Fenneke Sysling ( VU Amsterdam)

(In Association with the Department of Indonesian Studies)

"D.J.H. Nyessen. An anthopologists quest to study the races of Java and how he failed, 1927-1930."

Victor Boantza (University of Sydney)

 "Eudiometers as Instruments of Enlightenment and the Conflicts of Experimental Philosophy"

In 1772 Joseph Priestley announced a new method of measuring the “goodness” of airs—the nitrous air test—thus laying the foundation for the practice of eudiometry. In 1783 Henry Cavendish published ‘An Account of a New Eudiometer’ but concluded that “our sense of smelling can … perceive infinitely smaller alterations in the purity of the air than can be perceived by the nitrous test.” During the 1770s–80s eudiometry was widely practiced and hotly disputed. While giving rise to utopian dreams of social, medical, and environmental reforms experimentalists found the instrumental practice difficult to standardize and reconcile with various theoretical and experimental motivations. Examining the ambivalent identity of the eudiometer within its contexts of production and use shows the interplay between experimental skill, accuracy, and simplicity in the generation and dissemination of scientific knowledge in the Enlightenment.

 Clemency Montelle (Canterbury)

"Hypsicles of Alexandria and his "little" work on rising times".

The determination of rising times for the twelve zodiacal signs at a given terrestrial latitude was a challenge for ancient mathematicians and astronomers and many attempts to model these were proposed in antiquity based on the leading mathematical theories and techniques ofthe day.  An important early approach was put forth by the Alexandrianmathematician Hypsicles (fl. ca. first half of second century BCE)in a work called the  Anaphorica who based his solution on the assumption that rising times increase and decrease strictly linearlywith constant difference. Indeed, in an era when the overwhelmingsuccess of Ptolemy's mathematical  Syntaxis ensured the redundancy ofalmost all works that predated it, Hypsicles's work is not onlysignificant because of the fact that it is a rare glimpse into earlyGreek mathematical astronomy but also because it invokes some elegantarithmetical mathematical lemmas to solve a practical problem in ascene that was dominated by geometrical ways of thinking. 

Alan Chalmers (University of Sydney)

' Boyle on intermediate causes and explanations: The key to the Scientific Revolution'.

Robert Boyle drew a distinction between ‘intermediate’ causes and explanations, that involve experimentally accessible causes such as weight and elasticity, and ultimate causes and explanations, that trace the causes of phenomena back to the unchanging atoms whose motions and arrangements were presumed by mechanical philosophers to be responsible for them. I argue that this distinction provides the key to understanding what was novel about the new kind of knowledge that gained currency in the period referred to as the Scientific Revolution. From this vantage point it can be appreciated that the emergence of the new experimental science was relatively independent of the scholarly debates conducted by natural philosophers. In this paper I defend this position in the context of hydrostatics, That science, in the hands of Pascal and Boyle, serves as a paradigm example of the new experimental science. Its distinctive features are highlighted by comparing the articulation and defence of hydrostatics by Pascal and Boyle with  Stevin’s version , which was in the tradition of practical mathematics, and with Descartes version, which sought ultimate, corpuscular explanations of hydrostatic phenomena. The Scientific Revolution is best seen as involving the emergence of experimental science as distinct from natural philosophy rather than as the replacement of one natural philosophy, the Aristotelian  world view, by another, the mechanical world view.

Monday 19th September

Juha Saatsi (Leeds)

"Scientific Realism and Inferentially Veridical Representations".

Zoe Drayson (ANU)

"On personal and subpersonal states."

Explanations of human behaviour appeal to a wide variety of states: beliefs and desires, sensations and emotions, computational algorithms and subsystems, neuronal action potentials and spike rates. It is common to find such states classified in the literature as either 'personal level states' or 'subpersonal level states', but this distinction is rarely elucidated. I argue that there are two separate versions of the personal/subpersonal distinction, and that states deemed subpersonal by one version can be classified as personal states on the other version. I highlight the difficulties that arise when the two distinctions become confused, using Bermudez's (2003) discussion of reflexive thought as an example.

 Monday 17 October POSTPONED

 Sr. Mary Sarah Galbraith (University of Sydney) POSTPONED -  WILL SPEAK AT THE RESEARCH DAY

" 'Utiles et Necessarias':Early Modern Science and the Jesuits' Campaign for Credibility".

Monday 24 October

Kiran Krishna (University of Sydney)

"Fixing fit limits to Nature: William of Conches' Singular Vision of the Created World and the Quest for Order in High Medieval Natural Philosophy."

Since Pierre Duhem, the question of the continuity of medieval natural philosophy with that of the early modern period has been continually agitated. One particular detail in the story as we have it is Duns Scotus' legalist reading of the distinction between the divine powers and how it set the stage for Ockham's abandonment of the concept of world-order in favour of a world consisting of singulars. However, these two developments which have traditionally been dated to the last quarter of the thirteenth century - viz. skepticism concerning the existence and demonstrability of a natural order, and the conception of the world as composed of singulars - are already present before and during the thirteenth century assimilation of Aristotle, conditioning rather than being supplemented by, that process. By a study of William of Conches' Dragmaticon Philosophiae, its structure, its cultural and particularly legal and theological context, and the evolution of the world-view it offers, I will detail the twelfth century origins of the ideas which have been seen as crucial in the development of natural philosophy. 

Friday28th October

1pm TO 5PM

HPS RESEARCH DAY