UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies

A two-day conference organised by our good friend (and former PhD student) Hauke Riesch. This is an opportunity to catch up with plenty of friends of the department (old and new!) - and you can even spot one member of STS staff on the programme! Join us for some productive networking and plenty of discussion around topics of common concern. Anyone interested in exploring the connections between philosophy and sociology of science (both broadly construed) is very welcome!

Programme and further information:

This workshop explores the potential productive overlaps between the disciplines of Philosophy and Sociology. With a focus on two disputed domains, relations between the Philosophy of Science and the Sociology of Science and interactions between Bioethics and Sociological approaches to Ethics, we aim at developing conceptual tools to reflect the fruitful interactions between these disciplines.  

Sociology and Philosophy of Science have over the past 40 years lived through a somewhat uneasy relationship. While both areas have often explored topics of similar nature, cross-disciplinary conversations have either been conducted in a confrontational manner or not at all.  In similar vein, these tensions are also a feature of relations between the fields of Bioethics and Sociology. Recent developments in natural sciences such as nanoscience or synthetic biology are opening up new avenues to study complex issues and to make sense of them and enhance our understanding. Philosophy and Sociology of Science and Bioethics can provide conceptual tools, methods of analysis and critical perspectives to these analyses. Traditionally however these fields have been standing apart and have only recently started to interact more strongly. As these scientific fields are by nature increasingly interdisciplinary, a similar challenge can be given to philosophy and sociology of science: Can we identify joint problems and conceptual tools to reflect the new scientific developments in the fields of the biological sciences?

Both philosophy and sociology have a core set of intellectual traditions, background assumptions and methods, and our aim here is to make these explicit and to question to what degree these do and should make a difference to ‘crossing the divides’. Indeed, holding these cross-disciplinary conversations is crucial if we want to avoid one discipline rediscovering the wheels of others.  We also hope that such conversations will enable participants to identify the strengths of each discipline so that particular scientific or ethical problems are investigated in a more co-ordinated and synergistic manner with the disciplinary contributions building on each others’ insights. 

Registration is free – to book your place please contact Hauke Riesch at crossingthedivides@gmail.com by 1st May 2013

Programme:

Monday, 13.5.13

11.30 – 12.00am: Welcome: Hauke Riesch

12.00 – 13.30: Keynote: Sabina Leonelli: What counts as the context of scientific inquiry? Discussant: Erika Mansnerus

13.30 – 14.30: Lunch

14.30 – 15.15: Talk 1: Sarah Davies: Applied philosophy, STS, synthetic biology: Exploring multi-partner interdisciplinarity

15.15 – 15.45: Coffee break

15.45 – 16.30: Talk 2: Brian Rappert: Meeting in the Missing? A ‘Non-’ as a strategic topic for collaboration

16.30 – 17.15: Talk 3: Chiara Ambrosio: Objectivity and visual cultures

17.15 – 17.30: Discussion

20.00: Conference dinner in Central London

Tuesday, 14.5.13

11.-12.30am: Keynote: Hasok Chang: Philosophy of scientific practice: the challenge of the social. Discussant: Hauke Riesch

12.30-13.30: Lunch

13.30-14.15: Talk 1: Angela Filipe: ‘Is ADHD real?’  or how ethnography might bring sociology and the philosophy of medicine together

14.15-15.00: Talk 2: Hauke Riesch: The prevention paradox in popular discourse

15.00-15.30: Coffee break

15.30-16.15: Talk 3: Nathan Emmerich: Rethinking bioethical expertise: From a philosophical to a social theoretical perspective

16.15-17.00: Talk 4 Duncan Wilson: What can history do for bioethics?

17.00-17.15: Closing

This Workshop is funded by the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Strategic Award supporting LABTEC (London and Brighton Translational Ethics Centre).The AMIE strand of LABTEC focuses on methodological and epistemological issues in interdisciplinary and empirical ethics providing opportunities within the LABTEC programme for reflection on the purposes of, and approaches to, studying ethics and, beyond the programme, for fostering networks and building national interdisciplinary ethics capacity through meetings with colleagues from UK and international centres. Two broad and overlapping themes have run through AMIE meetings to date: 1) the possibilities of, and challenges facing, a genuinely interdisciplinary ethics, especially one that takes both empirical and normative concerns seriously; 2) the potential contribution of sociology to the study of ethics.