About the Conference
JOIN US for an interdisciplinary conference from October 7-10, at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Integrating Complexity: Environment and History will consist of two linked workshops exploring a set of challenges to scientific understanding that span many fields of the natural and human sciences, and that have broad implications for research choices, for social policy, and for how we understand ourselves and the world.
Many scientists and philosophers have treated the discovery of universal laws of nature as the primary goal of scientific research. This is often achieved via the use of experimental methods that allow scientists to study variation in particular properties of systems or to isolate particularly revealing phenomena, and the use of simplified abstract models. However, this goal has long been recognized as problematic in many areas of investigation, such as those that treat complex, experimentally inaccessible, or historically unique phenomena.
Two linked workshops will take up related themes concerning scientific understanding of complex phenomena: 1) the conceptual integration of complexity in explorations of organism-environment interaction in the life and social sciences, and 2) the methodological integration of complexity in the distinctive approaches to confirmation and explanation in the historical sciences.
The workshops will engage these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together leading researchers, young scholars, and graduate students from philosophy, history, and the sciences. This diverse group of scholars will contribute to developing a new account of scientific practice that recognizes the distinctive conceptual and methodological challenges of integrating complexity. We hope that each group will gain by learning how similar conceptual and methodological problems have been handled in different fields, and how responses to them have developed historically.
The conference will be held at Western's Spencer-Ivey Centre, a venue with outstanding meeting facilities, award-winning cuisine, comfortable guest rooms, and wonderful settings for informal discussion both indoors and out.
JOIN US for an interdisciplinary conference from October 7-10, at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada. Integrating Complexity: Environment and History will consist of two linked workshops exploring a set of challenges to scientific understanding that span many fields of the natural and human sciences, and that have broad implications for research choices, for social policy, and for how we understand ourselves and the world.
Many scientists and philosophers have treated the discovery of universal laws of nature as the primary goal of scientific research. This is often achieved via the use of experimental methods that allow scientists to study variation in particular properties of systems or to isolate particularly revealing phenomena, and the use of simplified abstract models. However, this goal has long been recognized as problematic in many areas of investigation, such as those that treat complex, experimentally inaccessible, or historically unique phenomena.
Two linked workshops will take up related themes concerning scientific understanding of complex phenomena: 1) the conceptual integration of complexity in explorations of organism-environment interaction in the life and social sciences, and 2) the methodological integration of complexity in the distinctive approaches to confirmation and explanation in the historical sciences.
The workshops will engage these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, bringing together leading researchers, young scholars, and graduate students from philosophy, history, and the sciences. This diverse group of scholars will contribute to developing a new account of scientific practice that recognizes the distinctive conceptual and methodological challenges of integrating complexity. We hope that each group will gain by learning how similar conceptual and methodological problems have been handled in different fields, and how responses to them have developed historically.
The conference will be held at Western's Spencer-Ivey Centre, a venue with outstanding meeting facilities, award-winning cuisine, comfortable guest rooms, and wonderful settings for informal discussion both indoors and out.
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The 4-day event comprises two linked workshops addressing interrelated strands in approaches to phenomena whose causal complexity poses special challenges to scientific understanding:
(1) the conceptual integration of complexity in explorations of organism-environment interaction in the life sciences and social sciences, and
(1) the conceptual integration of complexity in explorations of organism-environment interaction in the life sciences and social sciences, and
(2) the methodological integration of complexity in the distinctive approaches to confirmation and explanation in the historical sciences.
The two workshops will draw together philosophers, historians, and natural and social scientists whose work focuses on the interpretation of the organism-environment interaction and its implications for our understanding of complex biological and social systems, and on the distinctive methodological challenges posed by the historical sciences.
The partitioning of the complexity of the world into organism and environment—a step toward simpler abstract representations of organic phenomena—opened a space for exploration of the complex and dynamic relationship between the two. Conceptions of this relationship have played a crucial role in the development of many areas of biology, including evolutionary theory, ecology and ethology. Other disciplines, including the social sciences and medicine, have also made use of the diverse representations of the complex interaction between organisms and their environment. These relationships remain deeply contested in these domains today.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Pre-Darwinian Conceptions of O-E Interaction
- Organization, Regulation & Response in O-E Interaction
- O-E Interaction in Evolution
- Intervening in the Environment
- O-E Interaction in Medicine
- History Matters: O-E Interaction and Historicity
- O-E Interaction in the Human Sciences
2. Methodology in the Historical Sciences
The distinctive epistemological challenges of the "historical sciences" give rise to methodological debates concerning contingency, historicity, irreversibility and the limits of simple equilibrium models in biology but also in other disciplines such as palaeontology, geology, cosmology and history itself.. The implications of these issues are far-reaching for questions of evidence, explanation and the nature of understanding in the historical sciences.
Possible Topics include but are not limited to:
- Path dependence, contingency and irreversibility
- Historical explanation
- Anthropic principles
- Reconstructing the past
- Understanding unique events
Workshop Structure:
The event will combine plenary sessions presented by invited speakers, panel sessions, and discussion sessions led by graduate students and junior scholars.
Submission Guidelines:
Please submit a 1-page abstract for a presentation of no more than 20 minutes. There are two types of sessions: break-out discussions and panels. In a break-out discussion, the presentation introduces material for an extended discussion led by the presenter. In a panel, three related presentations precede a combined discussion. You may specify which format you prefer, though we will consider all submissions for both formats. For break-out discussions, please provide references for 2-3 background readings that can be made available in advance. This event aims to foster lively discussion across disciplinary lines and between junior and senior scholars - submissions from any relevant field and from graduate students are welcome.
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Muitos darwinistas ficam estupefatos, inclusive o Dr. Roberto Berlinck, quando eu afirmo neste blog que a teoria da evolução através da seleção natural, assim como a teoria do Design Inteligente, é uma teoria de longo alcance histórico -- tenta reconstruir eventos únicos e não repetíveis.
Todavia, de tanto ouvirem a retórica do mantra dobzhanskyano de que nada em biologia faz sentido a não à luz de evolução, eles nem são capazes de perceber que a biologia evolutiva não faz parte das ciências duras como a física que tem leis que podem ser mensuradas e suas experiências repetidas universalmente. A biologia evolutiva não tem leis, tem apenas um princípio: o da seleção natural.
QED: Toda e qualquer crítica à TDI é, diretamente, uma crítica à teoria da evolução qua ciência histórica.
A teoria do Design Inteligente propõe que a complexidade é um sinal de inteligência empiricamente detectado na natureza. E agora o pessoal do ISHPSSB vai abordar a complexidade? Bons ventos epistêmicos começam a soprar na Academia. Quando vai soprar sobre a Nomenklatura científica tupiniquim???
Será que este evento vai receber destaque posterior no boletim da ABFHIB? Duvido, mas é capaz que eu tenha de morder a minha língua...
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Vote neste blog para o prêmio TOPBLOG 2010.
Muitos darwinistas ficam estupefatos, inclusive o Dr. Roberto Berlinck, quando eu afirmo neste blog que a teoria da evolução através da seleção natural, assim como a teoria do Design Inteligente, é uma teoria de longo alcance histórico -- tenta reconstruir eventos únicos e não repetíveis.
Todavia, de tanto ouvirem a retórica do mantra dobzhanskyano de que nada em biologia faz sentido a não à luz de evolução, eles nem são capazes de perceber que a biologia evolutiva não faz parte das ciências duras como a física que tem leis que podem ser mensuradas e suas experiências repetidas universalmente. A biologia evolutiva não tem leis, tem apenas um princípio: o da seleção natural.
QED: Toda e qualquer crítica à TDI é, diretamente, uma crítica à teoria da evolução qua ciência histórica.
Será que este evento vai receber destaque posterior no boletim da ABFHIB? Duvido, mas é capaz que eu tenha de morder a minha língua...
+++++
Vote neste blog para o prêmio TOPBLOG 2010.
