(September 25: Carl Mitcham)
"The Philosophical Inadequacy of Engineering"
ABSTRACT: Engineering is a philosophically inadequate profession. This is not to claim that engineering is inadequate insofar as engineers fail to do philosophy. Such a claim might be true but trivial. Why should engineers be philosophers? Instead, the argument is that engineering is caught in a fundamental difficulty that is revealed by philosophical inquiry and thus may be described as philosophical in character. Reflective or critical analysis of engineering reveals that the profession is committed to an end (public safety, health, and welfare) that is not in fact integral to it. This philosophical inadequacy or deficiency leads to misunderstandings and false expectations both within and without the profession. (return)

(October 2: Katherine Brading)
"Objects, Individuals, and Structures: In Search of Fundamental Ontology"
ABSTRACT: Contemporary structural realists are proposing a radical revision of our fundamental ontology: we should eliminate objects and replace them with "structure": the world, in and of itself, is structure. The argument for this ontological version of structural realism begins from an alleged "metaphysical underdetermination" afflicting standard "object-oriented" scientific realism. I think that the argument fails, and I will discuss one reason why (the most interesting one, of course). This discussion focusses our attention on the concepts of object and individual, and on a view of physical objects that, I argue, originated with Newton in his discussion of Descartes on bodies and motion.

There is a positive outcome for structural realists, however, because the resources that the ontic structural realist employs when developing the argument from metaphysical underdetermination can be re-deployed to create a more promising strategy.

The draft papers that I will draw on for my talk can be found at http://www.nd.edu/~kbrading/Research/research.html: the structural realism stuff is in the joint paper with Alex Skiles, and the Descartes/Newton stuff is in 'Newton's law-constitutive approach to bodies: a response to Descartes'. (return)

(October 9: Thomas Mayer)
"Trying Galileo"
ABSTRACT: Galileo did himself in. True, he had help, whether from Paul V and Urban VIII, the Jesuits, the Dominicans, the Congregation of the Index or even the Inquisition, but his fate was still largely his own fault. This talk focuses on his two trials before the Roman Inquisition, first in 1615–16 and again in 1632–33, the second leading to his condemnation for violating an order given in 1616 to abandon the belief that the sun was the center of the universe. Unlike most previous approaches, mine does not assume that the outcome was inevitable. Nor does it assume that philosophical, scientific or even theological issues were necessarily determinative. Instead, it takes a legal and political approach beginning from the fact that Galileo arrogantly rejected a legal way out of his second trial. Since both of his investigations contained lots of legal oddities, examining the Inquisition’s procedures (which have almost been ignored until very recently) leads to a much different picture than the still dominant view that Galileo was a victim of intolerance and superstition. Unfortunately, the Vatican’s recent proposal to reopen the case (including yet another publication of its acts) rests on at least two fundamental misunderstandings of Inquisition procedure: the fact that three cardinals and the pope did not sign Galileo’s sentence is insignificant. Popes never signed sentences and at least some of the cardinals often did not. Some sentences were signed only by the Inquisition’s commissary. Despite Urban’s missing signature, in both trials the pope’s role turns out to be vital. But equally, in both cases Paul and Urban had to at least bend if not break the rules in order to bring Galileo to book. He gave them both plenty of provocation. (return)

(October 16: Joost Vijselaar)
"Psyche and Electricity"
ABSTRACT: The interaction of psychiatry with culture and society at large, as well as with the sciences and technology make a fascinating subject matter for the historian. Ever since electricity became a object of science during the eighteenth century there has been speculation about the role of electricity in the nervous system and the use of electricity for therapeutic purposes in psychiatry. From this perspective I will address three topics: madness and electricity in the 18th century; the importance of electrophysiology and electrotherapy in establishing biological psychiatry and neurology in 19th century Germany and the debate on electroconvulsive therapy during the last decades of the 20th century. (return)

(October 23: Emily Grosholz)
"The Representation of Time: Awareness, Mathematics, and the Puzzle of Asymmetry"
ABSTRACT: We often employ mathematics in science to bypass the accidents of human consciousness, but in representing time, mathematics may not only help physics, but also lead us astray just as surely as the limitations of our own organism. (return)

(October 30: Michel Janssen)
"Inside the Black(body) Box: Jordan on the Wave-Particle Duality of Light"
ABSTRACT: In 1909, Albert Einstein derived a formula for the mean square energy fluctuation in a small subvolume of a box filled with blackbody radiation. This formula is the sum of a wave term and a particle term. In a famous joint paper with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg submitted in late 1925, Pascual Jordan used the new matrix mechanics to show that one recovers both these terms in a simple model of quantized waves. So, contrary to what Einstein had concluded in 1909, the two terms do not require separate wave and particle mechanisms, but arise from a unified dynamical framework. This result not only solved Einstein's puzzle about the wave-particle duality of light, it also provided striking evidence for matrix mechanics, and can be seen as a strong argument for field quantization. After a brief review of Einstein's early work on fluctuations in blackbody radiation, I will present Jordan's result and the curious story of its reception. Rather than being hailed as a major contribution to quantum theory, Jordan's result met mostly with skepticism, even from his co-authors. I will argue that the skeptics were wrong. This talk is based on a joint paper with Anthony Duncan, "Pascual Jordan's resolution of the conundrum of the wave-particle duality of light." Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (2008): 634-666. (return)

(November 6: Panel on IT History )
"Institute of Technology 75th History Project"
ABSTRACT: The Institute of Technology was created in 1935 and will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2010. The IT Dean's office has commissioned an engaging and illustrated book-length of IT's history -- including its notable faculty, alumni, research and teaching. This presentation will give an overview of our research, and present our findings on the distinct aspects of the Institute of Technology. We accent IT's notable achievements in science and engineering, and profile its colorful leaders and faculty members. (return)

(November 13: Jeffrey Yost)
"Programming Enterprise: Women Entrepreneurs in Software and Services, 1965-1990."
ABSTRACT: This talk will begin by postulating that the early predilections and particular trajectories of women's history and business history have contributed to the dearth of historical literature on women entrepreneurs and the complete absence of historical literature on women and entrepreneurship in computing. The core of the talk (based on several case studies) will focus on a hitherto unexplored, but significant segment of the computer services industry—IT independent contractor brokerages—and the critical role of women in launching firms and subsequently leading the primary trade association in this industry (NACCB). In doing so, it will seek to balance the important, nascent historical studies emphasizing educational and workforce barriers to women in computing, with narratives where initial barriers give way to entrepreneurial moments, and the themes of women's agency and leadership come to the fore. (return)

(Wednesday, December 9: Joan Strassman)
"Social Evolution and Behavior in the Microbe Dictyostelium discoideum"
ABSTRACT: The ideal study of behavior, broadly interpreted, weaves a complete story and includes behaviors in natural environments, their evolutionary history, and their genetic and physiological bases. This is much more possible for microbial species than it is for large animals, like wasps or birds. Furthermore, microbes offer the opportunity of independent tests of theories of the evolution of behavior that were developed from work on animals. Protists like the social amoeba Dictyostelium have particular advantages because they are eukaryotes; they lack appreciable levels of horizontal gene transfer, and share many genes with animals. They are easily collected from soil, easily reared in the laboratory, easily frozen away, and have a species-rich phylogeny that varies in social behaviors. Here we examine recent progress in social evolution of Dictyostelium, including genes for behavior, the importance of relatedness, what mutation accumulation experiments tell us, and a genomic perspective. (return)

(December 11: David Queller)
"What Is an Organism?"
ABSTRACT: The organism is the fundamental unit of life and yet there is surprisingly little debate, and even less agreement, about what it is. Following on the realization that new levels of organisms have evolved from groups of lower-level organisms, we propose a social definition. An organism is a biological entity that has very high cooperation among its parts, and very little conflict, and is thus the locus of adaptation. We explore the implications of this view for what we consider to be organisms, and argue its advantages relative to earlier views. (return)