Category: Uncategorized
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Anticipation and prediction: A conceptual odyssey
A group of us at Making Science Public recently discussed Responsible Research and Innovation and Anticipatory Governance. During this conversation a colleague reminded us that anticipation is not the same as prediction (see also here). This made me think about the meanings of these words and in order to get to grips with them I…
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Fermenting thought: A new look at synthetic biology
I have become involved in a new project related to synthetic biology. The University of Nottingham has received funding for a big Synthetic Biology Research Centre. I am a social scientist within the new team and in charge of keeping an eye on ‘responsible research and innovation’. This is not what this post is about…
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Rosetta and the rubber duck: How we got to know a comet
I can’t really let Rosetta pass by without a little blog post… This was brought home to me when Alasdair Taylor tweeted on 2:21 PM – 6 Aug 2014: “Sexiest, crazy bonkers, rubber duck, chaotic town, Disneyland, big roller coaster, scary ride: all terms used to describe #Rosetta”. This made me curious about how people…
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Thinking with animals: The microbe
This is a GUEST POST by Richard Helliwell, a PhD student at the Institute for Science and Society, who participated in a workshop on Thinking with Animals at the University of Nottingham on 20th June 2014. What does it mean to think with animals, in particular to think with microbes, my ‘animal’ companion of thought?…
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You say regulatory science, I say mandated science; let’s call the whole thing off?
One issue of contention after the Circling the Square conference was the apparent confounding of science with regulatory science. I finally took a bit of time to dig into the history and use of the concept of ‘regulatory science’ and a related concept, ‘mandated science’. I should stress that there are whole courses on ‘regulatory…
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Science, sensationalism and the dangers of over-selling research
This is a GUEST POST by FREYA HARRISON. Freya works in Steve Diggle’s group in the Centre for Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Nottingham, where she researches the ecology and evolution of cooperation. She spends most of her time exploring how communication and cooperation help bacteria to cause chronic infections, but she is also…
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Autism, sociality and human nature
This is a post by Gregory Hollin originally written for Somatosphere (where it made a bit of splash!) and reposted here with the permission of the author. There are, I believe, a few reasons to suppose that autism is a particularly fascinating area to be studying at the moment. What are those reasons? Firstly, prevalence…
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Kandinsky, New Objectivity, and ripping apart the furniture
This is a post by GREGORY HOLLIN who helped organise the Circling the Square conference and these are his reflections on some of the online discussions that followed on blogs and in comments. Circles, Squares, and nonrepresentational forms in Munich Recently I visited Munich and, at the behest of a friend who knows far more…
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Making sense in science and in public
Over the last few weeks some of my colleagues within the Institute for Science and Society and the Making Science Public programme (and beyond) have probably got pretty annoyed with me, as I have become a bit argumentative in a debate about science and politics and the line between sense and nonsense. In the following…
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Re-imagining the public / re-imagining the political
Last month (15-16 May) I attended a conference organised by Michel Ledda, Robert Cowley, and David Chandler from the Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) at the University of Westminster entitled: ‘New perspectives on the problem of the public’. Together with Sujatha Raman I work on the Leverhulme funded project ‘Models of Managing…
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