One of their Directors Thomas Meier came to our most recent Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk (2022). They’ve also got some good people on their board like Elaine Scarry.
I would note that my sense is that they’re a bit more focussed on analysing ‘apocalyptic imaginaries’ from a sociological and criticial theory perspective. See for example their first journal issue, which is mostly critical analysis of narratives of apocalypse in fiction or conspiracy theories (rather than e.g. climate modelling of nuclear winter). They strike me as somewhat similar to the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. Maybe a crude analagous distinction would be between scientists and philosophers of science?
On the youtube video, I wasn’t super impressed by that talk. It seemed more interested in pathologising research on global risks than engaging on the object level, similar to some of the more lurid recent work from Torres and Gebru. But I’m going to Schwarz’s talk this Friday in Cambridge so hopefully will be able to dig deeper.
The distinction between scientists and philosophers of science doesn’t massively seem apt. Their work is primarily critical, similar to the work of sociologists of science or STS scholars rather than philosophers of science
Yeah that’s fair. Depends on the particular researcher, they’re quite eclectic. Some are even further removed, like the difference between scientists and literary criticism of a novel about scientists (see e.g. this paper on Frederic Jameson).
One of their Directors Thomas Meier came to our most recent Cambridge Conference on Catastrophic Risk (2022). They’ve also got some good people on their board like Elaine Scarry.
I would note that my sense is that they’re a bit more focussed on analysing ‘apocalyptic imaginaries’ from a sociological and criticial theory perspective. See for example their first journal issue, which is mostly critical analysis of narratives of apocalypse in fiction or conspiracy theories (rather than e.g. climate modelling of nuclear winter). They strike me as somewhat similar to the Centre for the Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements. Maybe a crude analagous distinction would be between scientists and philosophers of science?
On the youtube video, I wasn’t super impressed by that talk. It seemed more interested in pathologising research on global risks than engaging on the object level, similar to some of the more lurid recent work from Torres and Gebru. But I’m going to Schwarz’s talk this Friday in Cambridge so hopefully will be able to dig deeper.
The distinction between scientists and philosophers of science doesn’t massively seem apt. Their work is primarily critical, similar to the work of sociologists of science or STS scholars rather than philosophers of science
Yeah that’s fair. Depends on the particular researcher, they’re quite eclectic. Some are even further removed, like the difference between scientists and literary criticism of a novel about scientists (see e.g. this paper on Frederic Jameson).
Awesome, thanks for giving useful context!