Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley explores this new field of study in a special series for CBC Radio's Ideas.
Luminaries include Simon Schaffer (Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life); Lorraine Daston (Objectivity), director of the Max Planck Institute for the history of Science; Margaret Lock (Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death); Ian Hacking (The Social Construction of What? ); Michael Gibbons and Peter Scott (Rethinking Science); Ruth Hubbard (Exploding the Gene Myth); Richard Lewontin (Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA); Peter Galison (Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time); Steven Shapin (Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life); Barbara Duden (Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn) and Silya Samerski; Evelyn Fox Keller (Reflections on Gender and Science); James Lovelock (The Revenge of Gaia); Ulrich Beck (Risk Society); and Bruno Latour (We Have Never Been Modern).
CBC Radio Podcasts ~ Ideas: How to Think About Science
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
How To think About Science
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
‘There is no scientific basis to the concept of humanity’
Now available for downloading is the first report of the European Union Sixth Framework Project on the Knowledge Politics of Nano-, Bio-, Info- and Cogno- Sciences and Technologies.
The report is entitled ‘Research trajectories and institutional settings of new converging technologies’. It is written by Steve Fuller and includes annexes from the European partners on the project who describe the state of play in their respective countries.
You may access the report here:
http://www.converging-technologies.org/outputs.html
The debate next week at Warwick ‘There is no scientific basis to the concept of humanity’, will be videoed and there will be an accompanying podcast. Both will be available online a few days after the event.
More information about the debate is here:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/newsandevents/events/there_is_no_scientific_basis_to_the_concept_of_humanity1/
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dystopia: The Culture Industry's Neutralization of Stephen King's the Running Man
"...almost two decades before programs such as "America's Most Wanted" and "COPS" appeared, King offered a predictive and trenchant critique of reality police television shows. Second, influenced by Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, King both employed and modified the dystopian convention of using a dialogue between the protagonist and a member of the ruling elite to demystify and interrogate structures of power. Third, The Running Man ends with an incredibly ghastly scene: an eviscerated protagonist flying an airliner into a high-rise office complex. In rendering this scene, King did not merely make his audience queasy and eerily foreshadow the events of September 11, 2001. He also rewrote one of the seminal episodes of American literature: the evisceration of the waist gunner Snowden in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.
In Part II, I examine the ways in which various iterations of The Running Man have thematically moved away from King's novel. First, King's celebrity prevented the work (originally published under a pseudonym) from being viewed fully as a dystopia. His status fixed The Running Man in a constellation of horror novels and movies. Second, the 1987 movie adaptation of The Running Man transformed a Vietnam-era protest novel into a Reagan-era star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Finally, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon attempted, in 2001, to turn the material of The Running Man into the very thing that it predicted: a reality television show called "The Runner," which featured a nationwide manhunt and huge cash prizes. Thus, within thirty years of its writing and less than twenty from the date of its publication, The Running Man became--in the words of Syme--not only different from what it once was but actually contradictory".
In Part II, I examine the ways in which various iterations of The Running Man have thematically moved away from King's novel. First, King's celebrity prevented the work (originally published under a pseudonym) from being viewed fully as a dystopia. His status fixed The Running Man in a constellation of horror novels and movies. Second, the 1987 movie adaptation of The Running Man transformed a Vietnam-era protest novel into a Reagan-era star vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura. Finally, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon attempted, in 2001, to turn the material of The Running Man into the very thing that it predicted: a reality television show called "The Runner," which featured a nationwide manhunt and huge cash prizes. Thus, within thirty years of its writing and less than twenty from the date of its publication, The Running Man became--in the words of Syme--not only different from what it once was but actually contradictory".
"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Dystopia": The Culture Industry's Neutralization of Stephen King's the Running Man. Contributors: Douglas W. Texter - author. Journal Title: Utopian Studies. Volume: 18. Issue: 1. Publication Year: 2007. Page Number: 43+.
Speculating a Sustainable Future: Science Fiction & the Pedagogy of Ecological Literacy
This thesis by Eric Otto appears simpatico with Acheron's mission statement. It takes a balanced look at the treatment of ecological themes spanning from Deep Ecology to Kim Stanley Robinson's imagining that Red and Green may eventually lay down together in the fields of the Lord.
I'm archiving it here as it merits further attention once I'm finally freed from the other commitments currently bearing down on me.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
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