2005-2006
DATE: February 17, 2005 (5:30 pm)
To be held in Moot Court, New Chancellor Day Hall, Faculty of Law, 3644 Peel Street.
THIS IS A PUBLIC LECTURE AND ALL ARE WELCOME; A RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW.
SPEAKER: Donna Haraway (University of California - Santa Cruz History of Consciousness Program)
TITLE: We Have Never Been Human: Companion Species in Naturecultures
DATE: Monday, September 26, 2005
SPEAKER: Simon Schaffer (History & Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University)
TITLE: Why Trust Public Experiments?: An Historical Perspective
Simon Schaffer Lecture [.pdf]
DATE: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - 6:00 pm
SPEAKER: Isabelle Stengers (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
TITLE: Science at the crossroads : the end of the Galilean break?
LOCATION: PALMER LECTURE THEATRE, MCINTYRE MEDICAL BUILDING, 3655 PROMENADE SIR WILLIAM OSLER
Abstracts
WHY TRUST PUBLIC EXPERIMENTS?: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Simon Schaffer
It is argued by CEOs of major technological firms, by social observers, and by scientists themselves, that there has been a major, critical decline in public trust in the sciences. The solution to this crisis, it is argued, would include the development of new forms of more accountable knowledge, forms more transparent and evident, more responsive to public scepticism and interests. This lecture explores the history of these views of crisis in authority and trust; it also identifies a key form of public science, the demonstrative experiment designed to show the authority of scientific expertise. Such a history does not offer evidence for a new crisis in trust in science; rather, it calls into question the received view of the role of public demonstration in establishing scientific authority.
SCIENCES AT THE CROSSROADS: THE END OF THE GALILEAN BREAK?
Isabelle Stengers
The Galilean break, that is the thesis that scientific knowledge can be opposed against all other forms of human knowledge, is about to end. However the problem is "how" it will end. By a destruction of the singularity of scientific practices or by their opening to what they previously disqualified ? The answer to such a question does not belong to philosophy, but philosophy may contribute to elcucidate the challenge and its demands.
WE HAVE NEVER BEEN HUMAN: COMPANION SPECIES IN NATURECULTURES
Donna Haraway (Thursday, February 17th)
This lecture examines how to think jointly through biology (Lynn Margulis on symbiosis, Scott Gilbert on evolutionary ecological developmental biology, Barbara Smuts on animal-human relations in behavioral research); poststructuralist philosophy (Derrida on the animal question, Deleuze on becoming animal, Isabel Stengers on 'pensez avec Whitehead'); and science studies (Latour on matters of concern, Ihde on scientific instruments & infoldings of the flesh, Charis Thompson on ontological choreography). My purpose is to flesh out what I mean by "companion species in naturecultures" as a way to inhabit historical multi-species worlds without the pitched battles between modernist humanism and its posts.