Dear all--happy new year!
I'm one of the co-founders of this group and definitely we would
love to get more people involved who take feminist approaches to
science.  Email me directly if you have questions.
Best Rachel
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Call for Papers
Second Biennial Conference of the Society for Philosophy of
Science in Practice (SPSP)
University of Minnesota, 18-20 June 2009

Please send an abstract of 500 words, and full contact
information, to [log in to unmask]
For further information about the conference, see the conference
website: http://ships.umn.edu/spsp

Deadline for submission: February 1st, 2009.

The Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) aims to
create an interdisciplinary community of scholars who approach
the philosophy of science with a focus on scientific practice and
the practical uses of scientific knowledge. For further details
on our objectives and activities, see the Society's website:

http://www.philosophy-science-practice.org


The SPSP biennial conferences provide a broad forum for scholars
committed to making detailed and systematic studies of scientific
practices — neither dismissing concerns about truth and
rationality, nor ignoring contextual and pragmatic factors. The
conferences aim at cutting through traditional disciplinary
barriers and developing novel approaches. We welcome
contributions from not only philosophers of science, but also
philosophers working in epistemology and ethics, as well as the
philosophy of engineering, medicine, agriculture, and other
practical fields. Additionally, we welcome contributions from
historians and sociologists of science, pure and applied
scientists, and any others with an interest in philosophical
questions regarding scientific practice.

The SPSP Conference in 2009 will be held concurrently with a
large workshop for teachers on integrating historical,
philosophical and sociological perspectives into science teaching
(http://ships.umn.edu/2009). Joint sessions are planned.

In addition to keynote lectures by Prof. Helen Longino (Stanford
University) and Prof. Mary Morgan (London School of Economics),
the conference will feature parallel sessions with contributed
papers. For the 2009 conference, we particularly welcome
contributions on the topics listed below; however, other topics
are by no means excluded. Please indicate clearly in your
abstract which of the following topics (if any) your paper
addresses — this will help us construct coherent themed sessions.

In addition to individual papers, proposals for whole, thematic
sessions with coordinated papers are strongly encouraged,
particularly those which include multiple disciplinary
perspectives and/or input from scientific practitioners. Session
proposals must include a 500-word abstract for each paper (or an
equivalent amount of depth and detail, if the format of the
proposed session is a less traditional one). Multiple submissions
of any form by the same person will not be allowed.

1. Philosophy of Science and Science Education: How does
philosophy of science inform science teaching? What ideas about
scientific practice, including those based on historical and
sociological perspectives, are important to teach? How can they
be effectively taught in a science classroom? How is such
understanding assessed? What insights and challenges might such
contexts offer to philosophers?

2. Epistemology of Scientific Practice: There has been a degree
of disconnection between epistemology and the philosophy of
science, despite the clear relevance of the two fields to each
other. We welcome contributions that flesh out epistemologists’
concerns in terms of scientific practice, or broaden traditional
epistemological categories in order to make them more suitable
for the understanding of knowledge practices.

3. Experimental Practices: More than 20 years ago the ‘new
experimentalists’ in philosophy of science called for a more
serious engagement with experimental practice. The work
continues, and significant questions remain. How are scientific
phenomena produced and observed — in the laboratory, in the
observatory, in the field, and even in the armchair? What exactly
does the knowledge of phenomena consist in? What are the
characteristics of the technologies and sites that enable
scientists to identify the objects of their study and to theorize
about them?

4. Practices of Modeling, Simulations and Computer Experiments:
Anyone familiar with today’s cutting-edge scientific research
will feel how out of touch our common philosophical images of
scientific activity are. Most scientific theorizing today seems
to happen in the form of modeling and simulation. Has there now
been enough philosophical work on modeling, after the flurry of
activity in recent decades? Have we, for instance, paid enough
attention to the more applied and complex subjects that tend to
be neglected in traditional philosophy of science, including
climatology, synthetic chemistry, ecology and seismology?

5. ‘Knowing Well’, Values, and Evidence-for-Use: How do
philosophical approaches to knowledge change when the context
shifts from ‘pure’ science to applied science and public policy,
in areas such as engineering, agriculture and medicine? How do we
go beyond mere knowing to ‘knowing well’? How does the blurring
of the traditional distinction between ‘fact’ and ‘value’ affect
our conceptions of evidence and epistemic justification? And how
do individual and social values and sense of responsibility shape
the scope, focus and methods of scientific practice?

6. Rationality, Pluralism and ‘Styles of Reasoning’: Philosophers
tend to accept very few kinds of reasoning as rational:
deductive, inductive/statistical, and perhaps abductive. From
historical and empirical studies it appears that scientific
practices employ many other styles of reasoning. Often, these
other ‘styles’ are seen as ‘merely heuristic’ and unable to play
a role in the justification of knowledge. Is it possible to
present more interesting accounts of these other styles of
reasoning and of rationality?

7. Philosophical Pragmatism and Science in Practice: Are there
existing philosophical frameworks that are particularly
well-suited for the understanding of ‘science in practice’? In
recent years many people have paid renewed attention to the
American pragmatists in this connection: Dewey, Peirce, James,
and also C. I. Lewis. Can pragmatism really provide useful
guidance for the philosophy of science in practice? If so, which
ideas are most useful for which purposes?

8. Social Epistemology: Within both the philosophy and sociology
of science, there is a shared interest in the production,
assessment, and validation of knowledge. We welcome contributions
which synthesize sociological and philosophical points of view —
empirically based research into the origination and transmission
of scientific knowledge, as well as considerations about the
social issues which arise when such knowledge is applied in a
variety of types of practice.