New England Workshop on Science and Social Change

The annual New England Workshop on Science and Social Change (NewSSC) is an innovative, interaction-intensive workshop designed to facilitate discussion and longer-term collaboration among college faculty who teach and write about interactions between scientific developments and social change.

Specific objectives of NewSSC are to show that: (See prospectus for NewSSC)

Spring 2004 Workshop, "Complexities of environment and development in the Age of DNA"

Everyone "knows" that genes and environment interact, but, in this "Age of DNA," genetics is often seen as the way to expose the important or root causes of behavior and disease or as the best route to effective therapeutic technologies. Several scientific currents, however, are bringing back into the picture environmental contributions in the development of behavioral and medical conditions over any individual's lifetime. This trend provides a wealth of potential issues and case material for science and technology studies.

Location: Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole MA, USA
May 1-4


Organizer: Peter J. Taylor, University of Massachusetts Boston, Programs in Science, Technology and Values and Critical and Creative Thinking.
Facilitator: Denise Lach, Oregon State University
Participant-Evaluator: Steve Fifield, University of Delaware

Seed funding: NSF Program in Science and Technology Studies, SES-0402142

Participants

João Arriscado Nunes (jan@ces.uc.pt)
Steve Fifield (fifield@UDel.Edu)
Evelyn Fox Keller (efkeller@mit.edu)
Denise Lach (denise.lach@oregonstate.edu)
Sergio Martinez (sfmar@minerva.filosoficas.unam.mx)
Susan Oyama (soyama@earthlink.net)
Matthew Puma (mopuma@charter.net)
Jason Robert (Jason.Robert@Dal.Ca)
Peter Taylor (peter.taylor@umb.edu)
Cor vanderWeele (c.n.vd.weele@freeler.nl)
Sarah Vogel (sav2101@columbia.edu)
Marc Weinstein (marcw@lcbmail.uoregon.edu)
Rasmus Winther (rasmus@filosoficas.unam.mx)

Sections to follow:


Precirculated materials

João Arriscado Nunes Steve Fifield Susan Oyama Peter Taylor Cor van der Weele Marc Weinstein Rasmus Winther

Notes towards possible sessions/activities

  • Notes to stimulate thinking about language related to environment and development
  • Diagramming of Intersecting Processes (a teaching activity under development)

    Profiles of Participants

    João Arriscado Nunes

    I got a first degree in History at the University of Porto and a PhD in Sociology at the University of Coimbra. My early research focused on the history of peasant agriculture, demography and family sociology, with an ongoing interest in the sociology of knowledge.
    After getting my PhD, I moved into Science and Technology Studies. I completed two long-term projects based on an ethnography of a cancer research laboratory in Portugal, and was involved as a researcher or as coordinator of the Portuguese teams in several national and European collaborative projects on globalization and science, on science, technology and governance, on the regulation and public perceptions of biotechnology, on public debate and participatory technology assessment and on public understanding of science.
    Between 1998 and 2001, I was coordinator of the Portuguese team of the international project "Reinventing Social Emancipation", funded by the Macarthur and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundations, hosted by the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra and directed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. The project, involving over 60 researchers from six countries ( Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Mozambique, India and Portugal), studied local responses to neoliberal globalization and the emergence of solidaristic, alternative forms of globalization, and included case studies on participatory democracy, alternative forms of economic activity, multicultural citizenship, rival knowledges, biodiversity and intellectual property and emerging forms of transnational trade-unionism. The results are in the process of publication in five countries (Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Britain and Italy) and four languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian).
    My current research interests focus on: a) social studies of biomedicine and public health, in particular the enactments of cancer in oncobiological research; the management of uncertainty in tumor pathology; health and environment; a sociological history of helicobacter pylori; b) the regulation of the life sciences and biomedicine (in particular medically assisted reproduction and research on human embryos); c) public participation in debate and deliberation on matters related to science, health and the environment. I am a member of the steering committee of the European network ITEMS (Identifying Trends in European Medical Space), funded by the European Union.
    Besides being a professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra (teaching in both the graduate and the undergraduate programs) and a senior researcher at the Center for Social Studies (CES), an interdisciplinary research center of the same University, I am active in training courses for environmental protection officials, activists and members of the Civil Protection Agency, as well as in initiatives in science education.

    Selected publications
    2003a, From Bioethics to Biopolitics: New Challenges, Emerging Responses, Oficina do CES, 193.
    2003b, The Uncertain and the Unruly: Complexity and Singularity in Biomedicine and Public Health, Oficina do CES, 184.
    2002, Risk, Uncertainty and Innovation in Biomedicine: Tumour Pathology and Translational Research, Oficina do CES, 180.
    1998, Ecologies of Cancer: Constructing the "Environment" in Oncobiology, Oficina do CES, 133.
    1997, Shifting Scales, Articulating Cancer: Towards a Cartography of Oncobiological Research, Oficina do CES, 98.
    (All available online at www.ces.fe.uc.pt)
    2001, "A síndrome do Parque Jurá ssico: História(s) Edificante(s) da Genética num Mundo `Sem Garantias´", Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociais, 61: 29-62.
    Boaventura de Sousa Santos and João Arriscado Nunes, 2003, "Introdução: Para Ampliar o Canon do Reconhecimento e da Diferenca", in Boaventura de Sousa Santos (ed.), Reconhecer para Libertar: Os Caminhos do Cosmopolitismo Multicultural, Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 25-68 (English version available at www.ces.fe.uc.pt/emancipa).
    João Arriscado Nunes and Maria Eduarda Goncalves (eds.), 2001, Enteados de Galileu? A Semiperiferia no Sistema Mundial da Ciencia, Porto: Afrontamento.

    Steve Fifield

    I am interested in how school science curricula are shaped by broader culture(s), and how science education, in turn, mediates the ways we understand ourselves in relation to science. One of the ways I'm exploring this topic is through the stories of gay, lesbian, and, bisexual student and novice teachers as they make sense of themselves and their sexualities, and at the same time learn how to be science teachers. The manuscript I submitted to the NewSSC04 website, a case study from this work, explores how a gay student teacher in biology appealed to genetic foundations for his sexuality as a way to construct a place for himself in "the natural way of things." Some of his students, on the other hand, favored environmental causes for homosexuality, since they were convinced that God would not create "immoral" genetic traits. My paper takes up other issues that are beyond the focus of the workshop, but the interplay of nature, genes, morality, and sexuality in science education is an example of a topic I hope to approach more critically as a result of the workshop.
    My path to these issues looks more coherent in hindsight than it felt in the making. I came to these interests through BA and MS degrees in biology and ecology, respectively. At the University of Minnesota, I was lured away from Ph.D. studies in science to the study of science through wonderful interactions with people like John Beatty, Helen Longino, Ron Giere, and Ken Waters. At Minnesota, I completed a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, with a minor in Studies of Science and Technology. I then came to the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware (UD) to teach future high school science teachers. After several years in that position, I recently moved to the UD Education Research and Development Center. I earn my keep doing educational program evaluations and policy analyses on issues ranging from full-day kindergarten to school vouchers. In addition to being a participant, I will produce a formal program evaluation of the workshop. My goals are to document our experiences and to understand something about the interactions of the workshop environment and the relationships and ideas that we develop together.

    Sergio F. Martínez

    I have worked in philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, and general philosophy of science. In the last ten years my work has focused on how patterns of causal explanation develop and articulate historically. I am currently in charge of a research project titled "Philosophy of Scientific Practices" at the Institute of Philosophical Research at Mexico's National University. We study how focusing on scientific practices, as opposed to scientific theories, leads to different ways of understanding science. The project's main objective is formulating a notion of scientific practice (as a special sort of social practice) that allows a naturally integrated approach to the philosophy of science and technology. I am in particular interested in developing ways in which the concept of "technological change", as elaborated in different disciplines (such as economics, history, sociology and philosophy), can be compared and evaluated from different perspectives. Evolutionary models of practices play an important role in the development of such integrative framework. As part of this project I am currently working on a paper (with Angeles Eraña) that examines the relation between ordinary and scientific cognition from different perspectives about the modular structure of the mind. Our contention is that what I call heuristic structures provide the link between both types of cognition.

    Selected relevant publications:

    * Martínez, S. (1997). De los efectos a las causas. Sobre la historia de los patrones de explicación científica. Paidós/UNAM, México.
    * Martínez, S. (2003). Geografía de las prácticas científicas. Normatividad, heurística y racionalidad. UNAM, México.
    * Martínez, S. (2000). "On Changing Views about Physical Law, Evolution and Progress in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century," Ludus Vitalis vol. VIII, num. 13.
    * Eraña, A. and Martínez, S. (submitted), "The Heuristic Structure of Scientific Knowledge."

    Courses:
    * Philosophical and Historical Problems in Biology, workshop for undergraduate majors in Biology, School of Sciences, UNAM.
    * Explanation and Reduction in the Sciences, graduate program in Philosophy of Science, UNAM.
    * Selected Topics in Cognitive Sciences, graduate program in Philosophy, UNAM

    Susan Oyama

    After taking my degree from Harvard University's interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations I began reading, speaking, and writing in the area that has consumed most of my scholarly life: the concept of development, especially its relationships with evolutionary theory and its uses and misuses in academic disciplines and in public discourse. I have written extensively on the nature-nurture opposition, the notion of genetic information and other biological metaphors, and have attempted to articulate an alternative understanding of the processes of development and evolution. I share with other workshop participants an interest in how science works.

    My teaching was mostly in psychology departments, but it was always a great pleasure to interact with students in other fields. Having stopped teaching about four years ago, I am now Professor Emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate School and University Center, both of The City University of New York.

    Selected publications:

    in press
    Speaking of nature. In Y. Haila & C. Dyke (Eds.), How does nature speak? The dynamics of the human ecological condition. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Boundaries and (Constructive) Interaction. In Christoph Rehmann-Sutter and Eva M. Neumann-Held (Eds.), Genes in development. Rereading the molecular paradigm. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    2001
    Cycles of contingency: Developmental systems and evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffiths, and R. D. Gray (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (including a chapter, "What do you do when all the good words are taken?")

    2000
    Evolution's eye: A systems view of the biology-culture divide. Series on Science and Cultural Theory, Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Roy Weintraub, series editors. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    The ontogeny of information: Developmental systems and evolution (2nd edition, revised and expanded). Series on Science and Cultural Theory, Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Roy Weintraub, series editors. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Causal democracy and causal contributions in DST. Philosophy of Science, 67 (Proceedings), S332-347.

    Jason Robert

    I am a philosopher of biology and bioethicist at Dalhousie University. I also hold a New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. My research is funded through operating grants from the CIHR and from the Stem Cell Network. I work primarily on questions about development, especially in relation to genetics (on the one hand) and evolution (on the other). My first book, Embryology, Epigenesis, and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously, has just been published by Cambridge University Press. Much of my recent thinking and writing has dealt specifically with gene-environment interactions, both in terms of causal (ontogenetic) studies and also in terms of large-scale population-based (statistical) research.
    Aside from the book, some of my relevant publications are:

    Robert JS. Developmental Systems and Animal Behaviour. Critical notice of Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide, by Susan Oyama. Biology and Philosophy 18.3: 477-489 [2003]

    Robert JS. How Developmental is Evolutionary Developmental Biology? Biology & Philosophy 17.5: 591-611 [2002]

    Robert JS, Hall BK, Olson WM. Bridging the Gap between Developmental Systems Theory and Evolutionary Developmental Biology. BioEssays 23.10: 954-962 (2001)

    Robert JS. Interpreting the Homeobox: Metaphors of Gene Action and Activation in Development and Evolution. Evolution & Development 3.4: 287-295 (2001)

    Robert JS. Genomes, Hormones, and Health. Literary Review of Canada 9.4: 18-21 (May 2001)

    Robert JS. Schizophrenia Epigenesis? Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 21.2: 191-215 (2000)

    Additional details about my research program can be found at .


    Peter Taylor

    I joined the Critical and Creative Thinking (UMass Boston in the fall of 1998 and have been enjoying new challenges teaching experienced educators, other mid-career professionals, and prospective K-12 teachers. Working in the CCT Program also provides opportunities to promote reflective practice in ways that extend my contributions to ecology and environmental studies (ES) and social studies of science and technology (STS). In those fields I focus on the complexity of, respectively, ecological or environmental situations and the social situations in which the environmental research is undertaken. Both kinds of situation, I argue, can be characterized in terms of "intersecting processes" that cut across scales, involve heterogeneous components, and develop over time. These cannot be understood from an outside view; instead positions of engagement must be taken within the complexity. Knowledge production needs to be linked with planning for action and action itself in an ongoing process so that knowledge, plans, and action can be continually reassessed in response to developments -- predicted and surprising alike. In this spirit, ES, STS, and critical pedagogy/reflective practice have come together for me in a project of stimulating researchers to self-consciously examine the complexity of their social situatedness so as to change the ways they address the complexity of ecological and socio-environmental situations. Through collaborations in and beyond the College of Education I also seek to promote a vision of critical science and environmental education that extends from improving the teaching of scientific concepts and methods to involving citizens in community-based research. Recently, I have begun to take these interests in a new direction through historical and sociological analysis of social epidemiological approaches that address the intersections of environment, health, and development.

    This project had its beginnings in environmental and social activism in Australia which led to studies and research in ecology and agriculture. I moved to the United States to undertake doctoral studies in ecology, with a minor focus in STS. Subsequently I combined scientific investigations with interpretive inquiries from the different disciplines that make up STS, my goal being to make STS perspectives relevant to life and environmental students and scientists. Critical thinking and critical pedagogy became central to my intellectual and professional project as I encouraged students and researchers to contrast the paths taken in science, society, education with other paths that might be taken, and to foster their acting upon the insights gained. Bringing critical analysis of science to bear on the practice and applications of science has not been well developed or supported institutionally, and so I continue to contribute actively, to new collaborations, programs, and other activities, new directions for existing programs, and collegial interactions across disciplines.
    Further elaboration of this work

    Selected relevant publications
    (1997) "Teaching Philosophy," http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/ goalsoverview.html
    (1998) "Natural Selection: A heavy hand in biological and social thought," Science as Culture, 7 (1), 5-32.
    (2001). "Distributed agency within intersecting ecological, social, and scientific processes," in S. Oyama, P. Griffiths and R. Gray (Eds.), Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 313-332.
    (2003a). "Non-standard lessons from the 'tragedy of the commons'," pp. 87-105 in M. Maniates (Ed.), Empowering Knowledge: Teaching and Learning Global Environmental Politics. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield.
    (2003b). Gene-environment complexities: What is interesting to measure and model? The Evolution of Population Biology: Modern Synthesis. R. Singh, S. Jain and M. Uyenoyama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [see also new variant of this in the precirculated materials]

    Cor Van der Weele

    I am a biologist (geneticist) and a philosopher by training. My PhD (1995) was in Philosophy of Biology, at the Free University of Amsterdam, supervised by Wim van der Steen.
    My thesis was titled Images of development; Environmental causes in ontogeny. Its subject is intimately related to the theme of the workshop. I compared the dominant way to understand development, in terms of a genetic program, with two alternative ways, in terms of 1. gene-environment interactions in developmental systems and 2. organisms as integrated wholes. I approached the subject through a pragmatic philosophy of science, in which causal analysis should be understood in its theoretical context.
    I also ventured into ethical consequences of different ways to understand development, focussing on the moral relevance of selective attention. For example, developmental disruptions caused by environmental pollutants with estrogen-like effects could long go unnoticed, because these effects did not fit in the expectations generated by a genetic understanding of development, so nobody went looking for them.

    The ideal of complete understanding was a constant background subject in my thesis. I argued it is an unattainable ideal and approaches to development should not be criticized because of their limitations. The problem is rather the overdominance of one approach, i.e. the genetic one.
    I no longer consider this to be a completely satisfactory analysis, the less so since the conditions for system approaches have been improving. This generates new ambitions of complete understanding. While it is still a challenge to study the inevitable limitations of such ambitions, the question in how far and in what way system approaches can live up to aspirations of completeness also deserves new consideration.

    After several years of work in different jobs and on different subjects (always related to ethics), right now I am returning to the philosophy and ethics of biology in a new position (University of Wageningen). This return is also stimulated by a grant in the Dutch program on social aspects of genomics.
    In my thesis, I found that metaphors were a fruitful approach to understanding (the differences between) scientific ways of thinking. This, of course, fits in with the themes of selective attention and thinking within limited frameworks, since metaphors highlight some aspects of a subject and hide others. In a recent paper that builds on my thesis, Images of the genome; from public debates to biology, and back, and forth, I again focus on metaphors as instruments of thought, emphasizing biology (incuding genomics) as a rich source of innovative imagery. I also argue that, in contrast to dominant assumptions, metaphors are not less important in science than in public debates. Numerous fascinating questions about metaphors as instruments of scientific and non-scientific thought are still open.


    Selected relevant publications, courses, etcetera.

    Publications
    - (1993): Explaining Embryological Development: Should Integration be the Goal? In: Biology and Philosophy 8: 385-387.
    - Van der Weele, Cor (1993): Metaphors and the Privileging of Causes. In: Acta Biotheoretica 41: 315-327.
    - Van der Weele, Cor (1995): Images of Development; Environmental causes in Ontogeny. PhD Thesis, Free University, Amsterdam.
    - Van der Weele, Cor (1997): Environmental causes in ontogeny and an ethics of attention. In: M.L. Dalla Chiara, Kees Doets, Daniele Mundici and Johan van Benthem (eds): Structures and Norms in Science,. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
    - Van der Weele, Cor (1999): Images of Development; Environmental Causes in Ontogeny. SUNY Press, Albany.
    - Van der Weele, Cor (2001): Developmental Systems Theory and Ethics: Different Ways to be Normative with regard to Science. In: Oyama, S. et al, eds: Cycles of Contingency; Developmental Systems and Evolution. Bradford / MIT, Cambridge (Mass.)
    - Van der Weele, Cor (forthcoming): Images of the Genome; form Public debates to Biology, and Back, and Forth. In: Acta Biotheoretica.

    Courses.
    - During my years at the Free University (1990-1995), I gave various lectures an guest-classes on the subject of my research.
    - From 1998 to 2000, I designed and set up a study program in Medical Biotechnology at Utrecht University, in which I also taught some classes myself, for example a course on science and ethics.
    - In my new job at Wageningen University, I will design a new course in Biology and Philosophy, with special attention to genomics.

    Marc Weinstein

    I am a research associate at the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at the University of Oregon, where I am involved in range of funded research projects related to occupational health and safety. Since September 2002, under the guidance of Prof. Linda McCauley (University of Pennsylvania), LERC has collaborated with Oregon State University, Oregon Health Science University, and the Environmental Justice Action Group on a National Institute of Health outreach grant "GENETICS: Genes and Environment, New Education Initiatives to Involve Communities" (R25 12089). LERC's role on this five-year grant is to assess the labor community's understanding of advances in gene/environment research, develop culturally appropriate educational material for workers, and to work with labor leaders on the development of ethical guidelines related to the use of genetic science in the workplace. Simultaneously with my work on the GENETICS grant, I am developing a number of ideas on how social scientists might collaborate on future Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) projects related to advances in genetic research. I have na undergraduate degree in Eastern European Politics from U.C. Berkeley (1985) and a Ph.D. in Management and Industrial Relations from MIT (1996). Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked for Seiko Epson Corporation in Suwa, Japan (1986) and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Gdansk in Poland (1987-89). Prior to joining LERC in December 2003, I was Assistant Professor of Management at the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon (1996-2003), and was a visiting faculty member the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. (1995-96; 2000-2001).

    Selected Publications

    Weinstein, M., and Widenor, M., "Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Advances of Toxicogenomic Research on Workplace Health and Safety Practices, American Association of Occupational Nursing Journal, forthcoming, 2004 .

    Hess, J., Hecker, S., Weinstein, M., and Lunger, M. "A Participatory Ergonomics Intervention to Reduce the Risk of Low Back Injury in Concrete Workers," Applied Ergononics, forthcoming, 2004.

    Weinstein, Marc, and Obloj, Krzysztof, "Strategic and Environmental Determinants of the Modernization of the Human Resource Function in Post-socialist Poland, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol 13, No. 4, May 2002.

    Weinstein, Marc "Solidarity's Abandonment of Worker Councils: Redefining Employee Stakeholder Rights in Post-Socialist Poland," British Journal of Industrial Relations, Winter 2000.

    Rasmus Gronfeldt Winther

    I am a philosopher of biology and a philosopher of science, with an interest in history of biology. The central theme of my work is a philosophical analysis of the part-whole organization of biological systems.

    I recently finished my PhD at Indiana University (October, 2003), under the supervision of Elisabeth Lloyd (History and Philosophy of Science Department), Frederick Schmitt (Philosophy Department), and Michael Wade (Biology Department). I wrote the dissertation while living in San Francisco. I am currently doing a post-doc in philosophy in Mexico City at the Universidad Nacional Autónonoma de México (UNAM), which allows me to witness the social and political complexities of global dynamics. Such complexities include reactions and attitudes to the "Age of DNA" in contexts outside the US and Europe.

    My dissertation sought to construct, explore, and defend a deep difference between two kinds of theorizing in biology: formal and compositional. Formal biology finds and formulates relations, often captured in the form of laws, among mathematical properties of abstract and simple biological objects. Population genetics and theoretical mathematical ecology, which are cases of formal biology, thus share methods and goals with theoretical physics. Compositional biology, on the other hand, discovers and constructs the structure, process, and function, through developmental and evolutionary time, of material and complex biological parts and wholes. Molecular genetics, biochemistry, developmental biology, and physiology, which are examples of compositional biology, are in serious need of philosophical attention.

    I am in the process of submitting articles (from the dissertation) on the role of models, abstraction, explanation, and theoretical perspectives in compositional biology. These topics are all part of my central focus on part-whole organization in biological systems.

    My previous published historical and biological work explores the links between genes, development, environment, and evolution in the work of Charles Darwin and August Weismann, as well as in contemporary biological work on part-based organization ("modularity").

    Teaching and research are intimately related . It is also indubitable that one learns profoundly from students. I have taught a course exploring the relations between genes, development, environment, and behavior, both at the individual and group level, called "Ants, Apes, and Humans: Genes, Behaviors, and Societies." At the UNAM, I am currently teaching a philosophy of science course on models found in a variety of sciences, including different biological sciences, cognitive science, and physics.

    I hope to continue tying work in philosophy of biology, regarding parts, to more general issues in both the philosophy of science and metaphysics and epistemology. Furthermore, I hope to explore more concrete aspects and consequences, in biology and society at large, of part-based investigation in biology (including thinking of genes and environmental variables as parts of a biological system).


    Pertinent Publications:
    2000. "Darwin on Variation and Heredity," Journal of the History of Biology, 33: 425-455.

    2001. "August Weismann on Germ-Plasm Variation," Journal of the History of Biology, 34: 517-555.

    2001. "Varieties of Modules: Kinds, Levels, Origins and Behaviors," Journal of Experimental Zoology (Molecular and Developmental Evolution), 291: 116-129.

    Michael J. Wade, Rasmus G. Winther, Aneil F. Agrawal, and Charles J. Goodnight. 2001. "Alternative Definitions of Epistasis: Dependence and Interaction," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16: 498-504.

    In press, 2004. "Evolutionary Developmental Biology Meets Levels of Selection: Modular Integration or Competition, or Both?", to appear in Modularity: Understanding the Development and Evolution of Complex Natural Systems (W. Callebaut and D. Rasskin-Gutman, eds.), MIT press.

    Accepted. "An Empirical Analysis of Theoretical Perspectives in Compositional Biology," Biology and Philosophy.


    Dissertation:
    2003. Formal Biology and Compositional Biology as Two Kinds of Biological Theorizing


    Program and Notes

     

    Saturday, May 1

     

    Time

    Activity

    Purpose

    11:00

    Arrive at Woods Hole, Check in

     

    11:30

    Working Lunch: Welcome

    Peter Taylor

    Matthew Puma (logistics)

    Welcome people to workshop, explain details that need to be covered, talk about what your hopes for workshop (including guided freewriting)

    1:00

    Autobiographical Introductions

    Denise Lach – will take brief notes on flip charts as reminders for folks

    Give participants an opportunity to

    1. introduce themselves in narrative depth, their current and emerging work, and
    2. learn more about each other

    2:30

    Break

     

    3:00

    Autobiographical Introductions – con’t

     

    4.30

    Reflection on the day

    Introduce themes to chew on concerning our interactions and process as a group

    5:30

    Break

    Recover

    6:30

    Dinner

     

    7:00

    Entertainment – depictions of science and scientists in popular culture

     “Donna Haraway reads National Geographic” (1987)

    An icebreaker and more time for conversation for those who want to participate.  (The evening sessions are designed to facilitate ways of knowing that aren’t necessarily text-based.)

     

     

    Sunday, May 2

     

    Time

    Activity

    Purpose

    9:00

    Understanding Intersecting Processes:

    Diane Paul article re: PKU –

    Peter Taylor will

    1.  circulate article prior to workshop & as homework

    2.  have guide sheets for diagramming intersecting process

    3.  facilitate process

     

    1. Introduce process for thinking about complex issues of development of individuals and science-in-society
    2. Model how we can work together during the rest of the workshop  = experiment & get help with our experiments

    10:30

    Break

     

    11:00

    Understanding Intersecting Processes (cont.)

    Denise Lach will debrief process

     

    12:00

    Picnic Lunch

     

    1:00

    Excursion – a walk on the beach

    Conversation among participants, reflection on emerging ideas, enjoy the day

    4:00

    Return and break

     

    4:15

    Generative evaluation

    Steve Fifield will facilitate

    Move from evaluation of what has happened to ideas of what could yet happen to participants taking initiative to make things happen, including planning activities for days 3 & 4

    5:30

    End

     

    6:30

    Dinner

     

    ~7:00

     Bedtime reading

     Participants read passages, poems

     Participants bring articles, passages, poems, pictures, or other descriptions of “alternative metaphors”

     

     

    Monday, May 3

     

    Time

    Activity

    Purpose

    8:30

    Metaphor and enactment of metaphors

    Identify other ways of describing work that aren’t related to control.

    10:00

    Break

     

    11:00

    Discussion re Activity

     

    12:00

    Lunch

     

    1.00

    Activity based on New Scientist article on asthma

     

    2:30

    Break

    Long break for conversation, catching up, walking, reflecting

    4:00

    Debrief: discussion about ways we’re being surprised.  Question: “I didn’t expect to be thinking about…”

    Surfacing emerging ideas, concepts, surprises; start/re-start conversations

    5:30

    End

     

    6:30

    Dinner

     

    7:30

    Learning together: Making Music Guest facilitator: Ben Schwendener, http://gravityarts.org

    Exploring other ways of knowing and/or working together

     

    Tuesday, May 4

     

    Time

    Activity

    Purpose

    8:30

    Activity: Problem Based Learning -- Please guide and excite my board about a new funding category related to research on development

    Peter Taylor will prepare problem, make assignment, prepare guidelines

     

    The “problem” will be designed to bring together our ideas about the workshop topic and directions for future research & collaboration.

    PBL aims to bring substantive ideas to others through a process that facilitates thinking/learning together

     

    11:00

    Presentations to Group

    Let others know about ideas, learning

    12:00

    Lunch

     

    12:30

    Historical Scan

    Written Evaluation

    Review what people found innovative, important, helpful; what they would like to change

     

    1:45

    What we are taking away & Farewells

     

    2:15

    End

     

     


    References cited during sessions

    References from:

    Conference on "Complexity of environment and development in the Age of DNA," organized by Peter Taylor. Marine Biological Laboratories, Woods Hole, Massachusetts USA. April 30-May 4, 2004

    Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther

    rasmus@filosoficas.unam.mx

    Please contact me if I am missing a reference from the conference.

    May 17, 2004

     

    Allen, Barry. 2004. Knowledge and Civilization. Westview Press.

     

    Borges, JL. 1961. Del Rigor en la Ciencia. En: El Hacedor. Buenos Aires: Emecé. Presumably in: Collected Fictions, trans. A Hurley. 1999. Penguin Books.

     

    Bouleau, N. 2002. La règle, le compas et le divan, Paris: Seuil.

     

    Bowlby, J. 1984. Attachment and Loss. Penguin Books

     

    Carroll, Lewis. 1995. The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works, Deluxe Edition. Gramercy. Story of the map that covered the entire empire is in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Chapter 11.

     

    Calvino, Italo. 1978. Invisible Cities. Harvest Books.

     

    Clark, Andy and David Chalmers. 1998. The Extended Mind. Analysis 58:10-23, 1998. Reprinted in (P. Grim, ed) The Philosopher's Annual, vol XXI, 1998. http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/extended.html

     

    Condit, CM. 1999. The Meanings of the Gene: Public Debates About Human Heredity (Rhetoric of the Human Sciences). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

     

    Coombes, Annie E., Reinventing Africa. Museums, Material Culture And Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994.

    http://www.glaadh.ac.uk/documents/plymouth_bibliog.pdf

     

    Coyne, JA, Barton, NH, and Turelli, M. 1997. Perspective: A Critique of Sewall Wright's Shifting Balance Theory of Evolution. Evolution 51, 643-671.

     

    Dawkins, Richard. 1982. Extended Phenotype. Reprint 1999, Oxford University Press, with afterword by Daniel Dennett.

     

    Dervin, B., & Foreman-Wernet, L. (with Lauterbach, E.) (Eds.). (2003). Sense-Making Methodology reader: Selected writings of Brenda Dervin. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

     

    Dowie, Mark. Jan/Feb 2004. Gods and Monsters. Mother Jones.

     

    Elbow, P. 1981. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford University Press.

     

    Handelman, J. et al. 2004. Scientific teaching.  Science: 304: 521-522.
    (full text with links
    http://newgenerationprogram.wisc.edu/resources.htm)


    Hendriks-Jansen, H. 1996. Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought
    . Cambridge: MIT Press.

     

    Johnston, T. D. and L. Edwards. 2002. Genes, Interactions, and the Development of Behavior. Psychological Review 109: 26-34.

    Cited in: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000644/00/Robert_Oyama_review.pdf

     

    Kandinsky, W. 1912. On the Spiritual in Art. Found in Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art. Texts of Kandinsky. 1994. Ed. Lindsay, KC and P Vergo. DaCapo Press.

     

    Keller, EF. 1996a. Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

     

    Keller, EF. 1996b. Refiguring Life. New York: Columbia University Press.

     

    Keller, EF. 2002. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

     

    Keller, EF and LL Winship. 2002. Century of the Gene. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

     

    Lakoff, M. and M. Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

     

    Lakoff, M. and M. Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.

     

    Lakoff, M. and RE Nuñez. 2000. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books.

     

    Levins, R and Lewontin, RC 1985. The Dialectical Biologist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

     

    Lewontin, RC 1974. The Analysis of Variance and the Analysis of Causes. Reprinted in Levins and Lewontin, 1985, pp. 109-122.

     

    Lombardi, Mark. Work on Relational Diagrams: http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardi.html

     

    Ocean's Ark (Ecological sustainability, including water purification): http://www.oceanarks.org/

     

    Oyama, S. 2000a. The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Duke University Press.

     

    Oyama, S. 2000b. Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide. Duke University Press.

     

    Oyama, S., P. Griffiths and R. Gray. 2001 Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

     

    Pearce, F. 2000. "Inventing Africa." New Scientist(12 August): 30-33.

     

    Rende, R. 2003. Beyond Heritability: Biological Process in Social Context.  Ms.
    Email:        Richard_Rende@Brown.EDU

     

    Robert JS. 2000. Wild Ontology: Elaborating Environmental Pragmatism. Ethics and
    the Environment
    5: 191-209.

     

    Robert, JS. 2004. Embryology, Epigenetics, and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

     

    Russell, G. Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization.

    Ben Schwendener's webpage:   http://www.gravityarts.org/

     

    Schiff, M. and Lewontin, RC 1986. Education and Class: The Irrelevance of IQ Genetic Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

     

    Stepan, N. L. 1986. Race and gender: The role of analogy in science. Isis 77: 261-277.

     

    Taylor, P. J. 2001a. Distributed agency within intersecting ecological, social, and scientific processes. In: Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffiths and R. Gray. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 313-332.

     

    Taylor, PJ. 2001b. How heritability can mislead.

    http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/heritability.html

     

    Taylor, PJ. 2001c. Key Teaching/Learning Tools (Process Tools)

    http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/tools.html

     

    Taylor, PJ 2002. Historical Scan (one type of process tool)

    http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/historicalscan.html

     

    van der Weele, C 1999. Images of Development: Environmental Causes in Ontogeny. SUNY Press

     

    Varley, John. 1986. Blue Champagne. Berkeley Edition. (Science Fiction)

     

    Varley, John. The Barbie Murders. First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1978 (David Publications). (Science Fiction)

     

    Vasari, G. 1927. The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects New York: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.

     

    Wade, MJ. 1992. Sewall Wright: gene interaction and the Shifting Balance Theory. In: Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology. Vol. 8. (Futuyma, D and Antonovics, J, eds.) Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 35-62.

     

    Wade, MJ and Goodnight, CJ. 1998. Perspective: The Theories of Fisher and Wright in the Context of Metapopulations: When Nature Does Many Small Experiments. Evolution 52, 1537-1553.

     

    Williams, Raymond. 1983. Keywords. Rev. Ed. NewYork: Oxford UP.

     

    Willis, PE. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Lexington Books.


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