Ishkabibble
I just got back from a week in Salt Lake City, Utah. I spent about five days at the archives, in addition to attending talks at this year's ISHPSSB conference. (For the uninitiated, that's: International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology). I then spent a long weekend hiking in the Uinta mountains, which is a pretty spectacular place to go! ISH is unique and different from other conferences insofar as it tries to bring together an interdisciplinary bunch of people, all of whom share an object of study in common: the life sciences. That's the idea, anyway. But, in recent years, it has become increasingly dominated by philosophy. This is not a bad thing per se -- philosophers have a lot to offer those of us who are interested in writing critical intellectual history. But why aren't the historians showing up? If indeed we are seeing a resurgence in philosophical issues among young historians of science, this seems li...