Workshop: Historical and Social Perspectives on the Life Sciences Concerning Life and Death: Naples, Italy, June 23-30, 2019

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides partial support for an international workshop; it provides funds for ten individuals from the US to participate in an international residential collaborative workshop that is to be held in Naples Zoological Station, Italy, in June 2019. The workshop theme is "Life and Death," and all participants are expected to discuss in depth six aspects of the theme, moving from early notions about living beings in the Early Modern period to the latest research programs around the world that are attempting to probe the limits of contemporary science and technology. The total number of faculty at the workshop is limited to ten and student participants to twenty-five; the grant will support four faculty members and six graduate students or post-doctoral fellows from US academic institutions. The workshop theme, "Life and Death," engages with the way that thinkers in the European tradition have asked fundamental questions about the function and purpose of the living body. It is an important topic in the history of biology, and it connects closely with related issues in sociology, technology, and ethics. One aim of the workshop is to familiarize participants with different modes of scientific thought, both across historical time and in different cultures and geographical regions. Additional importance to the theme derives from the fact that biologists and social scientists today are carefully exploring the ambiguous boundary between life and death as expressed not only in the human body, as in hospital situations, the course of diseases, the definition of death, ageing, and forensic pathology, but also on the cellular level, in cell rejuvenation, stem cell physiology, and cancer research, as well as in changing cultural ideas about theology and the question of an afterlife. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.