Gregory Radick (Leeds) am Deutschen Museum

Gemeinsam mit dem Lehrstuhl Philosophy and History of Science and Technology der TUM laden wir herzlich ein zum Vortrag von Gregory Radick (University of Leeds) am 19. März. Der Vortrag findet von 16 bis 18 Uhr am Deutschen Museum auf Englisch statt.

The Organization of Scientific Knowledge

In the sciences, bodies of knowledge worthy of the name are not merely aggregations. They are organized, with some phenomena and practices treated as exemplary, primary, central and others as exceptional, secondary, peripheral. My
book Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023) concerns the organization of scientific knowledge about biological inheritance, in particular the Mendelian organization which took shape after the 1900 “rediscovery” of Mendel and which persists to this day. Drawing on perspectives from the history of science, the philosophy of science and the sciences themselves, I argue that this organization – and the genetic determinism it engenders – was not inevitable, and furthermore that a better history of how and why biology went Mendelian holds the key to developing an alternative, anti-deterministic organization. In this lecture I want to position this work within a long-run HPS tradition, stretching back at least to the Toulmin-Kuhn era and forward to a future where, I will suggest, the engineering or re-engineering of scientific concepts is part of HPS core business. Along the way I’ll touch on the role of idealizations in science and the consequences of one idealization rather than other potential ones coming to serve as a conceptual pivot.