By Amy Wuest Grischa Metlay, in her 2006 paper "Reconsidering Renormalization: Stability and Change in 20th-Century Views on University Patents," traces conceptual shifts in the debates surrounding public policy from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. As the title implies, some things changed while others didn’t. She argues that the concept of “intellectual property” underwent [...]
By Dan Hicks [This is the first of a series of posts on science and the public interest, written by members of the Rotman Institute’s Science, Policy, and Philosophy Working Group.] In the wake of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, contemporary philosophers of science generally recognize that values play a role in [...]
Join us this January 24th, for the first talk of the new year at a Rotman special event. Stathis Psillos will revisit this controversy, analyse the wider context in which it took place, examine the role of history of science in the defence of a realist approach to science and draw some significant lessons for the [...]
By Wayne Myrvold In the lead-up to the release of the contribution of Working Group I (the Physical Science Basis) to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment report (AR5), stories alleging that the state of climate science is in disarray are proliferating. If you read between the lines, there’s an air of desperation in these stories. If [...]
“In a modern world where we can travel the globe in hours, connect with one another from wherever we are, achieve remarkable advances in healthcare and physically explore our universe, it is easy to take science for granted,” said Carl Hoefer, the new Director of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. “But it is essential that [...]
By Martin Vezér Since 2001, the Institute Vienna Circle (IVC), the University of Vienna, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research have held a summer university program focusing on topics in the philosophy of natural and social sciences. This past July, I attended the Vienna International Summer University (VISU)—a program that brought together an international group of professors [...]
Further Reflections from the Future Directions in Feminist Phenomenology Conference By Katy Fulfer Public attention to assisted death in medical contexts seems to be exploding. In June the Quebec legislature tabled a care-at-the-end-of-life bill that includes provisions for physician-assisted death. In the state of Washington, there was a 17% rise in the number of individuals [...]
By Jessey Wright On June 15th and 16th, 2013 the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario hosted a symposium, the seeds for which were sown at the signing of a research agreement between the Royal Society of Canada and the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities less than a year ago. [...]
We are beginning to realize that weare more lost than we previously thought. -Harry Martinson, Aniara 13. It is somewhat surprising that two of my favorite books, one being von Wright’s Vetenskapen och förnuftet and the other the Nobel laureate Harry Martinson’s Aniara, both have a very negative view of the future of humankind. Aniara [...]
Von Wright (right) with Wittgenstein. Most of my intellectual development growing up was through books. I read basically anything I could get my hands on. Books were more important to me than school and I never paid much attention to school until I arrived at Uppsala University in 1992. I was there, after considerable disagreement [...]
