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Notre Dame’s History and Philosophy of Science program Celebrates its 25th
anniversary
1
Our PhD program celebrated its 25th anniversary this
year, and we marked the occasion with a conference of alumni,
alumnae, faculty and current students sharing their current
research, reflections on HPS, and memories of the program
from the days of the MA through the creation of the PhD to the
present day. Thank you to everyone who came, or who sent
photos and memories to share. We had a special few days to
treasure, and photos from the event can be found here:
www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.772236379519596.107
3741830.207130969363476&type=3
We used the occasion to thank past directors of the
program, and to set up a fund in their honor to support our
current graduate students. All donations, no matter how small,
2
are gratefully received. As our current alums no doubt
remember well, every $20 towards travel expenses for a
conference makes a difference. We have raised approximately
$2000 so far, and invite you to support our students with a
small donation. Details of how to donate can be found at
reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/donate/
In the wake of the conference, we have begun putting
together an archive for the ND HPS program. Please contact
Vaughn McKim (vmckim@nd.edu) or Sarah Naramore
(snaramor@nd.edu) if you have items or information that
could be useful.
Katherine Brading, Director
Mark your calendars:
• Thu Oct 29, 2015 - HPS Colloquium Speaker: Joyce Chaplin
• Nov 5-6, 2015 – Collaboration Conundrum Conference (For more information, visit reilly.nd.edu/c3)
• Thu Dec 3, 2015 – HPS Colloquium Speaker: Emilie Kutash
All updates to the HPS calendar can be found at reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/hps-activities/hps-calendar/
History and Philosophy of Science Newsletter
University of Notre Dame Volume 10, 2015
Lorem Ipsum
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STUDENT UPDATES
Laura Bland received a Graduate
Fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute
for Advanced Study for 2015-2016.
The fellowship will allow her to finish
her dissertation, which examines the
cultural and religious background of
scientific ideas in the early modern
Atlantic World. She has also been
awarded the Dibner Fellowship in the
History of Science and Technology by
the Huntington Library in Los Angeles,
CA. Laura was also awarded the 2014-
5 Sloan Prize.
Beatriz Carrillo was awarded an
ISLA Graduate Student Research
Award that allowed her to go to the
National Archives and the Rockefeller
Archive to research the roles of
international agents in the creation of
the Chilean health system. From this
she wrote a paper on the participation
of the USPHS in Chilean-US
relationships of health that she
presented at a conference on Public
Health in Latin America and the
Caribbean at the University of York.
Recently, she been researching the
participation of Chilean doctors in
politics in the 1920s and 1930s and will
visit Chile to continue her research.
Bohang Chen delivered two talks in
Beijing this May, and will spend his
summer compiling a book with Prof.
Phillip Sloan on continental philosophy
2
of biology. His essay on the relationship
between Darwinism and religion was
published in a Chinese magazine in April.
Jamee Elder recently presented her
paper on "Émilie Du Châtelet on
Newtonian Attraction" at the HPS Du
Châtelet workshop. This past year she was
funded by a "Fulbright Science and
Innovation Graduate Award” and attended
a "Fulbright Enrichment Seminar" over
spring break, in Portland, Oregon with
the theme "Civic Engagement:
Environmental Initiatives for a Sustainable
Future."
John Hanson is currently working on a
paper on Du Châtelet's treatment of
continuity with Katherine Brading. This
work will be supported by a grant from
ISLA. Early next semester he will be
chairing a symposium about Du Châtelet
at the European Philosophy of Science
Association meeting in Düsseldorf.
Moiz Hasan is currently involved in an
international collaborative project which
seeks to explore the development of the
Islamic institution of wisdom/mystical
philosophy. In particular, the task focuses
on examining the teachings in one
international mystical lineage,
the Naqshbandiyya, named after the
Central Asian scholar Bahauddin
Naqshband (d. 791/ 1389). The project is
an initiative to develop a richer history of
this lineage through a census of the
3
surviving manuscripts (written by the
personages of the lineage) and their
examination, and to allow specialists
and the general public access to this
literature through translations from the
original Persian and Arabic to the Urdu
and English languages. Moiz is one of
the principal investigators of the project
and recently completed a book-length
project about one such personage
comprising 5 unedited, rare, Persian
manuscripts with their Urdu
translations. The book is in Urdu and
published in Pakistan with the title The
Life and Teachings of Hazrat Khwaja
Yusuf Hamdani Based On 5 Hitherto
Unpublished Manuscripts.
Xiaoxing Jin presented his paper
“Translation and Transmutation: The
Origin of Species in China” at the 2015
Midwest Junto Conference for the
History of Science at University of
Wisconsin-Madison. He was also Notre
Dame’s Table Tennis Champion this
year!
Michelle Marvin is currently
working for Celia Deane-Drummond
as part of her grant for the "Human
Distinctiveness Seminar." In April, she
presented at the Midwest American
Academy of Religion conference in
Ada, Ohio, as part of the Sensory and
Material Cultures of Religion session.
Her paper, entitled "The Sound of
Theology: A Comparative Study on
3
Taizé Chant and Vedic Mantra,"
investigates the ways in which the
musical practices of specific Hindu and
Christian communities serve as
expressions of theological identity.
Michelle was also awarded a spot in the
2015 Community Engagement Faculty
Institute at Notre Dame's Center for
Social Concerns.
Mousa Mohammadian won two
grants this year, one from Notre
Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European
Studies to take a 5-week German
intensive course this summer in NYC,
and the other a travel grant from The
Consortium for Socially Relevant
Philosophy of/in Science and
Engineering (SRPoiSE). He recently
defended his dissertation proposal and
will work with Anjan Chakravartty. In
March, he presented his paper
“Cognitive Values are a ‘Collective
Pool’: On Douglas’ Theory of
Cognitive Values” at the SRPoiSE
conference.
Sarah Naramore is currently a
Research Fellow at Philadelphia’s
Consortium for History of Science,
Technology, and Medicine and has been
traveling for research related to her
dissertation on the medical system of
eighteenth-century American physician
Benjamin Rush. In addition to
dissertation preparations, she presented
a paper at the annual Midwest Junto at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison
entitled, "From Within and Without: The
Emergence of Yellow Fever as a Public
Disease, 1790-1820," and worked with
Vaughn McKim on the history of the
Notre Dame HPS program.
Pablo Ruiz de Olano co-taught the
very popular “Ethics of Emerging
Weapons Technologies” course with Maj.
General Robert Latiff (Ret.) in Spring
2015.
John Slattery passed his doctoral
candidacy exams with honors, and is
currently working on his dissertation
"New Science, Old Problems: A
Theological Analysis of Rev. John Zahm's
Attempt to Bridge Evolution and Roman
Catholicism," advised by Prof. J. Matthew
Ashley. In March, John traveled to
Scotland on a Postgraduate Research
Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh,
where he gave a talk on "Liberation
Theology and Post-Kuhnian Philosophies
of Science: Possibilities of Consonance." A
month prior, John gave an invited lecture
at the Lutheran School of Theology at
Chicago, entitled: "Christology and
Creation from Teilhard de Chardin to
Elizabeth Johnson." In May, he will travel
to Portland to give a talk at the annual
conference of the College Theology
Society on ecology, theology, and racism,
entitled: “Critical Distance between the
Earth and the Poor: Placing M. Shawn
Copeland in Dialogue with Ecological
Theology."
Finally, John is also currently working
with Prof. Don Howard on an edited
volume of the unfinished work of Rev.
Dr. Ernan McMullin, "Christian
Theology and the Natural Sciences,"
under contract with Oxford University
Press.
Monica Solomon plans to finish
writing her dissertation this summer.
She presented a paper entitled
"Individuals and Individualism in
Philosophical Communities," at the
Hypatia biennial conference at Villanova
University in May. She presented a
preliminary report titled "Émilie Du
Châtelet and Christian Wolff on
extension, space and time: a comparative
analysis."on Émilie Du Châtele at the in-
house workshop that took place April
24-25. Finally, she will be assisting Greg
Macklem with the 2015 ETHOS
summer working group.
Jeremy Steeger is currently studying
for his comps and working with
Katherine Brading on a paper on Du
Châtelet's natural philosophy. He also
presented a paper called "Du Châtelet's
Ontology: PSR and the Problem of
Force" at the recent conference on Du
Châtelet. Jeremy will be attending the
European Philosophy of Science
Association's 2015 meeting in Düsseldorf
this fall, presenting his Du Châtelet
work on a panel with John Hanson,
Jamee Elder, and Monica Solomon.
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ALUMNI UPDATES
Justin Biddle (Ph.D., 2006) was
awarded tenure at Georgia Tech.
Marvin Bolt (Ph.D., 1998), formerly
vice president for collections at the
Adler Planetarium and Astronomy
Museum, has been appointed by The
Corning Museum of Glass as its first
curator of science and technology. He is
responsible for managing the Museum’s
science and technology collection,
exhibits, and programming.
Steve Case (Ph.D., 2014) was
awarded the 2014 Annals of Science
essay prize for his paper, "'Land-marks
of the Universe': John Herschel Against
the Background of Positional
Astronomy." The essay is forthcoming
in Annals of Science. He also presented a
paper on the topic at the 2015 Midwest
Junto in Madison.
Matthew Dowd (Ph.D., 2003)
continues to help organize the biennial
history of astronomy workshops. The
twelfth workshop will take place June
24–28, 2015. Matt has also co-edited a
volume, with Doug Vakoch, due out
from Cambridge University Press this
summer: The Drake Equation: Estimating
the Prevalance of Extraterrestrial Life through
the Ages. He also is the author of one
chapter of that book. Matt is the current
president of the Notre Dame chapter of
Phi Beta Kappa.
2014 was a great placement year for our HPS program, with all of our job candidates
accepting excellent positions: Manuela Fernández Pinto has taken up her post-doc at
the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
(http://www.helsinki.fi/tint/index.htm), Elise Crull (pictured, left) and Charles
Pence accepted tenure-track positions in philosophy at CCNY and LSU respectively,
Richard Oosterhoff has accepted a multi-year post-doc at the University of Cambridge,
and our first ND HPS post-doc Catherine Jackson (pictured, right) accepted a tenure-
track position in history of science at UW-Madison.
Stellar year for ND HPS placements
Nahyan Fancy (Ph.D., 2007) was
awarded membership at Princeton’s
Institute of Advanced Study for Fall
2015.
Manuela Fernández Pinto (Ph.D.,
2014) has been chosen as the winner of
the History of Economics Society's
2015 Joseph Dorfman Prize for the best
dissertation in the history of economic
thought and methodology, for her
dissertation Learning from Ignorance:
Agnotology's Challenge to Philosophy of
Science. She also helped organize a
workshop on Scientific Imperialism at
the University of Helsinki, where she is
a research team member at the
Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence
in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences,
and has an ongoing project to turn the
contributions into an edited volume or a
special journal issue. Manuela has also
accepted a postdoctoral position at the
Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá,
beginning in mid July. She will maintain
her affiliation at Helsinki.
Darin Hayton (Ph.D., 2004) has a book
coming out this fall titled The Crown and the
Cosmos. Astrology and the Politics of
Maximilian I (University of Pittsburgh,
2015)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/082
294443X
5
Vladimir Jankovic (Ph.D., 1998) is
currently fronting a major application
for a £10m bid to lead the Leverhulme
Centre for Crisis Studies. He is also
preparing an ESRC bid on Working
Atmospheres: Industrial Meteorology
and the Commercialization of Weather,
1950-2010.
Ryan Macpherson (Ph.D., 2003) is
serving as Chair of the History Dept. at
Bethany Lutheran College and as senior
editor of The Family in America: A Journal
of Public Policy.
Christopher Mirus (Ph.D., 2004)
reports his excitement that Jude
Galbraith will be entering the ND HPS
doctoral program this fall. Jude took a
number of his courses in the HPS minor
at the University of Dallas, a program,
he notes, that exists because of his HPS
education at ND. This summer, he and
his wife and their two two little boys are
heading to Rome, where he’ll spend two
years teaching at the University of
Dallas's Rome campus.
John Mullen (M.A., 2004) was
recently tenured at Bethany College in
Kansas.
Richard Oosterhoff (Ph.D., 2013)
has published “The Fabrist Origins of
Erasmian Science: Mathematical
Erudition in Erasmus’ Basel,” Erasmian
Science, special edition of Journal of
Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 3:6
(2014), 3:1-37; “A Book, a Pen, and
the Sphere: Reading Sacrobosco in the
Renaissance,” in History of Universities
28, no. 2 (June 2015) (in press). He is
also the author of the entry on “Jacques
Lefèvre d’Étaples,” a 12,000-word
invited, reviewed entry for the
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
under the section of Renaissance
Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye (2015).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lefe
vre-etaples/
Steve Ruskin (Ph.D., 2001) has an
article coming out this summer titled
“The Business of Natural History:
Charles Aiken, Colorado Ornithology,
and the Role of the Professional
Collector,” in Historical Studies in the
Natural Sciences.
Mike Shank (M.A., 1975), Professor
of the History of Science, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, recently translated
Roshdi Rashed, Classical Mathematics from
al-Khwārizmī to Descartes (London:
Routledge, 2015) from the French
(Paris, 2008). Thanks to the generosity
of a former student, he has spent the
spring semester of 2015 conceiving and
drafting a history of medieval science
aimed at high school readers. On July
1, he will retire. After some mind-
clearing and while giving several
hobbies their due, he hopes in the years
ahead to complete several languishing
book and editions projects.
Holly Vandewalle (Ph.D., 2010) is
currently serving as Assistant Professor of
the Practice at Boston College. She and
Daniel McKaughan (Ph.D., 2007) are
going to publish their course reader in the
history and philosophy of science with
Bloomsbury Press.
Joseph Zepeda (Ph.D., 2009) was
awarded tenure at St. Mary’s College of
California.
The HPS Alumni Database is available at
http://reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-
of-science/hps-people/hps-alumni-ae/
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FACULTY UPDATES
Francesca Bordogna’s (PLS) current book manuscript, “The Pragmatist Hotel,” examines a group of European,
especially Italian, philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, visual artists, novelists, journalists, and politicians
(including Italy’s fascist Duce, Benito Mussolini), who in the early decades of the twentieth century endorsed the
philosophy of pragmatism and entertained complex relationships with William James and Charles S. Peirce. She is also
working on an essay on the relationships between mathematics and metaphysics in William James’s late metaphysical
works, for an Oxford University Press volume. Her article “‘Unstiffening Ideas’: The Italian Magic Pragmatists and
William James” will appear in the following volume: James Kloppenberg, Joel Isaac, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
eds., Worlds of US History (Oxford University Press, in press). She also presented papers at various conferences,
including HOPOS 2014, S-USIH 2014, and SAAP 2015 and gave an invited lecture at the University of Chicago’s
Fishbein Center for the History of the Human Sciences.
Michael J. Crowe (PLS, emeritus), though retired, continues to be somewhat active in research and publication. Most
recently, he co-edited with Nicholas Ayo a collection of ten papers by Fred Crosson titled Ten Philosophical Essays in
the Christian Tradition, which Notre Dame Press published in May 2015. He has published two essays on aspects of
the history of the extraterrestrial life debate, the longer co-written with Dr. Matthew Dowd, an HPS graduate and a
manuscript editor at Notre Dame Press. In the last two years he has presented papers at various conferences at Notre
Dame and gave a talk to the physics department at the University of Chicago on the history of vector analysis.
Lane DesAutels (HPS Postdoc) has just had an article accepted by the journal Synthese titled "Toward a propensity
interpretation of stochastic mechanism for the life sciences.” In addition, his abstract "On the Role of Unactualized
Possibilities Biological Explanation" was accepted for presentation at the International Society for the History,
Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology meeting to be held in Montreal in July, and an abstract (co-written with
Grant Ramsey) titled "Causal-possibility Explanation" was accepted for presentation at the European Philosophy of
Science Association meetings to be held in Düsseldorf in September.
Left: Chris
Hamlin signs his
new book More
Than Hot at the
Johns Hopkins
University Press
book signing at
the 2014 History
of Science
Society Meeting.
7
Christopher Hamlin (History) published More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever with Johns Hopkins University
Press in 2014. He also delivered the James Bryne Lecture at Depaul University on April 9 titled "Turning over the
Right Rocks: Finding Legacies of Catholic Environmentalism" and the Robert P. Hudson lecture at the University of
Kansas Medical School on May 7 titled “How Malaria Became a Disease -- and what that disease was.”
In Spring 2015, Lynn Joy (Philosophy) taught for the first time her new course on Women and Philosophy, which
asks what roles a philosopher's own life and personal identity should play in defining and evaluating his or her
philosophical achievements."
Don Howard (Philosophy) had a number of his papers on Einstein and quantum theory translated into Italian and
published as Anche Einstein gioca a dadi La lunga lotta con la meccanica quantistica (Carocci, 2015). He is currently
working with Maj. Gen. Robert Latiff on a project to produce educational modules based upon the DARPA-NRC
report titled "Emerging and Readily Available Technologies and National Security: A Framework for Addressing
Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues." Powerpoints, videos, and other materials will be posted on the Reilly Center
website this summer.
Janet Kourany (Philosophy) was an IASH [Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities] Distinguished Visiting
Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently organizing a conference with Kevin Elliott (Ph.D., 2004) and
Anjan Chakravartty (Philosophy) called "The Collaboration Conundrum: Special Interests and Scientific Research"
to take place at ND November 5-6, 2015, for which she received a 2015 Large Henkels grant of $10,000. She gave
papers this year in Waterloo (in August, with Manuela Fernández Pinto, Ph.D., 2014), Chicago (a symposium paper
at PSA in November), Ghent (also in November and again with Manuela Fernandez Pinto), Edinburgh (in March),
and Dubrovnik (in April).
Robert (Jay) Malone, Executive Director of the History of Science Society, based at Notre Dame, was elected a
Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Feb 2015. He continues to serve as
the HSS delegate to AAAS’s Section X (Societal Impact of Science and Engineering), is active in Section L (History
and Philosophy of Science) and serves as HSS delegate to the National Humanities Alliance (which advocates for the
humanities in the U.S.). He is also a member of the Conference of Administrative Officers of the American Council of
Learned Societies and represents the HSS at the American Historical Association (the HSS is formally affiliated with
AAAS and the AHA). He continues to work on the field diaries of B.L.C. Wailes who, in the 1840s, conducted one of
the earlier state geological surveys in the U.S.
Kate Marshall (English) was been awarded the 2014 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology
of Culture for her book Corridor: Media Architectures in American Fiction. The award, presented by the Media
Ecology Association, honors works that focus on the ethnographic or intercultural analysis of communication,
perception, cognition, consciousness, media, technology, material culture, and/or the natural environment. She also
earned tenure in May.
Lorem Ipsum
Phil Mirowski’s book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) has been issued in German and Spanish
translations this year. His next book, with co-author Edward Nik-Khah, will be The Knowledge we have Lost in
Information: a history of the economics of information, (Oxford) which will be accompanied by a video lecture series
from INET. He also gave an invited lecture to the Copenhagen Business School on the topic. He was an invited
speaker at the New York Review of Books conference on “What’s Wrong with the Economy—and Economists,” You
can find the video of this talk at: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2015/mar/29/whats-wrong-with-the-economy/
Phillip Sloan, (PLS, emeritus) continues his work with the Center and the HPS program. He has recently
published “Molecularizing Chicago, 1945-1965: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the University of Chicago Biophysics
Program.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44: 364-412. He has also completed a major revision of his
entry, “Evolution to 1872” for the Stanford On-Line Encyclopedia of Philosophy. With former Reilly Center Director
Gerald McKenny, and Reilly Center Research Coordinator Kathleen Eggleson, he has recently published Darwin in
the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) that came
from the Reilly-Center sponsored conference commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Tom Stapleford (PLS) has received two major grants. The first, "Economic Statistics and the Challenge of
Democratic Control," is a $100k grant from the NSF that will allow him to be on leave in AY 2015-2016.
(http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1430854.) The second grant is for a large project on which
he is co-PI with Celia Deane-Drummond and Darcia Narvaez titled "Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science."
This is a three-year, $3.1 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust for a multi-disciplinary study of the
cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dispositions that are fostered in daily practice of laboratory research in biology.
Jim Turner (History) retired in 2015 and was honored with a conference titled Humanities & Divinity: Reckoning
with Intellectual and Religious History.
Laura Walls (English) is finishing a biography of Henry David Thoreau, supported originally by a Guggenheim
fellowship and now by an NEH fellowship. One recent spin-off from this work is an essay on Thoreau and the
philosophy of measurement titled "Of Compass, Chain and Sounding Line: Taking Thoreau's Measure," forthcoming
in Reasoning in Measurement, edited by Alfred Nordmann and Nicola Mößner (Pickering and Chatto, 2015).
VISITORS: Marcus Carrier and Maceo Williams from Bielefeld University visited us as part of our exchange program this academic year. Professor Martin Carrier also visited us from Bielefeld and gave a colloquium talk on “Science, Economy, and Politics: How to Respond to the Credibility Crisis of Science” in November. Notre Dame HPS has begun a new exchange program with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Anna Ortin visited as a student in the spring and Michela Massimi visited in December and gave a talk titled “Kant’s Dynamic Theory of Matter in 1755 and Its Debt to Speculative Newtonian Experimentalism.” Updates on visitors and partner programs can be found at reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/hps-people/hps-visitors/ and reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/partner-programs/
Lorem Ipsum HPS Newsletter, Vol. 10
Our incoming class for Fall 2015 is confirmed. Please join us in
welcoming:
Julianna Poole (History track)
Julianna has a masters degree in molecular biology from Princeton and is currently
pursuing research on the character and effects of Old English medical remedies.
Martin Beers (Philosophy track)
Martin comes to us from Thomas Aquinas College, and has research interests in
philosophy of physics.
Jude Galbraith (Philosophy track)
Jude’s undergraduate degree is in philosophy from the University of Dallas, and he is
interested in ethical implications of science and how science intersects with society.
Sebastián Murgueitio Ramirez (Philosophy track)
Sebastian is a double major in philosophy and physics at Universidad de los Andes,
Bogotá, and his interests are in philosophy of physics.
History and Philosophy of Science Program University of Notre Dame Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values 453 Geddes Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556
[Recipient]
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HPS Reading Group Fall 2015
The Fall reading group book selection is Joyce Chaplin’s Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2003).
Recommended