Issue No.49, March 1995 (ISSN 0158 9040)

Edited by Tim Sherratt on behalf of AAHPSSS.

Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science,
University of Sydney

The past year has been the most exciting and productive period in our history. The Unit has moved into new, much improved offices, with a workroom for graduate students, equipped with computer access and a periodicals library, and our teaching and research have greatly developed.

Dr Nicolas Rasmussen joined the Unit as a lecturer in June 1994, bringing with him an outstanding research record, advanced degrees in science and HPS, and recent experience of teaching at UCLA. Nick's education was at Chicago, Cambridge and Stanford and his teaching is now in the social studies of science, 20th-century life sciences and the philosophy of experiment.

In 1995, we have witnessed yet another increase in our undergraduate numbers (over 200 students are now enrolled in HPS, around 30 in HPS3). We are especially pleased with the quality of our graduate programme. We now have a graduate community of 18, comprising PhD, MPhil/MSc and MQual/Prelim. students, who display a spectacularly rich variety of research interests, from the late 19th-century psychology of James Sully to the introduction of dialysis technology, and including work on early Victorian geological networks, the philosophy of mind, the development of scientific creationism, Darwinian theories of childhood, and paediatrics in Sydney. We are continuing to develop our provision for graduate students, who are now offered a fortnightly seminar programme, a small-group tutorial, and two reading-groups, along with an annual graduate conference.

This programme has undoubtedly enabled us to attract to the Unit a group of highly talented researchers-in-the-making, including three APA scholars. We have also instituted an exacting examination for students who wish to upgrade from MPhil/MSc to PhD, or who wish to move from 'probationary' status as PhD students; in addition to ensuring that our Unit's graduates leave us with a well-rounded (and examined) grasp of HPS (and M), this examination will help us in maintaining our exemplary record for completion rates.

Highlights in the Unit's activities in 1995 include a conference and workshop with Steve Shapin in June, a couple of dayschools on medicine and film, and our annual residential graduate conference in November. (Non-Sydney University students and faculty participate in these events and are always welcome). Nick Rasmussen is looking after our visiting speaker programme this year, which will be running on Wednesday evenings; for further details, readers are invited to contact him at the Unit.

Alan Chalmers has recently completed three articles, "Theory Change and Theory Choice", Methodology and Science, 27, 1994, 161-5, "Cartwright on Fundamental Laws" forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy and "Ultimate Explanations in Science" forthcoming in Cogito. Members will be relieved to learn that What is This Thing Called Science? has now been published in Polish and will soon appear in Estonian, Danish and Swedish, whilst Science and its Fabrication can now be read in Korean! Alan's research in the history of atomism is currently focused on Democritus. He is also evaluating current attempts to construct a Bayesian account of science, and is continuing his work on Maxwell's electromagnetic theory. He has been invited to the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Science in London as a Visiting Fellow for the second half of this year, and will be returning via the US in an attempt to find someone to talk to about Maxwell's electromagnetism.

Nicolas Rasmussen is in the process of writing a book on the origins of experimental traditions in biological electron microscopy, and is pursuing related research interests in 20th century life science. Currently in press are pieces on the founding of cell biology (Journal of the History of Biology) and, with Peter Hawkes, on the electron microscope as a research tool (in R. Bud, S. Johnston, and D.J. Warner eds., Instruments of Science). Other projects include the epistemology of experimentation, and cultural traditions in laboratory contexts.

Michael Shortland's edition of Hugh Miller's Memoir was published by Edinburgh University Press in March. His edited collection of essays, Hugh Miller is due in late 1995 from Oxford University Press, as is Telling Lives in Science, which he has edited with Richard Yeo, published by Cambridge University Press. In press presently are 'Foreign and Familiar Lands: Indian History and History of Science' (Studies in the History of Science and Medicine); 'Powers of Recall: Sigmund Freud's Partiality for the Prehistoric' (Australian Journal of Historical Archaeology), and 'T.H. Huxley, H.G. Wells and the Method of Zadig' (with B. Sommerville, in A. Barr [ed.], T.H. Huxley: New Essays). Michael's recent award of an ARC Large Grant will enable him to complete a major project on the social history of geology. Other research projects include a cultural history of walking, a study of anonymity in natural history, medicine and science publications, and further work on the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann.

- Michael Shortland (Head of Unit).