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We are pleased to send you the call for papers for the special issue "Ignorances in the sciences" of the journal Lato Sensu. The submission deadline is January 31, 2025. Papers can be written in French or in English. In this special issue, we propose to take an epistemological stance at the ways in which ignorance is present in the sciences. It seems to play many roles. It is a social and political construct of the scientific enterprise, a heuristic and driving force in scientific discovery, while possessing an epistemological and conceptual status that distinguishes it from a simple lack of knowledge. This observation of pluralism leads us to question the ignorances in the sciences. We are looking for proposals that explore both a general epistemological framework for ignorance and its epistemological (and even ethical) implications in special sciences. Contributions in the following topics are particularly welcome: Definitions and conceptualisations of scientific ignorance ...

In a time when the specter of environmental catastrophe is not a possibility for a hypothetical or distant future, but a matter of contemporary and most pressing concern, the ways in which we incorporate its causes and consequences into our collective cultural imagination as a species has emerged as a dynamic arena for critical inquiry. As scientists, scholars, and policy-makers grapple with the complexities of how to effectively address the climate crisis, contemporary fiction has become a site for exploring another set of parallel questions: how are we imagining a present and a future where climate crisis is the new norm? When do we cross the threshold of considering the ongoing climate crisis a matter of realist fiction instead of a concern for authors of dystopian plots? Is it still possible – or even responsible – to imagine eco-utopias based on how far behind are we on our goals for sustainable development? Or are they now more necessary than ever to promote an ideal objective to...

Organization: Mark Coeckelbergh, Leonie Bossert, Leonie Möck Keynote Speakers: Aimee van Wynsberghe, University of Bonn Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs Austria Daniel Kammen, University of California, Berkley Lidia Brito, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences UNESCO Payal Arora, University of Utrecht Theme: Humanity is facing pressing socio-ecological crises such as biodiversity loss, pandemics, and climate change. All these crises have a planetary dimension, as they have global and intergenerational consequences. Technologies can play a major role in mitigating or exacerbating these crises, especially artificial intelligence (AI) with its ever-increasing impact around the world, making it one of the leading technologies of the Anthropocene. AI can contribute to climate change due to its huge consumption of energy and water, as well as high CO2 emissions. But it can also mitigate climat...

Contested & Erased Energy Knowledges: A Trans-Disciplinary Conference. 31 Oct – 2 Nov 2024 | University of Dundee & University of Edinburgh | Edinburgh, Scotland Keynote speakers: Karen Barad, Winona LaDuke, Michael Marder. Today, ‘energy’ is most often associated with the global North’s – and increasingly the global South’s – vital dependence on the combustion of fossil fuels needed for heating, transportation and food production. All are threatened – as we know all too well by now – by anthropogenic climate change. Although there is no shortage of ‘green’ energy innovations, many cause more problems than they solve, as the example of wind farms in Oaxaca, which caused aridification while reinstating colonial relationships, shows (Dunlap 2018). One reason for this is the sheer volume of energy extraction. The other is the conceptual framework that underpins this activity: this is a source-conversion-end-use concept of energy that is embedded in the Greco-monotheistic-scientifi...

TIDA (Text and Idea of Aristotle’s De anima) is a research project funded by the European Research Council (grant agreement no. 101053296). TIDA is devoted to developing a new overall interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of mental phenomena. TIDA’s central idea is to break with the interpretative approached that has dominated research on Aristotle’s ‘psychological treatises’, and especially research on his De anima. On that approach, Aristotle’s De anima presents us with Aristotle’s ‘philosophy of mind’. Against this approach, TIDA aims to show that Aristotle’s De anima is concerned with the definition of the first principle of the of the science of living beings, namely the soul. TIDA aims to study how Aristotle defines that principle, how the results reached in his De anima structures the science of living beings (animals and plants), and how those results divide the explanatory labor among the treatises that pertain to the science of perishable living beings. TIDA held its inaugura...