Cfp: "The Tenacity of the Nature/Nurture Divide," Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, March 20-21, 2009.

The formula nature/nurture (Na-Nu) has captured a very basic split in the causal structure we assign to the constitution of the human. The divide determines explanatory strategies in scientific and non-scientific arenas. We aim to further our understanding of the tenacity of this binary distinction by contextualizing it within a large time scale, and through different cultures. This workshop will bring together scientists, historians and philosophers, who will tackle the Na-Nu complex from different and complementary angles and will contribute to the collective answering of questions linked to it. Is there for instance something inevitable about such dramatic dichotomous structure? Why does it seem to recur, under ever new shapes, with every new shift in the life and social sciences? Or has it progressively weakened under the strain of criticism and alternative frames? Are we then witnessing its last incarnations? What would a future con¬ceptual field of humanities and the life sciences look like without such a conceptual and ontological divide? Speakers: Evelyn Fox Keller, Lisa Gannett, Peter Hammerstein, Tim Ingold, Ursula Klein, Geoffrey Lloyd, Federico Navarrete, Eric Turkheimer, Elizabeth Williams. For more information, please visit: http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/index.html