The philosophical influences on anthropology. This project aims to undertake a comprehensive account of Kant’s impact on the early history of anthropology, offering a new framework for understanding philosophy’s role as a cultural force in society. The project will investigate the importance of Kant’s twin narratives of progressive human development and racial difference for understanding the course taken by anthropology when determining government policies regarding race relations. The benefit ....The philosophical influences on anthropology. This project aims to undertake a comprehensive account of Kant’s impact on the early history of anthropology, offering a new framework for understanding philosophy’s role as a cultural force in society. The project will investigate the importance of Kant’s twin narratives of progressive human development and racial difference for understanding the course taken by anthropology when determining government policies regarding race relations. The benefit of this reconstruction will be the identification of contemporary examples of Kant’s continued legacy, especially in the context of legacies of racial bias, and to the nature of claimed racial and ethnic identities.Read moreRead less
The experimental self in early modern philosophy. This project aims to analyse an unrecognised connection between the emergence of experience-grounded theories of the self and the rise of early modern experimentalism. These are two developments in early modern philosophy which paved the way for today’s conception of science. By studying the influence of Cartesian physiology on early modern accounts of embodied cognition, the project seeks to correct some of the misconceptions of the period. The ....The experimental self in early modern philosophy. This project aims to analyse an unrecognised connection between the emergence of experience-grounded theories of the self and the rise of early modern experimentalism. These are two developments in early modern philosophy which paved the way for today’s conception of science. By studying the influence of Cartesian physiology on early modern accounts of embodied cognition, the project seeks to correct some of the misconceptions of the period. The project aims to clarify the role of human agency in advancement of knowledge, and develop a conceptual framework that allows a more nuanced and complex understanding of the relationship between the humanities and sciences.Read moreRead less
The quest for the 'I': reaching a better understanding of the self through Hegel and Heidegger. The conception of the 'I' is central to our lives. The more multicultural a country is, the more pressing becomes the question of the conception of the self. Focusing on the thought of Hegel and Heidegger, this project aims to offer a richer account that avoids individualism and allows thinking of the formation of the self as a collective enterprise.
Passionate Knowledge: The Ethics and Politics of the Scientific Revoution. Modern science and the modern state came to the world together. They emerged from the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, which changed not only the way people understood the world, but how they understood themselves as individuals and communities. By analysing scientific, philosophical and political documents, some canonical and some rarely read, this project aims to reveal the ethical and political implications o ....Passionate Knowledge: The Ethics and Politics of the Scientific Revoution. Modern science and the modern state came to the world together. They emerged from the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, which changed not only the way people understood the world, but how they understood themselves as individuals and communities. By analysing scientific, philosophical and political documents, some canonical and some rarely read, this project aims to reveal the ethical and political implications of the rise of modern science. It is expected to be the first comprehensive study of the co-formation of science and the state in their era of origin, shedding crucial and surprising light on the place of science in culture and politics ever since.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE120102368
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$375,000.00
Summary
The making of the modern chemist: struggles within Enlightenment science. The project will reinterpret the emergence of modern chemistry by challenging the iconic revolution-centred approach to the history of early modern science. Examining scientific successes alongside crises and revolutionaries alongside reactionaries, the project will chart chemists' long struggle for disciplinary independence in the Enlightenment.
Climate change and the history of environmental determinism. In previous centuries, most scientists presumed that environment and climate determined human health, capacities and difference. By tracing this longstanding idea through the twentieth century, this project will identify implications for current climate science.
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220101505
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$363,582.00
Summary
The Aristotelian Soul in Late Ming China. This project aims to uncover a seminal moment during the first stage of Sino-Western intellectual encounters when the Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) collaborated with the mandarin Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) on the Lingyan lishao (1624), a Chinese translation of Aristotle’s On the Soul. Since Ming Chinese lacked direct analogues for the Aristotelian soul, this work provides significant insights into how conceptual translation is conducted between dispa ....The Aristotelian Soul in Late Ming China. This project aims to uncover a seminal moment during the first stage of Sino-Western intellectual encounters when the Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) collaborated with the mandarin Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) on the Lingyan lishao (1624), a Chinese translation of Aristotle’s On the Soul. Since Ming Chinese lacked direct analogues for the Aristotelian soul, this work provides significant insights into how conceptual translation is conducted between disparate cultures. The intended outcome of this project is to reveal the semantic transformations between the European and Chinese contexts. Benefits include the opening up of pioneering yet understudied texts and insights into why certain ideas fail to resonate in their new target culture.Read moreRead less
The Huxleys and global science, 1825–1975. This project aims to deepen our understanding of how life and earth sciences contributed to global modernity over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The project will focus on two major biologists and communicators of evolutionary theory, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) and his grandson Julian Huxley (1887–1975). It will interrogate the questions that the Huxleys raised about the changing nature of time, the deep past and the distant future of human ....The Huxleys and global science, 1825–1975. This project aims to deepen our understanding of how life and earth sciences contributed to global modernity over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The project will focus on two major biologists and communicators of evolutionary theory, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) and his grandson Julian Huxley (1887–1975). It will interrogate the questions that the Huxleys raised about the changing nature of time, the deep past and the distant future of humankind, shifting ideas about difference between and within species. By doing so, the project aims to better understand developments from pre- to high- to post-Darwinian eras, and the major institutional and intellectual shifts from imperial to international sciences.Read moreRead less
Conscience and conscientious objection in health care. Medical professionals sometimes decline to provide particular forms of safe, beneficial and legal health care, on the grounds that provision would go against their consciences. Bioethicists and policy makers have failed to identify legitimate limits to the scope of appeals to conscientious objection in health care. This is in large part because the underlying concept ''conscience" is unclear. This project aims to advance bioethical debate by ....Conscience and conscientious objection in health care. Medical professionals sometimes decline to provide particular forms of safe, beneficial and legal health care, on the grounds that provision would go against their consciences. Bioethicists and policy makers have failed to identify legitimate limits to the scope of appeals to conscientious objection in health care. This is in large part because the underlying concept ''conscience" is unclear. This project aims to advance bioethical debate by producing a philosophically and psychologically informed analysis of conscience, and by applying this to discussions about the legitimate limits to conscientious objection in health care. It is expected to result in academic and non-academic publications and enable improvements to Australian health care policy.Read moreRead less
Indigenous land claims in historical context. By enlightening the history of Indigenous legal opposition to dispossession from the beginning of colonisation, this project will provide a means of engaging with the political challenges and responses posed by legal conflicts with Indigenous peoples over the question of land.