BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//History and Philosophy of Science Events - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for History and Philosophy of Science Events
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:Australia/Sydney
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+1100
TZOFFSETTO:+1000
TZNAME:AEST
DTSTART:20240406T160000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+1000
TZOFFSETTO:+1100
TZNAME:AEDT
DTSTART:20241005T160000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+1100
TZOFFSETTO:+1000
TZNAME:AEST
DTSTART:20250405T160000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+1000
TZOFFSETTO:+1100
TZNAME:AEDT
DTSTART:20251004T160000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+1100
TZOFFSETTO:+1000
TZNAME:AEST
DTSTART:20260404T160000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:+1000
TZOFFSETTO:+1100
TZNAME:AEDT
DTSTART:20261003T160000
END:DAYLIGHT
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:UTC
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZOFFSETTO:+0000
TZNAME:UTC
DTSTART:20240101T000000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20250901T173000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20250901T183000
DTSTAMP:20260428T002441
CREATED:20250808T011912Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250827T063206Z
UID:104-1756747800-1756751400@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:A Cultural History of the Vagus Nerve
DESCRIPTION:Abstract \nFrom the Latin vagus\, meaning wanderer or vagrant\, the vagus nerve – also known as the vagal nerve – is the tenth cranial nerve. The vagus nerve is a pair of nerves that acts as a key connector of brain\, heart\, lungs\, and abdominal organs. It is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system\, as well as a central part of the microbiome-gut-brain axis. The nerve has emerged as an object of fascination in recent years. The production of discourses on this nerve extends from scores of self-help books that promise to help readers ‘activate’\, ‘unleash’\, and ‘soothe’ the vagus nerve\, to wellness accounts on social media that aim to coach users through exercises and movements that can reset and balance the vagus nerve\, and online media articles on the possibilities of the nerve. Achieving mental wellness or mental balance is positioned as a significant capability of the vagus nerve. However\, despite its importance in the medical practice and its circulation in popular culture\, less is known about the vagus nerve’s trajectories in medical and health history. This paper aims to sketch a cultural history of the vagus nerve and its connections to mental health. It draws on a range of archival and popular sources to critically examine the recent interest in the vagus nerve and its implications for understandings of mental health. \nSpeaker \nJacinthe Flore is a Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne\, where she also leads the Medical Humanities Research Lab.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/a-cultural-history-of-the-vagus-nerve/
LOCATION:Michael Spence Building\, F23\,Level 5\, Room 501\, University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
ORGANIZER;CN="School of History and Philosophy of Science":MAILTO:hps.admin@sydney.edu.au
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250908T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250908T183000
DTSTAMP:20260428T002441
CREATED:20250903T052548Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250903T053045Z
UID:122-1757352600-1757356200@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:Weaving Genetics with Silk in Japan - Lisa Onaga
DESCRIPTION:Abstract \nWhen the history of raw silk is traced by following the thread of commodity formation and trade\, our capacity to fully grasp the interactions among the insects\, plants\, and humans responsible for silk-making can become limited. The enormous economic significance of export-bound raw silk manufactured and directly traded from Japan mainly to US American consumers since the mid-1800s until its peak in the 1930s is a case in point. The volume of raw silk unraveled from the cocoons of silk moths had peaked just before the Pacific War to over 40\,000 tonnes per year (around 400 times the mass of a blue whale!). On the one hand\, the low barrier to participation in sericulture—cocoon cultivation––spurred this scale of production in Japan\, which enabled experts\, bureaucrats\, and industry leaders to organize an unruly multiplicity of cocoon-spinners strains and nationally reform sericultural practices. On the other hand\, another negotation was taking place at the site of cocoon-spinners’ bodies. In this talk\, I highlight key scientific and technological developments that took place as biologists and sericulturists strove to control the reproduction and diversity of kaiko (蚕 / Bombyx mori) at every stage of their metamorphosis—egg\, larvae\, pupae\, moth. Tracing how sericulturists and scientists sought to improve the material properties of cocoons and silk\, and importantly\, the means to rear kaiko more than once a year\, sheds light upon the new forms of value ascribed to cocoon spinners’ hereditary information. Archival materials and scientific papers are analyzed in this reconstruction of the institutional development of genetic research in Japan\, enabled through attentiveness to a range of sericultural improvement efforts. Ultimately\, diverse forms of kaiko represented more than problems to solve; they had become tools and above all\, biological resources for the archipelagic nation to protect. \nSpeaker \nLisa Onaga is a Senior Research Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science\, where she leads the “Proteins and Fibers: Scaffolding History with Molecular Signatures” Working Group.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/weaving-genetics-with-silk-in-japan-lisa-onaga/
LOCATION:Michael Spence Building\, F23\,Level 5\, Room 501\, University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
ORGANIZER;CN="School of History and Philosophy of Science":MAILTO:hps.admin@sydney.edu.au
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20250915T170000
DTEND;TZID=Australia/Sydney:20250915T180000
DTSTAMP:20260428T002441
CREATED:20250804T014709Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250909T231204Z
UID:97-1757955600-1757959200@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:If peer review is broken\, what can fix it? Some suggestions from the repliCATS project (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science) - Prof Fiona Fidler
DESCRIPTION:Abstract \nIn many scientific fields\, post-publication surveys of the literature find that peer reviewers routinely overlook methodological flaws and statistical errors\, avoid reporting suspected instances of fraud\, and commonly reach a level of agreement barely exceeding what would be expected by chance. Other studies expose the extent of gender bias in peer review\, and questionable editorial protocols that lack transparency. Anecdotally\, editors also report increasingly difficulty in recruiting reviewers. What can be done about these well-known problems? This talk proposes an alternative model of peer review\, drawing from expert elicitation\, deliberation and decision-making literature and our experience running the repliCATS project. There is perhaps a limited role for AI in an overhaul of peer review\, but that is not the focus of the talk. \nNow in its seventh year\, the repliCATS project has evaluated over 4\,000 published social science articles across 8 disciplines\, including psychology\, economics\, and education\, as well as hundreds of preprints on PsyArXiv. For each paper\, a diverse group of experts discuss and forecast the likely replicability of the research findings and make a variety of other judgements about the credibility of the evidence presented using a structured deliberation protocol. This talk will present our approach to evaluating research\, and for cases where we have the outcome of actual replication studies\, data about the accuracy of our forecasts. \nSpeaker \nFiona Fidler is Professor and Head of the History & Philosophy of Science (HPS) Program at the University of Melbourne. She is broadly interested in how experts\, especially scientists\, make decisions and change their minds. Her past research has examined how methodological change occurs in different disciplines\, including psychology\, medicine and ecology. She is also interested in methods for eliciting reliable expert judgements to improve decision making\, including peer review decisions. She has been active in establishing the Metascience community in Australia\, and was the founding president of the Association for Interdisciplinary Metaresearch and Open Science (AIMOS). She is co-director of the MetaMelb Research Initiative at the University of Melbourne\, and lead PI of the repliCATS project (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science). \n 
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/if-peer-review-is-broken-what-can-fix-it-some-suggestions-from-the-replicats-project-collaborative-assessments-for-trustworthy-science/
LOCATION:Michael Spence Building\, F23\,Level 5\, Room 501\, University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
ORGANIZER;CN="School of History and Philosophy of Science":MAILTO:hps.admin@sydney.edu.au
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250922T173000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250922T183000
DTSTAMP:20260428T002441
CREATED:20250916T053935Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250916T053943Z
UID:134-1758562200-1758565800@hps-events.sydney.edu.au
SUMMARY:A Defence of Minimal-Rewrite Counterfactuals in the History of Science - Prof Gregory Radick - University of Leeds
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: What if\,  at the 1927 Solvay conference\, the causal interpretation of quantum mechanics had received a more sympathetic hearing?  What if Charles Darwin had died on the Beagle voyage and so had never lived to write On the Origin of Species?  What if the Oxford biologist W. F. R. Weldon hadn’t died of pneumonia in the spring of 1906 but instead lived to finish and publish his Mendelism-challenging book on inheritance?  The might-have-been pasts evoked by such questions are known as “minimal-rewrite counterfactuals\,” because they invite us to suppose that just one element which could plausibly have been different in the actual past was different\, with the consequences of that difference then reasoned through in the light of the evidence of what in fact happened.  In this talk I want to defuse two worries about the preference for minimal-rewrite counterfactuals among the historians of science prepared to “go there.”  The first worry is that there’s no justification for the preference; that is\, there’s no good reason to ignore the wider range of possibilities opened up once one begins asking about alternative pasts.  The second worry is that the preference neutralizes the potential for criticism of present-day science from counterfactual reasoning\, making it inherently conservative. \nBio: Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds.  He has published widely on the history of the modern life and human sciences\,  with books including The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language (2007)\, Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023) and\, as co-editor with the late Jonathan Hodge\, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (2003\, 2nd edition 2009). A former President of the British Society for the History of Science and the International Society for the History\, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology\, he is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Metascience\, which originated in New South Wales.
URL:https://hps-events.sydney.edu.au/event/a-defence-of-minimal-rewrite-counterfactuals-in-the-history-of-science-prof-gregory-radick-university-of-leeds/
LOCATION:Michael Spence Building\, F23\,Level 5\, Room 501\, University of Sydney\, New South Wales\, 2006\, Australia
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR