Rocks, Bones & Ruins: Evidence in Historical Science

Spaces are limited; please email Adrian Currie ([email protected]) to reserve one.

Historical scientists frequently face evidential scarcity: long-ago events are not always amenable to experimental investigation and their traces are degraded and incomplete. Yet, hypotheses about the deep past are frequently rich, sophisticated and above all plausible.  How is such success achieved? Rocks, Bones & Ruins brings together scientists and philosophers to discuss the methodology and epistemic situation of the historical sciences.


Keynote Speakers

Alison Wylie (University of Washington): How archaeological evidence bites back: scaffolding, critical distance, and triangulation.

Derek Turner (Connecticut College): A second look at the colors of the dinosaurs.


Presenters

Lindell Bromham (ANU): Testing hypotheses in macroevolution.
Peter Hiscock (Usyd): Staying put or moving on? Ethnographic reference as stabilizing framework or as limiting vision in Australian archaeology.

John Wilkins (Usyd): Evolutionary novelty and surprise.

Adrian Currie (ANU/Calgary): Ethnographic analogy, the comparative method, and archaeological special pleading.

Malte Ebach (UNSW) & Michaelis Michael (UNSW): Do the links between evidence and causation in the historical sciences stand up to scrutiny? A need for standard criteria.

Roland Fletcher (Usyd): What are the entities of cultural evolution?

Kim Shaw-Williams (ANU) & Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera (ANU): towards a new view of human origins: the wetlands foraging hypothesis.

Maureen O'Malley (Usyd): Molecular stories from the life sciences: reconciling the past.

Robert Hurley (VUW): Ask any scientician: the unique difficulties of applying the philosophy of the historical sciences to human history.


See