Occasional public seminars (2019-2020)
5th november 2019
lorraine daston
Annihilating Time: The Coup d’Oeil and the Limits of Narrative
lorraine daston
Annihilating Time: The Coup d’Oeil and the Limits of Narrative
We are pleased to announce that the Narrative Science project will be hosting Prof. Lorraine Daston on November the 5th. Her talk, 'Annihilating Time: The Coup d’Oeil and the Limits of Narrative', will begin at 16:30 and conclude by 17:45. A reception will follow her talk and all attendees are invited.
The reception is sponsored by a British Academy engagement award, and is the final dissemination event for the 'Narrative Science in Techno-Environments' network.
In order to maintain an idea of numbers, we ask you to please register, by writing to Dr. Dominic Berry before the 30th of October. Location details will be shared nearer the time. d.j.berry@lse.ac.uk
The reception is sponsored by a British Academy engagement award, and is the final dissemination event for the 'Narrative Science in Techno-Environments' network.
In order to maintain an idea of numbers, we ask you to please register, by writing to Dr. Dominic Berry before the 30th of October. Location details will be shared nearer the time. d.j.berry@lse.ac.uk
Term 3 (APR-JUN 2019)
30th April 2019
Neil Tarrant
The Roman Index and Arnald of Villanova: The Rejection of Albert the Great’s Astrology
Heike Hartung
Longevity Narratives: From Life Span Optimism to Statistical Panic
Neil Tarrant
The Roman Index and Arnald of Villanova: The Rejection of Albert the Great’s Astrology
Heike Hartung
Longevity Narratives: From Life Span Optimism to Statistical Panic
Neil Tarrant (University of York)
The Roman Index and Arnald of Villanova: The Rejection of Albert the Great’s Astrology
Christians contested the orthodoxy of astrological talismans between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The debate hinged on whether or not talismans could produce their effects naturally. These claims about the natural world were rarely tested empirically, however. Arguments for and against the orthodoxy of talismans depended on a philosopher or theologian’s ability to mobilise philosophical and theological opinions -- in effect, their ability to construct a convincing narrative – to defend their conception of the natural order, and by extension the orthodoxy of this set of magical practices. In this paper, I explore these issues by taking the example of the censorship of Arnald of Villanova’s works in sixteenth-century Italy.
Heike Hartung (University of Potsdam)
Longevity Narratives: From Life Span Optimism to Statistical Panic
In order to situate my talk historically, I will give a brief overview of the development of longevity discourse, beginning with the Enlightenment’s optimism to eventually overcome old age. Next, I will trace the emergence of statistics in the nineteenth century with its impact on the life course, developing concepts such as „life expectancy“ and the „life span“. Introducing a cultural comparative perspective, I will analyse two narrative case studies of longevity published in the early twentieth century, the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall's Senescence (1922) and the British dramatist Bernard Shaw's play cycle Back to Methuselah (1921). The analysis illustrates that evolutionary and cultural perspectives on ageing and longevity are ambivalent and problematic, providing the ground for what Kathleen Woodward has termed „statistical panic“ (2009). In Hall’s and Shaw’s texts this is related to a crisis narrative of culture and civilization against which both writers place their specific solutions of individual and species longevity. Whereas Hall employs autobiographical accounts of artists as examples of longevity to strengthen his argument about wise old men as exclusive repositories of knowledge, Shaw in his vision of longevity as an extended form of midlife for both genders encounters the limits of age representation.
The Roman Index and Arnald of Villanova: The Rejection of Albert the Great’s Astrology
Christians contested the orthodoxy of astrological talismans between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The debate hinged on whether or not talismans could produce their effects naturally. These claims about the natural world were rarely tested empirically, however. Arguments for and against the orthodoxy of talismans depended on a philosopher or theologian’s ability to mobilise philosophical and theological opinions -- in effect, their ability to construct a convincing narrative – to defend their conception of the natural order, and by extension the orthodoxy of this set of magical practices. In this paper, I explore these issues by taking the example of the censorship of Arnald of Villanova’s works in sixteenth-century Italy.
Heike Hartung (University of Potsdam)
Longevity Narratives: From Life Span Optimism to Statistical Panic
In order to situate my talk historically, I will give a brief overview of the development of longevity discourse, beginning with the Enlightenment’s optimism to eventually overcome old age. Next, I will trace the emergence of statistics in the nineteenth century with its impact on the life course, developing concepts such as „life expectancy“ and the „life span“. Introducing a cultural comparative perspective, I will analyse two narrative case studies of longevity published in the early twentieth century, the American psychologist G. Stanley Hall's Senescence (1922) and the British dramatist Bernard Shaw's play cycle Back to Methuselah (1921). The analysis illustrates that evolutionary and cultural perspectives on ageing and longevity are ambivalent and problematic, providing the ground for what Kathleen Woodward has termed „statistical panic“ (2009). In Hall’s and Shaw’s texts this is related to a crisis narrative of culture and civilization against which both writers place their specific solutions of individual and species longevity. Whereas Hall employs autobiographical accounts of artists as examples of longevity to strengthen his argument about wise old men as exclusive repositories of knowledge, Shaw in his vision of longevity as an extended form of midlife for both genders encounters the limits of age representation.
14th may 2019
Sally Horrocks and Paul Merchant
Scientists’ narratives in An Oral History of British Science
Sarah Dillon
“The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers”: Weizenbaum, Pygmalion and the Implications of Gendering AI
Sally Horrocks and Paul Merchant
Scientists’ narratives in An Oral History of British Science
Sarah Dillon
“The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers”: Weizenbaum, Pygmalion and the Implications of Gendering AI
Sally Horrocks (University of Leicester) and Paul Merchant (British Library)
Scientists’ narratives in An Oral History of British Science
This paper is concerned with the ways in which scientists narrate their lives and work when given the opportunity to do so in extended ‘life story’ oral history interviews. It focuses on the collection ‘An Oral History of British Science’, led by National Life Stories at the British Library. We briefly indicate the range of ways in which narrative is used by scientists in the collection, including the use of ‘coherence structures’ in accounts of childhood and career choice and ‘genre conventions’ in stories of career highs and lows. We then focus on the use of narrative in one particular type of interview material – descriptions of scientific work in the laboratory and field. Drawing on examples from the physical earth sciences and biology, we explore the narratives that scientists themselves use when describing the detail of their scientific work
Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)
“The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers”: Weizenbaum, Pygmalion and the Implications of Gendering AI
Preface 4 of Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models and the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought (1995) is entitled ‘The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers’. Hofstadter defines the Eliza effect as an ‘illusion’, ‘which could be defined as the susceptibility of people to read far more understanding than is warranted into strings of symbols – especially words – strung together by computers’ (157). More widely, the Eliza effect in computer science names our tendency to unconsciously assume that computer behaviours are analogous to human behaviours, with a consequent effect on our perception of their ontological status. Hofstadter considers this dangerous in its effects because it misrepresents the capacities and capabilities of the research, and the technologies it creates. ‘The operational term here is’, he says, ‘hype’, but with an interesting caveat, ‘and yet it is,’ he repeatedly says, ‘inadvertent’ (167). He acknowledges that it benefits the researchers, but he describes it as merely an ‘overly charitable way of characterizing what has happened’ (157). For Hofstadter, the Eliza effect is not mal-intentioned, but ‘like a tenacious virus that constantly mutates,’ he says, it ‘seems to crop up over and over again in AI in ever-fresh disguises, and in subtler and subtler forms’ (158). Hofstadter identifies this phenomenon, but he is doing so as a scientist, in relation to its consequence for scientists and scientific research. What he does not do is think about the social and ethical consequences of the Eliza effect, and about the role of rhetoric in triggering it. In this paper, I explore the Eliza effect in this regard, from a feminist and a literary perspective. The Eliza effect gets its name from the responses to Joseph Weizenbaum’s first natural language processing software, ELIZA, which he named after the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1913). Understanding ELIZA’s historical and literary origin stories highlights the role of gendering in triggering the Eliza effect, and its feminist dangers. This literary historical case-study can then inform contemporary debate regarding, for instance, the societal harm of the gendering of virtual personal assistants, in particular in relation to such social consequences as the objectification of women, and the replication of gendered models of power and subservience. More broadly, the paper demonstrates the role that literary narratives play in shaping the development, reception and impact of science and technology.
Scientists’ narratives in An Oral History of British Science
This paper is concerned with the ways in which scientists narrate their lives and work when given the opportunity to do so in extended ‘life story’ oral history interviews. It focuses on the collection ‘An Oral History of British Science’, led by National Life Stories at the British Library. We briefly indicate the range of ways in which narrative is used by scientists in the collection, including the use of ‘coherence structures’ in accounts of childhood and career choice and ‘genre conventions’ in stories of career highs and lows. We then focus on the use of narrative in one particular type of interview material – descriptions of scientific work in the laboratory and field. Drawing on examples from the physical earth sciences and biology, we explore the narratives that scientists themselves use when describing the detail of their scientific work
Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)
“The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers”: Weizenbaum, Pygmalion and the Implications of Gendering AI
Preface 4 of Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models and the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought (1995) is entitled ‘The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers’. Hofstadter defines the Eliza effect as an ‘illusion’, ‘which could be defined as the susceptibility of people to read far more understanding than is warranted into strings of symbols – especially words – strung together by computers’ (157). More widely, the Eliza effect in computer science names our tendency to unconsciously assume that computer behaviours are analogous to human behaviours, with a consequent effect on our perception of their ontological status. Hofstadter considers this dangerous in its effects because it misrepresents the capacities and capabilities of the research, and the technologies it creates. ‘The operational term here is’, he says, ‘hype’, but with an interesting caveat, ‘and yet it is,’ he repeatedly says, ‘inadvertent’ (167). He acknowledges that it benefits the researchers, but he describes it as merely an ‘overly charitable way of characterizing what has happened’ (157). For Hofstadter, the Eliza effect is not mal-intentioned, but ‘like a tenacious virus that constantly mutates,’ he says, it ‘seems to crop up over and over again in AI in ever-fresh disguises, and in subtler and subtler forms’ (158). Hofstadter identifies this phenomenon, but he is doing so as a scientist, in relation to its consequence for scientists and scientific research. What he does not do is think about the social and ethical consequences of the Eliza effect, and about the role of rhetoric in triggering it. In this paper, I explore the Eliza effect in this regard, from a feminist and a literary perspective. The Eliza effect gets its name from the responses to Joseph Weizenbaum’s first natural language processing software, ELIZA, which he named after the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (1913). Understanding ELIZA’s historical and literary origin stories highlights the role of gendering in triggering the Eliza effect, and its feminist dangers. This literary historical case-study can then inform contemporary debate regarding, for instance, the societal harm of the gendering of virtual personal assistants, in particular in relation to such social consequences as the objectification of women, and the replication of gendered models of power and subservience. More broadly, the paper demonstrates the role that literary narratives play in shaping the development, reception and impact of science and technology.
28th may 2019
Emily Hayes
Fashioned in the light of physics: the scope and methods of Halford Mackinder's geography
Dominic j. berry
Biological engineering as genre
Emily Hayes
Fashioned in the light of physics: the scope and methods of Halford Mackinder's geography
Dominic j. berry
Biological engineering as genre
Emily Hayes (Oxford Brookes University)
Fashioned in the light of physics: the scope and methods of Halford Mackinder's geography
From Walter Benjamin to recent narratives of the history of science, scholars have foregrounded the structuring element of time and temporal perception. Moreover, even as their investigations draw inspiration from iconography and visual studies, the majority focus on a range of published texts (Benjamin, Eiland et al 2002; Morgan 2014, 2017; Morgan and Norton Wise 2017). Seeking to re-orient narrative science studies, my paper focuses on space and on insights drawn from the discipline most attentive to space, geography. Developing recent research in historical geography, my paper elucidates how space actively shapes narratives, and their voicing, silencing and reception (Livingstone 2005; Withers, Finnegan, Higgitt, 2006; Naylor 2010; Finnegan 2016). My case study examines the influence of the Royal Institution Professor of Natural Philosophy, John Tyndall (1820-1893) upon Halford Mackinder's (1861-1947) geographical knowledge-making practices, the latter’s story of his own journey to geography and his perception of the discipline’s position within a wider scheme of science. Turning away from textual epistemological traditions, I consider instead oral practices and the verbal narration of knowledge in popular lectures (Kearns 1997; Driver 1998, 2001 & 2013; Keighren 2010; Withers 2013; Keighren and Withers 2015; Henderson 2013; Anderson 2019). Finally, by expanding existing histories of geographical instruments and methodological practices, I elucidate how overlooked technologies such as the magic lantern actively fashioned the narration of scientific knowledge as well as what actually constituted scientific and geographical knowledge in the final decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century (Cosgrove 2005 & 2012; Ryan 1997 & 2005; Withers 2013; MacDonald and Withers 2015; Wess and Withers 2018).
Dominic J. Berry (LSE)
Biological engineering as genre
Synthetic biology, and molecular biology before it, prompted questions about their status as either real and substantive, or fleeting and undefinable. There is something about the emergence of these fields that scientists, science communicators, and their historical, philosophical, and social analysts, have often treated as out of the ordinary in comparison to the sciences as a whole. Molecular biology was often taken to be a synonym or antonym for biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, and so on. Synthetic biology as molecular biology, or genetic engineering, or biotech, and so on. In this paper I argue that such fields become far easier to understand if we successfully decentre disciplinarity in the history of science. Of course disciplines matter, but as is routinely pointed out, treating them as the primary structural component that histories of science describe, or rely on, causes significant problems in terms of the assumptions made about epistemology, what constitutes success, who is contributing to sciences, and so on.
One way to achieve a decentring of disciplines, is to approach the development of science in the same way as literary theorists approach the development of genre. In so doing, we can better appreciate how fields are built around shared questions, how growth in one area can feedback on and suggest further proliferating paths in entirely different ones, and the ways in which scientists and sciences regularly define themselves in relation to other scientists and sciences. Using as an example the case of biological engineering, which mixes actors categories with my own analytical ones, I survey the making of biological engineering throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The primary source materials are issues of New Scientist, but these are to be used as a guide to the space of biological engineering, rather than as charting its history. At least, not in isolation of everything else we might draw on in writing histories of the subject.
Fashioned in the light of physics: the scope and methods of Halford Mackinder's geography
From Walter Benjamin to recent narratives of the history of science, scholars have foregrounded the structuring element of time and temporal perception. Moreover, even as their investigations draw inspiration from iconography and visual studies, the majority focus on a range of published texts (Benjamin, Eiland et al 2002; Morgan 2014, 2017; Morgan and Norton Wise 2017). Seeking to re-orient narrative science studies, my paper focuses on space and on insights drawn from the discipline most attentive to space, geography. Developing recent research in historical geography, my paper elucidates how space actively shapes narratives, and their voicing, silencing and reception (Livingstone 2005; Withers, Finnegan, Higgitt, 2006; Naylor 2010; Finnegan 2016). My case study examines the influence of the Royal Institution Professor of Natural Philosophy, John Tyndall (1820-1893) upon Halford Mackinder's (1861-1947) geographical knowledge-making practices, the latter’s story of his own journey to geography and his perception of the discipline’s position within a wider scheme of science. Turning away from textual epistemological traditions, I consider instead oral practices and the verbal narration of knowledge in popular lectures (Kearns 1997; Driver 1998, 2001 & 2013; Keighren 2010; Withers 2013; Keighren and Withers 2015; Henderson 2013; Anderson 2019). Finally, by expanding existing histories of geographical instruments and methodological practices, I elucidate how overlooked technologies such as the magic lantern actively fashioned the narration of scientific knowledge as well as what actually constituted scientific and geographical knowledge in the final decades of the nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century (Cosgrove 2005 & 2012; Ryan 1997 & 2005; Withers 2013; MacDonald and Withers 2015; Wess and Withers 2018).
Dominic J. Berry (LSE)
Biological engineering as genre
Synthetic biology, and molecular biology before it, prompted questions about their status as either real and substantive, or fleeting and undefinable. There is something about the emergence of these fields that scientists, science communicators, and their historical, philosophical, and social analysts, have often treated as out of the ordinary in comparison to the sciences as a whole. Molecular biology was often taken to be a synonym or antonym for biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, and so on. Synthetic biology as molecular biology, or genetic engineering, or biotech, and so on. In this paper I argue that such fields become far easier to understand if we successfully decentre disciplinarity in the history of science. Of course disciplines matter, but as is routinely pointed out, treating them as the primary structural component that histories of science describe, or rely on, causes significant problems in terms of the assumptions made about epistemology, what constitutes success, who is contributing to sciences, and so on.
One way to achieve a decentring of disciplines, is to approach the development of science in the same way as literary theorists approach the development of genre. In so doing, we can better appreciate how fields are built around shared questions, how growth in one area can feedback on and suggest further proliferating paths in entirely different ones, and the ways in which scientists and sciences regularly define themselves in relation to other scientists and sciences. Using as an example the case of biological engineering, which mixes actors categories with my own analytical ones, I survey the making of biological engineering throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The primary source materials are issues of New Scientist, but these are to be used as a guide to the space of biological engineering, rather than as charting its history. At least, not in isolation of everything else we might draw on in writing histories of the subject.
18th june 2019
Veronika Lipphardt
Ethnicizing isolation: How narratives guide genetic investigations of (vulnerable) human populations
Will Tattersdill
What if dinosaurs survived? Or, reading alternate natural history in science fiction and non-fiction of the late twentieth century
Veronika Lipphardt
Ethnicizing isolation: How narratives guide genetic investigations of (vulnerable) human populations
Will Tattersdill
What if dinosaurs survived? Or, reading alternate natural history in science fiction and non-fiction of the late twentieth century
Please note that this seminar takes place in PAR.1.02 (Parish Hall, LSE), which can be found on this map, on Sheffield St.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-information/campus-map
Veronika Lipphardt (University College Freiburg)
Ethnicizing isolation: How narratives guide genetic investigations of (vulnerable) human populations
This paper aims to demonstrate how genetic studies of human populations use narratives at different points of argumentation, in different ways, and with different functions, so that genetic data can be presented as convincing evidence. I will draw on two examples of human populations that have been studied by geneticists in recent years: Europeans and Roma. Most human population genetic studies attempt a historical explanation for a particular case of human genetic diversity; hence the field has sometimes been called "Genetic History“. Its protagonists claim to deliver the scientifically most sound and reliable account of history by employing methods and approaches from the natural sciences. This field of research thus provides rich grounds for analysing multiple and complexely intertwined appearances of narrative in science. A specific focus will be laid on how even in seemingly technical aspects of sampling reference populations and curating DNA data, narratives and implicit understandings of history guide the decisions and practises of researchers. Human population geneticists aspire to a version of history that connects mechanical explanations (such as isolation, migration or distance) with selected historical data. In the case of vulnerable populations, I will argue, this narrative mode can pose a threat for societal integration.
Will Tattersdill (University of Birmingham)
What if dinosaurs survived? Or, reading alternate natural history in science fiction and non-fiction of the late twentieth century
In common parlance, to be a ‘dinosaur’ is to be extinct, outmoded, ossified, useless. There is considerable irony in this, not just because the 175 million year success story of dinosaur evolution seems certain vastly to exceed the length of human tenure on this planet (200,000 years and counting), but also because even the briefest of forays into popular culture teaches us that the dinosaur is not dead but thriving. For W. J. T. Mitchell, dinosaurs are the “totem animals of modernity”, wedded by turns to iconic developments in nineteenth and twentieth century culture: public museums, skyscrapers, and the Hollywood blockbuster. We may think dinosaurs dead, but we daily imbue them with a new and powerful vitality.
Perhaps owing to the tension between the very real senses in which dinosaurs are present and absent, they have found themselves the subjects of science fiction for well over a century. Much of this science fiction brings dinosaurs and humans into contact with each other, whether by time travel (as in Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ (1952)), gene sequencing (as in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)), or space travel (as in Anne McCaffrey’s Dinosaur Planet (1978)). A significant subset of this fiction, however, restores the dinosaurs in a different way: by cancelling the asteroid-induced apocalypse which wiped most of them out 66 million years ago. For these alternate natural histories, the dinosaur becomes a figure for an entirely different kind of past - one which is still present, and one in which humanity is apparently greatly diminished (if present at all). In this talk, I'll invite us to think about what the dinosaur can teach us about alternate history, the history of science, and historicism itself.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-information/campus-map
Veronika Lipphardt (University College Freiburg)
Ethnicizing isolation: How narratives guide genetic investigations of (vulnerable) human populations
This paper aims to demonstrate how genetic studies of human populations use narratives at different points of argumentation, in different ways, and with different functions, so that genetic data can be presented as convincing evidence. I will draw on two examples of human populations that have been studied by geneticists in recent years: Europeans and Roma. Most human population genetic studies attempt a historical explanation for a particular case of human genetic diversity; hence the field has sometimes been called "Genetic History“. Its protagonists claim to deliver the scientifically most sound and reliable account of history by employing methods and approaches from the natural sciences. This field of research thus provides rich grounds for analysing multiple and complexely intertwined appearances of narrative in science. A specific focus will be laid on how even in seemingly technical aspects of sampling reference populations and curating DNA data, narratives and implicit understandings of history guide the decisions and practises of researchers. Human population geneticists aspire to a version of history that connects mechanical explanations (such as isolation, migration or distance) with selected historical data. In the case of vulnerable populations, I will argue, this narrative mode can pose a threat for societal integration.
Will Tattersdill (University of Birmingham)
What if dinosaurs survived? Or, reading alternate natural history in science fiction and non-fiction of the late twentieth century
In common parlance, to be a ‘dinosaur’ is to be extinct, outmoded, ossified, useless. There is considerable irony in this, not just because the 175 million year success story of dinosaur evolution seems certain vastly to exceed the length of human tenure on this planet (200,000 years and counting), but also because even the briefest of forays into popular culture teaches us that the dinosaur is not dead but thriving. For W. J. T. Mitchell, dinosaurs are the “totem animals of modernity”, wedded by turns to iconic developments in nineteenth and twentieth century culture: public museums, skyscrapers, and the Hollywood blockbuster. We may think dinosaurs dead, but we daily imbue them with a new and powerful vitality.
Perhaps owing to the tension between the very real senses in which dinosaurs are present and absent, they have found themselves the subjects of science fiction for well over a century. Much of this science fiction brings dinosaurs and humans into contact with each other, whether by time travel (as in Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’ (1952)), gene sequencing (as in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park (1990)), or space travel (as in Anne McCaffrey’s Dinosaur Planet (1978)). A significant subset of this fiction, however, restores the dinosaurs in a different way: by cancelling the asteroid-induced apocalypse which wiped most of them out 66 million years ago. For these alternate natural histories, the dinosaur becomes a figure for an entirely different kind of past - one which is still present, and one in which humanity is apparently greatly diminished (if present at all). In this talk, I'll invite us to think about what the dinosaur can teach us about alternate history, the history of science, and historicism itself.
Term 1 (oct-dec 2018)9th October 2018
Sally atkinson Fragile cultures and unruly matters: narrating microbial lives in synthetic biology knowledge practices Elisa vecchione The political necessity of a more poetic science: the case of climate-economic narratives BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Sally Atkinson (University of Exeter) Fragile cultures and unruly matters: narrating microbial lives in synthetic biology knowledge practices In this paper I describe the pluralistic and mutable roles attributed to and enacted by microbes in the process of microbial engineering for bioproduction. Examining the tension between live cultures as bio-objects and bio-actants, I explore how such roles reveal and shape scientific practice and emerging knowledge in an industry-academic synthetic biology collaboration. Elisa Vecchione (Group of Pragmatic and Reflexive Sociology, EHESS, Paris) The political necessity of a more poetic science: the case of climate-economic narratives This presentation enquires into the possibility of applying narrative analysis to the construction, validation and use of scenarios of climate change. The inquiry is motivated by a methodological concern relating to uncertainty management within scenario modelling; and a democratic concern of having models transparent and accountable. It takes its premises from two ideas pertinent to scenario modelling: the idea that scenarios are ‘storylines’ of the future, as officially employed by the IPCC; and the idea that the complexity of the modelled systems confers them ‘historical’ properties of retrodiction. In order to harness the narrative and historical properties of scenario modelling for both science and policy, I will build on Hayden White’s theory of history and narrativity and explore the methodological and democratic benefits of intending the modeller as a ‘storyteller of the future’. 6th November 2018
Julia Sánchez-Dorado and Claudia Cristalli Colligation in model analysis: from Whewell’s tides to the San Francisco Bay Model mARY mORGAN Simultaneous Discovery or Competing Concepts? Economists's Notions of Utility in the Late 19th Century BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Unfortunately due to personal events Dr. Veronika Lipphardt will not be able to join us this week, we are working to find an alternative date for her presentation. Instead we are very pleased to feature work from Prof. Mary Morgan. Julia Sánchez-Dorado (UCL) and Claudia Cristalli (UCL) Colligation in model analysis: from Whewell’s tides to the San Francisco Bay Model The notion of colligation has been recently recalled by several philosophers of science engaged in debates concerning explanation and the role of narratives in science (Morgan 2017; Ducheyne 2010; Koster 2009). In this paper, we pick up on Whewell’s definition of “colligation” (Whewell 1847; 1858) and argue that this concept can be helpful in understanding scientific practices of modelling. If colligation has a value in fostering our understanding of models, it could also help us examine in which sense models and narratives could be related. For the scope of this talk, we aim at (1) clarifying the concept of colligation through the analysis of the philosophical and scientific work of Whewell (1847, 1858); (2) illustrating the relevance of this concept today by looking at a well-known case of scientific modelling, namely the construction of the San Francisco Bay Model (Weisberg 2013; Huggins and Schultz 1967; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1963). We conclude that a well-characterized, historically rigorous, notion of “colligation” not only contributes to debates on scientific modelling but could also aid advancing a systematic account on the role of narrative in science, by allowing to spell out how scientists order and make sense of a range of materials in practice. Veronika Lipphardt (University College Freiburg) (Cancelled) Ethnicizing isolation: How narratives guide genetic research in vulnerable populations Mary S. Morgan (LSE) Simultaneous Discovery or Competing Concepts? Economists's Notions of Utility in the Late 19th Century Economists developed the concept of ‘marginal utility’ in the late-nineteenth century within several different ‘schools’ of economics. Their ideas have been seen as sufficiently similar that historians of economics have sometimes taken this to be a case of simultaneous discovery - by four different economists (Menger, Clark, Jevons and Walras) in four separate countries (Austrian, America, Britain and France). They are thought to have developed this notion out of an older tradition of thinking about ‘use-value’, and this may account for why the similarities in their versions stood out for later commentators. Although they used the same labels, their accounts of utility were sufficiently different to make them conceptually distinct. These four versions were each associated with different characteristics of individual and social behaviour, which had salience for the theoretical context in which they were embedded. These characteristics are best revealed, and so traced, not in debates between the economists but rather in the separate narratives that they each told, first in introducing their version of ‘marginal utility’, and then in developing the characteristics of their concepts. This comparison explores how such latenineteenth century economists’ narratives provided not only the wrapping, but much of the substantive content and format of their concepts-in-development, as well as carrying important implications for the mode of reasoning thought allowable in using their different versions of the concept. References for the Sánchez-Dorado and Cristalli abstract: Ducheyne, S. (2010) “Whewell’s tidal researches: scientific practice and philosophical methodology”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 41 (2010) 26–40. Huggins, E., and Schultz, E. (1967) “San Francisco Bay in a warehouse”. Journal of the IEST,10(5), 9–16. Koster, E. (2009) “Understanding in Historical Science: Intelligibility and Judgment”. In de Regt, H., Leonelli, S., and Eigner, K. (eds.) Scientific Understanding. Philosophical Perspectives. University of Pittsburgh Press. Morgan, M. (2017) “Narrative ordering and explanation”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 62 (2017) 86-97. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (1963). Technical report on barriers: A part of the comprehensive survey of San Francisco Bay and tributaries. California (Main report). San Francisco: Army Corps of Engineers. Weisberg, M. (2013) Simulation and Similarity. Oxford University Press, 2013. Whewell, W. (1934) “On the Empirical Laws of the Tides in the Port of London; With Some Reflexions on the Theory”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 124 (1834), pp. 15- 45. Whewell, W. (1847), Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Founded upon their History, 2vll., Parker & sons: London-Cambridge. Whewell, W. (1858), Novum Organon Renovatum, Parker & sons: London 20th November 2018
Caitlin Donahue Wylie Narrating Disaster: A Method of Socialization in Engineering Laboratories Sigrid Leyssen On the Experimental Phenomenology of Causality BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Caitlin Donahue Wylie (University of Virginia) Narrating Disaster: A Method of Socialization in Engineering Laboratories Storytelling is a powerful mode of initiating novices into communities, thanks to the tacit knowledge, behavioral norms, and moral values embedded in the stories. How then do research communities deploy narratives as a tool of socialization? Based on participant observation and interviews, this study investigates the stories that prepare undergraduate research assistants to be future engineers. One key method of conveying social and technical norms is when an engineering professor or a graduate student tells an undergraduate about his or her experiences of laboratory mistakes and failures. These “disaster stories” stand in stark contrast to the more common narrative of scientific heroism. There are also gendered implications for telling humble vs. heroic stories, which may contribute to women’s underrepresentation in engineering and offer a potential strategy to alter engineering discourse to be more inclusive. For example, disaster stories contain messages of self-deprecation, humility, teamwork, and mutual learning. They also generously offer novices the opportunity to learn vicariously through the more experienced engineers’ errors. I argue that disaster stories can reduce hierarchy, normalize learning through mistakes, and build relationships among workers through the sharing of embarrassing personal struggles. I propose, then, that different forms of narrative can produce different kinds of research communities and, accordingly, different kinds of knowledge claims. Sigrid Leyssen (Le Centre Alexandre-Koyré) On the Experimental Phenomenology of Causality Why, for palaeontologists, does the successive and progressive apparition of living creatures give rise to the idea of causality? In a highly charged debate on evolutionism at the turn of the 20th century, Albert Michotte (1881-1965), at the time still a student, questioned the way causal narratives were created in different sciences. In his professional career as an experimental psychologist, he would come to investigate similar questions more fundamentally: what makes people see causal relations? In his last large-scale research project on Phenomenal Causality, started in 1939, he investigated experimentally, with the help of short animations, what conditions were needed for human beings to perceive directly causal and other functional relations between moving objects. In this talk, I discuss and contextualise Michotte’s causality experiments. I explore them as a historical case-study on narrativity as a scientific technique, as a research object – and as part of the basic perceptual apparatus of the scientist. 4th december 2018
lukas engelmann Epidemiology as Narrative Science: Outbreak reports of the third plague pandemic from 1894 to 1952 sabine baier How Many Molecules Does It Take To Tell A Story?- Managing Epistemic Distances In Medicinal Chemistry BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Lukas Engelmann (University of Edinburgh) Epidemiology as Narrative Science: Outbreak reports of the third plague pandemic from 1894 to 1952 The paper will introduce the outbreak report as a narrative epidemiological genre. Since the late nineteenth century, epidemiology has not only developed statistical instruments and stochastic models, but the formalisation of the budding discipline included also the consolidation of a consistent narrative practice. As example for this paper serves a series of outbreak reports from the third plague pandemic from 1894 to 1952. This period coincides with the formative decades of modern - or formal - epidemiology, in which the field came to be defined as an academic discipline. Outbreak reports were a genre of communication for and between epidemiologists. Each report aimed to cover the characteristics of the complex conditions which have turned a series of infections into an epidemic event. The reports collected a wide range of information, reaching from individual case reports over dispersed mortality and morbidity statistics to sections about bacteriology, observations of treatment and prevention practices as well as life-styles and living conditions. As such the report served as places of explanation and cohesion for quantifiable data, such as case numbers, climate details or timelines. But beyond this explanatory function, the reports did also reinstate and safeguard epidemiological practice as an empirical art, with a dedication to fine-grained, systematic observation. The reports give deep insight into the formation of modern epidemiology as a broad interdisciplinary project, suspended between historical, anthropological, sociological, statistical, and medical approaches to disease. Furthermore, my paper will show that the narrative structure of the reports also sustained epidemiological reasoning as an inductive practice, based on the correlation of an open-ended range of data and perspective, and often indifferent to questions of causation Sabine Baier (LSE and ETH Zürich) How Many Molecules Does It Take To Tell A Story?- Managing Epistemic Distances In Medicinal Chemistry Among the application-oriented sciences, no other endeavour is as disconnected in time from its possible outcomes and findings as target-based drug discovery. Developing a new drug takes up 10 to 12 years on average and navigating the vast chemical space throughout this tedious process in order to come up with a potentially successful new drug seems to be almost infeasible. What makes it so difficult, among a variety of reasons, is the fact that the desirable and undesirable medical effects of a new chemical compound in humans usually become apparent much later within the process of drug discovery. This epistemic distance, as I call it in my paper, complicates and impedes everyday decision making for the chemists: What looks good in the test tube simply does not necessarily work later on for laboratory animals or for humans, and yet, the chemist has to make decisions based on these later effects very early on. Particularly, if we are focusing on the stage of early molecular development in the beginning of the drug discovery process – where chemists in their laboratories sample a broad selection of different compounds in order to tackle the biochemical target in question – it becomes clear that barely any decision-making tools, theories, and techniques are available to bridge the epistemic distance between the need for everyday decision making in the laboratory and future outcomes of clinical tests. As a result, the questions need to be raised of how this epistemic distance can be managed nonetheless and how the chemists are able to justify their actions even though they are lacking any sort of hard proof? Based on the findings of my field studies within the research and development laboratories of Hoffmann-La Roche AG and Novartis AG in Basel, Switzerland, I therefore argue in my paper that by deploying carefully crafted discovery narratives, the laboratory heads decrease the epistemic distance and therefore manage to both maintain and even to increase their decision-making capacities. In my talk, I will not only describe what kind of discovery narratives are developed by the chemists but also how these discovery narratives function as valid heuristic tools within the process of drug discovery. |
Term 2 (jan-mar 2019)15th january 2019
Sharon crasnow Counterfactual Narrative in Political Science phyllis Kirstin Illari Mechanism and Narrative BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Sharon Crasnow (Norco College) Counterfactual Narrative in Political Science Recent accounts of multimethod research propose that it be understood through a research triad consisting of theory, variance-based evidence, and evidence for causal mechanism, the last of these deriving from case-based research (Goertz 2016). Counterfactuals play a role in both variance-based and case-based research in political science. I argue that we can better understand how counterfactuals function to inform the understanding of causal mechanisms in political science by recognizing that cases are presented as narratives. Using John Beatty’s recent work on narrative in science (Beatty 2016, 2017), I consider how counterfactuals aid in identifying causal mechanisms using an example of counterfactual thinking from political science to illustrate. I conclude that counterfactual reasoning in the context of the narrative structure of cases provides evidence for causal mechanisms but functions quite differently from the counterfactual basis of variance-based methods and consider the ramifications for the research triad account of multimethod research. Phyllis Kirstin Illari (UCL) Mechanism and Narrative 29th january 2019
Ivan flis Narrating an unfinished science: Scientific psychology in late-twentieth century textbooks adrian currie History is Peculiar BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Ivan Flis (University of Utrecht) Narrating an unfinished science: Scientific psychology in late-twentieth century textbooks What makes a discipline? In this presentation, I will try to provide one kind of answer to this question by looking at the way psychologists narrate their science in undergraduate textbooks. In particular, I will look at thirteen editions of the same undergraduate textbook, Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology, that was continuously published from the 1950s to today. Disciplinary introductions in textbooks are peculiar genres. The authors attempt to satisfy the expectations of very different audiences with one text. This produces a specific story that meshes history, the core set of officially sanctioned epistemological positions, and the author's idiosyncratic view of their science. By extension, it provides material for the disciplinary identity of whole generations of future experts and scientists. In the talk, I will try to cover three interesting topics by looking at the series of textbooks: what can we as historians learn about psychology by looking at the way psychologists narrate their discipline to students, what kind of sources are textbooks (with their limits but also specific opportunities), and what are some of the interesting features of studying a single text that went through so many re-publications. Adrian Currie (University of Exeter) History is Peculiar The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution was a critical event shaping the modern world, seeing radiations in mammals, squamate lizards, snakes, birds and (maybe) dinosaurs, as well as the emergence of flowering plants (angiosperms) and their accompanying menagerie of pollinating insects. The revolution is at least in part thought to be related to the contemporaneous final breakup of Pangea into smaller continents, and the new angiosperm-insect alliance is also cited as driving radiations in other lineages. It is often thought that historical explanation is in some sense narrative explanation, or at least that history is particularly suited to narrative forms. For instance: perhaps shifting from the relatively homogenous Pangea to the more heterogeneous modern continents led to a wider variety of habitats with more haphazardly distributed taxa, thus opening the door to diversification in the mid-Cretaceous. This connection between narrative and history has led some to ask whether there is some logic or essential property to narratives, others to draw links between the literary and the historical, and others to question whether narrative structures are discovered or constructed. I have a hunch about what makes narratives powerful answers to historical questions, which emerges from a hunch I have about why history matters for knowledge. History, I want to argue, matters for generating peculiarity. Some target is peculiar to the extent that (1) it is the outcome of a diversity-boosting process and (2) its modal profile depends upon structures which are the result of that process. Some processes are diversity-boosting rather than dampening, more likely to produce heterogeneous products than homogenous products. A single supercontinent is potentially diversity-dampening, as environments are homogenized and populations are less isolated: Pangea’s breakup then, could be diversity-boosting. The outcomes of these processes might themselves be robust or fragile, but what matters for peculiarity is that this robustness or fragility is explained as being the result of structures emerging from a diversity-boosting process. The insect-angiosperm alliance has proven remarkably stable and robust through the Cenozoic, yet is (perhaps) the result of a diversity-boosting process like tectonic shift. Because narratives are able to accommodate sequential changes over time, they are particularly well suited to capturing peculiarity. Further, I think this gives grounds to argue for a (relatively humble) realism about narratives: insofar as they describe peculiarity, historical narratives are discovered rather than invented. 12th february 2019
Alfred Nordmann A Feeling for the Mechanism Eleanora Loiodice Science as a creation: Giorgio de Santillana’s approach to history of science BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK
Alfred Nordmann (Technical University Darmstadt) A Feeling for the Mechanism This paper seeks to marry too many concepts and will draw them together into an account of „working knowledge“ which is knowledge of how things can work together and effect things. This knowledge takes the form of attunement to the working order that is instituted by an organism, mechanism, or algorithm, that is, to parameter dependencies and a sense of what can happen next in a (socio-)technical system. While such knowledge need not be verbalizable, it is verbalized by way of mechanistic narratives that have been theorized in the context of 18th century aesthetics (Lessing, Diderot, Hogarth). These theories emphasize the epistemic value of these narratives as they develop from immersive or „empathetic“ participation capacities for anticipation, maintenance, or care. (To make matters worse, some just about untranslatable German terms will make their appearance as supposedly useful concepts: Mitleid, Folgerichtigkeit, Sachlichkeit.) Primarily situated within the philosophy of technology, the presentation is motivated within the larger project of making the philosophy of technology matter for the philosophy of science. The present account of narratives pertains to the „new mechanism“ (Craver, Darden, Machamer) on the one hand, to the management of complexity on the other hand. Eleonora Loiodice (Università degli Studi di Bari) Science as a creation: Giorgio de Santillana’s approach to history of science This paper is dedicated to understanding de Santillana's approach to the history of science, one that is habitually left out of historiographical discussion. Santillana's approach to history of science is significantly different from those with which we are more familiar. At the outset, he argued that science is like a novel and a creation, and that we cannot study science without integreting it into a larger vision:
For Santillana, science does have a universal function in that it represents the ordering capacity of thought. Science has in itself something entirely humanistic, namely its interplay of creative images, its own experiences in the search for truth, which tie up with all other forms of intellectual search. 26th FEBRUARY 2019
Annamaria contini Metaphor as narrative reconfiguration: an example in the French physiology of the late nineteenth century adelene buckland Plot Problems: Geological Narratives, Anti-Narratives, and Counter-Narratives in the Early Nineteenth Century BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Annamaria Contini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia) Metaphor as narrative reconfiguration: an example in the French physiology of the late nineteenth century According to the most recent studies, both metaphors and stories can be viewed as tools for thinking. This presentation aims to show that metaphors and stories share some properties with scientific models, in particular with theoretical and analogical models. For example, they share the tendency to organize abstract experiential contexts in terms of concrete and structured concepts. Objects and experiences are seen and described as if they had certain characteristics, namely by the heuristic-fiction medium. To go in depth, the paper reconstructs an emblematic case of the relationship between scientific models and metaphors, underlining how it is a metaphor shaped the new image of the life promoted by Claude Bernard in the context of nineteenth-century biology. In fact, Bernard is only able to map a field that is still little known by transferring properties taken from the domain of the art. Through a metaphor that is at the same time a narrative reconfiguration, Bernard can so claim the originality of biological science in respect to the physical and chemical sciences, without putting into question its determinism and its status as an experimental science. Adelene Buckland (King's College London) Plot Problems: Geological Narratives, Anti-Narratives, and Counter-Narratives in the Early Nineteenth Century Literary scholars have traditionally been interested in the ways in which scientific accounts of the history of the planet, its species, or of the universe, may have been influenced by - or imported into - literary genres, such as the Bible, the epic poem or the novel. However, in the nineteenth century, geologists seeking to write entirely new accounts of earth history sought to throw off the influences of literary modes of storytelling and to find a new form through which to articulate its workings. In doing so, many developed an avowed hostility to writing as a mode of scientific practice or even explication. This paper explores the ways in which narrative, nonetheless, found its way into key geological writings by Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century, in ways that continue to shape debates about appropriate forms by which we ought to imagine the earth. 12TH MARCH 2019
SARAH DILLON Reasoning by Analogy: ELIZA, Pygmalion and the Societal Harm of Gendering Virtual Personal Assistants Vito De Lucia Reading law outside of the legal text: legal narratives BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Unfortunately Sarah Dillon's talk had to be rearranged. She will instead be joining us on the 14th of May 2019. Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge) Reasoning by Analogy: ELIZA, Pygmalion and the Societal Harm of Gendering Virtual Personal Assistants This paper presents a feminist analysis of the relationship between narrative and science through a case study of the gendering of virtual personal assistants (VPAs). I propose that attending to the functioning of ‘reasoning by analogy’ in machine learning, in literary thinking, and as governing interactions between humans and computers, creates a strong evidence base that gendering VPAs causes societal harm. The paper takes a historical and literary approach to this topic by situating contemporary debate in the context of Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, the first natural language processing software programme. Weizenbaum named ELIZA after Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. This paper presents a detailed comparative literary analysis of Weizenbaum’s scientific papers and popular science writing, and of Shaw’s Pygmalion. I foreground the problems both ELIZA’s scientific and literary origin stories raise with regard to female servitude, the relationship between the natural and the artificial, and the treatment of women. The paper demonstrates the role that literary narratives and literary thinking play in shaping the development, reception and impact of science and technology. Vito De Lucia (The Arctic University of Norway) Reading law outside of the legal text: legal narratives 26th march 2019
marco tamborini Narrating the Deep Past Staffan Müller-Wille From Travel Diary to Species Catalogue: How Linnaeus Came to See Lapland BLOG POST FOLLOWING TALK Marco Tamborini (Technical University Darmstadt) Narrating the Deep Past In 1856, English geologist Samuel Pickworth Woodward summarized the method of geological investigations as follows: “in whatever way geological history is written, its original investigators have only one method of proceeding–from the known to the unknown–or backwards in the course of time.” (Woodward, 1856, p. 420) My talk sheds light on the nature of the practices used to narrate paleontological time. By analyzing the epistemic presuppositions that made the proceeding from the known to the unknown and backwards possible, I derive some broader conclusions about the features of paleontological narrations. Specifically, I will analyze the practices of 19th-century German paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn. His approach to the history of life was, put simply, to present a history of data, and his innovation—which is part of a broader general transformation in data practices in the nineteenth century—was to marry statistical natural history with narrative visual techniques. Yet, how do paleontologists obtain epistemic access to deep past? Which role do visualizations have in coming up with coherent (historical) narrations? And which function does technology have in presenting and narrating possible stories from the dark abyss of deep time? Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter) From Travel Diary to Species Catalogue: How Linnaeus Came to See Lapland In the summer of 1732, the Swedish medical student Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) travelled through Northern Scandinavia. During his trip, Linnaeus composed a travel diary that exalted the life-style of Sámi reindeer herders and described the natural resources of Northern Scandinavia. In my paper, I will look at how Linnaeus put together his diary, but also at how he mined it for material to be included publications. The diary itself was carefully composed as a narrative, and the many observations Linnaeus made of mineral resources, plants and animals, and economic practices were embedded in this narrative. It remained unpublished during Linnaeus’s life-time, and only became a classic of scientific travel writing with the publication of an English translation in 1811. Yet there are many publications by Linnaeus in which he drew upon his experiences in Lapland. To be able to extract information from his diary, Linnaeus had drawn up an elaborate index, which notably used a lot of indigenous categories. As I will show through select examples, Linnaeus used this index not only to access material for his taxonomic publications, but also to re-tell his own Lapland experience, as well as the accounts by others, in a range of contributions to different literary genres like letters, reports, journal articles, floras and faunas. As my analysis will show, narration needs to be looked at as an iterative practice, entangling stories that have been told already with stories that are yet to be told. |