Dear all,
Especially for those of you new to Cambridge, I would like to introduce CamPoS
-- the Cambridge Philosophy of Science network. CamPoS brings together people
interested in philosophy of science in all the departments and colleges of the
University of Cambridge. It was created about a year ago through an initiative
by Huw Price (representing the Faculty of Philosophy), Hasok Chang
(representing the Department of History and Philosophy of Science), and Jeremy
Butterfield (representing all the rest, including college-based people).
One of the main activities of CamPoS is to run a weekly seminar series (funded by HPS and
Philosophy) with speakers from both within and outside Cambridge. This happens
1.00-2.30pm every Wednesday during termtime. This term the meetings will be in
Seminar Room 2 in the HPS Department in Free School Lane. We are very pleased to be able
to start the series this Wednesday (16 October) with a presentation by Professor John
Dupre of Exeter University, who is visiting in Cambridge for this term. He will be
speaking on his current research on "A Processual Perspective on Biology".
The CamPoS website displays an overview of activities and people in the field
across Cambridge, including information about various research area and people
working in them. Thereby it aspires to serve as the unified portal to
philosophy of science in Cambridge:
http://www.camposgroup.org/
The CamPos e-mail list has been used primarily for announcements of events so
far, but we also hope to use it more as a discussion list.
If you would like to join CamPoS, please go to this page on our website:
http://www.camposgroup.org/people/join/
Anyone can join the e-mail list. If you have a formal affiliation with Cambridge University, you
can also request to "join the website", meaning that you will be listed on the
"CamPoS people" pages (general and subject-specific).
best regards,
Hasok Chang, Huw Price and Jeremy Butterfield
p.s. Here is an abstract of John Dupre's talk:
We tend to talk about living systems as if they consisted of a hierarchy of
things (molecules, cells, organisms...) But it is also clear that these
entities are more accurately conceived as processes, and their relative
stability is maintained by a host of subprocesses. Though this is not in itself
especially controversial, it is less often noticed that it has important
consequences. It presents serious problems, for instance, for the new mechanism
that has recently become very popular among philosophers of the life sciences.
More speculatively, I suggest that the substance ontology that has dominated
scientific thinking since the seventeenth century has become an obstacle to
thinking about biology.
...brought to you by HPS-discussion.
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