Evidence and Explanation in the Arts and Sciences

Coordinators:

Henry Turner and Jonathan Kramnick

Center for Culturl Analysis , Rutgers Universty

info@cca.rutgers.edu

The Rutgers University Center for Cultural Analysis (CCA), an interdisciplinary research center, announces a competition for visiting postdoctoral fellowships for 2009-2010.

Evidence and Explanation in the Arts and Sciences

Few aspects of the modern university are more taken for granted than the notion that the arts and sciences form separate fields of inquiry.  The physical plan of the university campus reflects the separation, as do curricula, libraries, administrative organization, and many informal aspects of academic life.  But what would it mean to identify areas of conjunction between the arts and  sciences rather assuming their separation?  The Center for Cultural Analysis in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University invites applications for its 2009-10 seminar on “Evidence and Explanation in the Arts and the Sciences.” The purpose of the seminar will be to examine characteristic methods for defining and handling evidence in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and to assess how these fields use evidence to produce plausible explanations about natural, social, and imaginative worlds.  Drawing on the research of the seminar participants and the work of distinguished visitors, the seminar will approach the problem of constituting a faculty of the “Arts and Sciences” by proceeding along four primary axes:

• an historical inquiry into how fields that we now recognize as belonging to the sciences and the humanities have come to assume the modern contours that shape the intellectual landscape of today’s university; 

• a philosophical inquiry into the basic concepts and methods that shape the terrain of the sciences and the humanities: problems of induction, hypothesis, modeling and experimentation, of system and theory, among others;

• a topical inquiry into longstanding concerns in the arts and sciences, including life, matter, consciousness, time, force, interpretation, and meaning;

• a formal inquiry into how evidence is represented, modified, shared, communicated, and made exemplary, including the role of digital media and other new information technologies in the handling of evidence.

We welcome applications from scholars in any field of the natural and social sciences, the philosophy of science, the history of science, information technology, art history, and literary studies. Possible topics include but are not limited to the history of the disciplines; laboratory life and the culture of scientific debate; problems of evidence in emerging scientific fields; the history of quantitative analysis and its application to humanistic disciplines; natural history and natural illustration; ancient science and philosophy; literature, science and the “two cultures”; cognitive science and its relation to problems of consciousness, imagination, and creativity; computing, new media, and information technologies in scientific and humanities research. 

The CCA sponsors up to three external fellowships with awards of $40,000 as well as non-funded associate fellowships.  All fellows will have access to the Center’s resources during the tenure of the fellowship and will be expected to participate in and to present their work to the Center seminars, which meet regularly throughout the academic year.  Applications can be downloaded using the links in the right hand column of this page.  These provide further details about fellowship terms and expectations.  Requests for applications to be sent through the mail should be received no later than December 8.  Applications are due January 9.

Apply for Fellowship (External Fellows)