This week, Dr Sophie Ritson is in conversation with Professor Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and Physics at Harvard University, a founding member of the Black Hole Initiative, and coordinator of the History, Philosophy and Culture (HPC) Working Group of the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT).

Galison is a historian and philosopher of science whose work has explored how experiments end, how scientific images are made and interpreted, and how practices of objectivity have developed. His books include How Experiments End, Image and Logic, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps, and Objectivity (with Lorraine Daston). He also co-directed Secrecy and directed Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, which follows the effort to produce the first image of a black hole.

Sophie Ritson is a historian and philosopher of science at the University of Melbourne, and one of the leaders of the Collaborations focus group within the ngEHT’s HPC Working Group. The group brings historians, philosophers, ethnographers and sociologists into a physics collaboration while it is still being built, rather than studying it retrospectively. Its work examines questions of governance and social epistemology, including authorship, consensus and disagreement. Ritson’s own research has explored the string theory controversy, “non-discovery” in high-energy physics, and research governance, drawing closely on her engagement with physicists at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider.

In this episode, Galison traces his path into the history and philosophy of science through family, teaching, and laboratory experience, emphasising how experimentalists taught him to distinguish effects from artefacts—a question that shaped his first book. He explains his interest in scientific images as a way of recovering the craft and tacit knowledge obscured by the protocol-driven view inherited from logical empiricism. The conversation then turns to the 2019 M87* image, which he presents as the culmination of his interest in secrecy and invisibility. The discussion concludes with broader questions about distributed knowledge, the state of HPS, and how to design billion-dollar instruments that remain open to the unexpected.

This episode:

• Describes Galison's path into physics and the history of science
• Explains how distinguishing a real effect from an artefact shaped How Experiments End
• Introduces visualisation as a topic in HPS, against protocol-driven accounts of knowledge
• Discusses the materiality of science, and why the laboratory has looked like a church, a factory, and a startup
• Frames secrecy as "anti-epistemology," and how blocked knowledge illuminates how knowledge is secured
• Argues the black hole image is a computational image, and that photography is an expansive category
• Reflects on the reconvergence of history and philosophy of science with contemporary practice
• Closes on why images can surprise us, and how to design experiments open enough to find the unexpected

This interview was recorded in July 2025.

Relevant Links

• Peter Galison, Harvard
• Sophie Ritson
• ngEHT History, Philosophy and Culture Working Group
• "Big STEM collaborations should include humanities and social science", Nature Human Behaviour (2023)
• A unique collaboration using a virtual Earth-sized telescope shows how science is changing in the 21st century, The Conversation
• The HPC White Paper, Galaxies (2023)
• Black Holes | The Edge of All We Know (2020)
• Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University
• Event Horizon Telescope, first image, 10 April 2019
• Objectivity (Zone Books, 2007)
• How Experiments End (University of Chicago Press, 1987)
• S3 Ep 7, Sophie Ritson on 'Collaboration in Science' 

Episode production assistant: Paul Carter

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Dr Jahnavi Phalkey, historian of science and technology, filmmaker, and Founding Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru. Phalkey is the author of Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India, and producer-director of the documentary film Cyclotron (2020) – a film about the world's oldest functional particle accelerator and the people who keep it running today. Her writing spans the history of science, technology, and the state in twentieth-century India.

The conversation traces Phalkey's route into the history of science by way of political sociology, silent cinema, and a chance funded place at Georgia Tech under John Krige, and her eventual return to studying India after finding its absence conspicuous in accounts of twentieth-century science. She discusses how Atomic State pushes back against two dominant framings in the historiography of science in India: the "tools of empire" argument for the imperial period, and the scarcity of histories of Indian science after independence. Drawing on the early efforts to build particle accelerators in Kolkata and Bangalore, and the eventual rise of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Department of Atomic Energy, she describes how the demands of a single, resource-intensive field reshaped the relationship between Indian science and the Indian state — and how that "big science" model went on to marginalise both university research and smaller-scale inquiry.

The discussion broadens into Phalkey's work reframing India and China as "conceptual sites" rather than deviant "cases" measured against a European norm, and closes with her current thinking on critique in the history and philosophy of science, informed in part by Bruno Latour, and on what it means for historians of science to help the public make meaning of research in an age of climate change, AI, and new gene technologies.

In this episode, Phalkey:

• Describes her winding path into history of science
• Explains what drew her back to studying science in India specifically, after finding it missing from standard histories of twentieth-century science
• Outlines the two historiographical tendencies Atomic State argues against: the "tools of empire" framework and the neglect of post-independence science
• Discusses the concept of India and China as "conceptual sites," against the limits of a Europe-benchmarked history of science
• Traces the early, fragile efforts to build particle accelerators in Kolkata and Bangalore, and the wartime origins of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
• Reflects on how the everyday bureaucracy of running a national laboratory shaped the entangled relationship between Indian science and the postcolonial state
• Discusses her documentary Cyclotron and the material, practical difficulties of building and maintaining a particle accelerator in a resource-constrained setting
• Considers how the "big science" model, centred on the Department of Atomic Energy, drew resources and people away from Indian universities and small-scale research
• Calls for a connected rather than a difference-based history of science in the Global South, and reflects on reconstituting the meaning of critique in history and philosophy of science

Relevant Links

• Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India — Permanent Black
• Cyclotron (2020) — documentary directed and produced by Jahnavi Phalkey
• Science Gallery Bengaluru
• Science of Giants
• Devi Prize – for promoting "public engagement with science" (2024)
• Infosys Prize, Humanities ( 2023)

Mentioned scholarship

• David Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge History of India)
• Bruno Latour, "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?" (2004)
• Steven Shapin & Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump (1985)

Note: This conversation was recorded in May, 2026

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Dr Mazviita Chirimuuta, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and author of The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press, 2024) –  winner of the 2025 Lakatos Award and the 2024 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy from the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

The conversation centres on the central argument of the book: that the leading ideas which have shaped neuroscience are best understood as attempts to simplify the brain, one of the more complex objects of scientific inquiry. Mazviita describes this in practice as a mismatch between the brain's overwhelming complexity and the representations — models, theories, diagrams — that scientists rely on, which necessarily ignore much of that complexity. She identifies three recurring simplifying strategies running through the book — reduction, mathematisation, and analogy — and discusses how "proxy systems," from anesthetised cats to cerebral organoids, let scientists study minimal, decontextualised versions of the brain built using these strategies.

She also discusses the diverging paths of neuroscience and AI research, the risk of conflating predictive power with genuine understanding, and why she advocates for greater theoretical pluralism in how science approaches the brain.

In this episode, Chirimuuta:

• Describes her academic path from psychophysics and vision science back into philosophy of science
• Introduces The Brain Abstracted and its central concern with simplification in neuroscience
• Unpacks three recurring simplification strategies in neuroscience — reduction, mathematisation, and analogy
• Traces how the computer analogy shaped artificial neural networks, from McCulloch and Pitts through Hubel and Wiesel to today's deep learning models
• Introduces the idea of the "Heraclitean brain" — a system always in flux — and what this means for scientific explanation
• Reflects on the historical back-and-forth between localisationist and dynamic/distributed views of brain function
• Considers the shifting, increasingly divergent relationship between neuroscience and AI research, including energy efficiency as a new point of biological inspiration
• Calls for greater theoretical humility and pluralism in neuroscience, drawing on the 19th-century work of John Hughlings Jackson as a case study

Relevant Links

• The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience (MIT Press)
• Mazviita Chirimuuta wins the 2025 Lakatos Award — LSE
• Mazviita Chirimuuta's research site / Outside Colour
• Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy (MIT Press, 2017)
• Nancy Cartwright, The Dappled World (1999)
• Nicole Rust, Elusive Cures (2025)

Note: This conversation was recorded at the end of 2025.

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Dr. Magdalena Skipper, Editor-in-Chief of Nature. Skipper has held the role since 2018, and has a background in the genetic sciences. She is also notably the first female — and only the eighth person — to lead the journal since its founding in 1869.

Skipper reflects on what she has worked to preserve and change since taking on the role, from deepening the connection between Nature's research and journalism teams to broadening the journal's scope beyond the natural sciences into engineering, social sciences, and clinical research. Drawing on her training as a geneticist, she discusses how evidence and rigor take different forms across disciplines, and why she sees no single "final word" in science.

The conversation turns to some of the defining pressures on contemporary research culture: the COVID-19 pandemic's paradoxical effect on public trust in science, the discipline-specific nature of the replication crisis, and the rise of meta-science as a lens for understanding how research itself is produced. Skipper also discusses Nature's move toward transparent peer review, the persistent inequities shaping who gets published, and why she remains fundamentally hopeful about science's capacity for self-correction.

In this episode, Skipper:

• Describes what she set out to preserve and change on becoming Nature's Editor-in-Chief, including expanding the journal's scope into engineering, social sciences, and clinical research
• Reflects on how her background in genetics shaped her thinking about evidence, rigor, and multiple valid paths to a scientific claim
• Discusses the COVID-19 pandemic's dual legacy: accelerating the adoption of preprints while eroding public trust in science
• Unpacks the replication crisis as a discipline-specific phenomenon and what Nature has learned from it
• Explains the growing role of meta-science, particularly at the intersection of psychology, human behaviour, and research practice
• Details Nature's move to transparent and, since June 2025, mandatory published peer review reports
• Addresses persistent inequities in scientific publishing and Nature's editorial efforts to counter "helicopter science"
• Shares why she remains hopeful about science's capacity for self-correction and its role in building a more equitable world

Relevant Links

• Nature Journal
• Nature Profile
• Begley & Ellis (2012), "Raise standards for preclinical cancer research" — Nature comment on reproducibility in cancer research
• Nature: Registered Reports format
• Nature : Transparent Peer Review initiative

Note: This conversation was recorded in October 2025.

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Steven Shapin, Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard. Shapin reflects on his path into the history and sociology of science and discusses the central concerns of his work: how knowledge is produced, the social foundations of trust in science, the embodied nature of knowledge, and the performance of expertise. 

He revisits Leviathan and the Air-Pump, co-authored with Simon Schaffer, outlining the Boyle–Hobbes controversy and showing how seventeenth-century scientific credibility depended on rhetoric, social standing, and performance, while highlighting the broader relevance of the book’s insights into the social foundations of knowledge. Shapin considers contemporary challenges, including political interventions in science and universities, the effects of digital communication, and the fragmentation of expertise, and reframes the “crisis of truth” as a crisis of social knowledge.

Finally, he connects these themes to his recent work on taste and eating (Eating and Being), examining how communities form shared judgments about food and flavour, paralleling the intersubjective construction of objectivity in science.

In this episode:

• Recounts his path through Edinburgh, UCSD, and Harvard and what each taught about interdisciplinarity.
• Explains the story and broader thesis of Leviathan and the Air-Pump: facts are made credible through practice, rhetoric, and social arrangements.
• Reflects on shifting disciplinary fault lines.
• Describes how credibility is performed today and the growing value of face-to-face embodiment.
• Surveys credibility issues from science’s entanglement with business, government, and partisan politics.
• Discusses Eating and Being, drawing parallels between intersubjective agreement in science and taste.

Transcript being prepared.

Photo: Steven Shapin, Groningen, Netherlands, March 2020, by Newfrogm, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Relevant links

• Steven Shapin — Harvard profile / home page
• LARB Essay “Is There a Crisis of Truth?” (2019)
• Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Shapin & Schaffer, 1985) – Wikipedia entry
• Steven Shapin's books

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Professor Cordelia Fine — psychologist, award-winning writer, and professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne. Cordelia is one of today’s leading voices on how science and society shape our understandings of gender.

In the conversation, Cordelia discusses her new book Patriarchy, Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work. The book challenges two influential views of gender inequality: the “different but equal” view, or the claim that natural differences between the sexes explain persistent inequalities in work and care; and the “business case” for diversity, which treats equality as worthwhile only when it improves efficiency or profit.

Fine argues that both perspectives misrepresent the problem. Drawing on psychology, sociology, economics, and cultural evolution, she shows how divisions of labour are created and reinforced, how expectations are instilled from childhood, and how workplace structures designed around constant availability clash with the realities of people’s lives.

She concludes by outlining a new vision of gender equality — one that rejects both biological determinism and narrow economic utility, and instead centres justice, fairness, and human wellbeing.

In this episode, Fine:

• Explains why the “different but equal” and “business case” narratives remain persuasive yet inadequate
• Traces how gender divisions of labour operate at individual, interactional, and institutional levels
• Describes how children actively take up and reproduce gender norms
• Shows how workplace ideals disadvantage carers and perpetuate inequality
• Proposes a conception of gender justice that measures equality in terms of wellbeing, respect, and fair reward

Relevant Links

• Cordelia's Website
• University of Melbourne profile
• Patriarchy, Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work
• Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference (W.W. Norton, 2010)
• Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Sex (W.W. Norton, 2017)

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Professor Miriam Solomon, Professor of Philosophy at Temple University and a leading voice in philosophy of science, medicine, and psychiatry.

Solomon reflects on her intellectual trajectory, from her early studies in the natural sciences at Cambridge and her doctoral work at Harvard, to her later contributions in the philosophy of medicine and psychiatry. She describes how questions about knowledge-making — from consensus conferences to evidence-based medicine — led her to examine psychiatry and, most recently, the constitutive role of stigma in shaping psychiatric categories.

In the conversation, Solomon argues that stigma is not only a social force attached to mental illness from the outside but also a factor that has shaped psychiatry from within. It has influenced the recognition, definition, and revision of diagnostic categories, as she illustrates through cases drawn from the history of psychiatry. She situates these examples within broader debates about the nature of psychiatric disorder, the limitations of the DSM, and possible alternative frameworks.

In this episode, Solomon:

• Recounts her path from philosophy of science to psychiatry, shaped by formative years at Cambridge and Harvard
• Explains why consensus conferences and evidence-based medicine sparked her interest in psychiatry and the DSM
• Argues that stigma is not only a social prejudice but a constitutive force within psychiatric knowledge
• Examines the role of stigma in categories like Asperger’s and PTSD, and its entanglement with hermeneutical injustice
• Assesses debates over defining psychiatric disorder, including the harmful dysfunction model, and emphasises the centrality of “harm” over “dysfunction”
• Discusses the challenges facing the DSM
• Calls for greater awareness of how stigma operates, both within psychiatry and in everyday experiences of mental illness

Relevant Links

• Miriam Solomon’s home page
• On the Concept of "Psychiatric Disorder": Incorporating Psychological Injury
• Miriam Soloman PhilPapers
• Making Medical Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2015)

Transcript coming soon. 

Photo Credit: Amira Solomon

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri speaks with Professor Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Columbia University and one of the most influential philosophers of science of the past half-century.

Kitcher traces his intellectual journey from his early years at Cambridge and Princeton, where he studied with Thomas Kuhn, Carl Hempel, and Paul Benacerraf, to his later interventions in public debates over creationism, sociobiology, and the Human Genome Project. These experiences, he explains, shifted his understanding of philosophy’s role—from narrow technical problems to broader ethical and political questions.

He also reflects on his evolving views of scientific explanation, his collaborations with historians and sociologists of science, and the recognition of ethical and political dimensions long neglected in philosophy of science. Kitcher concludes with his vision of a pragmatist philosophy that reconnects ethics with politics and ensures science serves democratic ideals and human flourishing in the face of global crises.

In this episode, Kitcher:

• Recounts his path from mathematics to philosophy of science at Cambridge and Princeton
• Reflects on the influence of Thomas Kuhn, Carl Hempel, Paul Benacerraf, and Richard Rorty
• Explains how public debates on creationism, sociobiology, and genomics redirected his work toward questions of science and society
• Discusses his shift from unificationist to pluralist accounts of scientific explanation
• Highlights the importance of history and sociology of science for philosophy’s self-understanding
• Argues for philosophy’s responsibility to address ethical and political dimensions of science
• Outlines his pragmatist vision for democracy, ethics, and science in the service of human flourishing
  
  

Relevant Links

• Philip Kitcher – Columbia University profile (emeritus)
• Science, Truth, and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2001)
• The Rich and the Poor (Columbia University Press, 2021)

Transcript coming soon

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

This week, Thomas Spiteri is in conversation with Professor Lydia Patton, philosopher of science and historian of the philosophy of science. Patton traces her unexpected journey from ballet to Kantian philosophy and into the emerging field of HOPOS (history of philosophy of science). She reflects on her years as editor-in-chief of the HOPOS journal, she offers her perspective on the field’s future.

Along the way, she highlights the distinctive character of HOPOS as a historically grounded approach to philosophical problems, reflects on her editorial leadership of HOPOS (2017-2024), emphasises the importance of widening the scope of the discipline, and considers the promise and limits of new and emerging methods of research. She concludes by discussing some of areas of research that continue to capture her attention.

In this episode, Patton:

• Recounts her unlikely path from ballet to philosophy and HOPOS
• Clarifies what makes HOPOS distinctive as a historical approach
• Reflects on her editorial leadership of HOPOS (2017–2024)
• Challenges presentist views of the 19th century and its blurred disciplinary boundaries
• Explores new digital methods in the history of philosophy of science
• Shares concerns and hopes about AI and machine learning
• Looks ahead to the journal’s future under Matthew Brown

 Relevant Links

• Lydia Patton Website
• Article discussed: Serendipity and the Unexpected in the History of Philosophy of Science: Reflections on My Editorship of HOPOS (2017–2024)
• HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science
• International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (HOPOS)
• Stuart Russell – Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control 

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org

“I love your field. It is making such an important point about scientists who don't understand the extent to which our own upbringing impacts our starting assumptions. It's those starting assumptions that get you in trouble.”  

In today’s episode Samara Greenwood returns to interview the pioneering primatologist and evolutionary anthropologist, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, about her latest book Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies. The discussion centres on the shifts Sarah made in her personal assumptions through the process of conceiving and writing this work. The notion that men had the capacity to be expert carers of young babies was foreign to Sarah until she experienced it firsthand when her son-in-law took on the role of primary carer to her first-born grandson in 2012. This ‘lived experience’ of expert male care led Sarah not only to a new mindset, but to a new way of theorising about the evolutionary possibilities for baby-care in men. 

Relevant Links:  

• Sarah B. Hrdy | Anthropology 
• Father Time | Princeton University Press 
• Should We Expect More from Dads? | Featuring Sarah Hrdy | The New Yorker 
• How Feminism changed Primatology | Featuring Samara Greenwood | The Philosopher’s Zone 

For more on the topic of supporting men in their care of children, see our series on working fathers.  

Working Fathers Podcast Mini-Series:  

• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 1 - Where's Dad? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 2 - What Gave Rise to the Breadwinner? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 3 - Are Fathers Free? 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 4 - Give Dads a Break 
• Working Fathers Mini-series. Ep 5 - What's Next?
   

Thanks for listening to The HPS Podcast. You can find more about us on our website, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

This podcast would not be possible without the support of School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Hansen Little Public Humanities Grant scheme.

Music by ComaStudio.
Website HPS Podcast | hpsunimelb.org