Notre Dame’s History and Philosophy of Science program Celebrates its 25th

anniversary

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Our PhD program celebrated its 25th anniversary this

year, and we marked the occasion with a conference of alumni,

alumnae, faculty and current students sharing their current

research, reflections on HPS, and memories of the program

from the days of the MA through the creation of the PhD to the

present day. Thank you to everyone who came, or who sent

photos and memories to share. We had a special few days to

treasure, and photos from the event can be found here:

www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.772236379519596.107

3741830.207130969363476&type=3

We used the occasion to thank past directors of the

program, and to set up a fund in their honor to support our

current graduate students. All donations, no matter how small,

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are gratefully received. As our current alums no doubt

remember well, every $20 towards travel expenses for a

conference makes a difference. We have raised approximately

$2000 so far, and invite you to support our students with a

small donation. Details of how to donate can be found at

reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/donate/

In the wake of the conference, we have begun putting

together an archive for the ND HPS program. Please contact

Vaughn McKim (vmckim@nd.edu) or Sarah Naramore

(snaramor@nd.edu) if you have items or information that

could be useful.

Katherine Brading, Director

Mark your calendars:

• Thu Oct 29, 2015 - HPS Colloquium Speaker: Joyce Chaplin

• Nov 5-6, 2015 – Collaboration Conundrum Conference (For more information, visit reilly.nd.edu/c3)

• Thu Dec 3, 2015 – HPS Colloquium Speaker: Emilie Kutash

All updates to the HPS calendar can be found at reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/hps-activities/hps-calendar/

History and Philosophy of Science Newsletter

University of Notre Dame Volume 10, 2015

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STUDENT UPDATES

Laura Bland received a Graduate

Fellowship at the Notre Dame Institute

for Advanced Study for 2015-2016.

The fellowship will allow her to finish

her dissertation, which examines the

cultural and religious background of

scientific ideas in the early modern

Atlantic World. She has also been

awarded the Dibner Fellowship in the

History of Science and Technology by

the Huntington Library in Los Angeles,

CA. Laura was also awarded the 2014-

5 Sloan Prize.

Beatriz Carrillo was awarded an

ISLA Graduate Student Research

Award that allowed her to go to the

National Archives and the Rockefeller

Archive to research the roles of

international agents in the creation of

the Chilean health system. From this

she wrote a paper on the participation

of the USPHS in Chilean-US

relationships of health that she

presented at a conference on Public

Health in Latin America and the

Caribbean at the University of York.

Recently, she been researching the

participation of Chilean doctors in

politics in the 1920s and 1930s and will

visit Chile to continue her research.

Bohang Chen delivered two talks in

Beijing this May, and will spend his

summer compiling a book with Prof.

Phillip Sloan on continental philosophy

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of biology. His essay on the relationship

between Darwinism and religion was

published in a Chinese magazine in April.

Jamee Elder recently presented her

paper on "Émilie Du Châtelet on

Newtonian Attraction" at the HPS Du

Châtelet workshop. This past year she was

funded by a "Fulbright Science and

Innovation Graduate Award” and attended

a "Fulbright Enrichment Seminar" over

spring break, in Portland, Oregon with

the theme "Civic Engagement:

Environmental Initiatives for a Sustainable

Future."

John Hanson is currently working on a

paper on Du Châtelet's treatment of

continuity with Katherine Brading. This

work will be supported by a grant from

ISLA. Early next semester he will be

chairing a symposium about Du Châtelet

at the European Philosophy of Science

Association meeting in Düsseldorf.

Moiz Hasan is currently involved in an

international collaborative project which

seeks to explore the development of the

Islamic institution of wisdom/mystical

philosophy. In particular, the task focuses

on examining the teachings in one

international mystical lineage,

the Naqshbandiyya, named after the

Central Asian scholar Bahauddin

Naqshband (d. 791/ 1389). The project is

an initiative to develop a richer history of

this lineage through a census of the

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surviving manuscripts (written by the

personages of the lineage) and their

examination, and to allow specialists

and the general public access to this

literature through translations from the

original Persian and Arabic to the Urdu

and English languages. Moiz is one of

the principal investigators of the project

and recently completed a book-length

project about one such personage

comprising 5 unedited, rare, Persian

manuscripts with their Urdu

translations. The book is in Urdu and

published in Pakistan with the title The

Life and Teachings of Hazrat Khwaja

Yusuf Hamdani Based On 5 Hitherto

Unpublished Manuscripts.

Xiaoxing Jin presented his paper

“Translation and Transmutation: The

Origin of Species in China” at the 2015

Midwest Junto Conference for the

History of Science at University of

Wisconsin-Madison. He was also Notre

Dame’s Table Tennis Champion this

year!

Michelle Marvin is currently

working for Celia Deane-Drummond

as part of her grant for the "Human

Distinctiveness Seminar." In April, she

presented at the Midwest American

Academy of Religion conference in

Ada, Ohio, as part of the Sensory and

Material Cultures of Religion session.

Her paper, entitled "The Sound of

Theology: A Comparative Study on

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Taizé Chant and Vedic Mantra,"

investigates the ways in which the

musical practices of specific Hindu and

Christian communities serve as

expressions of theological identity.

Michelle was also awarded a spot in the

2015 Community Engagement Faculty

Institute at Notre Dame's Center for

Social Concerns.

Mousa Mohammadian won two

grants this year, one from Notre

Dame’s Nanovic Institute for European

Studies to take a 5-week German

intensive course this summer in NYC,

and the other a travel grant from The

Consortium for Socially Relevant

Philosophy of/in Science and

Engineering (SRPoiSE). He recently

defended his dissertation proposal and

will work with Anjan Chakravartty. In

March, he presented his paper

“Cognitive Values are a ‘Collective

Pool’: On Douglas’ Theory of

Cognitive Values” at the SRPoiSE

conference.

Sarah Naramore is currently a

Research Fellow at Philadelphia’s

Consortium for History of Science,

Technology, and Medicine and has been

traveling for research related to her

dissertation on the medical system of

eighteenth-century American physician

Benjamin Rush. In addition to

dissertation preparations, she presented

a paper at the annual Midwest Junto at

the University of Wisconsin-Madison

entitled, "From Within and Without: The

Emergence of Yellow Fever as a Public

Disease, 1790-1820," and worked with

Vaughn McKim on the history of the

Notre Dame HPS program.

Pablo Ruiz de Olano co-taught the

very popular “Ethics of Emerging

Weapons Technologies” course with Maj.

General Robert Latiff (Ret.) in Spring

2015.

John Slattery passed his doctoral

candidacy exams with honors, and is

currently working on his dissertation

"New Science, Old Problems: A

Theological Analysis of Rev. John Zahm's

Attempt to Bridge Evolution and Roman

Catholicism," advised by Prof. J. Matthew

Ashley. In March, John traveled to

Scotland on a Postgraduate Research

Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh,

where he gave a talk on "Liberation

Theology and Post-Kuhnian Philosophies

of Science: Possibilities of Consonance." A

month prior, John gave an invited lecture

at the Lutheran School of Theology at

Chicago, entitled: "Christology and

Creation from Teilhard de Chardin to

Elizabeth Johnson." In May, he will travel

to Portland to give a talk at the annual

conference of the College Theology

Society on ecology, theology, and racism,

entitled: “Critical Distance between the

Earth and the Poor: Placing M. Shawn

Copeland in Dialogue with Ecological

Theology."

Finally, John is also currently working

with Prof. Don Howard on an edited

volume of the unfinished work of Rev.

Dr. Ernan McMullin, "Christian

Theology and the Natural Sciences,"

under contract with Oxford University

Press.

Monica Solomon plans to finish

writing her dissertation this summer.

She presented a paper entitled

"Individuals and Individualism in

Philosophical Communities," at the

Hypatia biennial conference at Villanova

University in May. She presented a

preliminary report titled "Émilie Du

Châtelet and Christian Wolff on

extension, space and time: a comparative

analysis."on Émilie Du Châtele at the in-

house workshop that took place April

24-25. Finally, she will be assisting Greg

Macklem with the 2015 ETHOS

summer working group.

Jeremy Steeger is currently studying

for his comps and working with

Katherine Brading on a paper on Du

Châtelet's natural philosophy. He also

presented a paper called "Du Châtelet's

Ontology: PSR and the Problem of

Force" at the recent conference on Du

Châtelet. Jeremy will be attending the

European Philosophy of Science

Association's 2015 meeting in Düsseldorf

this fall, presenting his Du Châtelet

work on a panel with John Hanson,

Jamee Elder, and Monica Solomon.

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ALUMNI UPDATES

Justin Biddle (Ph.D., 2006) was

awarded tenure at Georgia Tech.

Marvin Bolt (Ph.D., 1998), formerly

vice president for collections at the

Adler Planetarium and Astronomy

Museum, has been appointed by The

Corning Museum of Glass as its first

curator of science and technology. He is

responsible for managing the Museum’s

science and technology collection,

exhibits, and programming.

Steve Case (Ph.D., 2014) was

awarded the 2014 Annals of Science

essay prize for his paper, "'Land-marks

of the Universe': John Herschel Against

the Background of Positional

Astronomy." The essay is forthcoming

in Annals of Science. He also presented a

paper on the topic at the 2015 Midwest

Junto in Madison.

Matthew Dowd (Ph.D., 2003)

continues to help organize the biennial

history of astronomy workshops. The

twelfth workshop will take place June

24–28, 2015. Matt has also co-edited a

volume, with Doug Vakoch, due out

from Cambridge University Press this

summer: The Drake Equation: Estimating

the Prevalance of Extraterrestrial Life through

the Ages. He also is the author of one

chapter of that book. Matt is the current

president of the Notre Dame chapter of

Phi Beta Kappa.

2014 was a great placement year for our HPS program, with all of our job candidates

accepting excellent positions: Manuela Fernández Pinto has taken up her post-doc at

the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences

(http://www.helsinki.fi/tint/index.htm), Elise Crull (pictured, left) and Charles

Pence accepted tenure-track positions in philosophy at CCNY and LSU respectively,

Richard Oosterhoff has accepted a multi-year post-doc at the University of Cambridge,

and our first ND HPS post-doc Catherine Jackson (pictured, right) accepted a tenure-

track position in history of science at UW-Madison.

Stellar year for ND HPS placements

Nahyan Fancy (Ph.D., 2007) was

awarded membership at Princeton’s

Institute of Advanced Study for Fall

2015.

Manuela Fernández Pinto (Ph.D.,

2014) has been chosen as the winner of

the History of Economics Society's

2015 Joseph Dorfman Prize for the best

dissertation in the history of economic

thought and methodology, for her

dissertation Learning from Ignorance:

Agnotology's Challenge to Philosophy of

Science. She also helped organize a

workshop on Scientific Imperialism at

the University of Helsinki, where she is

a research team member at the

Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence

in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences,

and has an ongoing project to turn the

contributions into an edited volume or a

special journal issue. Manuela has also

accepted a postdoctoral position at the

Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá,

beginning in mid July. She will maintain

her affiliation at Helsinki.

Darin Hayton (Ph.D., 2004) has a book

coming out this fall titled The Crown and the

Cosmos. Astrology and the Politics of

Maximilian I (University of Pittsburgh,

2015)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/082

294443X

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Vladimir Jankovic (Ph.D., 1998) is

currently fronting a major application

for a £10m bid to lead the Leverhulme

Centre for Crisis Studies. He is also

preparing an ESRC bid on Working

Atmospheres: Industrial Meteorology

and the Commercialization of Weather,

1950-2010.

Ryan Macpherson (Ph.D., 2003) is

serving as Chair of the History Dept. at

Bethany Lutheran College and as senior

editor of The Family in America: A Journal

of Public Policy.

Christopher Mirus (Ph.D., 2004)

reports his excitement that Jude

Galbraith will be entering the ND HPS

doctoral program this fall. Jude took a

number of his courses in the HPS minor

at the University of Dallas, a program,

he notes, that exists because of his HPS

education at ND. This summer, he and

his wife and their two two little boys are

heading to Rome, where he’ll spend two

years teaching at the University of

Dallas's Rome campus.

John Mullen (M.A., 2004) was

recently tenured at Bethany College in

Kansas.

Richard Oosterhoff (Ph.D., 2013)

has published “The Fabrist Origins of

Erasmian Science: Mathematical

Erudition in Erasmus’ Basel,” Erasmian

Science, special edition of Journal of

Interdisciplinary History of Ideas 3:6

(2014), 3:1-37; “A Book, a Pen, and

the Sphere: Reading Sacrobosco in the

Renaissance,” in History of Universities

28, no. 2 (June 2015) (in press). He is

also the author of the entry on “Jacques

Lefèvre d’Étaples,” a 12,000-word

invited, reviewed entry for the

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

under the section of Renaissance

Philosophy, ed. Jill Kraye (2015).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lefe

vre-etaples/

Steve Ruskin (Ph.D., 2001) has an

article coming out this summer titled

“The Business of Natural History:

Charles Aiken, Colorado Ornithology,

and the Role of the Professional

Collector,” in Historical Studies in the

Natural Sciences.

Mike Shank (M.A., 1975), Professor

of the History of Science, University of

Wisconsin-Madison, recently translated

Roshdi Rashed, Classical Mathematics from

al-Khwārizmī to Descartes (London:

Routledge, 2015) from the French

(Paris, 2008). Thanks to the generosity

of a former student, he has spent the

spring semester of 2015 conceiving and

drafting a history of medieval science

aimed at high school readers. On July

1, he will retire. After some mind-

clearing and while giving several

hobbies their due, he hopes in the years

ahead to complete several languishing

book and editions projects.

Holly Vandewalle (Ph.D., 2010) is

currently serving as Assistant Professor of

the Practice at Boston College. She and

Daniel McKaughan (Ph.D., 2007) are

going to publish their course reader in the

history and philosophy of science with

Bloomsbury Press.

Joseph Zepeda (Ph.D., 2009) was

awarded tenure at St. Mary’s College of

California.

The HPS Alumni Database is available at

http://reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-

of-science/hps-people/hps-alumni-ae/

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FACULTY UPDATES

Francesca Bordogna’s (PLS) current book manuscript, “The Pragmatist Hotel,” examines a group of European,

especially Italian, philosophers, mathematicians, psychologists, visual artists, novelists, journalists, and politicians

(including Italy’s fascist Duce, Benito Mussolini), who in the early decades of the twentieth century endorsed the

philosophy of pragmatism and entertained complex relationships with William James and Charles S. Peirce. She is also

working on an essay on the relationships between mathematics and metaphysics in William James’s late metaphysical

works, for an Oxford University Press volume. Her article “‘Unstiffening Ideas’: The Italian Magic Pragmatists and

William James” will appear in the following volume: James Kloppenberg, Joel Isaac, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

eds., Worlds of US History (Oxford University Press, in press). She also presented papers at various conferences,

including HOPOS 2014, S-USIH 2014, and SAAP 2015 and gave an invited lecture at the University of Chicago’s

Fishbein Center for the History of the Human Sciences.

Michael J. Crowe (PLS, emeritus), though retired, continues to be somewhat active in research and publication. Most

recently, he co-edited with Nicholas Ayo a collection of ten papers by Fred Crosson titled Ten Philosophical Essays in

the Christian Tradition, which Notre Dame Press published in May 2015. He has published two essays on aspects of

the history of the extraterrestrial life debate, the longer co-written with Dr. Matthew Dowd, an HPS graduate and a

manuscript editor at Notre Dame Press. In the last two years he has presented papers at various conferences at Notre

Dame and gave a talk to the physics department at the University of Chicago on the history of vector analysis.

Lane DesAutels (HPS Postdoc) has just had an article accepted by the journal Synthese titled "Toward a propensity

interpretation of stochastic mechanism for the life sciences.” In addition, his abstract "On the Role of Unactualized

Possibilities Biological Explanation" was accepted for presentation at the International Society for the History,

Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology meeting to be held in Montreal in July, and an abstract (co-written with

Grant Ramsey) titled "Causal-possibility Explanation" was accepted for presentation at the European Philosophy of

Science Association meetings to be held in Düsseldorf in September.

Left: Chris

Hamlin signs his

new book More

Than Hot at the

Johns Hopkins

University Press

book signing at

the 2014 History

of Science

Society Meeting.

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Christopher Hamlin (History) published More Than Hot: A Short History of Fever with Johns Hopkins University

Press in 2014. He also delivered the James Bryne Lecture at Depaul University on April 9 titled "Turning over the

Right Rocks: Finding Legacies of Catholic Environmentalism" and the Robert P. Hudson lecture at the University of

Kansas Medical School on May 7 titled “How Malaria Became a Disease -- and what that disease was.”

In Spring 2015, Lynn Joy (Philosophy) taught for the first time her new course on Women and Philosophy, which

asks what roles a philosopher's own life and personal identity should play in defining and evaluating his or her

philosophical achievements."

Don Howard (Philosophy) had a number of his papers on Einstein and quantum theory translated into Italian and

published as Anche Einstein gioca a dadi La lunga lotta con la meccanica quantistica (Carocci, 2015). He is currently

working with Maj. Gen. Robert Latiff on a project to produce educational modules based upon the DARPA-NRC

report titled "Emerging and Readily Available Technologies and National Security: A Framework for Addressing

Ethical, Legal, and Societal Issues." Powerpoints, videos, and other materials will be posted on the Reilly Center

website this summer.

Janet Kourany (Philosophy) was an IASH [Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities] Distinguished Visiting

Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently organizing a conference with Kevin Elliott (Ph.D., 2004) and

Anjan Chakravartty (Philosophy) called "The Collaboration Conundrum: Special Interests and Scientific Research"

to take place at ND November 5-6, 2015, for which she received a 2015 Large Henkels grant of $10,000. She gave

papers this year in Waterloo (in August, with Manuela Fernández Pinto, Ph.D., 2014), Chicago (a symposium paper

at PSA in November), Ghent (also in November and again with Manuela Fernandez Pinto), Edinburgh (in March),

and Dubrovnik (in April).

Robert (Jay) Malone, Executive Director of the History of Science Society, based at Notre Dame, was elected a

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Feb 2015. He continues to serve as

the HSS delegate to AAAS’s Section X (Societal Impact of Science and Engineering), is active in Section L (History

and Philosophy of Science) and serves as HSS delegate to the National Humanities Alliance (which advocates for the

humanities in the U.S.). He is also a member of the Conference of Administrative Officers of the American Council of

Learned Societies and represents the HSS at the American Historical Association (the HSS is formally affiliated with

AAAS and the AHA). He continues to work on the field diaries of B.L.C. Wailes who, in the 1840s, conducted one of

the earlier state geological surveys in the U.S.

Kate Marshall (English) was been awarded the 2014 Dorothy Lee Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology

of Culture for her book Corridor: Media Architectures in American Fiction. The award, presented by the Media

Ecology Association, honors works that focus on the ethnographic or intercultural analysis of communication,

perception, cognition, consciousness, media, technology, material culture, and/or the natural environment. She also

earned tenure in May.

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Phil Mirowski’s book Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste (2013) has been issued in German and Spanish

translations this year. His next book, with co-author Edward Nik-Khah, will be The Knowledge we have Lost in

Information: a history of the economics of information, (Oxford) which will be accompanied by a video lecture series

from INET. He also gave an invited lecture to the Copenhagen Business School on the topic. He was an invited

speaker at the New York Review of Books conference on “What’s Wrong with the Economy—and Economists,” You

can find the video of this talk at: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2015/mar/29/whats-wrong-with-the-economy/

Phillip Sloan, (PLS, emeritus) continues his work with the Center and the HPS program. He has recently

published “Molecularizing Chicago, 1945-1965: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of the University of Chicago Biophysics

Program.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44: 364-412. He has also completed a major revision of his

entry, “Evolution to 1872” for the Stanford On-Line Encyclopedia of Philosophy. With former Reilly Center Director

Gerald McKenny, and Reilly Center Research Coordinator Kathleen Eggleson, he has recently published Darwin in

the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) that came

from the Reilly-Center sponsored conference commemorating the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Tom Stapleford (PLS) has received two major grants. The first, "Economic Statistics and the Challenge of

Democratic Control," is a $100k grant from the NSF that will allow him to be on leave in AY 2015-2016.

(http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1430854.) The second grant is for a large project on which

he is co-PI with Celia Deane-Drummond and Darcia Narvaez titled "Developing Virtues in the Practice of Science."

This is a three-year, $3.1 million grant from the Templeton Religion Trust for a multi-disciplinary study of the

cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dispositions that are fostered in daily practice of laboratory research in biology.

Jim Turner (History) retired in 2015 and was honored with a conference titled Humanities & Divinity: Reckoning

with Intellectual and Religious History.

Laura Walls (English) is finishing a biography of Henry David Thoreau, supported originally by a Guggenheim

fellowship and now by an NEH fellowship. One recent spin-off from this work is an essay on Thoreau and the

philosophy of measurement titled "Of Compass, Chain and Sounding Line: Taking Thoreau's Measure," forthcoming

in Reasoning in Measurement, edited by Alfred Nordmann and Nicola Mößner (Pickering and Chatto, 2015).

VISITORS: Marcus Carrier and Maceo Williams from Bielefeld University visited us as part of our exchange program this academic year. Professor Martin Carrier also visited us from Bielefeld and gave a colloquium talk on “Science, Economy, and Politics: How to Respond to the Credibility Crisis of Science” in November. Notre Dame HPS has begun a new exchange program with the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Anna Ortin visited as a student in the spring and Michela Massimi visited in December and gave a talk titled “Kant’s Dynamic Theory of Matter in 1755 and Its Debt to Speculative Newtonian Experimentalism.” Updates on visitors and partner programs can be found at reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/hps-people/hps-visitors/ and reilly.nd.edu/history-and-philosophy-of-science/partner-programs/

Lorem Ipsum HPS Newsletter, Vol. 10

Our incoming class for Fall 2015 is confirmed. Please join us in

welcoming:

Julianna Poole (History track)

Julianna has a masters degree in molecular biology from Princeton and is currently

pursuing research on the character and effects of Old English medical remedies.

Martin Beers (Philosophy track)

Martin comes to us from Thomas Aquinas College, and has research interests in

philosophy of physics.

Jude Galbraith (Philosophy track)

Jude’s undergraduate degree is in philosophy from the University of Dallas, and he is

interested in ethical implications of science and how science intersects with society.

Sebastián Murgueitio Ramirez (Philosophy track)

Sebastian is a double major in philosophy and physics at Universidad de los Andes,

Bogotá, and his interests are in philosophy of physics.

History and Philosophy of Science Program University of Notre Dame Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values 453 Geddes Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556

[Recipient]

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HPS Reading Group Fall 2015

The Fall reading group book selection is Joyce Chaplin’s Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2003).