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Otávio Bueno contrasts the concept of style in art and science

Richard Meckien — 2013-10-14T17:55:00Z

Philosophy professor Otávio Bueno, from the University of Miami, will give a conference on the basic characteristics of the concepts of style in sciences and arts on October 17, at 2 pm, in the Auditorium of USP’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC).

The conference entitled ‘The Concept of Style in Art and Science’ will be Bueno’s way to explore what is distinctive and common in applications of the concept in both fields. He comments that science historian Alistair Crombie (1915-1996) believed that in science there are well-defined styles that feature forms of specific investigation (deductive, experimental, hypothetical, taxonomic, statistical and evolutionary). Bueno compares this observation to the fact that well-defined pictorial styles (considering only painting), such as naturalism, impressionism, cubism and abstract expressionism, have set major movements in art history.

Bueno is full professor and head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Miami. He dedicates his research to the fields of philosophy of science, philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics. More recently he has been involved with aesthetics. He is one of the editors of the epistemology and philosophy of science journal ‘Synthese’.

The conference is an initiative of IEA’s Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group.

Feminist Standpoint Theory and Formation of Gender Archaeology: What Knowers Know Well - October 14, 2013

Richard Meckien — 2013-10-14T03:00:00Z

Theoretical frameworks of differentiation between humans and animals

Richard Meckien — 2013-06-03T17:20:00Z

The fourth meeting of the 'Conference Cycle on Humans and Animals: The Limits of Mankind' will bring together three researchers to discuss comparisons between humans and animals from different points of view. The roundtable will take place on June 6 at 9.30 am in IEA’a Event Room.

The panelists will be the teachers Gustavo Caponi, of the Center for Philosophy and Human Sciences of the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Maurício de Carvalho Ramos, of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) of USP, and Hernán Neira, of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (UCS). Mediator will be Baravalle Lorenzo, researcher of a postdoctoral program at FFLCH.

Themes

In his exhibition 'Typology and Phylogeny of the Human', Caponi will address the misconceptions that result from the mixture of typological and phylogenetic definitions (related to the genealogy of a biological group) to determine whether a living being belongs to a zoological or botanical species, especially when the opposition between animality and humanity enters the scene.

Ramos will speak on ‘The Relationship Between Animals and Humans Designed as a Biocultural and Ethical-Epistemic Continuous’. The aim of the teacher is to debate a theoretical continuist perspective that takes into account the inseparability between epistemic and ethical judgments and between the biological and the cultural dimensions in the understanding of differences and similarities between humans and animals.

Neira will reflect on ‘Sensitivity and Sovereignty: Descartes and Condillac in Relation to Animals’. The researcher will consider the ideas of these two philosophers to discuss the central role of comparison between animals and humans in the understanding of humanity and to discuss issues on animality faced by modern Zoophilosophy.

Cycle

The cycle covers the origins, legitimacy, and ethical-political consequences of differentiation of living beings in humans, animals and sub-humans (this last case defined by the prejudiced view of certain groups of individuals of certain ethnicities, body types or gender, considered inferior humans).

The aim is to discuss the most relevant philosophical and epistemological fundamentals to what is meant by human from an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing various perspectives, including those of anthropology, biology, and ethics.

The cycle comprises five meetings. The last two are scheduled for June and August. The organization is from IEA’s Philosophy, History and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group, the Philosophical Scientiae Studia Association and Fapesp’s Thematic Project ‘Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: On the Relationship between Science, Technology, and Society’.

Meeting discusses the ‘culture’ of other primates

Richard Meckien — 2013-05-17T17:30:00Z

The third meeting of the 'Conference Cycle on Humans and Animals: The Limits of Mankind' takes place on May 22 at 9.30 am at IEA’s Event Room. The topic to be discussed is 'Primatology, Not-human ‘Cultures’, New Otherness and Ethnography'. The exhibitor will be Anthropolgist Eliane Sebeika Rapchan, of the State University of Maringá.

At the conference, Rapchan will talk about the relationship between humans and other primates focused on ethnographic records. The researcher will discuss the controversial idea of the existence of specific ‘cultures’ among these animals and the consequent formation of a new otherness of non-human nature.

Rapchan studies the relationship between nature and culture and between sociocultural anthropology and life sciences, with emphasis on primatology, biological anthropology, and ethology. Her most recent research deals with the relationship between humans and animals based on the ethnography of the behavior of capuchin monkeys, as well as the possibility of a ‘culture’ among chimpanzees.

Cycle

The cycle comprises five meetings. The last two are scheduled for June and August. The organization is from IEA’s Philosophy, History, and Sociology of Science and Technology Research Group, the Philosophical Scientiae Studia Association and Fapesp’s Thematic Project ‘Genesis and Meaning of Technoscience: On the Relationship between Science, Technology, and Society’.

Art and hacktivism in debate

Richard Meckien — 2013-05-17T17:15:00Z

The intersections of artistic practices, hacking and economy are the theme of the meeting Interrupção em Rede: Repensando Oposições em Arte, Hacktivismo e Negócios da Rede Social (Interruption Network: Rethinking Oppositions in Art, Hacktivism and Social Network Business), to be held at IEA on May 23 at 3.00 pm in the Event Room.

The exhibitor will be the Italian researcher Tatiana Bazzichelli, who studies the relationship between artistic manifestations and the business of social media. The conference will be held in Italian with consecutive translation by Massimo Canevacci, visiting Professor at IEA.

At the event, Bazzichelli will talk about the conditions for hacker and artistic practices on Web 2.0 and how social networks can develop and incorporate these digital culture practices. Examples of network art and hacking in California and Europe that challenge the notions of power and hegemony will also be presented.

Bazzichelli is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center of Digital Media’s Innovation Incubator of the Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, and holds a PhD in Media Studies and Information from Aarhus University, Denmark. She is also a member of the curatorial team of Transmediale Festival Berlin and author of Networking. La rete come arte (2006) /Networking. The Net as Artwork (2008).

Canevacci is Professor of Cultural Anthropology and of Digital Art and Culture at Università Degli Studi di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy. His studies focus on ethnography, visual communication, art, and digital culture. The research he has been developing at IEA, situated among these themes, includes four main conceptual frameworks: self-representation, ubiquity, visual fetishism, and critical and experimental theory.

German researchers talk about communicative and cultural memories

Richard Meckien — 2013-05-08T19:35:00Z

Jan Assmann and Aleida Assmann, both professors at the University of Konstanz, Germany, will be the exhibitors of the international seminar Communicative and Cultural Memory, which will be held on May 15, at 7 pm, in the IEA'a Event Room. They will talk about the theory of memory that has been developed together from the work of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945) on collective memory. The event will be held in English with simultaneous translation and broadcast live on the web.

Throughout their studies, Jan and Aleida make a distinction between two types of memory: a communicative one, related to memories passed from one generation to another in an informal and daily way, usually by oral tradition, and a cultural one, referring to the collective memories of the past that have a symbolic character and that last through texts, images, rites, monuments and other mnemonic supports.

The main aspects of the theory developed by them are synthesized in the research project "The Past in the Present: Dimensions and Dynamics of Cultural Memory", on which they have been working since 2011. The seminar is supported by the Department of Modern Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) of USP.

Lecturers

Aleida Assmann is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Konstanz. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Heidelberg and in Egyptology from the University of Tübingen. Her published papers cover fields such as Egyptology, English Literature and History of Literary Communication, but since the 1960's she has been working on memory theory. Her research focuses on cultural memory, with particular interest on the tensions between individual experiences and official memories of Germany's history in the post-World War II period.

Jan Assmann is Honorary Professor of Religious and Cultural Theory at the University of Konstanz, where he currently teaches, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Heidelberg, where he served until 2003. He holds a Dr. honoris causa title in Theology from the University of Münster. His publications cover the fields of Egyptology, focusing on interpretations of the origins of monotheism, Reception of Egypt in the European Tradition, History of Religion, Historical Anthropology and other topics. In recent years, he has been focusing on the dimension of cultural memory in a distant timeline, dating back more than 3000 years. From this, he seeks to understand the role of memory in disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.