This UBC Science and Technology Studies Colloquium is presented by the research cluster, Reasonable Trust: Fostering Humanities Methods in Public Engagement with Science and Technology, with support from the Public Humanities Hub.
Abstract: Science is a product of society: in its funding, its participation, and its application. In this talk, I outline a strong view of the obligations that science’s institutions bear to the public in virtue of this dependence. I then explore how expanded participation in science—diversified professional as well as the participation of amateurs or non-academics in scientific research—can contribute to public trust of science. I suggest that such expanded participation can give rise to what we might call “responsive science,” thereby helping scientific institutions discharge their obligations to the public.
Speaker: Dr. Angela Potochnik, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Public Engagement with Science, University of Cincinnati
https://www.angelapotochnik.com/
A philosopher of science, Angela Potochnik has written extensively on scientific practices of idealization. In Idealization and the Aims of Science (Chicago, 2017) she argues scientific inquiry is deeply configured by human cognitive and practical ends, and that strategies of idealization are crucial to our ability to navigate the world’s complexity in ways that give us an understanding of this world relevant to the wide range of purposes science serve.
Potochnik is also well known for her work on participatory research in which she explores a variety of modes of stakeholder engagement across the sciences, and also makes the case that these principles extend to philosophical science studies. She is an influential advocate of “socially engaged philosophy of science” (with Cartieri, 2014), and recently published Science and the Public (CUP Element, 2024). It is this latter body of work that Potochnik will discuss when she visits UBC this September.
Thursday, September 26, 2024
5:00 – 6:30 PM
Buchanan Tower, room 1112
1873 East Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z1