Table of Contents: - Hempel Award Call (Reminder)
Election Nomination Call (Reminder) -
Short Reads by Grads
- Call for new Short Reads
- PSA24 Call for Posters Open
- PSA24 Sponsors
- Calendar of Events & Calls for Papers - Upcoming Dates
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Hempel Award Call (Reminder) |
Nominations may now be made for the 2024 Hempel Award, a biennial award recognizing lifetime scholarly achievement in the philosophy of science. The Hempel Award is named in honor of Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997), one of the twentieth century’s leading philosophers of science and an active PSA member for over fifty years. The award will be presented prior to the PSA Presidential Address at PSA2024 in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 16, 2024.
The Prize Committee for the Hempel Award consists of the current PSA Governing Board or its designated subcommittee. Nominations for the Hempel Award should include a full CV and between three and five detailed letters of support; the latter should address the nominee’s scholarly achievements, construed broadly to include not only the specific research of the nominee but also the nominee's larger impact on the scholarly community of philosophers of science (including training and mentorship, public outreach, professional work for the Philosophy of Science Association, and other community-building activities). Self-nominations will be accepted. Nominees and nominators should be members of the Philosophy of Science Association. Current Governing Board members may not participate in a nomination.
Nominations must be submitted electronically to office@philsci.org no later than May 31, 2024. Questions about the Hempel Award should be directed to Max Cormendy, PSA Executive Director, at director@philsci.org. Members who wish to renominate a candidate from the previous round can send a note to Executive Director Max Cormendy. No additional materials will be required, but the nominator may add to the file should she or he so wish. |
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Election Nomination Call (Reminder) |
In accordance with the Philosophy of Science Association bylaws, the nomination period for the 2024 PSA election is now open. This year we will be electing the next PSA President, as well as two new PSA Governing Board members. The terms of those elected will begin on January 1, 2025.
A nomination can be made for either of these roles by any coalition of 15 full members of the society. Please email any nominations to director@philsci.org, including the names of the 15 members nominating the candidate. |
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The PSA is pleased to share its sixth installment of Short Reads by Grads.
Hannah S. Allen is a Ph.D. Candidate and Steffensen Cannon Fellow at the University of Utah. Her work focuses on the philosophy of science, applied ethics, and the philosophy of race, and her dissertation project investigates the history of the intersection of race and pharmacogenetics. Her other projects include empirical work on geneticists’ perspectives on genetic causation and an investigation into the role of inductive risk in making genetic causation claims. |
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Review of Translating Medicine Across Premodern Worlds, eds. Tara Alberts, Sietske Fransen, and Elaine Leong (The University of Chicago Press, 2022) By Hannah S. Allen
Translation evokes movement, an exchange of information or ideas, a multicultural, chimeric trade between original content and input of the translator. While this practice often applies to texts, it can also equally and effectively be applied to practices, a conceptual dynamism demonstrated in Translating Medicine Across Premodern Worlds, eds. Tara Alberts, Sietske Fransen, and Elaine Leong. Divided into three sections, contributors to this volume engage with archives and archive-making, extra-textual translation, and the notion of expertise while examining and deconstructing previously held notions of translation across materia medica of the pre-modern world. Their distinctly historical approaches suggest new pathways for scholars within the history and philosophy of science by offering narratives from diverse backgrounds which wear away at traditional historical accounts and interrogate timeworn dichotomies. In this review, I consider two of these inquiries.
Daniel Trambaiolo’s piece considers how Dutch medical knowledge influenced Japanese medical knowledge in the Early Modern period. Exhibit A in this investigation replicates Kako Ranshu’s somewhat unorthodox practice of overlaying European images depicting blood vessels with Japanese images indicating acupuncture points to create an entirely new text. Trambaiolo’s endeavor demonstrates how visual observation plays a role in constructing knowledge and implies some relationship between blood vessels and acupuncture points simply by juxtaposing the two images. Doing so posits each tradition’s notion of circulation as hypotheses rather than objective fact, demonstrates the possibility of an integration between what we know as the East and what we know as the West, and suggests that one source of knowledge might fill in where the other lacks.
In another piece, Hansun Hsiung discusses integrating invasive Western surgical techniques, specifically tumor excision, into a culture in Japan which saw such practices as inhumane. This case study emphasizes that translation not only occurs in the spoken and written word, but in practice, methodologies, and values. Key among the latter of these was how to translate virtue. Virtue dictated when it was morally permissible to inflict grave injury to a body given to them by the ancestors, a quandary further compounded when the operation was performed on the breast, an extension of the female energy yin. Hsiung thus makes the case for translation being not just an epistemic, but an epistemic-ethical grounds for negotiation.
These case studies capture just a few of the myriad ways in which authors in Translating Medicine challenge dominant constructions of medical history in the premodern world. The primarily historical text and loose constructions of "knowledge making" invite numerous opportunities for collaboration and elaboration with philosophers of science. The volume introduces case studies which merge diverse cultural, geographical, and historical contexts that will only be augmented when combined with the philosophy of science. Broadening in this way has the potential to productively challenge the standard canon of philosophy of science with real historical record, allowing for possible investigations into the cultural-embeddedness and value-ladenness of medical and scientific knowledge. By this same token, these essays invite inquiry into the nature of scientific progress and change, possibly invoking conversations regarding more diverse and inclusive pluralism of methodology.
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Call for new Short Reads by Grads |
In an effort to build community and bring graduate students into the broader professional discussion, the PSA Newsletter is continuing our initiative called Short Reads by Grads. This is an exclusive opportunity for PSA student members.
Graduate students will have an opportunity to publish a short book review (500 words) as part of our Newsletter content. To support this initiative, we have a signup sheet for those interested in participating (https://forms.gle/vRWkfWqSxrc4hBPHA). Graduate students who agree to write the review will receive a copy of a recent book. Please contact Ramy Amin (amin@philsci.org) with questions. |
PSA24 Posters Call Now Open |
We are looking forward to hosting the 2024 Philosophy of Science Association Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. Call for Posters is now open - we can't wait to see your fantastic submissions.
Call for Posters open until June 1, 2024 |
The PSA is pleased to announce its first round of PSA24 sponsors for the upcoming biennial meeting in New Orleans: Emerald Sponsors: University of California Irvine, Logic & Philosophy of Science
Platinum Sponsors: Ann Johnson Institute
Gold Sponsors: Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Philosophy Arizona State University, Centre for Biology and Society, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science Silver Sponsors: The Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh Our sponsors help make the PSA biennial meeting possible. Thanks to them, not only are we able to have a high quality meeting but we are also able to keep conference registration more accessible for students. If you are interested in becoming a PSA24 sponsor, please reach out to director@philsci.org. |
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Calendar of Events & Calls for Papers - Upcoming Dates |
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