COURI Symposium Abstracts, Spring 2011 (COURI Symposium Abstracts)

Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border (Philosophy)

The idea of this ezine is to create a dialogue between young scientists who are now in the process of receiving their training, and an expanded community of philosophers, historians, and humanists in general. An earlier form of this journal existed nearly a decade ago, but went into hibernation since then, and we are only now reviving it after the pandemic. In putting together this set of articles, our hope is to present a toolbox of thinking that includes ethical reasoning, moral imagination, and an expanded sense of what creative thinking might be for scientific research when we look at things from multiple points of view. The articles try to capture diverse situations that arise often in research – introduction of novel technologies such as the introduction of robotics, conflict between safety and power which might arise in the contexts of making smart cities etc. These reflections, we hope, will help generate a layer of transparency around scientific research, and allow the development of what may be called an open system of science. One must remember that research today consists not only of data, material, codes, and algorithms, it also uses a complex reasoning and decision-making processes that prioritize some research over some others. The commitment of the Young Scientists and Philosophers on the Border’s editorial board is to explore those decision-making processes in STEM with the toolbox of ethical, historical, and philosophical imagination. Our hope is that this form of critical and informed conversation about STEM will help close the long-standing gap between the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities, and it will encourage the notion of a more inclusive form of scientific practice, which may be good for the society in general.