Science Archives - Public Seminar

Education

Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

There are currently no conversation partners for Western academics within the Russian academy

October 1, 2024 • by Nataliia Viatkina

A recent issue of Aeon featured an article entitled “The Missing Conversation,” with the subtitle “To the detriment of the public, scientists and historians don’t engage with one another. They must begin a new dialogue.” The article amounts to a conversation between the famous scientists and historians of science, professors Lorraine Daston and ...

Academic Dialogue Against the Background of War

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Science & Technology

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

An open source mobile app democratizes access to local climate data

October 10, 2022 • by Daniel Sauter, Timon McPhearson and Christopher Kennedy

New technologies such as augmented reality and data visualization tools have emerged over the past decade offering new ways for audiences to not only view and understand big data, but to also interact with it. ...

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

Science & Technology

Back to Belief

To believe in science – or that the aim of science is to deceive us – is to confuse opinion with belief

June 7, 2021 • by Michaël Fœssel

_____ When COVID-19 invited itself into our lives, it did not arrive alone. In its wake came a global flood of knowledge on respiratory viruses and their prevention and treatment. It has been pointed out that, in recent history, far more serious epidemics have swept through society, particularly the Spanish flu ...

Past Present

A Possible Coronavirus Vaccine

Past Present Podcast, Episode 255

November 18, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has announced a promising new coronavirus vaccine. Niki referred to historian Joanna Radin’s Washington Post piece on the connections between cattle breeding and vaccine distribution and political scientist Dan Drezner’s article about the Trump administration’s cavalier approach ...

Public Health

Understanding the Fear of Vaccines

How to talk about public health in the age of COVID

July 21, 2020 • by Tarun Jose Kattumana

The pandemic has already changed some minds. Many who were previously opposed to vaccinations have softened their stance. However, misinformation from anti-vax groups continues to be far-reaching and influential. Why are anti-vax claims influential despite the immediate threat of the pandemic? What, if anything, can be done to lower the ...

From the Editors

Over Our Dead Bodies

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” and the lessons of contemporary history

April 8, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Perhaps it is inevitable that middlebrow culture seems particularly meaningful at moments of disarray. When Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, the hottest cultural phenomenon was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, and each song — ostensibly about the American Revolution and its aftermath — seemed to ...

Feature

Death by Omission

Power and Politics in the Amazon

September 25, 2019 • by Chris Crews

Celebrity Distractions Shellenberger begins by attacking public celebrities who shared photos that were either not from the Amazon or actually dated back to years earlier: “Celebrities, environmentalists, and political leaders blame Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, for destroying the world’s largest rainforest, the Amazon, which they say is the “lungs of the world.” Singers and ...

Feature

More Precious Than Gold

How a Carbon-based Cryptocurrency Might Save Our Planet

September 19, 2019 • by Gustav Peebles and Ben Luzzatto

Today, we are existentially threatened by our own waste production: atmospheric carbon. But what if we took a cue both from nature and endless generations of farmers, and re-labeled our carbon waste as central, as fertile; as the font of all value in the system? For eons, farmers have known ...

Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

An interview with Banu Subramaniam

July 26, 2019 • by Banu Subramaniam

Her critique is genealogical in nature. It consists in an attempt to show how modern Hindu nationalism is being constructed through a tactic she calls “archaic modernity” -- a phrase coined to capture the way that the ancient religious civilization of India is being read as prefiguring modern scientific techniques ...

The New Trail of Tears

How climate change is forcing the relocation of species, including our own

July 25, 2019 • by Brian Stewart

In 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, designed to appropriate to the United States lands occupied by aboriginal Americans. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, but the army under Commander in Chief Andrew Jackson acted anyway. Now a lightning rod for condemnation of the expropriation of indigenous property, Jackson ...

Science & Technology

Will the Idea of Intergenerational Justice Mobilize Us Into Climate Action?

An Interrogation of the Politics of Climate Change

July 10, 2019 • by Tina Sikka

As a result of these factors, climate communication strategies used thus far have just not gained traction. One of the principle questions scientists, social scientists, journalists, and media scholars are currently grappling with is: what is the best way to frame the danger of climate change in a way that ...