From debbie.castle at sydney.edu.au Wed Jan 22 14:38:58 2020 From: debbie.castle at sydney.edu.au (Debbie Castle) Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2020 03:38:58 +0000 Subject: [SydPhil] HPS PRESENTATION - LEAH ARONOWSKY - Cybernetics and the Making and Unmaking of Ecological Threats Message-ID: [https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/OKxFCANZvPiDx2mmcG008s?domain=gallery.mailchimp.com] SCHOOL OF HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE PRESENTATION [https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/3dsqCBNZwLiLxBZZH6Y2Pf?domain=gallery.mailchimp.com] DR LEAH ARONOWSKY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Cybernetics and the Making and Unmaking of Ecological Threats. Abstract: Scientists have widely accepted the greenhouse gas theory of climate change since the mid-twentieth century. Yet it was only in the 1980s that this phenomenon was cast as an environmental problem. This talk analyzes this disjuncture. It explores the role of the conceptual frameworks of science in the making and unmaking of ecological ?threats? by charting the rise and fall of the idea of the planet as a cybernetic system. First introduced to the US and British environmental sciences in the immediate postwar era, cybernetics took a systems approach to the planet itself, recasting the environment as a self-regulating, self-correcting, stable system. In so doing, it offered a new way to understand the ecological effects of anthropogenic pollutants by making it possible to imagine chemical pollutants like radioactive fallout and greenhouse gases as merely ?temporary disturbances? to the system. Using the case of greenhouse gases and global warming, the talk traces how this cybernetic conception of the planet led scientists to cast the climate as fundamentally imperturbable to human-induced disturbances. In so doing, the talk shows how the conceptual frameworks of science have historically been used to produce?as well as counter?ideas about what constitutes an ecological threat at a given historical moment. WHERE: LEVEL 5 FUNCTION ROOM F23 ADMINISTRATION BUILDING WHEN: TUESDAY 28TH JANUARY 2020 START: 5.00PM All Welcome | No Booking Required | Free All Welcome | No Booking Required | Free PLEASE CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR ANY CHANGES TO VENUE OR TIME sydney.edu.au/science/hps/ Copyright ? *2016* *HPS, All rights reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list This email was sent to debbie.castle at sydney.edu.au why did I get this? unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences Unit for History and Philosophy of Science ? University of Sydney ? Sydney, NSW 2006 ? Australia [Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: