First session of the SHS/Philosophy/Biology seminar "Cultivating interdisciplinarity today"
Dear Colleagues, Gilles Moutot, a faculty member at CEPEL, is one of the organizers—through SHSMED, the social sciences and humanities department of the Faculty of Medicine—of the first sessionof the Social Sciences, Humanities, Philosophy, and Biology seminar titled “Fostering Interdisciplinarity Today.”It will take place onMarch 11 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. inthe DR13 lecture hall, CNRS campus, 1919 route de Mende inMontpellier. On this occasion, we will have the pleasure of hearinga presentationbyCharlotte Brives(microbial anthropologist—CNRS, Émile Durkheim Center — UMR5116, Bordeaux, France) andRémy Froissart(evolutionary virologist, CNRS, IRD, University of Montpellier, UMR 5290, MIVEGEC, Montpellier F-34394, France):
“Evolution and Involution in Biomedicine: Phage Therapy and Treatments for Bacterial Infections”
For the past two decades, bacterial (multi-)resistance to chemical antibiotics has been cited as one of the major public health threats of the 21st century. There is now a sense of urgency and an ever-pressing need for solutions. What kind of medicine do we want? And what does that require of us?
In this lecture, we propose to “slow down,” to “undermine reflexes, methods, and ideals of intelligibility,” following the call of the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers. We will use the example of a therapy practiced worldwide for over 100 years: phage therapy (i.e., the use of bacteriophages to treat bacterial infections). Through a reflection on the evolutionary and dynamic nature of life, we will seek to grasp what makes bacteriophages unique and how they function, and to consider the multispecific relationships at work in this therapy, which links viruses, bacteria, and humans together. Actively taking into account the modes of existence of these different entities will lead us to a more general reflection on the conditions for the development of phage therapy.
Registration (free):https://interdis.sciencesconf.org/
General Overview of the Seminar “
” This interdisciplinary seminar project arose from two observations. On the one hand, the conditions under which contemporary research is conducted—funding and publication practices, the use of new data-generation technologies, and, more broadly, current social conditions and ecological crises—are undermining and calling into question the discipline-specific methods of producing evidence and knowledge. On the other hand, this reality creates tension with the division of labor that continues to govern the disciplinary organization of our modes of knowledge: based on the separation between nature on one side, and culture and society on the other—and, consequently, between the natural sciences and the humanities and social sciences—a division that makes it difficult to grasp the problems that our knowledge and practices generate and that we encounter within them. Moreover, it is no longer so much the objects themselves that define disciplines as the ways in which they are examined. The social sciences and philosophy now study the material and ontological dimensions of objects specific to biology, while biology increasingly considers the social, economic, and ecological conditions and consequences of its practices.
How, then, can we make sense of this contemporary situation—and better position ourselves within it as actors? How can we assess the effects it has on our knowledge and practices? And how can we collectively learn to grasp the consequences of our knowledge and practices in the wider world where they circulate and unfold?
This seminar is thus intended to be both a space for exploring forms of cooperation between the humanities, social sciences, and biology that are already underway, and a space for cultivating and familiarizing ourselves with our respective disciplines, our ways of framing problems, and conducting our research. In other words, it is about considering what we are—or are not—capable of doing together.
Upcoming sessions: May 12 – 3:00–5:00 p.m. Isabelle Stengers: “Another Science Is Possible” June 19 – 3:00–5:00 p.m. Guillaume Lachenal: “The Environmental History of HIV”
