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Philosopher Steve Fuller delivers Beatty lecture

Published: 15 September 1999

What doesnÂ’t kill us makes us stronger: Why the science wars may turn out to be a good thing after all

Tuesday, September 21, 1999
5:45 PM
Palmer-Howard Theatre
McIntyre Medical Sciences Building
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3655 Drummond Street, Montreal
All are welcome. Free entrance. No tickets necessary

Founder of "social epistemology," University of Warwick Professor Steve Fuller is a renowned philosopher, historian and sociologist of science. In a nutshell, Professor Fuller describes social epistemology as "the normative study of knowledge systems. In other words, I am interested not only in how the various academic disciplines and other knowledge practices work, but also in how they donÂ’t work and how they may be improved. This project inevitably takes me from my original training in history, philosophy, and sociology of science to issues more traditionally associated with politics and ethics. It is also profoundly interdisciplinary, and in many cases, work done under the rubric of Â’social epistemologyÂ’ challenges the business-as-usual attitude of academic work."

Very active in public commentary, Steve Fuller was recently engaged in a controversy in the Times Higher Education Supplement (London) over the implications of electronic communications for academic work.

Professor Fuller is the author of such major publications as Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents (2nd ed. New York: Guilford Press 1993/1989), Philosophy, Rhetoric and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1993) and Science (University of Minnesota Press, 1997). He is the founder and Editor of Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, (London: Taylor & Francis Ltd.).

This public lecture was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Beatty Memorial Lectures Committee, with the participation of the Departments of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, Anthropology, Mathematics and Statistics, Political Science, Physiology, Social Studies in Medicine, Philosophy, Sociology, the Centre for Medicine Ethics and Law, the Montreal Neurological Institute, and the Faculties of Arts and Medicine.

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