Conecta. Desde 1995

Shifting Perspectives: Plural Worlds, Contested Sciences Location: University of Edinburgh, Scotland Dates: 13–16 July 2026 Organized by: The History of Science Society (HSS) The European Society for the History of Science (ESHS) With support from The British Society for the History of Science (BSHS)   Deadline for submitting proposals:   Friday 1 December 2025, 11:59 pm PST (Abstract Submission Site to come)   Link to the full Call For Proposals is available here:  https://hssonline.org/page/2026cfp

We invite papers for a panel on the topic of pyrotechnics for the upcoming Renaissance Society of America (RSA) Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco from February 19-21, 2026. This panel will be sponsored by the Science History Institute.  In anticipation of the upcoming exhibition on the history of fireworks at the Science History Institute, this panel seeks to study the multiple uses of pyrotechnics through the Renaissance, including their utilization in performances, ceremonies, rituals, and their connection to military engagements of the era. The Renaissance saw an expansion in the popularity and variety of the use of gunpowder, both for military and entertainment purposes. How did pyrotechnics visually, auditorily, and olfactorily impact their spectators? How did the development of these spectacles intersect with military and scientific activities of the period? How might pyrotechnics be used to understand cultural and intellectual exchange? From recipes for gunpowder to souv...

19-20 February 2026, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.  Deadline for abstract submission : 15 September 2025 We are delighted to announce a call for papers for a workshop focused on the historical use of questionnaires in the empirical fieldwork of health practitioners. Today, public health agencies routinely employ questionnaires in large population surveys to assess health trends at local, national, and global levels (e.g., the World Health Survey Plus). This workshop aims to historicize how various actors—public health officials, physicians, patients, and local residents—contributed to the development of health and medical questionnaires. This call invites scholars to examine the paper-based technologies and field methods historically used to collect and analyze data, such as house visits, field observations, and correspondence with patients. Central to the discussion will be the epistemic traditions that informed the development of questionnaires. Today’s population  surveys typ...

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s   Center for Humanities & the History of   Modern Biology   The Sydney Brenner Research Fellowships offer stipends of up to $5,000 to fund travel and other expenses associated with work on a significant research project in the history of the life sciences. Ideal projects will be advanced and broad in scope, with a portion of the research done at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives.   For the application details and requirements, please visit: https://www.cshl.edu/ education/center-for- humanities/grants-fellowships/ sydney-brenner-research- fellowship/

A widespread view about the “great divide” between science and art builds on the presumption that they are driven by different values. According to this view, science pertains to objective knowledge and truth, while visual arts and fiction, for instance, are best characterized in terms of aesthetic pleasure and subjective interpretation. Recent studies in philosophy and cognitive science, however, reveal that the two sides of the “great divide” have a lot in common. Scientists, for example, often build models that deliberately distort reality, and some have argued that such models contain fictions similar to literary fictions (Godfrey-Smith, 2006; Frigg & Nguyen, 2022). Meanwhile, the attention of many philosophers of science has shifted from scientific knowledge to another epistemic goal: scientific understanding. This shift has opened debates about how knowledge relates to understanding and whether the latter is at all factive (de Regt, 2017; Khalifa, 2017). On the other side, re...

A Trans-Disciplinary Conference Dundee, Scotland, 3 – 4 December 2025   We commonly understand radiation as the transmission of energy in the form of light, heat, and radio waves, or the emission of particles from radioactive substances. This includes ultraviolet radiation, X and gamma rays and radioactive materials as well as, less frequently, spontaneous emissions of energy from unstable atomic nuclei. The early 20th century medical use of X-rays was exquisitely captured by Duchamp in a 1910 painting  Portrait of Dr. Dumochel . In this work, the French physician is shown with a red aura – presumably depicting the erythema of radiation – while parts of his body are missing to connote the mysterious ability of X rays to invisibilise flesh while making bones and internal organs visible. A little over a century later, diagnostic mammograms, full-body airport security scans, even personal radiation-emitting devices (mobile phones) are the norm. Ionising radiation is used in ...

Emergence in Philosophy and Science. Summer School and Conference Cusano University, Rome - September 16th-19th, 2025 We are glad to invite applications for a Summer School on Emergence in Science and Philosophy to be held on September 16th-17th 2025 at Cusano University (Rome). The Summer School will be followed by a two-days workshop on the same topic.  Lecturers/Speakers Francesca Bellazzi  (Durham University)   Margarida Hermida  (King's College London) Maxime Hilbert  (University of Namur) Gauvain Leconte-Chevillard  (University of Namur) Erica Onnis  (Cusano University) Michele Paolini Paoletti  (University of Macerata)  Andrea Roselli  (University of Namur)  Vanessa Seifert  (University of Athens) Andrea Velardi  (Cusano University)  Joel Walmsley  (University College Cork) For details regarding registration and accommodation in Rome, please write to Erica Onnis. Applications to the Summer School open...

University of York, 25th-26th June 2026 Keynote: Katie Murphy. Confirmed Speakers include: Liza Blake, Tita Chico, Jonathan Sawday, Helen Smith, Lizzie Swann We invite proposals for the final conference of the AHRC-DFG project, ‘Scientific Poetry and Poetics in Britain and Germany, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, 1580-1750’. From the late 16th and on into the first half of the 18th century, a large body of poetic writing addressed scientific subject matter. The conference explores this mass of scientific poetry – and a corresponding poetics of science – that reveals a vibrant facet of Renaissance, Restoration, and Enlightenment culture: the production not only of ideas, but of new, technical vocabularies and fast-paced neologizing, all forged in the particular demands of poetic form. Poetry, the era believed, did not function as mere ornament, but to reveal deep structures in the created world. This potential was theorized by the period’s emerging literary criticism, a pract...

Dates 24 - 26 June 2026   Venue Academic Building, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology   Keynote Speakers Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens, Greece) Uljana Feest (University of Hannover, Germany) Greg Radick (University of Leeds, UK) Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia, Canada)   Organising Committee Keith Chan Fons Dewulf Yafeng Shan (chair) Qinyi Wang Qiyue Zhang   Funders Centre for Philosophy of Science, HKUST The Asian Philosophy of Science Association Conference Description History and Philosophy of Science (aka HPS) emerged in the 1950s and greatly promoted the historical approach to the philosophy of science. Despite its rapid institutionalisation in the 1960s, HPS did not become a full-fledged academic discipline eventually. There have been axiological, institutional, methodological, and practical challenges. That said, some historically minded philosophers of science and philosophically minded historians of science never st...