Join us for an informal launch of Greg Radick’s new book, Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology! Wednesday 1 November, 5pm, right after our Visiting Speaker Seminar. There will be drinks and snacks.
It will be in the Michael Sadler Building foyer — up the stairs inside the entrance, and turn left — or if you come to the seminar you can just follow the crowd.
The Mangoletsi-Potts Lectures are an annual series of four public lectures aimed at a general academic audience, addressing topics in ‘theoretical philosophy’ broadly construed. The series is funded by the Mangoletsi Trust. Previous speakers have included Sally Haslanger, Christina Van Dyke, Mohan Matten, Rae Langton, Helen Beebee and more.
This year’s lectures will be given by Professor John D Norton, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Pittsburgh, specialising in history and philosophy of science. His theme is ‘The material theory of induction’.
The talks will be delivered in hybrid mode – get in touch with the organiser, Juha Saatsi, for info on how to join.
Monday 27 June, 15:30 – 17:00
The Material Theory of Induction, Introduced
Liberty Building LT (LG.06)
Tuesday 28 June, 10:00 – 11:30
Analogy, Abduction and Simplicity
Liberty Building LT (LG.06)
Tuesday 28 June, 15:30 – 17:00
Why Not Bayes
Liberty Building LT (LG.06)
Wednesday 29 June, 10:00 – 11:30
There is No Complete Calculus of Inductive Inference
Mechanical Engineering LT B (2.37)
21-22 June 2022
A celebration of the career of our wonderful colleague, Professor Steven French, upon his retirement after 40 years at the University of Leeds.
Steven’s students, friends and colleagues from around the world are coming together:
Colin McCullough-Benner (Leeds)
“Exploring the Space Between Semantic and Inferential Accounts of Scientific Representation.”
Otavio Bueno (Miami)
“Structure and Modality: A Modal Way” (Zoom)
James Fraser (Durham)
“On the Epistemology of Infinite Quantum Systems”
James Ladyman (Bristol)
“The Model-Theoretic Approach to Scientific Theories and Ontic Structural Realism”
Peter Vickers (Durham)
“Identifying Future-Proof Science”
Alice Murphy (Munich)
“Agency in an Aesthetics of Science”
Samuel Schindler (Aarhus)
“Predictivism and ad hoc-ness: an empirical study”
Dean Rickles (Sydney)
“On Quantum Existentialism (Zoom)
Kerry McKenzie (San Diego)
“How to do things with structures: on some non-cognitive elements in the work of Steven French”
Anjan Chakravartty (Miami)
“Vikings, Toolboxes, Goldilocks, and Metaphysics: Pragmatist Challenges for Scientific Realism”
Numbers are limited, to register and for more info contact Juha Saatsi J.T.Saatsi@leeds.ac.uk
Professor John Ladbury, from the Leeds Centre for Disease Models, is collaborating with Professor Greg Radick, from the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science, to run an interdisciplinary set of Sadler seminars. The series will explore problems arising from the use of simple models to understand complex diseases, as well as the prospects for new approaches — from the lab to the clinic and beyond — that might help ease these problems.
The meetings will run at the University of Leeds each month throughout this spring and summer. All seminars will take place in hybrid format. If you’d like join, please email Greg Radick, G.M.Radick@leeds.ac.uk.
Wed. 30 March 5 pm: Introductory discussion led by Greg Radick (PRHS) and John Ladbury (Biology), with recommended background reading “From Peas to Disease: Modifier Genes, Network Resilience, and the Genetics of Health,” Jesse D. Riordan and Joseph H. Nadeau, American Journal of Human Genetics 101 (2017), 177-91 (attached)
Wed. 27 April 5 pm: A talk by Colin Johson (Medicine), with brief commentaries by Kal Kalewood (Stanford/PRHS) and Helen Beebee (PRHS)
Wed. 25 May 5 pm: A talk by Ryan Matthew (Medicine) & Heikeo Wurdak, with brief commentary by Ellen Clarke (PRHS)
Wed. 29 June 5 pm: Discussion of seminar-group draft project manifesto
Wed. 27 July 5 pm: TBA
In this blog post, one of our PhD students working on the interdisciplinary ‘Extinction Studies’ project, Danny Davis, reflects on a recent field trip!
After the previous academic year of stringent covid restrictions, the Extinction Studies field trip to Boggle Hole provided a very welcome opportunity for me to finally meet and engage with a cohort of PhD researchers who, although working across very different disciplines, all have similar interests in understanding the ongoing ‘extinction crisis’. From using machine learning to identify endangered birds being sold in the illegal wildlife trade to examining the use of anthropomorphism in English literature, the wide-ranging and fascinating projects being pursued by those within the cohort made for interesting and relevant discussion in relation to my own project in the philosophy of conservation.
The coach journey through the North York Moors and past the seaside town of Whitby, made even more picturesque by the uncharacteristic October sunshine, eventually wound its way down the Yorkshire coast to Boggle Hole. The first day of the field trip was spent ‘rock-pooling’ under the guidance of Ana Cowie of the Yorkshire Wildlife trust. Armed with a classification pamphlet, a net and a bucket, we walked out through the rock pools revealed by the low tide. All sorts of critters were lurking beneath the rocks within the pools – devil crabs with bright red eyes, star fish, hermit crabs, sea anemones and more. Of particular interest was the ‘sea squirt’ which appeared to the untrained eye as little more than slime on a rock, but which Ana informed us was in fact the most closely related animal to humans of all those we had found in the rock pools – it is a vertebrate after all, unlike all the others we had seen – however it eats its own back bone… freaky!
The second day saw a return of more typical Yorkshire weather for our fossil hunting expedition led by Dr Alex Dunhill. A rainy walk along the coastal path and down to Ravenscar led us to encounter perhaps the most staggering sight of the trip – a colony of at least fifty seals frolicking on the beach and in the shallows where the beach meets the sea. After a fair while absorbing this incredible sight we quietly snuck past the occupied beach, careful not to disturb the seals, and began our fossil hunt.
We slowly walked along the beaches in search of the memories of long-extinct creatures that were contained within the rocks. Rocks so soft one could break them with bare hands contained within them imprints of extinction events of unimaginable scale that happened inconceivably long ago. As I chipped away at these rocks I was struck by the fact that human beings are new-comers to the drama of Planet Earth. Seen from this distance, the current extinction crisis appears to fade into insignificance – the planet has been through absolute calamity and catastrophe several times in the past and life has always recovered. The life we had observed in the rock pools yesterday would become the fossils of tomorrow.
As a philosopher, I questioned whether it was possible to attach any normative value to the mass extinctions of the past – were they bad because the planet decreased in biodiversity? Were they good because ultimately they led to human life? Both? Neither? If we can’t attach any normative value to these past mass extinctions, then what makes the current extinction crisis any different? Perhaps it has to do with our own role in the current crisis and the responsibilities this generates. Being face to face with the majestic seals earlier in the day certainly reinforced my sense of solidarity with the more-than-human world – a sense that both the seals and the humans share a collective fate and are irreducibly entangled together in their dependence on the relative stability of the biosphere.
A final evening featuring an unexpectedly intense unicorn-themed board game cemented the group-comradery that had been developing over the past two days. It was a joy to have been a part of the first extinction studies field trip and we all remain excited as to the possibilities of future collaboration that the DTP provides.
HPS Leeds 