Visual legitimisation of astronomy in the 16th and 17th centuries:

Atlas, Hercules and Tycho's Nose

Den 5. februar, kl. 17.00
Auditorium 10
H. C. Ørsted Instituttet
Universitetsparken 5
København


Talk by:
Dr.habil. Volker Remmert
Institut für Mathematik, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz


Kl. 16.30 inviterer Videnskabshistorisk Selskab på kaffe, te og frugt for 10 kr. i Institut for Matematiske Fags frokoststue, rum 04.4.19 på 4. sal.

At 4.30 p.m., coffee, tea and fruit in the lunch room of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, room 04.4.19, on the 4th floor.


Organizer:
Videnskabshistorisk Selskab
Danish Society for the History of Science

Absract

Images of the virtuous hero Hercules and the crowned King Atlas offered considerable potential for legitimising the new astronomy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The accomplishments of Hercules, a seeker after virtue, with his exceptional learning, his role as disseminator of knowledge, his significance as an example of ideal manhood and, in addition to all, his achievement of immortality, invited comparison with the endeavours of astronomers. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Hercules and Atlas appear as the spiritual authorities of the discipline, and each was called into use to symbolise both the old and the new astronomy. To argue by visual means was part of the order of the day, whether in Rome, Paris or Copenhagen. Tycho Brahe played an important part in applying strategies of visual legitimisation to the science of astronomy, for he had a comprehensive understanding of the tradition and importance of the artistic legitimisation and glorification of power.

Dus med dyrene?

Forårssemesteret 2008
Mandage kl. 15.15 - 17.30
Studenternes Hus
Aarhus Universitet
Mødelokale 2.

Arrangør: Forum Teologi Naturvidenskabs


I vor vestlige kultur er der en lang tradition for at betragte mennesket som noget helt særligt i forhold til dyrene. Det gælder teologisk såvel som filosofisk. I teologien påberåbte man sig gerne skabelsesberetningen i 1 Mos 1, hvor det hedder, at Gud skabte mennesket i sit billede og gav det som opgave at herske over alle verdens dyr. I filosofien betonede man, at det er fornuften eller ånden eller moraliteten, der hæver mennesket højt op over dyrene. Betoningen af forskellen mellem mennesker og dyr kulminerede med Descartes, som betragtede dyret blot som en maskine uden sjæl og følelser. Dermed leverede han en filosofisk retfærdiggørelse af vivisektion, dvs. dissekering af levende dyr.

Betoningen af menneskets særstilling gik og går hånd i hånd med udnyttelse af dyr til gavn for mennesket, f.eks. i kvægdrift, i medicinsk og kommerciel forskning, men også i det at holde kæledyr. Udnyttelsen behøver ikke at være hensynsløs, men er det ofte. Det dokumenteres bl.a. af den seneste tids grusomme transporter af slagtesvin.

Teologiens og filosofiens radikale distinktion mellem menneske og dyr er blevet problematiseret af evolutionsteoriens tese om en udviklingsmæssig kontinuitet mellem menneske og dyr. Mere specielt kan der henvises til den senere tids påvisning af et stort genetisk slægtskab mellem mennesker og chimpanser samt tydelige analogier mellem de sidstnævntes sociale adfærd og menneskelig moral. Bevidstheden om kontinuiteten mellem menneske og dyr er en vigtig del af baggrunden for en voksende kritik af hensynsløs udnyttelse af især 'højere' dyr.

Alt dette fremkalder spørgsmålet, om der er en uløselig konflikt mellem et teologisk (filosofisk) og et biologisk syn på forholdet mellem menneske og dyr. Samtidig urgeres det etiske spørgsmål, hvordan vi bør behandle dyrene, hvis de i flere henseender er 'ligesom os'. Det er disse spørgsmål, der danner omdrejningspunktet for forårssemesterets forelæsningsrække.

Rækken åbner med en forelæsning ved Knud Larsen, som er seniorforsker ved Det Jordbrugsvidenskabelige Fakultet ved Aarhus Universitet. Forelæsningen handler om de etiske overvejelser, der melder sig i forbindelse med bioteknologisk udnyttelse af grise, især frembringelse af transgene grise som organdonorer. Næste forelæsning holdes af professor i bioetik og formand for det Dyreetiske Råd Peter Sandøe og handler om spørgsmålet, om det traditionelle skel mellem menneske og dyr kan opretholdes. Dernæst tages den teologiske tanke om menneskets særstilling op til fornyet overvejelse af Helena Röcklinsberg, som er lektor i teologisk etik ved Lunds Universitet. Rækken slutter med en forelæsning ved chefen for dyreafdelingen i Odense Zoo, Bjarne Klausen, om danskernes syn på dyrene, samt spørgsmålet, hvordan et fornuftigt dyresyn bør se ud.

Alle er velkomne til møderne, som holdes mandag eftermiddage i Studenternes Hus, Aarhus Universitet, mødelokale 2. Der gøres opmærksom på, at møderne - der som sædvanligt starter kl. 15.15 - slutter kl. 17.30 og at kaffepausen reduceres fra en halv time til et kvarter.

Engagement i arbejdet?

Konsultationsprocesser hos danske praktiserende læger

Forsvar af ph.d.-afhandling ved:
Astrid Pernille Jespersen

Fredag d.8 februar kl.13.00.
Københavns Universitet
Den Humanistiske Fakultet
Lokale 23.0.49 (det nye KUA)

Analysing discourses, networks and other fluid things

Seminar & PdD course

28 February 2008
CBS, Porcelænshaven 16 B, 2. sal, lokale 212.
Frederiksberg

More information: PhD course

Seminar
Folk som ikke er ph.d. studerende er velkomment til at deltage fra kl. 13-15. Skriv til Maja og tilmeld dig: mh.lpf@cbs.dk


Faculty
Professor Mike Michael, Sociology, Goldsmith's, University of London Associate. Professor Maja Horst, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, CBS. Professor Alan Irwin, Research Dean at CBS


Course Coordinator
Maja Horst, Director of doctoral school of knowledge and management, CBS


Prerequisite
The participants should have an interest in research analytics inspired by actor-network-theory, discourse analyses or other post-structural frameworks.Before the course, participants should provide 1-5 pages describing the specific analytical framework of the PhD-project including a description of at least one example of empirical analysis.

Prerequisite/progression of the course
The participants should have an interest in research analytics inspired by actor-network-theory, discourse analyses or other post-structural frameworks.Before the course, participants should provide 1-5 pages describing the specific analytical framework of the PhD-project including a description of at least one example of empirical analysis.


Aim of the course
The focus of the course is on methodology and the aim is to discuss challenges connected to the use of post-structural analytical frameworks inspired by Foucault, Latour, Deleuze and others. The course does not provide lectures on theory, but focuses on the discussion of specific examples of empirical analysis. It aims to discuss the choices made by the analyst and the challenges included in these choices. Examples to be discussed will be provided by PhD-scholars as well as faculty.


Learning Objectives
The course intends to provide PhD-scholars with inspiration and guidance about how to get from abstract theories to specific, tangible analyses of actual empirical material. In line with that overall goal, specific feedback on individual projects will be provided to participants.

Matematiske modeller:
vejledning eller vildledning?
-historisk set

RUC-Modeldag

13. marts, kl. 9-16
RUC, bygning 27, lokale I
Tilmelding m.m.: Klik her

Formålet med matematisk modellering
Prof. Stig Andur Pedersen, (Forskergruppe Filosofi og videnskabsteori, RUC)

Matematiske modeller spiller i dag en afgørende rolle i mange forskellige sammenhænge. De er nødvendige redskaber til forståelse af komplekse sammenhænge, og de benyttes til forudsigelser og til at kontrollere og regulere processer. Spørgsmålet om modellernes egnethed og kvalitet afhænger af, hvilke formål de skal tjene. På grundlag af nogle historiske eksempler vil forholdet mellem matematiske modellers formål og kvalitet blive diskuteret.


Fremkomsten af statistisk mekanisk modellering
Adjunkt Martin Niss (Forskergruppe IMFUFA, RUC)

Statistisk mekanik blev etableret som en fysisk disciplin i anden halvdel af 1800 tallet. Herved kulminerede flere århundredes forskning i en modelleringstilgang baseret på flg. komponenter: en atomistisk approach, hvor man forsøger at beskrive og forstå makroskopiske fænomener ud fra fænomenernes mikroskopiske byggesten kombineret med en udstrakt brug af matematiske modeller for at koble de to niveauer, som bygger på en statistik beskrivelse af byggestenes opførsel. I foredraget vil jeg forsøge at udrede den til tider ret snørklede historiske udvikling som førte til udkrystallisationen af denne modelleringstilgang.


Statistiske modeller gennem 300 år
Lektor Jørgen Larsen (Forskergruppe IMFUFA, RUC)

Foredraget vil præsentere udvalgte historiske eksempler på statistiske modeller med tilhørende overvejelser over, hvad det er modellerne kan/kunne, og hvad det er man kan/kunne med modellerne.


Ren og anvendt matematik ved DTU gennem tiderne
Prof. Vagn Lundsgaard Hansen (Institut for Matematik, DTU)

For at være i stand til formålsrettet at udvikle matematiske modeller skal man kunne matematik, kunne bringe matematik i anvendelse og kunne vurdere matematikanvendelsen. Disse kompetencer er langt fra sammenfaldende. Og det er ikke nogen simpel sag at organisere vekselspillet imellem matematik i egen ret og matematik som redskab i anvendelsessammenhænge optimalt. Foredraget vil illustrere denne problemstilling ud fra eksemplet DTU gennem tiderne.

Dansk bioteknologi i det 20. århundrede

9. maj, 8.30-16.30,
DTU, bygning 306, auditorium 31
Lyngby
Se Kort: dtu_vejviser.aspx


Symposium i Dansk Selskab for Historisk Kemi, hovedmøde i Kemisk Forening. Arrangeres i samarbejde med Dansk Bioteknologisk Selskab.


Tilmelding senest 15. april til Anita Kildebæk Nielsen akn(snabel-a)cen.dtu.dk eller anita(snabel-a)kildebaek.dk (evt. 4525 6474 eller 3052 7502). Husk at angive arbejdssted og titel, hvis dette ønskes oplyst på deltagerlisten.

DRAW THE LINE!

Cultural boundary making in everyday academic work life

May 30-31, 2008
The conference will be held at the Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus. The School of Education is situated in Copenhagen
The conference's webpage
UPGEM (Understamding puzzels in the Gendered European Map)

Deadline for Registration April 15th, 2008
Early registration is strongly recommended due to a limited number of participants


Research in academia shows that competent female and male scientists follow different career paths in different national contexts. Some countries are better than others at attracting female scientists to a research career in physical science. Even so, in these countries female scientists never reach top positions to the same extent as their male colleagues. The results presented at the UPGEM conference unveil the complex and intricate cultural historical patterns behind these facts.

The project offers a multifaceted picture of the diversity of the everyday life at universities in five European countries; Italy, Poland, Finland, Estonia and Denmark. To capture this complexity, the project has developed a `Culture Contrast Method' that draws analytical lines across the vast empirical data. This method sheds light on problems of e.g. retaining competent researchers in academia or problems of perceived gender categories hindering female researchers reaching the top. We have found these problems to be related to culture; i.e. diversity in historically and socially created boundaries between practices in nation states, between males and females and between those who stay in academia and those who leave because they are pulled out by more rewards in other workplaces or pushed out for reasons spanning from harassment, sexual harassment, low pay, unfair competition or fired following changes in the political climate.

The conference has three roundtable debates and a number of work shops on selected themes where specific findings will be presented. The actual results of the research will be presented for the first time at the conference itself, but you can learn more about the UPGEM project: UPGEM project

Responsible for workshops are UPGEM senior partners, consultants and assistants:

Senior partners:
Dr. Endla Lõhkivi, University of Tartu, Estonia
Dr. Kristina Rolin, Helsinki School of Economics, Finland
Professor Anna Maria Ajello, University La Sapienza, Italy
Dr. Merja Helle, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr. Cathrine Hasse, Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Consultants:
Agata Heymowski, Polish representative and consultant, Poland
Lone Svinth, Consultant of Quantitative studies, Denmark

Assistants:
Katrin Velbaum, University of Tartu, Estonia
Jenny Vainio, Helsinki University, Finland
Giulia Califiore, University La Sapienza, Italy
Cristina Belardi, University La Sapienza, Italy
Stine Trentemøller, Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark
Anne Bjerregaard, Danish School of Education, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Dual Uses of Biomedicine:
Whose responsibility?

X Annual Swedish Symposium on Biomedicine, Ethics and Society

9-10 June 2008
Seglarhotellet, Sandhamn
Sweden
Click here to read more


Biomedical research can have both beneficial and harmful uses and consequences. Of special concern in recent years is the perceived threat of "bioterrorism".

Acting with Science, Technology and Medicine

Call for Papers

EASST/4S conference
August 20 - 23, 2008
Rotterdam


STS Locations: Latin America

As has been noted in many STS works, the manner in which science, technology, and medicine is produced or translated depends greatly on historical and national contexts. The production of knowledge about the interactions of science, technology, medicine, and society is not exempt from this contextualization. Yet much like the production of tehnoscientific and medical knowledge, STS knowledge production remains primarily EuroAmerican despite the field's attempts to broaden its conceptual perspectives. The session's goal is three-fold: to explore the contributions to thinking about science, technology, medicine and society by scholars in Latin America past and present; to provide scholars working on Latin American STS issues an opportunity to showcase their work; and to further theorize the specifics of acting with a co-productionist/interventionist approach, to science, technology, and medicine in Latin American locations.

Papers are invited to address issues such as:

* Methodological and theoretical contributions to the field of STS by Latin American scholars
* Latin American approaches to theorizing and acting with science, technology, and medicine
* Latin American interventions and activism with science, technology, and medicine
* Latin American innovations and developments in science, technology, and society


Multiple panels will be submitted in these four areas if there is sufficient interest.


Session Organizers:
Robert Olivo, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Rick B. Duque, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Christina Holmes, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada


Submission deadline: February 13, 2008.

Please send an abstract of a paper (minimum 250 words, maximum of 400 words) dealing with the issues sketched above and related issues to Robert Olivo (olivo @ vt.edu).
Link to: Archive of STS.NL

Stafet-interview med

Peter Barker

Title: Professor of the history of science

Institutional affiliation: University of Oklahoma, USA


Discipline:

This is actually a difficult question to answer. I do research in sixteenth century cosmology and the history of nuclear weapons in the twentieth century, but my fundamental interests are in conceptual structures, understood empirically. My original training is in physics and philosophy (a rather odd joint degree from Oxford). After that I did what used to be called `History and Philosophy of Science' for my Ph.D. At Buffalo in the United States. I ended up in a rather good philosophy department at Memphis, Tennessee. But I was recruited from there to serve as a bridge between philosophy and history in the proposed STS graduate program at Virginia Tech - in fact I became the first director of the program and taught in it for ten years. While there I moved more strongly into history of science but also began to apply ideas from cognitive psychology to traditional problems in philosophy of science (this is how I met Hanne Andersen). In 1995 I moved to the history of science program at Oklahoma, and in 2002 I was offered a fellowship at the - sadly shortlived - Danmarks Humanistiske Forskningscenter. This enabled me to write a book with Hanne and another Virginia Tech veteran, Xiang Chen, that defines my field almost exactly: The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Cambridge 2006). So I would describe the discipline I am trying to work in as the cognitive history of science.


Which is the last research related book that you have read?

I have just finished The Nuclear Jihandist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (Twelve/Hachette Book Group, 2007) which is an attempt to tell the story of how A.Q. Khan brought nuclear weapons to Pakistan, and several other countries through a nuclear `black market'. One thing that emerges is that Kahn's success was pretty directly a result of US government policies during the Reagan administration.


Is there a book that you would recommend?

From the other end of my historical research, people in Denmark may have a special interest in Adam Mosley's Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the Late Sixteenth-Century (Cambridge, 2007), which I just reviewed for Isis. This is not a book for beginners - but if you want the best current scholarship on a Danish national icon, this book not only gives a detailed view of Tycho and his most important correspondents, it effectively ends several trivial disputes about his work.


Which is the most interesting paper that you have read within the last couple of months?

Bonnie G. Smith, "Gender and the Practices of Scientific History: The Seminar and Archival Research in the Nineteenth Century" The American Historical Review, Vol. 100, No. 4. (Oct., 1995), pp. 1150-1176. I used this in a methods class last fall - it sheds (not always flattering) light on the origins of many research practices we take for granted, such as the graduate seminar, and shows how they are gendered in ways that we need to acknowledge. The section on fetishism and archival research is especially provocative.


Which is the last conference you attended?

In December I attended the PHIS conference at Sandberg, Jutland, and gave a workshop on academic writing with my colleague Ron Schleifer. This is a condensed version of a course we developed in Oklahoma and an effective way to get people started in academic publishing - every year we see more papers we helped actually get into print. The PHIS conference is also a great chance to exchange ideas with Danish students in philosophy, history of science, and history of ideas.


Are there any newsletters or web-activities that you would recommend?

Take a look at the new online journal from graduate students in science studies at the University of Toronto: Spontaneous Generations. Another online launch from the University of Oklahoma may occur later his year, thanks to graduate student John Stewart. I will make sure he sends an announcement to Hugin og Munin!

Which journals would you recommend?

The journals I personally find most useful are Perspectives on Science and Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science. I also have high hopes for Centaurus.


Give an example of a key issue in your research area:

Empirical studies reveal two important classes of concepts, commonly called object concepts and event concepts (a better name for the latter might be `process concepts'). An example of an object concept is `planet' and example of an event concept is `orbit'. The attributes of an object concept have values that are constant over time; the attributes of an event concept have values that vary over time. When a system of object concepts is replaced by another system of object concepts the result is often a scientific revolution. When a system of object concepts is replaced by a system of event concepts the result is much more dramatic kind of revolution. Brahe used object concepts; Kepler used event concepts.


Give an example of a common misunderstanding in your research area:

The most pervasive misunderstanding I know is the belief that concepts should be specified by necessary and sufficient conditions. There are simple and devastating empirical objections to this view. We need to rethink most intellectual activities to avoid this trap.


Would you accept a ten-day trip to the Moon?

Well, I would love to go, but I could never justify someone spending that much money on getting me to the moon rather than doing something useful on earth. Now, if there was a really cheap, ecologically sound method of getting to the moon, it would be a different story…


Do you have a hero?

George Orwell for writing; Ludwig Wittgenstein for thinking; Thurgood Marshall for living.


To whom will you relay the list of questions?

Peter C. Kjaergaard, History of Ideas, Aarhus University