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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for History and Philosophy of Science Events
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DTSTART:20250101T000000
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260921T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260921T183000
DTSTAMP:20260917T045824Z
CREATED:20260917T045824Z
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SUMMARY:Expanding the Reflex Beyond Nervous Systems: animal preparations\, tropism\, and the presumption of stimulus-response sufficiency - Matthew Sims - Macquarie University
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: Contemporary biologists and philosophers often explain unicellular behaviour in terms of simple stimulus-response mechanisms\, even where it appears to involve memory\, learning\, or context-sensitive evaluation. This talk traces one historical route by which exhaustive explanations in terms of reflex-like behaviour became presumptively available for organisms lacking nervous systems: the animal preparation experiments of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reflex physiology. I reconstruct an inferential pattern\, the animal preparation model (APM)\, from Whytt and Hall’s decapitated preparations through Loeb’s extension of reflex explanation to cnidarians and non-neuronal organisms. Loeb treated the latter as a secondary comparison class\, licensing the conclusion that neuronal structures were dispensable for explaining similar animal behaviour. Jennings’s work on infusoria exposed the presumption underlying this move\, yet a residue of the APM’s logic outlived the experimental practice that generated it. I trace this presumption into contemporary treatments of slime mould navigation\, where organisms lacking nervous systems continue to attract a standing presumption of reflex sufficiency\, one that evidence of flexibility or history-dependence does not by itself defeat. The history of the reflex reveals that stimulus-response explanation is not a neutral methodological starting point\, but carries a historical residue that continues to shape explanations of behaviour. \nBio: Matthew Sims is a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie University\, Sydney\, Australia\, and an affiliate of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. His research lies at the intersection of the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of cognitive science\, with a particular focus on memory and learning\, the evolution of cognition\, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century protozoology. He has conducted extensive research on the protist Physarum polycephalum\, an acellular slime mould\, which was the subject of his first monograph\, published by Cambridge University Press.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/expanding-the-reflex-beyond-nervous-systems-animal-preparations-tropism-and-the-presumption-of-stimulus-response-sufficiency-matthew-sims-macquarie-university/
LOCATION:Madsen Room 331\, Madsen Building F09\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20261012T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20261012T183000
DTSTAMP:20260928T015524Z
CREATED:20260928T015524Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T015524Z
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SUMMARY:Forever young? Biological age testing and the marketing of control - Sara Green (in collaboration with Olivia Spalletta and Emma Gram) - University of Copenhagen
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: Biological age tests are becoming increasingly popular\, promising insights into future health risks and opportunities for slowing ageing. Yet\, despite growing scientific interest in biological age\, there is still no consensus on how it should be measured or validated as a marker of health. This article examines the ethical and social implications of biological age testing through an analysis of commercial marketing\, influencer narratives\, and autoethnographic reflections on taking a biological age test. We argue that biological age is increasingly presented not merely as a proxy for future disease risk but as a health outcome and optimization target in its own right. In doing so\, age testing encourages consumers to pursue further tests\, interventions\, and lifestyle modifications despite limited evidence that a reduction in biological age translates into improved health outcomes. Meanwhile\, the longevity industry contributes to a normative reframing of ageing as an individual responsibility and a condition that should be continuously monitored\, managed\, and ultimately avoided. \nBio: Sara Green is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Section for History and Philosophy of Science\, Department of Science Education\, at the University of Copenhagen\, Denmark. Her research focuses on the epistemic and social implications of personalised models and datafication in science and medicine\, with special focus on precision medicine and consumer medicine.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/forever-young-biological-age-testing-and-the-marketing-of-control-sara-green-in-collaboration-with-olivia-spalletta-and-emma-gram-university-of-copenhagen/
LOCATION:Madsen Room 331\, Madsen Building F09\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20261109T160000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20261109T183000
DTSTAMP:20261021T235837Z
CREATED:20261021T001553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261021T235837Z
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SUMMARY:The Ian Langham Memorial Lecture - Miranda Johnson - The University of Otago
DESCRIPTION:Title: Indigenous knowledge between the global and the planetary \nAbstract: Indigenous knowledge is a burgeoning area of inquiry as well as an object of considerable contestation. In this lecture in honour of Professor Ian Langham\, I take up the challenge of examining the political\, social\, and economic implications of the classification and institutionalization of Indigenous knowledge in recent decades. I will talk primarily about the case of ‘mātauranga Māori’ (Māori knowledge) in Aotearoa New Zealand in the context of recent disputes about its value. I examine how ‘mātauranga Māori’ emerged as a concept in academia in the 1980s. By the early twenty-first century\, it was being re-imagined as valuable for the nation’s ‘knowledge economy’ in an era of neoliberal globalization. In this changing context\, ‘mātauranga Māori’ was depicted as commodifiable and its practitioners were represented as knowledge-workers for the national economy. More recently\, scholars who argue we must rethink the human in an age of planetary disaster have perceived a different value in Indigenous knowledge. I will characterize this as a kind of knowing-in-the-aftermath\, an ethico-epistemic value that is precluded from academic and institutional characterisations of knowledge. \nBio: Miranda is a historian of colonialism and decolonisation\, focusing on issues of settler identity\, race\, indigeneity\, citizenship\, and the politics of writing history. Her research focuses on Anglophone settler societies of the South Pacific and North America. \nHer first book\, The Land is Our History: Indigeneity\, Law and the Settler State (Oxford University Press\, 2016) examined the wide-ranging effects of legal claims of Indigenous peoples in the settler states of New Zealand\, Australia\, and Canada in the late twentieth century. It won the W. K. Hancock Prize in 2018 from the Australian Historical Association. \nShe is currently finishing a book provisionally titled: Redeemer Nation: Myth\, History and the Politics of Indigeneity in a Southern Settler State. This book examines the fraught imaginary of ‘biculturalism’ in Aotearoa New Zealand\, paying particular attention to history-making and changing historical consciousness over the past five decades. \nWith Associate Professor Paerau Warbrick (Te Tumu) she is collating a collection of Māori petitions to the colonial New Zealand and British imperial governments in the nineteenth century. This is funded by a University of Otago Research Grant. \nShe has held prestigious fellowships overseas including a postdoctoral fellowhips with the Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan. She was a tenure-track professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison\, and a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney\, where she maintains a research affiliation. She is past-president of the New Zealand Historical Association. In 2026\, she was awarded the Ian Langham Memorial Prize in History and Philosophy of Science\, University of Sydney\, which honours work that speaks to the political\, social\, and economic implications of scientific change. \nIan Langham (1942-1984) was one of the pioneers of the academic study of HPS in Australia. Ian was an active exponent of the view that historians of science must examine the political\, social and economic implications of scientific change\, and believed it was essential for science students in particular to have their attention directed to these implications in order more fully to understand their own work and career choices. This Memorial Lecture aims to sustain and encourage this particular form of critical inquiry at the University of Sydney. \nReception starts from 4:00pm with light refreshments. \nTalk starts from 5:00pm.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/the-ian-langham-memorial-lecture-miranda-johnson-the-university-of-otago/
LOCATION:Michael Spence Building\, F23\,Level 5\, Room 501\, University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20261111T093000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20261112T150000
DTSTAMP:20261029T035736Z
CREATED:20261029T033102Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261029T035736Z
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SUMMARY:Workshop with Andreas Wagner
DESCRIPTION:[Image: EasyPeasy AI]\nEvolutionary biologist\, Andreas Wagner\, is visiting Sydney for six months. This workshop is an opportunity to hear more about his work and to listen to a variety of related talks by researchers in a range of disciplines. Everyone is welcome to attend all or part of this workshop. \nProgramme \nWednesday\, November 11th \n 9.30: Welcome\, morning tea \n10.00: Andreas Wagner: Fitness landscapes: past\, present\, and future \n11.00: Brett Calcott: A major transition in the generation of variation \n12.00: Lunch (provided) \n13.30: Sara Green: Personalized models in precision oncology: towards a science of and for the individual \n14.30: Rob Lanfear: Do plants evolve differently? \n15.30: Afternoon tea \n16.00: Maureen O’Malley: The evolution of microbiomes \n17.00: Evening plans \nThursday\, November 12th \n 9.30: Morning tea \n10.00: Lindell Bromham: Mutation\, evolution & diversity: the changing role of mutation in evolutionary theory \n11.00: Peter Godfrey-Smith: Commentaries \n12.00: Wrap-up\, lunch excursions\, 1:1 meetings with Andreas Wagner
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/workshop-with-andreas-wagner/
LOCATION:Merewether Building H04\, Lecture room 273 (second floor\, lift access)\, The University of Sydney\, NSW\, 2006\, Australia
CATEGORIES:Workshops
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