Calendar

Sometimes the lab discusses our own works-in-progress and sometimes we discuss the works of others. Below is our calendar  Fall 2011-Fall 2021. Since then we have been keeping our calendar internally — if for not other reason than it has seemed easier.

Fall 2021

Despite the possibility of meeting in person, we have decided to continue on Zoom for now.

  • Sep 28 – In person social & create calendar for the quarter
  • Oct 5 – Inkpen and Doolittle 2021 paper (Jim)
  • Oct 12 – Sally Haslanger ppt and paper (Daisy, can switch if one desires)
  • Oct 19 – Ari
  • Oct 26 – Aaron
  • Nov 2 –  Natasha (can switch if one desires)
  • Nov 9 – Denise (can switch if one desires)
  • Nov 16 – TBD
  • Nov 23 – Thanksgiving week, no lab
  • Nov 30 –TBD

Spring 2021

Yeah, ok.  Zoom encore.

  • Apr 7 – Joseph Travis, “Where Is Natural History in Ecological, Evolutionary, and Behavioral Science?” (Tiernan)
  • Apr 14 – M.A. Hunter, “The limits of accuracy for retrospective description of racial groups”
  • Apr 21 – Daisy, draft grant proposal
  • Apr 28 – Alison, Stephen Jay Gould research
  • May 5 – Maribeth, stakeholder perspectives manuscript
  • May 12 – Alison, teaching demo
  • May 19 – Natasha, draft, “Understanding Biological Sex Pluralistically”
  • May 26 – Carl Craver and William Bechtel, “Top-down causation without top-down causes” (Jason)
  • Jun 2 – Elih, draft, “Two kinds of basic research: Scoping and explanation”
  • Jul 6 – Extra lab to practice Ishkabbible talks!

Winter 2021

Zoom lab… still.

  • Jan 6 – Welcome back!  Plans for the quarter
  • Jan 13 – Tal Yarkoni, “The generalizability crisis” (Jim)
  • Jan 20 – Inauguration Day/check-in
  • Jan 27 –  Power outage in much of Davis, lab cancelled
  • Feb 3 – Adrian Currie visit
  • Feb 10 – Benn Johnson, “Abiotic Ecosystems? A Critical Examination of Arthur Tansley’s Ecosystem Definition” (Roberta)
  • Feb 17 – Maribeth, sharing her research
  • Feb 24 – Helen E. Longino’s “Chapter Three: Evidence and Hypothesis” in Science as Social Knowledge (Natasha)
  • Mar 3 – Jason 2nd year paper
  • Mar 10 – Joyce Havstad visit

Fall 2020

Zoom lab continues

  • Oct 2 – Welcome back!  Plans for the quarter
  • Oct 8  – Sarah Richardson, “Plasticity and Programming: Feminism and the Epigenetic Imaginary” (Daisy)
  • Oct 15 – Helen De Cruz and John De Smedt, “The role of intuitive ontologies in scientific understanding – the case of human evolution” (Natasha)
  • Oct 22 – Sara Green and Robert Batterman, “Biology meets physics: Reductionism and multi-scale modeling of morphogenesis” (Jason)
  • Oct 29 – George Simpson, “The role of the individual in evolution” (Alison)
  • Nov 5 – Lab check-in
  • Nov 12 – Alexali S. Brubaker and Richard G. Coss, “Evolutionary Constraints on Equid Domestication: Comparison of Flight Initiation Distances of Wild Horses (Equus caballus
    ferus) and Plains Zebras (Equus quagga)” (Denise)
  • Nov 19 – Julia Bursten, “The Function of Boundary Conditions in the Physical Sciences” – with visit from Julia.
  • Nov 26 – Thanksgiving, no lab
  • Dec 3 – Curt Meine visit
  • Dec 10 – Lab check-in

Spring 2020

Zoom lab!

  • Apr 10 –  Weaponizing epistemic virtues (Dan)
  • Apr 17  – Gail Melson, “Human–Animal Play” (Tiernan)
  • Apr 24 –  Interdependence chapter draft (Roberta)
  • May 1 – Jacob Stegenga, “Measuring Effectiveness” (Aaron)
  • May 8 – Boudry et al., “The end of science? On human cognitive limitations and how to overcome them” (Natasha)
  • May 15 – Elisabeth Lloyd, “Model robustness as a confirmatory virtue: The case of climate science” (Arieh)
  • May 22 – Vadim Keyser & Hannah Howland, built environments and ecosystems
  • May 29 –  “Functions Must Be Performed at Appropriate Rates in Appropriate Situations” (Jason)
  • Jun 5 – Denise Hossom practice presentation for POBAM

Winter 2020

  • Jan 17 – “Natural Agency: The Case of Bacterial Cognition” (Jason)
  • Jan 24 – Ch. 3 of Tami’s dissertation
  • Jan 31 – Paper of Ari’s choice
  • Feb 7 – Paper of Natasha’s choice
  • Feb 14 –Tiernan’s prospectus
  • Feb 21 – Denise’s prospectus
  • Feb 28 – Roberta Millstein, “Thinking about Aldo Leopold: Reflections on interdisciplinarity and research questions”
  • Mar 6 – 3rd and U gathering
  • Mar 13 – Tami Schneider, “The microbiome function in the holobiont”

Fall 2019

  • Sep 27 – Review the summer, plans for the fall
  • Oct 3 – Jim discusses his invasion ecology project
  • Oct 10 – Reading on ethics and animal behavior studies (Tiernan)
  • Oct 17 – Mark Sagoff, “On the Definition of Ecology” (Denise)
  • Oct 24 – Roberta shares paper or chapter related to her Leopold book
  • Oct 31 – Denise and Roberta share potential illustrative cases for their projects
  • Nov 7 – Reading on functions and health (Tami)
  • Nov 14 – Watch “Biggest Little Farm”
  • Nov 21 – Denise and Tiernan share prospectus ideas
  • Nov 28 – Thanksgiving – no lab
  • Dec 5 – Natasha Haddal 2nd yr paper workshop

Spring 2019

  • Apr 5 – Review the winter, plans for the spring
  • Apr 12 – Elena Aronova, “Earthquake prediction, biological clocks, and the cold war psy-ops: Using animals as seismic sensors in the 1970s California” (Dan)
  • Apr 19 – Nico Tinbergen, “On Aims and Methods of Ethology” (Tiernan)
  • Apr 26 – Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba, “Exaptation—a Missing Term in the Science of Form” (Roberta)
  • May 3 – Lab field trip to Mike Trestman’s talk in Animal Behavior
  • May 10 – (something from Kaan)
  • May 17 – Tiernan practice talk
  • May 24 – Sally Haslanger, “Tracing the Socio-Political Reality of Race”
  • May 31 – Chapter from Andrew Inkpen’s dissertation (Denise)
  • Jun 7 – Workshop ISHPSSB talks

Winter 2019

  • Jan 11 – Review the fall, plans for the winter
  • Jan 18 – Michael Soulé, “What Is Conservation Biology?”
  • Jan 25 – Marshall Abrams, “Environmental Grain, Organism Fitness, and Type Fitness”
  • Feb 1 – Dog diversity day
  • Feb 8 – Emily Grosholz, Tano Posteraro, and Alex Grigas, “Scientific Discovery and Inference: Between the Lab and Field in Biology”
  • Feb 15 – Alison McConwell visit
  • Feb 22 – Jennifer Mather, “Cephalopod consciousness: Behavioural evidence”
  • Mar 1 – Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver, “Thinking About Mechanisms”
  • Mar 8 – Robert Skipper and Roberta Millstein, “Thinking about Evolutionary Mechanisms: Natural Selection”

Fall 2018

  • Oct 2 – Welcome back!  Plans for the quarter.
  • Oct 9 – Daniel J. Hicks and Thomas A. Stapleford, “The Virtues of Scientific Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the Historiography of Science”
  • Oct 16 – Scott’s choice
  • Oct 23 – Roberta PSA outline (or maybe presentation), Tami PSA poster
  • Oct 30 – Tiernan’s choice, paper on animal behavior
  • Nov 6 – PSA decompression
  • Nov 13 – A chapter draft from Rick
  • Nov 20 – TBD
  • Nov 27 – possible lab visitor
  • Dec 4 – Andrés on Chris Manias’ “The problematic construction of ‘Paleolithic man’: the old Stone Age and the difficulties of the comparative method, 1859-1914”

Spring 2018

  • Apr 6 – Roberta – practice talk for SoCIA
  • Apr 13 – ?
  • Apr 20 -Rogério Passos Severo, “‘Plausible insofar as it is intelligible’: Quine on underdetermination” (Ty)
  • Apr 27 – Roberta – practice talk for U of Calgary
  • May 4 – Rune Nyrup, “Of Water Drops and Atomic Nuclei: Analogies and Pursuit Worthiness in Science” (Rick)
  • May 11 – Tiernan practice talk
  • May 18 – no lab
  • May 25 – Quayshawn Spencer, “Biological Theory and the Metaphysics of Race: A Reply to Kaplan and Winther” (Rick)
  • Jun 1 – Jaegwon Kim, “Psychophysical Supervenience” (Ari)
  • Jun 8 – Practice talks for AAAS-PD from Ari, Tami, and Denise

Winter 2018

  • Jan 17 – Walter Veit, “Procreative Beneficence and Genetic Enhancement” (Roberta)
  • Jan 24 – Saul Krugman, “The Willowbrook Hepatitis Studies Revisited: Ethical Aspects” (James)
  • Jan 31 – Bas van Fraassen, excerpt from Chapter 6 of The Scientific Image (Ty)
  • Feb 7  – Nancy Cartwright, Chapter 4 of Nature’s Capacities and Their Measurement (group)
  • Feb 14 – John Dupré, “The Metaphysics of Evolution” (Jim)
  • Feb 21 – Shaun on inductive risk
  • Feb 28 – Tiernan: McGee 2010 and Billings 2011, on xenoarchaeology.
  • Mar 7 – Rick: Lloyd 2015, “Adaptationism and The Logic of Research Questions”
  • Mar 14 – Scott on something related to cultural evolution

Fall 2017

  • Oct 2 – Welcome back.
  • Oct 9 – “Reproduction and the Scaffolded Development of Hybrids”, Jim Griesemer, 2014.  (Scott Cole)
  • Oct 16 – John Dupre paper on viruses and process. (Tiernan Armstrong-Ingram)
  • Oct 23 – Tami Schneider practice talk.
  • Oct 30 – Denise Hossom practice talk.
  • Nov 6 – Dan Hicks practice talk
  • Nov 13 – no lab
  • Nov 20 – Rob Wilson documentary
  • Nov 27 – Process ontology paper selected by Tiernan.
  • Dec 4 – Carlos Mariscal paper (Rick Morris)

Spring 2017

  • Apr 7 – Welcome back.
  • Apr 17 – Peter Machamaer, Lindley Darden, and Carl Craver, “Thinking about Mechanisms”
  • Apr 24 – Bert Leuridan, “Can Mechanisms Really Replace Laws of Nature?” and Holly Andersen, “Mechanisms, Laws, and Regularities”
  • May 1 – Elisabeth Lloyd, “Holobionts as Units of Selection: Holobionts as Interactors, Replicators, and Manifestors of Adaptation”
  • May 8 – W. Ford Doolittle and Austin Booth, “It’s the song, not the singer: an exploration of holobiosis and evolutionary theory”
  • May 15 – Bryan Skyrms, “The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure”
  • May 22 – Angela Potochnik, “Scientific Explanation: Putting Communication First”
  • May 29 – Scott Presentation
  • June 5 – Andrés Presentation
  • June 12 – No Lab – Finals!

Winter 2017

  • Jan 13 – Welcome back.
  • Jan 20 – Biological individuality (Tami Schneider)
  • Jan 27 – “Adaptation” by Richard Lewontin (Rick Morris)
  • Feb 3 – Chapter from Adaptation and Environment by Robert Brandon (Denise Hossom)
  • Feb 10 – “How the Concept of ‘Population’ Resolves Concepts of ‘Environment’”  by Roberta Millstein
  • Feb 17 – Practice talk (I-Sen Chen)
  • Feb 24 – Practice talk (Carlos Andres Barragan)
  • Mar 3 – Second year paper (Scott Cole)
  • Mar 10 – History of science papers (M.A. Hunter)
  • Mar 17 – Practice talk (Roberta Millstein)

Fall 2016

  • Sep 23 – Welcome back.
  • Sep 30 – “Explaining causal modelling. Or, what a causal model ought to explain” by Federica Russo (Tyrus Fischer)
  • Oct 7 – “Inimitable Function of Memory: Strict Functional Equivalence and the Un-Extended Mind”, Arieh Schwartz, Second Year Paper
  • October 14 – “Biological Individuality and Scientific Practice,” Karen Kovaka (Jim)
  • October 21 – PSA practice talks (Denise Hossom and Tami Schneider)
  • Oct 28 – PSA practice talks(Roberta Millstein, Michael Hunter, Rick Morris)
  • Nov 4 – PSA, no lab
  • Nov 11 – Veterans Day, no lab
  • Nov 18 – “Stranger in a Strange Land: A Forecasting Account of Evolutionary Mismatch” (Rick Morris)
  • Nov 25 – Thanksgiving, no lab
  • Dec 2 – Scott Cole, Second Year Paper

Spring 2016

  • Apr 1 – APA Pacific, no lab
  • Apr 8 –  “Crafting an Analytic Framework I: Three Pillars of Institutions” [Chapter 3 of Institutions and Organizations: Ideas, Interests, and Identities by W. Richard Scott]
  • Apr 15 – Alison Wylie, “A Plurality of Pluralisms: Collaborative Practice in Archaeology”
  • Apr 22 – Jacob G. Foster, Andrey Rzhetsky, and James A. Evans, “Tradition and Innovation in Scientists’ Research Strategies”
  • Apr 29 – Mark Bedau, “Downward Causation and Autonomy in Weak Emergence”
  • May 6 – Richard N. Boyd, paper TBA (Boyd is our colloquia speaker)
  • May 13 – Denise Hossom, “From Personhood to Neighborhood: Biotic Communities and Personal Identity”
  • May 20 – Nathan Confas, “A teleofunctional account of evolutionary mismatch”
  • May 27 – TBD
  • Jun 3 – TBD

Winter 2016

  • Jan 15 – Jim Griesemer, sketch of “Beyond Traditional Philosophy of Science”
  • Jan 22 – Rick Morris: Philip Kitcher, “The Naturalists Return”
  • Jan 29 – Jason Oakes: Chapters from Michael Weisberg’s Simulation and Similarity
  • Feb 5 – Roberta Millstein, “GMOs: Not So Fast” (and possibly a second paper draft)
  • Feb 12 – Josef Kay, TBA (Phil Psychiatry)
  • Feb 19 – Shawn Miller
  • Feb 26 – Scott Cole, CRISPR and the ethics of genome “editing”
  • Mar 4 – Tami Schneider
  • Mar 11 – Andrés Barragan

Fall 2015

Spring 2015

  • Apr 3 – Andrés Barragán, “‘Gene Hunters’ and their Hunters: Staging Genomic Trafficking and Bioethical Transgressions”
  • Apr 10 – Masel, J. (2012). Rethinking Hardy–Weinberg and genetic drift in undergraduate biology. BioEssays, 34(8), 701-710.
  • Apr 17 – Alirio Rosales, “Narratives and Theories”
  • Apr 24 – M.A. Hunter, Food For Thought
  • May 1 – Jason Oakes, “Alliances in Human Biology: The Committee on Industrial Physiology”
  • May 8 – Roberta Millstein, TBD
  • May 15 – Markus Eronen, “Levels of organization: A deflationary account” 
  • May 22 – Mark Fedyk, “Population-Level Thinking and Ethics”
  • May 29 – James Greisemer, TBD
  • Jun 5 Rick Morris, “TBD”

Winter 2015

Fall 2014

  • Oct. 10: Smart, John Jamieson Carswell. “Can biology be an exact science?” Synthese 11, no. 4 (1959): 359-368. [pdf]
  • Oct. 17: Fisher, Tyrus. “Causal Counterfactuals are not Interventionist Counterfactuals” (work in progress).
  • Oct. 24:  No lab
  • Oct. 31: Hunter, M. A., practice talk for PSA
  • Nov. 7: No lab
  • Nov. 14: Pemberton, Trevor J., Michael DeGiorgio, and Noah A. Rosenberg. “Population structure in a comprehensive genomic data set on human microsatellite variation.” G3: Genes| Genomes| Genetics (2013): g3-113.
  • Nov. 21:  Hull, D. L. (1976). Are species really individuals?. Systematic Biology, 25(2), 174-191.
  • Nov. 28: No lab
  • Dec 5: Discussion of abstracts for Ishkabibble 2015.
  • Dec 12: Morris, Rick

Spring 2013

  • Millstein, Roberta. “Stability, Interdependence, and Leopoldʼs Land Ethic.”
  • More to come . . .

Winter 2013

  • Budolfson, Mark Bryant. “Collective Action, Climate Change, and the Ethical Significance of Futility.”
  • Corballis, Michael C. “Recursion, language, and starlings.” Cognitive Science31, no. 4 (2007): 697-704.
  • Gentner, Timothy Q., Kimberly M. Fenn, Daniel Margoliash, and Howard C. Nusbaum. “Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds.” Nature 440, no. 7088 (2006): 1204-1207.
  • Marcus, Gary F. “Language: startling starlings.” Nature 440, no. 7088 (2006): 1117-1118.
  • Miller, Shawn A. “Trading Fiction for Performance: How to Understand Scientific Models.”
  • Roe, Sarah. “New Mechanists, Same Old Problems.”
  • Woodward, James. “Causation and Mechanisms in Biology.”
  • Wright, Jake. “A Virtue Account of Science.”

Fall 2012

  • Fisher, Tyrus, “Another neglected response to the Grim result.”
  • Hall, Ned. “Two concepts of causation.” Causation and counterfactuals (2004): 225-276.
  • Salmon, Wesley. “Scientific explanation and the causal structure of the world.” (1984).
  • Woodward, James. Making things happen: A theory of causal explanation. Oxford University Press, 2003.

Winter/Spring 2012

  • Craver, Carl F., and William Bechtel. “Top-down causation without top-down causes.” Biology & Philosophy 22, no. 4 (2007): 547-563.
  • Epstein, Joshua M. “Remarks on the foundations of agent-based generative social science.” Handbook of computational economics 2 (2006): 1585-1604.
  • Millstein, Roberta. “Probability in Biology: The Case of Fitness.”
  • Okasha, Samir. “Emergence, hierarchy and top-down causation in evolutionary biology.” Interface focus 2, no. 1 (2012): 49-54.
  • Peck, Steven L. “Agent-based Models as Fictive Instantiations of Ecological Processes.” Philosophy & Theory in Biology 4 (2012).
  • Potochnik, Angela. “Optimality modeling and explanatory generality.” Philosophy of Science 74, no. 5 (2007): 680-691.
  • Potochnik, Angela. “Explanatory independence and epistemic interdependence: A case study of the optimality approach.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (2009): axp022.
  • Winsberg, Eric. “Models of success versus the success of models: Reliability without truth.” Synthese 152, no. 1 (2006): 1-19.
  • Winsberg, Eric. “Laws and chances in statistical mechanics.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39, no. 4 (2008): 872-888.
  • Winsberg, Eric. “Computer simulation and the philosophy of science.”Philosophy Compass 4, no. 5 (2009): 835-845.
  • Winsberg, Eric. “A tale of two methods.” Synthese 169, no. 3 (2009): 575-592.

Fall 2011

  • Bechtel, William. “Mechanism and Biological Explanation*.” Philosophy of Science 78, no. 4 (2011): 533-557.
  • Chang, Hasok and Nancy Cartwright, “Measurement.”
  • Collier, David, Henry E. Brady, and Jason Seawright. “Sources of leverage in causal inference: Toward an alternative view of methodology.” Rethinking social inquiry: Diverse tools, shared standards (2004): 229-66.
  • Diamond, Jared M., and Ted J. Case, eds. Community ecology. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
  • Dowe, Phil. “A counterfactual theory of prevention and’causation’by omission.”Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79, no. 2 (2001): 216-226.
  • Dunning, Thad. “Improving causal inference: Strengths and limitations of natural experiments.” Political Research Quarterly (2007).
  • Milam, Erika Lorraine. “The equally wonderful field: Ernst Mayr and organismic biology.” (2010): 279-317.
  • Myers, Natasha, and Joseph Dumit. “Haptic creativity and the mid-embodiments of experimental life.” Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment (2011): 239-61.
  • Torres, Phillip J. “A modified conception of mechanisms.” Erkenntnis 71, no. 2 (2009): 233-251.

at UC Davis