Our Colloquium Series features talks by researchers on our campus and beyond. Stop by for the opportunity to learn about current research in the history and philosophy of science and medicine. Presentations are typically followed by questions and discussion.
Colloquium Series
Fall 2023
September 28, 2023
Clare Griffin, Assistant Professor, Department of History and Robert F. Byrnes Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University
Title: War Wounds: Weapons, Wounds, and Russian Imperialism in the Seventeenth and Twenty-First Centuries
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
October 5, 2023
Prof. Dr. Dieter Hoffmann
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany
Title: Farm Hall and the Allies' fear of the German atomic bomb
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
October 26, 2023
2023-24 Coffa Distinguished Lecture
John Norton, Distinguished Professor
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Pittsburgh
Title: The Material Theory of Induction
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall
November 30, 2023
Andrew Goldman, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in Music Theory and Cognitive Science
Department of Music Theory, Jacobs School of Music
Cognitive Science Program, College of Arts and Sciences
Indiana University
Title: Neuroscience in Music Research: Critical Challenges and Contributions
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
Spring 2024
January 25, 2024
Prof. Evan Ragland
Department of History, University of Notre Dame
Title: TBA
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
March 7, 2024
2023-2024 Distinguished Giere Lecture
Paul Teller, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis
Title: TBA
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall
April 4, 2024
Prof. Julian Reiss
Institute of Philosophy and Scientific Method
Johannes Kepler University
Title: TBA
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
April 18, 2024
2023-24 Westfall Distinguished Lecture
Tara Nummedal
John Nickoll Provost's Professor of History
Faculty Director, Center for Digital Scholarship
Brown University
Title: TBA
Time: 4:00 p.m
Location: Ballantine Hall
Past Talks
- Spring 2023
January 26, 2023
Prof. Colin Elliott, Indiana University, Department of History. Title: Rethinking the Antonine Plague
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
February 9, 2023
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FOR THE SAWYER SEMINAR: Prof. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Philosophy Training and Research Unit. Title: Post-Truth Era or New Regime of Veridiction in Technoscience?
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: SSRC Grand Hall, Woodburn Hall 200
March 2, 2023
GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE: Prof. Christopher Pincock, The Ohio State University, Department of Philosophy. Title: A Historicist Defense of Scientific Realism
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
March 23, 2023
SAWYER SEMINAR LECTURE: Prof. Bennett Holman, Associate Profession, Yonsei University, Underwood International College. Title: The New Demarcation Problem
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803April 6, 2023
Dr. Andrea Sullivan-Clarke, University of Windsor, Department of Philososphy. Title: Strategic Ignorance and Three Objections Involving Indigenous Epistemology
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803April 13, 2023
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FOR THE SAWYER SEMINAR: Prof. Margaret Schabas, The University of British Columbia, Department of Philosophy. Title: All But in Name: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Theory of Human Capital.
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
April 20, 2023
WESTFALL LECTURE: Prof. Nick Wilding, Georgia State University, Department of History. Title: Galileo's O: Circular Arguments
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803- Fall 2022
September 2, 2022
JOINT HPSC-PHILOSOPHY LECTURE: Prof. Angela Potochnik, University of Cincinnati, Department of Philosophy and the Center for Public Engagement with Science. Title: Truth and Reality: How to Be a Scientific Realist Without Believing Scientific Theories Are True
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Woodburn Hall 121September 22, 2022
GIERE LECTURE: Prof. Lauren N. Ross, University of California, Irvine, Logic and Philosophy of Science Department. Title: Causal diversity: Capturing distinctions among causation
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803September 27, 2022
COFFA LECTURE: Prof. Alison Wylie, University of British Columbia, Department of Philosophy. Title: Critical Genealogies: Collaborative Archaeology in Settler-colonial Contexts
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: SSRC Grand Hall, Woodburn Hall 200October 13, 2022
Prof. and Chair, James Strick, Franklin and Marshall College, Program in Science, Technology and Society. Title: Sex, Lies and Bookburning: Wilhelm Reich and the US Food and Drug Administration
Time: 4:00 p.m. (talk via Zoom)October 27, 2022
HANSON PRESENTATION: Siyu Yao, Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. Title: Excavation in the Sky: Historical Inference in Astronomy
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803November 3, 2022
Fabrizio Baldassarri, Post-Doc, Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. Title: Of Plants and Books: Pre-Modern Experimentation with Plants from Cesalpino to Grew
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803- Spring 2022
January 27, 2022
HANSON PRESENTATION: Elana Rakoff, Indiana University. Title: Competition and Consensus: The Strange Evolution of Dermatological Nosologies, from Willan and Bateman to von Hebra
Time: 4:00 p.m. (talk via Zoom)February 17, 2022
Prof. Carl Weinberg, Indiana University, Department of History. Title: The K-bomb: Evolution, Anticommunism, and the 1953 Kinsey Report on Female Sexuality
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803February 24, 2022
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FOR THE SAWYER SEMINAR: Prof. Lawrence Principe, Johns Hopkins, Department of History of Science and Technology. Title: Alchemy in the Modern Laboratory
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803March 10, 2022
Prof. John Rudolph, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Title: The Scientific Method in American Science Education
Time: 4:00 p.m. (talk via Zoom)April 4, 2022
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FOR THE SAWYER SEMINAR: Prof. Hasok Chang, University of Cambridge, Department of History and Philosophy of Science. Title: Epistemic Iteration Revisited: The Achievement of Precision in Concepts and Methods
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: SSRC Grand Hall, Woodburn Hall 200April 21, 2022
DISTINGUISHED LECTURE FOR THE SAWYER SEMINAR: Prof. Pamela Smith, Columbia University, Department of History. Title: Craft Practice and Rigor: Experiences and Reflections from the Making and Knowing Project
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: SSRC Grand Hall, Woodburn Hall 200- Fall 2021
September 30, 2021
Prof. Sabina Leonelli, University of Exeter, UK. Title: Can - and should - philosophy help to “open” science?
Time: 3:00 p.m. (talk via Zoom)October 7, 2021
HANSON PRESENTATION: Dan Li, Indiana University. Title: The Case of the Missing Tree Ring Hypothesis
Time: 4:30 p.m.
Location: Lindley Hall 125October 14, 2021
GIERE LECTURE. Prof. Michela Massimi, University of Edinburgh, UK. Title: Perspectival realism, situated knowledge and multiculturalism in science
Time: 12:00 p.m. (talk via Zoom)November 4, 2021
Prof. Elizabeth Schechter, Indiana University, Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science Program. Title: Plurals and plural identity
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 340November 18, 2021
WESTFALL LECTURE. Prof. Christia Mercer, Columbia University, NYC. Title: Empowering History of Science
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803December 2, 2021
Dr. Kate MacCord, Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences & Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA. Title: The Trouble with Germline: Using Integrated History and Philosophy to Explore a Problematic Assumption
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803December 9, 2021
Dr. Riana Betzler, Washington University in St. Louis. Title: The Science and Ethics of Empathy in Medical Practice
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803- Spring 2021
January 28, 2021: Claudia Cristalli, Indiana University, 4:30 pm, Title: The Philosophical Psychology of Charles S. Peirce. On the connection between perception, reason, and the logic of scientific inquiry
February 19, 2021: Professor Laura Franklin-Hall, NYU, 4:00 pm, Title: Genders as Historical Explanatory Kinds
February 25, 2021: Coffa Lecture, Professor Yemima Ben-Menahem, Hebrew University, 12:00 pm, Title: Lawlessness and Reduction
March 11, 2021: Professor Stephen Downes, University of Utah, 4:30 pm, Title: A History of the Heritability Coefficient Applied to Humans
March 18, 2021: Professor John Bickle, Mississippi State University, 4:30 pm, Title: Tinkering in the Lab
March 25, 2021: Professor Melinda Fagan, University of Utah, 4:30 pm, Title: Explanatory Particularism and Interdisciplinary Understanding
Cancelled: April 8, 2021: Westfall Lecture, Professor Christia Mercer, Columbia University, 4:30 pm, Title: TBA
April 15, 2021: Professor Anya Plutynski, Washington University St Louis, 4:30 pm, Title: On Adaptation in Mental Disorders & Somatic Disease: Why Defend a Pluralist View?
April 22, 2021: Professor Janella Baxter, Washington University St Louis, 4:30 pm, Title: Synthetic Biology is Changing Things – Just not in the Way You (Might) Think
April 29, 2021: Dr. Juliette Ferry-Danini, University of Toronto, 4:30 pm, Title: Why you have never heard of the drug Spasfon and what it can tell us about medicine
- Fall 2020
September 10, 2020: Evan Arnet, Indiana University, Title: Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Methodology, and the Origins of Comparative Psychology
September 12, 2020: Becca Jackson, Indiana University, 4:30pm, Title: “The Uncertain Method of Drops”: How a Non-uniform Fluid Unit Survived the Century of Standardization
- Spring 2020
January 23, 2020: Professor Rebecca Lave, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Can we save nature by selling it?
February 20, 2020 : Professor John Huss, University of Akron, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Mass Extinction, Narrative Closure, and Evidence
February 27, 2020 : Professor Stuart Glennan, Butler University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: The Many Mechanisms of Natural Selection
March 5, 2020: Professor Stasa Milojevic, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 p.m., Title: Quantitative Studies of Science
March 12, 2020 : Greg Lusk, Michigan State University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 pm., Title: Data for Users: A Democratic Account of Values in Science
Cancelled: March 30, 2020: Westfall Lecture, Professor Michael Stolberg, University of Würzburg, Hoagy Carmichael Room (Morrison Hall 006), 4:00 p.m., Title: Learned Medical Practice in the Sixteenth Century
Cancelled: April 2, 2020 : Professor Gunther Jikel, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 pm., Title: How to Remember Pennemunde?
Cancelled: April 9, 2020 : Coffa Lecture, Professor Alison Wylie, University of British Columbia, Hoagy Carmichael Room (Morrison Hall 006), 4:00 pm., Title: Complementary History and Philosophy of Science: Histories of Archaeology In and For Practice
- Fall 2019
October 30, 2019: Continuity, Improvement, & Innovation in Experimental Methodology, Professor Hanne Andersen, Professor Uljana Feest, Professor Karin Nickelsen, Professor Raphael School, Professor Jackie Sullivan, Professor Andrea Woody, Woodburn Hall 200, Event Program
To view photos from the workshop click here.
October 26, 2019: Women's Leadership Conference, Professor Helen Longino, Stanford University, Social Science and Research Commons, Event Program.
To view photos from the conference click here.
Themester Talks
October 8, 2020: Professor Kevin Elliott, Michigan State University, Title: The Importance of Open Science for Democracy
October 15, 2020: Professor Andrew Schroeder, Claremont McKenna College, Title: The Limits of Democratizing Science.of Democratizing Science: When Scientists Should Ignore the Public
Novemeber 12, 2020 : Professor Ann Keller, UC Berkley, Title: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together: Public Health Regulation and the Conservative Turn Against Federally Supported Science
Click To View Talks From The 2018-2019 Academic Year