Table of Contents: - Letter from the PSA President
- Nagel Award 2020
-
Philosophy of Science Editorship
- PSA Around the World CFP
- DEI Caucus
- UPSS Session
- PSA 2024
|
|
|
Letter from the President |
It is a great privilege to have served the PSA as President for the last two years, in what have been interesting times. Despite some challenges, as the worst of the pandemic is beginning to pass, I’m happy to report that the PSA is now in rude health. While the Baltimore meeting included many fine sessions and was greatly enjoyed by those who attended, it was a smaller than usual affair and rather under the shadow of the virus. Pittsburgh, with over 650 attendees, brought us within a handful of our record for pre-Covid numbers. It was clear in Pittsburgh that the PSA had fully weathered the storm.
I should thank some of the people who made this happen. As many will recall, our former Executive Director resigned just before the Baltimore meeting, shortly after we had, following much debate, decided to hold the meeting at all. This was undoubtedly a low point in my presidency. However, with the help of many members and friends of the PSA, above all of the tireless Jessica Pfeifer, who had rashly imagined that eight years of service as PSA Executive Director might be enough, we got the show on the road and, as already mentioned, had a small but successful meeting.
We then set about finding a new Executive Director. This process was led by the indefatigable Angela Potochnik, now officially the Governing Board Liaison with the Executive Office, and the person responsible for the establishment of our new office at the University of Cincinnati. From a number of excellent candidates we were fortunate indeed to appoint Max Cormendy. In half the normal time, and from a standing start, Max and his excellent team, organised one of our best ever meetings at Pittsburgh. I would like also to mention one member of his staff, Taraneh Wilkinson, who has spearheaded the professionalisation of our fund-raising operations. Taraneh and Max set new benchmarks for support for the Pittsburgh meeting, and as funding in the future looks increasingly uncertain, philanthropy is likely to be an increasingly vital part of the PSA economy. Overall, the Executive Office is now running like a well-oiled machine.
My very special thanks to all the people mentioned so far and also to the Governing Board and most especially to the Past-President and President-Elect, Alison Wylie and Michela Massimi. The Governing Board is the heart of the PSA and as President it has been an ever-available source of advice and leadership. Alison, Michela and other members of the Governing Board have been involved with all of the exciting initiatives that have transformed and grown the PSA over recent years.
Finally, having had the unique privilege of being involved as President in two biennial meetings, I have a strong sense of the importance and demanding character of the job of Program Director. I first observed this being performed with characteristic competence by the aforementioned Angela Potochnik, and then was more closely involved with an equally excellent performance by Holly Andersen. This is surely one of the very biggest demands the PSA makes of individual members, and they deserve our deep gratitude.
It is great to have our biennial meetings back on track, but this also raises a concern that has been much discussed by the Governing Board for several years, and has been brought into new focus by Covid, the carbon footprint of our meetings. A committee to explore the issue was set up by Alison Wylie and is now led by Kerry McKenzie, a passionate advocate for more climate friendly policies. Holly Andersen, as many of you will know, devoted a substantial part of her honorarium as program chair, to two ecological regeneration projects with substantial carbon capture potential. It’s not clear how significant an impact this kind of project could make on our carbon footprint in the future, but Holly’s generous and exciting projects give us a starting point for exploring this. Much of our effort is currently directed at the measurement activities that members will recognise as the essential preliminary to an informed policy decision. There are, of course, major possible gains from putting some or all of our biennial conference online. But polls of the membership have shown a clear consensus that no online event could serve the core purposes of our meetings. And the technology for hybrid meetings remains problematic and expensive. So this is a topic very much under continued review.
An vital and ongoing goal of the PSA that has been very much advanced by past presidents is improvement in our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Various groups have been established to try to address this problem, or set of problems, including the Underrepresented Philosophy of Science Scholar Initiative Committee (UPSSIC), the Diversity and Climate Committee, and the EDI Caucus, until recently the Women’s Caucus. Many PSA members have made invaluable contributions to these efforts, but I must single out Alicia Bokulich for her extraordinary efforts as head of UPSSIC. The project set up by her committee, which provides mentoring for scholars from underrepresented groups, is one of the largest and most successful of our current initiatives.
Another direction in which we would like to improve the PSA is in our growing inclusion of scholars from more of the world, especially the developing world. Under the leadership of Hasok Chang, the Internationalisation Committee is making real progress in this direction. In collaboration with Michela Massimi a set of off-year, online meetings based in various parts of the world less generally involved with the PSA is being established. I hope all members will follow announcements about these closely and look out for opportunities to get involved.
The PSA is a remarkably active organisation, and I fear that by singling out some of our current activities I have inevitably risked causing offence to some of the many members involved with other projects. Please forgive me. If I acknowledged all the people who have worked tirelessly to improve the PSA, I would very soon exhaust the reader’s patience. You know who you are and, on behalf of the PSA, I thank you all.
One final topic very central to the PSA is our flagship journal, Philosophy of Science. This has also been a place of change. We have completed the transition from Chicago to Cambridge University Press, which will, I think, generate significant benefits for the PSA. We are also just completing a change of editor-in-chief. I know the membership will all want to thank Andrea Woody for her wonderful work in this role for the last six years. The journal has gone from strength to strength in this time, and I have no doubt it will continue to do so under the leadership of Jim Weatherall, who has generously agreed to take on the job, moving the editorial office to the University of California, Irvine.
Thanks to the people mentioned above, and many others, I am confident that I am handing on the Presidency with the PSA in excellent shape. If, as seems plausible, the health of an organisation can be measured by the willingness of its members to contribute their time and energy to it, the PSA should feel very confident in its future. It has been a pleasure doing my own little bit for it, and I know it will be in excellent hands with Michela Massimi, to whom I wish the very best of luck with this new job to add to her portfolio.
Season greetings! John Dupré |
|
|
The PSA Awards Committee is very happy to announce that Katherine Creel has been awarded the Nagel Award for 2020, for her paper “Transparency in Complex Computational Systems,” published in Philosophy of Science. The committee sincerely regrets failing to announce this award at the bi-annual meeting. The winner for 2021 was Michael Miller, for his paper, "Infrared cancellation and measurement.” The Ernest Nagel Early-Career Scholar Essay Award is awarded annually to the best single-authored essay published in Philosophy of Science during the award year by someone who is either a graduate student at the time of publication or received a Ph. D. within the past five years. The recipients receive $250.
|
|
|
Philosophy of Science Editorship |
Thank you to Professor Andrea Woody
The PSA pays tribute to Professor Andrea Woody, who after six very successful years is stepping down from the role of Editor in Chief of the journal Philosophy of Science as of 1 January 2023. Established in 1934, the journal Philosophy of Science has had a long and venerable tradition of editors over the decades, colleagues who have selflessly dedicated their expertise and countless hours of their time to serve the profession in such an important job.
It is no exaggeration to say that Professor Andrea Woody has done hers in an exceptionally dedicated way. Not only has she steered the journal remarkably through very challenging times between the COVID pandemic and the shift from University of Chicago Press to Cambridge University Press earlier in 2022. But she has also by all measures grown the journal and made the journal become a venue where philosophers of science from all traditions could find a home for their work.
The PSA is deeply grateful to Professor Woody’s strategic vision for the journal that over the years has continued to expand its publications on a wide-ranging array of areas and topics. The Editorship of Professor Woody has been marked by a profound sense of humanity, dedication to her community, and kindness, a rare combination of editorial qualities that she has brought to the PSA editorial office with help of the entire team of Associate Editors and the editorial assistant, Kayla Mehl Hutchinson. Professor Woody leaves the journal in an exceptionally strong position as she moves on to new pastures in her role as Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of Washington. We wish Professor Woody every success in her new job as Dean and we send her our deepest thanks!
Welcome to Professor Jim Weatherall
In spring 2022, President John Dupré created a Search Committee to find a new Editor for the Philosophy of Science journal. A call for Expressions of Interest went out in March through the PSA website and social media. The PSA thanks the members of the Search Committee: Anjan Chakravartty, Max Cormendy, Doreen Fraser, Michela Massimi (Chair), Jun Otsuka, and Dan Weiskopf.
As a result of that search, the PSA Governing Board has now made its formal appointment and is very delighted to announce that the next Editor in Chief of Philosophy of Science with effect from 1 January 2023 is Professor Jim Weatherall from University of California, Irvine. Professor Weatherall is a world-leading philosopher of physics, and the author of three books: The Physics of Wall Street; Void: the strange Physics of Nothing, and The Misinformation Age (the latest co-authored with Cailin O’Connor). Among his many responsibilities, Professor Weatherall is the Editor of the book series Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Physics, and has been for many years an Associate Editor of the journal Philosophy of Science. The PSA warmly welcomes Professor Weatherall and is deeply grateful for the willingness to serve the PSA in such an important editorial role.
|
|
|
The Philosophy of Science Association is delighted to launch a new initiative called
PSA Around the World. The aim of the initiative is to reach out to the global community
of philosophers of science and spotlight the rich diversity of practices and traditions in
the field of philosophy of science via fully online conferences with a dedicated regional
focus, running in the years when the Biennial Meeting of the PSA does not take place.
Our inaugural PSA 2023 Around the World has a focus on East Asia including South
East Asia.
The conference will run fully online on ZOOM for three days and different time slots to
accommodate a global audience on various time zones: Sunday 5th November 2023;
Saturday 11th November 2023; Friday 17th November 2023 (precise timing for each
day TBA).
Contributed papers may be on any topic in philosophy of science and the conference
is open to all PSA members worldwide. Given the time zones constraints, and with an
eye to increasing diversity of topics, we regret that there is no call for symposia for this
conference.
The PSA 2023 Around the World Committee is committed to assembling a program
with high-quality papers on a variety of topics and diverse presenters that reflect the
full range of current work in the philosophy of science. Scholars working in East Asia
are particularly encouraged to submit papers, and papers exploring the philosophy of
science in East Asian contexts are most welcome.
Submissions should consist of a 1000 word abstract and should be prepared for
anonymous review with no information identifying the author in the body of the
abstract. For co-authored papers, the presenting author should upload the abstract.
Abstracts should be submitted using the conference EasyChair link: https://easychair.org/cfp/PSA_2023_Around_the_World
The deadline for submissions is 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on 31 March 2023.
The Program Committee expects to announce its decision on papers accepted for presentation by the end of June 2023. Authors of accepted abstracts are encouraged to post full-length papers as PSA 2023 Around the World Conference Papers at philsci-archive.pitt.edu (a publicly accessible digital archive) prior to the meeting if they wish to do so. Paper presentation at the conference should take no more than 15 minutes to allow 15 min for questions (30 min time slot per paper).
In accordance with current PSA policy no one is permitted to present more than once
at each PSA meeting. A scholar may appear as co-author on more than one paper but may present only once at PSA 2023 Around the World.
General questions about contributed papers should be directed to the Chair of the
PSA 2023 Around the World Program Committee, Michela Massimi, at
michela.massimi@ed.ac.uk. To maintain anonymity in the review process, questions
about specific submissions should be sent to office@philsci.org, as this address
will be monitored by someone not involved in the review process. |
|
|
The aim of the PSA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Caucus is to support all marginalized scholars in philosophy of science including, but limited to, scholars who are women, POC, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, disabled, non-TT, First Gen, ESL, caregivers, and allies. If you are interested in joining the caucus, please sign up for our listserv by clicking here.
|
|
|
The UPSS Session at the PSA 2022 Conference was a fantastic success. Four up-and-coming young scholars presented their work during the session: Ge Fang, graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Chia-Lua Lin, who just started their career as an assistant professor at Fairfield University, Yosef Washington, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jennifer Whyte, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. The energy was high and the atmosphere convivial as the room discussed a wide range of fascinating topics: cultural evolution, transdisciplinary modeling, the ontology of race, and communication with extra-terrestrial intelligence. The mood became full-on cheerful when Dr. Lin heartfully thanked the UPSS committee and their UPSS mentor, Dr. Julia Bursten, University of Kentucky, for the help and support they received during their journey to a first tenure-track position in the US. Dr. Lin’s success story will remain a point of pride and fulfillment as the UPSS committee continues their work towards a more inclusive philosophy of science community.
The Philosophy of Science Association's Underrepresented Philosophy of Science Scholars' Committee awarded Naftali Weinberger (Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy) the 2022 recipient of the PSA Prize in Philosophy of Science & Race, for his forthcoming article in Ergo, "Signal Manipulation and the Causal Analysis of Racial Discrimination" . The prize is awarded biennially for the best book, article, or chapter published in English within five years prior to the prize year/PSA meeting year that integrates philosophy of science with discussions of race, ethnicity, and/or racism. Naftali's paper provides a novel proposal for how to model discrimination, while artfully integrating the work of both philosophers and statisticians on the causal status of race. For his article, Naftali will receive a $500 cash prize, which is made possible through generous donations to the UPSS initiative.
| | |
Thanks so much to everyone that attended PSA 2022 in Pittsburgh. It was a great meeting that was made possible by all of you! Mark your calendars now for PSA 2024....... |
|
|
|
