Title: “Life as We Know It,” by Professors Michael J. Crowe and Christopher M. Graney
From the beginning the human race has scanned the heavens for the meaning of our existence and for signs of creatures living far, far away. The search itself says a lot about who we are.
Note: This talk is based on an essay that will be published in the Fall issue of Notre Dame Magazine.…
Early Modern Science
-Edward Muir. The culture wars of the late Renaissance skeptics,
libertines, and opera. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press,
2007, chapter 1, pp. 13-59.
-Copenhaver, Brian (1992). Did science have a Renaissance? Isis 83 (no. 3): 387-407. …
“Mass Extinctions in the Geological Record: Causes and Consequences”
Click here to see the poster
With its biblical overtones, the phenomenon of ‘mass extinction’ has intrigued and puzzled scientists in many different disciplines ever since the middle 1800s. Over the intervening 150 years an impressive number of hypotheses and mechanisms have been proposed to account for these global biotic turnover events (e.g., Benton 1990). Unfortunately, few of these hypotheses have been tested against empirical observations.
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Pluralism and the philosophy of physics.
Katherine Brading and Pablo Ruiz de Olano.
During the crisis following the Haitian earthquake of 2010 one physician commented that "we're practicing Civil War medicine here," referring to the absence of supplies and primitive environment of care. Actually, the well-run Civil War hospital offered superior care to that possible in quake-ravaged Haiti. This paper will outline the components of the best and worst of Civil War medicine, and argue that the conditions in southern hospitals were so far inferior to those of the north that it probably made a difference to the war effort. In the northern hospitals men shot rats as a target practice game; in the south they roasted them for lunch. Important aspects of the best care were nutritious food, medicines such as chloroform, quinine, and opium, and sufficient staff to ensure cleanliness and care of the weakened or wounded body. It is difficult to assess hospital outcomes due the quality of the data, but what information is available indicates that the disparities between northern and southern hospitals were a factor in the manpower issues that dominated the war’s final years.…
Writing Essays in History, Philosophy, and HPS
Anjan Chakravartty & Tom Stapleford
Wed, Oct 24th, 4.15pm-6.00pm
400 Geddes Hall
The last HPS Reading Group meeting for the Fall semester. We'll decide the topic for Spring 2013. If you would like to join our reading group, please send an email to Katherine Brading (kbrading1@nd.edu), the director of the HPS program. Please see more information about our sessions by visiting the HPS Reading Group webpage
…In the middle of the twentieth century, everybody knew what it was to be sick. A person felt bad, stopped regular life routines, and went to the doctor. Sociologists called this universal behavior “taking the sick role.” Several decades later, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it was becoming more and more difficult to take a sick role. Social norms had changed. Medicine had changed.…
