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Colloquia 2009-10
The colloquium meets 3 times per quarter on, generally on the 3rd, 6th and 9th Thursdays at 4:15 in the Lane History Building, Room 307, unless noted below.
- Bertie Mandelblatt, Postdoctoral Fellow at Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Université de Montréal
"Transatlantic Trade and Local Ecology in the Provisioning of the French Middle Passage"
4:15pm, February 18, 2010
History Building 200 Room 307
Bertie Mandelblatt is a Postdoctoral Fellow (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Université de Montréal) whose research concerns food history and commodity exchanges in the French Atlantic world. Her current project is the transatlantic circulation of French Caribbean rum and molasses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and her doctoral dissertation examined global and local scales of food provisioning of the Franco-Caribbean during the Ancien Regime. She has published articles in History Workshop Journal and History of European Ideas, and has a chapter on the mercantilist framework of colonial food provisioning forthcoming in an edited volume on French political economy of the eighteenth century.
- Catherine Wilson, Regius Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Aberdeen
"The Concept of 'the Organism' in the Philosophy of Biology"
Abstract: Does the term "organism" denotes a distinct natural kind that lends itself to meaningful theoretical generalizations or is instead an anthropic notion--one defined by reference to human needs and interests? Biologists tend to think it is the latter, philosophers the former, and I'll give some reasons for the disciplinary division. While siding with the biologists who think no real precision can be given to the term organism, I'll explore the possibility that the philosophers' conceptualization is basically normative and is to be appreciated in that light. And I'll attempt to defend Richard Dawkins against Peter Godfrey-Smith's charge that his language is objectionably anthropomorphic. (As opposed to anthropic).
4:30 pm, February 22, 2010 - * NOTE slightly later start time *
History Building Room 305
- Katherine Brading, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
"Oh dear, what can the matter be? Objects, individuals and structures"
Abstract: Contemporary structural realists are proposing a radical revision of our fundamental ontology: we should eliminate objects and replace them with "structure": the material world, in and of itself, is structure. The argument for this ontological version of structural realism begins from an alleged "metaphysical underdetermination" afflicting standard "object-oriented" scientific realism. I think that the argument fails, and I will discuss one reason why (the most interesting one, of course). This is the negative claim that I will argue for.
My rejection of the argument for structural realism hinges on a discussion of the concepts of object and individual, and a view of physical objects that, I argue, originated with Newton in his discussion of Descartes on bodies and motion. The second part of my talk will pursue the consequences of adopting Newton's approach to physical objects for (1) matter theory and (2) the proper place of structuralism within contemporary physics. The positive claims that I will argue for in the second part concern an account of what, according to physical theory, matter can be.
Some of the material for this talk is drawn from draft papers that can be found here: some structural realism stuff is in the joint paper with Alex Skiles, and some Descartes/Newton stuff is in 'Newton's law-constitutive approach to bodies: a response to Descartes'.
4:15pm, March 4, 2010
History Building Room 013
- Fa-ti Fan, Binghamton University, NY
Title TBA
April 22, 2010
Previously this Year
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Professor Irina Dezhina
"Russian Science and the Current Crisis"
Tuesday, November 10th, noon
location: CREES, 210 Encina Hall West, 417 Galvez Mall
Co-sponsored with Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies
- Science and Religion: New Approaches
speakers include:
Stephen Gaukroger, Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney
Peter Harrison, Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford
and Jonathan Sheehan, Department of History, Berkeley University
moderated by Professor Jessica Riskin
Monday, November 16th, 2009, 3pm - 7pm
Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa Street
Co-sponsored with the Stanford Humanities Center, Philosophy Department, HIstory Department, and Medieval and Early Modern Studies
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Alexander Afriat, University of Urbino (Italy)
"The Relativity of Inertia and Reality of Nothing."
January 14, 2010
Building 260 Room 003
ABSTRACT: We first see that the inertia of Newtonian mechanics is absolute and troublesome. General relativity can be viewed as Einstein's attempt to remedy, by making inertia relative, to matter; perhaps imperfectly though, as at least a couple of freedom degrees separate inertia from matter in his theory. We consider ways the relationist (for whom it is of course unwelcome) can try to overcome such underdetermination, dismissing it as physically meaningless, especially by insisting on the right transformation properties.
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Loren Graham, Professor Emeritus, of the History of Science, MIT
"The Power of Names: Religious Mysticism and Russian Mathematical Creativity."
noon, Wednesday January 27, 2010
Encina Hall West, Room 208
Co-sponsored with CREES
- Early Modern Things Workshop
Jan 29 and 30, 2010
Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center
Friday, January 29
9:30-10:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks (Paula Findlen, Stanford University)
10:00-12:00 First Session: Making Things
Session Chair, Daniel Stolzenberg (UC Davis)
Chandra Mukerji (UC San Diego) "Costume, Context, and Character: Material Order and Social Analysis in the Sixteenth-Century Geography of Nicolas de Nicolay"
Pamela Smith (Columbia University) "Making Things: Techniques and Books in Early Modern Europe"
Jessica Riskin (Stanford University) "The Unquiet Clock"
12:00-1:00 Lunch Break
1:00-3:00 Second Session: Empires of Things
Session Chair, Londa Schiebinger (Stanford University)
Marcy Norton (George Washington University) "Animals as Objects in the Spanish Empire"
Mark Peterson (UC Berkeley) "The World in a Shilling: Silver, Coins, and the Challenges of Empire in Seventeenth-Century Boston"
Alan Mikhail (Stanford University) "Anatolian Timber and Egyptian Grain: Things That Made the Ottoman Empire"
3:00-3:30 Coffee Break
3:30-5:30 pm Third Session: Global Commodities
Session Chair, Jan DeVries (UC Berkeley)
Carla Nappi (University of British Columbia) "Surface Tension: Objectifying Ginseng in Chinese Early Modernity"
Erika Monahan (University of New Mexico) "Locating Rhubarb: Early Modern Russia's Relevant Obscurity"
Luca Mola (University of Warwick) TITLE TBA
5:30 Reception
Saturday, January 30
10:00-12:00 Fourth Session: The Circulation of Things
Session Chair, Morten Steen Hansen (Stanford University)
Evelyn Welch (Queen Mary College, University of London) "Furs, Feathers, and Folding Fans: Material Goods in Earyl Modern Hands"
Corey Tazzara (Stanford University) "Capricious Demands: Strategies of Artisans and Consumer Behavior in Seventeenth-Century Florence"
Anne Goldgar (King's College, University of London) TITLE TBA
12-1:30 pm Lunch
1:30-3:30 pm Fifth Session: The Value of Things
Session Chair, Caroline Winterer (Stanford Univesity)
Morgan Pitelka (Occidental College) "The Shogun and His Things: Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) and the Agency of Objects"
Julie Hochstrasser (University of Iowa) "Stil-staende dingen: Picturing Objects in the Dutch Golden Age"
Amanda Vickery (Royal Holloway, University of London) "Fashioning Difference in Georgian England"
3:30-4:00 pm Coffee Break
4:00-5:00 pm Roundtable Discussion
Session Chair, Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford University)
Renata Ago (University of Rome "La Sapienza")
Timothy Brook (University of British Columbia)
5:00 pm Reception
This workshop is made possible by the sponsorship of the Stanford Humanities Center, and the Deans' Office, School of Humanities and Science, the Department of History, the Department of Art History, Center for European Studies, Mediterranean Studies Forum, Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Center for East Asian Studies, Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies, Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
For further information, contact the Conference Coordinator, Erin Lichtenstein (lichte@stanford.edu).
Previous Year's HPST Colloquia
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