Aviezer Tucker: The Scientific Inference of Origins and Hybrids

March 15, 11:00 

In the seminar room of the Research Groups in the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Villa, room V005, Harnackstraße 5, Berlin, ground floor, right hand side through the glass door.

Please, find an abstract attached.
The Scientific Inference of Origins and Hybrids
Aviezer Tucker
MPI for the History of Science, Berlin
15.3.2012

I ask the philosophical question about the meaning of origins and hybrids, and how have scientists come to infer, know, construct, or at least believe in them? Understanding the inferences of origins and hybrids in science requires the integration of historical and philosophical perspectives. Some of the historical sciences that infer origins and hybrids developed in the later part of the 18th century and the 19th century, Textual Criticism, Philology, History, Evolutionary Biology, Geology and Archaeology. Genetics based Phylogeny has evolved and progressed only in the later part of the twentieth century. Currently, Pre-History emerges as a synthetic historical science of the origins of humanity, combining methods from Genetics, Historical Philology and Archaeology. The history of these sciences in their inter-relations and mutual influences should be the empirical basis for developing epistemic models of scientific inferences of origins and hybrids. I argue that in the process of inference that I explicate, scientists have displayed a bias in favour of pure origins and against hybrids. Historically, there has been a bias towards constructing single, â€œpure” origins, rather than recognizing hybrids, when considering the origins of species, languages, ethnic groups, texts & etc. I attempt to understand this bias and the reasons for it and contextualize it both historically and inferentially.

Dr. Aviezer Tucker is visiting the Max Planck Institute in Berlin from Austin, Texas. His main field of research is the philosophy of the historical sciences. He published Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography (Cambridge University Press 2004) and edited the Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of History and Historiography (2009) as well as numerous articles in journals like History and Theory, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Erkenntnis, and in various anthologies. Tucker has held research positions at the Australian National University, New York University, Columbia University and the Central European University. He taught in Austin TX, New York, Prague, Hartford CT, and Belfast.