PLEASE NOTE: There is a change of venue for tomorrow’s HPS Philosophy Workshop. We will be meeting in the New Gallery of the Whipple Museum. Please ask at the HPS Reception if you need directions!
=== Dear all, Please join us tomorrow at the HPS Philosophy Workshop, where Maddie Geddes-Barton (PhD, English) will be presenting a section of her work on the relationship between Modernist literature and Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. The Workshop is at 12 noon, tomorrow, Friday the 30th of May. Please email me if you would like to read the material that Maddie has made available! --- ABSTRACT: The aim of my thesis is to explore the connections between neo-Kantian structuralism in the philosophy of science in the 1920s and 20s and the pattern based aesthetics of literary modernism. At the moment I am working on James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, who (between them) had read popular works by Poincare, Russell, Whitehead, Eddington and James Jeans as well as numerous journal articles discussing contemporary trends in scientific metaphysics and epistemology. In the workshop I am primarily interested in getting clear on the philosophy of science. In developing an account of the literary response to (what I am calling) ‘structuralist’ philosophy of science, I need to clarify what this philosophy is and how it is distinguished from other currents in contemporary philosophy in the 1910s, 20s and 30s. I am particularly concerned to get clear on the distinction between neo-Kantian ‘structuralism’ (and Whitehead’s holist metaphysics) on the one hand, and the sense-data school of empiricism. As I see it an important distinction is that the latter founds all knowledge upon immediate experience, whilst the former repudiates the notion of unmediated experience. In the presentation I’ll begin by giving a brief outline of my thesis as a whole, explaining why and in what ways pattern is important in reading Joyce and Eliot. I’ll then spend most of my time clarifying the nature of the ‘structuralist’ philosophy I am interested in. I’ll try to distinguish it from empiricism and clarify some of the key propositions about the nature of science that unify thinkers like Cassirer Poincare and Eddington. Finally if I have time, or if people are interested, I can suggest some of the ways in which I think the writing of Joyce and Eliot might respond to the ideas of pattern that emerge from this discussion. I am very happy to be pulled up if I say things that are inaccurate… --- The HPS Philosophy Workshop is a venue for junior members of the university to present in-progress work in the philosophy of science, and to receive constructive criticism and feedback. We meet every fortnight on Fridays. There is also tea, coffee, and biscuits, and sometimes I remember the milk too (bargain). All the best, Toby Bryant _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
