Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It has been a busy first quarter of the 2023 year for the Philosophy of Science Association and I just wanted to give you some brief updates on a few ongoing initiatives. As I was writing this brief update, the news of the deaths of both Ian Hacking and Bill Newton-Smith arrived. I join their respective families, colleagues, and friends around the world in mourning the loss of two of the most creative philosophers of our time— the Dept. of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford have respectively created the following In memoriam:
https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/news/in-memoriam-ian-hacking-1936-2023/
https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/article/in-memoriam-bill-newton-smith
Back to my PSA updates, the PSA is about to start working on a Strategic Plan which will lay out values and priorities for the society over the next few years. To this effect, all PSA members were invited to join two townhall meetings which took place via ZOOM in March. I am also convening a dedicated task force group consisting of PSA Past Presidents, President-Elect, and current Chairs of various PSA Committees. The task force group will start the work on the Strategic Plan document in late May. I shall report back to you all via the next newsletters about the progress made and will make sure to put in place mechanisms for receiving your feedback and comments as we go along, if you wish to do so.
Second, as already announced in the PSA Newsletter of March 2023, a warm welcome to Alison Wylie as the Chair of the Fundraising Committee. Alison stepped down in December 2022 from the role of Past President having served the PSA in 2019-2020 and very generously agreed to take on the task of steering the recently formed Fundraising Committee. You will hear more from Alison Wylie directly through this newsletter about upcoming initiatives and planned activities of the Fundraising Committee. These are key to the future sustainability of the PSA and to supporting its mission. I want to express my deep gratitude to Alison Wylie, Max Cormendy, Taraneh Wilson, Kevin Zollman and the fundraising consultant Maggie Clay Love for all their work so far – and to all PSA members, many thanks for your generous support.
I wanted also to give you a brief update about the PSA Around the World 2023 new initiative, which as you may remember I announced back in the first newsletter of 2023. The Call for Papers closed on 31 March and I am really delighted to report that we received 138 submissions with a fantastic representation from East Asia and South East Asia — please see figure below for some stats from EasyChair about geographic distribution.
This result exceeded our original expectations and shows that there is a genuine appetite among PSA members for online conferences that can bring together our global community. The PSA Around the World 2023 Program Committee is currently working hard to review the submissions and we will strive for diversity, equality, and inclusion in finalising the program of contributed papers and in organising plenary panel sessions with focus on Philosophy of Science in the East Asia incl. South East Asia. The final program will be posted in the summer on the website: https://www.philsci.org/philosophy_of_science_around_t.php
Once again many thanks to the PSA International Relations Committee with Hasok Chang, Chuang Liu, Teru Miyake and all the colleagues in the PSA AW2023 Program Committee for their enthusiastic support and tireless work for this initiative. And, of course, many thanks to everyone who submitted an abstract!
The conference will run on ZOOM with breakout rooms on Sunday 5th November 2023; Saturday 11th November 2023; Friday 17th November 2023.
Very best wishes,
Michela Massimi
PSA President 2023-24
