HPS at Melbourne

The program for the Semester 1 HPS Seminar Series is now available at the website: https://hpsseminar.wordpress.com/
Note that you can also download a pdf copy of the program from the website.

This semester, seminars will typically be at 12 noon on Wednesdays, in Old Arts 107 (Macmahon Ball Theatre). However, there are some variations to this pattern, so please do keep an eye on the website and my reminder emails for updates.

We will start at 12 noon on Wednesday 18 March, with Associate Professor Maurizio Meloni from Deakin University speaking on Governing Permeable Bodies: Humoralism to Epigenetics. As usual, there is an abstract and bio available at https://hpsseminar.wordpress.com/ #20200318 I will send a reminder email a few days before the talk.

This event by our colleagues at Monash might be of interest to the HPS community
Louis Green Memorial Lecture: Islamic Science in the Post-Copernican World
Speaker: Prof Samer Akkach -University of Adelaide
State Library Victoria, Seminar Room 1 (Entry 3 on La trobe St)
Wednesday 23 October 2019, 6:00pm - 7:30pm (6:30pm official start)

Louis Green Memorial Lecture Louis Green Memorial Lecture 2019.

The HiPSsters Club with John Wilkins

The HiPSster club: Meet your local academic! Everybody welcome!

The HiPSster club visiting the Map Collection. Everybody welcome!

We've got some new activities coming up. Everybody's welcome to the HiPSSters Club!

You can hear Emily Herring, one of our HPS Seminar speakers from Semester 1, speak about Henri Bergson's influence on ideas about evolution on ABC's The Philosophers' Zone.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/rockstar-and-rocks/11342570

Rock star philosopher, and rocks Revisiting celebrity thinker Henri Bergson, and a philosopher-geologist on rocks, science and climate change.

LAST HPS SEMINAR OF 2018. Not to be missed!!!

Wednesday 28 Nov, Rm256--North Wing, ARTS WEST
5pm, followed by dinner (tbd)

Professor Rob Wilson (Philosophy, La Trobe University)

Social engagement in contemporary history and philosophy of science

This is our first official 'HPS engagement' seminar. We plan to run one each semester from now on. Rob will discuss some examples from his own work, such as the The Eugenic Mind Project (MIT Press, 2018). And the new Philosophical Engagement in Public Life (PEiPL) network he has started this year, which has a philosophy of science working group.

Rob is a professor of philosophy at La Trobe University. His recent work includes "well-being, disability, and choosing children" which recently appeared in the journal Mind. The links below should take you to the Mind site, the first to the abstract (shareable), the second to the paper itself (just for individual download):

https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mind/fzy039/5098725

https://academic.oup.com/mind/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mind/fzy039/5098725?guestAccessKey=f68ad026-d9d7-420f-ad58-fa5792aa9500

Well-being, Disability, and Choosing Children Abstract. The view that it is better for life to be created free from disability is pervasive in both common sense and philosophy. We cast doubt on this view b

Don't forget our extra talk this week...

Friday 23 Nov, Room 556–North Wing, ARTS WEST
1-2pm, followed by a HPS PARTY in the 5th floor Research Lounge to celebrate recent PhD completitions.

Stereotype threat effects: A failure
to replicate
Professor Franca Agnoli, Psychology, University of Padova, Italy

Many studies conducted over decades have found that males, on average, perform better than females in mathematics, although the size of this gender gap is small and has been decreasing. Some authors have argued that stereotype threat is a principal cause of the gender gap in mathematics. They claim that gender differences arise because the performance of females is affected by their fear of confirming a negative stereotype about their mathematical ability. Recent research has, however, challenged this explanation for the gender gap. Striking inconsistencies in reported stereotype threat effects may be due to flawed experimental designs and inappropriate statistical analyses. We studied stereotype threat effects in mathematics among Italian high school students. Using Logistic Mixed-Effects Models treating both subjects and mathematics problems as random effects, we found that males performed better than females, but we found no evidence of a stereotype threat effect. We conclude that stereotype threat effects as an explanation for gender differences in mathematics are not robust.