
During the 1940s and 1950s, the Australian microbiologist F. Macfarlane Burnet sought a biologically plausible explanation of antibody production. In this talk, I seek to recover the conceptual pathways that Burnet followed in his immunological theorizing. In so doing, I emphasize the influence of philosophical speculations on individuality, especially those of Alfred North Whitehead; the impact of cybernetics and information theory; and the contributions of clinical research into autoimmune disease at Melbourne. Accordingly, this essay describes an intellectual arc distinct from most other tracings of Burnet’s conceptual development, which focus on his early bacteriophage research and his fascination with the work of Julian Huxley and other biologists in the 1920s. No doubt these were potent influences, but they seem insufficient to explain Burnet’s sudden enthusiasm in the 1940s for immunological definitions of self and not-self. I want to demonstrate here how Burnet’s deep involvement in philosophical biology—along with ineluctable clinical entanglements—shaped his immunological theories.
The lecture will take place in the Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre at the University of Sydney, from 6:30-8:00pm. The event is free and open to all.