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 2024
Sept 19th, 2024
Hanson Prize LectureAnn Campbell
Indiana University Bloomington
Ph.D. Candidate in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine
Title: Mechanism, Mountains, and Moral Philosophy: James Hutton, Adam Smith, and the Economy of Nature
Time: 4:00pm
Location: BH 803
October 3rd, 2024
Laura FosterIndiana University Bloomington
Associate Professor of Gender Studies,
Affiliate Faculty of African Studies and Maurer School of Law
Title: Vegetal AI Ethics: Plant Beings, Gendered Relations, and the Governing Of Artificial Intelligence
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: BH 803
October 10th, 2024
Gary EbbsIndiana University Bloomington
Professor of Philosophy
Director of Graduate Studies
Title: Quine on Observation Sentences: A Case Study of the Method of Explication
Time: 4:15 p.m
Location: BH 803
October 31st, 2024
Coffa Distinguished LectureGeorge Reisch
Independent Scholar, Chicago
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00pm
Location: BH 803
November 7th, 2024
Justin WoodIndiana University Bloomington
Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Associate Professor of Informatics
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00pm
Location: BH 803
December 5th, 2024
23-24 Giere Memorial LecturePaul Teller
University of California, Davis
Professor of Philosophy
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: BH 803
Spring 2025
January 16th, 2025
Anthony BeaversEmeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Evansville
Affiliated Faculty, Cognitive Science at Indiana University
Title: Cartesian Incursions into the Philosophy of AI
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: BH 803
February 6th, 2025
Sarah Robins,Associate Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: BH 803
February 27th, 2025
Jessica O' ReilyAssociate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
International Studies
Indiana University Bloomington
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: BH 803
March 13th, 2025
Randall BeerIndiana University
Provost Professor in Luddy School of Informatics and Computing
Provost Professor in the Cognitive Science Program
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00pm
April 3rd, 2025
Claudia SwanWashington University
Mark Steinberg Weil Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 pm
Location: BH 803
April 17, 2025
24-25 Westfall LectureDaniel Margocsy
University of Cambridge
Professor in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00pm
Location: BH 803
April 24th, 2025
24-25 Giere Memorial LectureCarl Craver
Washington University in St. Louis
Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology
Title: TBD
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803
Past Talks
- Spring 2024
Prof. Evan Ragland
Department of History, University of Notre Dame
Title: Bodies, Causes, and Diseases: Toward a History of Premodern Medical Theory and Practice Beyond the Humors
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803February 22, 2024
Caterina Agostini, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Indiana University, Bloomington
Department of History of History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine
Title: Charting the Cosmos: Exploring Galileo’s Correspondence on Astronomy
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803March 7, 2024
(EVENT POSTPONED) Fall 2024
Distinguished Giere Lecture
Paul Teller, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Davis
Title: What I Learned from Ron Giere: Access To the World is Unavoidably Inexact
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803March 28, 2024
George Elliott, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Purdue University Northwest
Title: Saltbox Science: Alchemy, Medicine, and the Household in English Colonial America
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803April 4, 2024
Prof. Julian Reiss
Institute of Philosophy and Scientific Method
Johannes Kepler University
Title: Adversarial Collaboration: Snake Oil or Cure-all?
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803April 10, 2024
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: The Männel is a root; it is said to be called an Alraune.” Mandrake, Money, and Medicine in a Saxon Mining Town
Time: 4:00 p.m
Location: Ballantine Hall 803- 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 803October 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 803October 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 803November 16, 2023
Staša Milojević, Professor, Luddy School of Informatics,
Computing, and Engineering
Indiana University
Title: Science as an engine of progress and the progress of science
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803November 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 803December 7, 2023
Brian Burkhart
Director of Native Nations Center
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Native American Studies Affiliate
University of Oklahoma
Title: Land and Kinship in Indigenous Environmental and Health Sciences
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Ballantine Hall 803- 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 Philosophy. 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 Jikeli, Indiana University, Sycamore Hall 105, 4:00 pm., Title: How to Remember Peenemünde?
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
November 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