Scientia series continues with Jan. 25 lecture

Scientia
series continues with Jan. 25 lecture
…………………………………………………………………

Control
freaks and paranoids, beware. Risks to yourselves and others
may loom more frequently than you realize, hints Larry Laudan,
an upcoming speaker at a Scientia Colloquium.

Laudan, an historian
of science, will present “Negotiating Risk in a Risky
World” Thursday, Jan. 25, at 4 p.m. in the Kyle Morrow
Room of Fondren Library. The Thursday date is a departure
from the usual Tuesday Scientia colloquia. A wine-and-cheese
reception will follow the lecture.

Laudan will
discuss some of the obstacles to the management and control
of risks to life and limb in contemporary society.

“Chief among
[the risks],” Laudan writes, “are a general ignorance
of the magnitude and relative sizes of risks faced in ordinary
life, a distortion — often deliberate — by the
media and government of the nature of the risks we face
that puts policy above science and a curious pattern of
adjustive behavior on the part of those suddenly faced with
a safety improvement.”

Laudan also
plans to illustrate how many risk-reduction mechanisms result
in measures for re-distributing rather than reducing risks.

The topic of
the 2000-2001 Scientia Colloquia is “Taking Chances:
Risk and Randomness in Science and Society.”

Scientia is
an institute of Rice University faculty founded in 1981
by mathematician and science historian Salomon Bochner.
It provides an opportunity for scholarly discussion across
disciplinary boundaries.