Science in the Forest, Science in the Past (SFSP)

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past (SFSP, 2017-) is an interdisciplinary workshop convened to probe the stubborn divergence we find in worldviews and ways of knowing (Lloyd and Vilaça 2020, viii-ix). The workshop arose in 2015 out of conversations on the mathematics of the Amazonian Wari' between Geoffrey Lloyd (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge) and Aparecida Vilaça (Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro). Manuela Carneiro da Cunha (Chicago, Universidade de São Paulo) and Mauro Barbosa (Campinas) joined shortly thereafter. Since 2017 it has met roughly every two years, each workshop focussed on a given theme. It has included scholars from ancient history and philosophy, anthropology, artificial intelligence, Assyriology, biology, Classics (Greco-Roman), computer science, history and philosophy of science, mathematics, Māori studies, neuroscience, religious studies, Sinology and sociology. Details follow.

In the beginning the ‘forest’ was Amazonian (Vilaça), the ‘past’ Ancient Greek and Ancient Chinese (Lloyd) and throughout ‘science’ understood to include all ways of knowing, the “distant sciences” (Jardine) as well as the nearby. Since then 'forest' has become “portmanteau for all kinds of worlds”, as one participant put it. “The Forest and the Past have things to teach us—and not just on questions of what we call academic interest”, Lloyd wrote in the Introduction to the proceedings of SFSP III. These expanding bounds have given participants “the chance to mount a resolutely interdisciplinary critique of a whole series of fundamental, and fundamentally problematic, concepts: life and death, consciousness, personhood, individuality as well as health and disease and well-being and cure and therapy themselves.”

SFSP workshop meetings, their themes, programmes and publications to date are as follows.

SFSP I (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, 31 May-2 June 2017), on the clash of ontologies, translation among them and their mutual intelligibility (Lloyd 2020, 1):

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past, ed. Geoffrey Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça, in HAU: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory 9.1 (Spring 2019): 36-182; Chicago: HAU Books, 2020.

Downloadable: https://haubooks.org/science-in-the-forest-science-in-the-past/

Wednesday 31 May

Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd

Science under scrutiny: the Clash of Ontologies and the Problems of Translation and Mutual Intelligibility

Professor Aparecida Vilaça

Inventing Nature: Christianity and Science in Indigenous Amazonia

Thursday 1 June

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern

A Clash of Ontologies? Time, law and science in Papua New Guinea

Professor Serafina Cuomo

Mathematical 'traditions' in ancient Greece and Rome

Professor Mauro Almeida

Where is the maths? Savage Mathematics in the Amazon: Ontological Diversity and pragmatic bridgeheads

Dr Agathe Keller

Shedding light on diverse cultures of mathematical practices in South Asia: Early Sanskrit mathematical texts in dialogue with modern elementary Tamil mathematical curricula.

Friday 2 June

Professor Karine Chemla

Different clusters of ancient texts from ancient China: different mathematical ontologies

Dr Mattei Candea

When action is a thing: behaviour as a matter of concern

Professor Willard McCarty

Modelling ontologies and wild thought

Professor Alan Blackwell

Objective Functions, Deep Learning and Random Forests

Professor Manuela Carneiro da Cunha

Indigenous and Local Knowledge and the issues of ecology and biological diversity

SFSP II (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, 5-7 June 2019), on a new or revised framework within which to discuss the fundamental problems encountered in SFSP I:

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past II, ed. Willard McCarty, G.E.R. Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça, in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 46.3 (September 2021).

Downloadable: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/yisr20/46/3

Wednesday 5 June

Aparecida Vilaça

A Pagan Arithmetic: Perspectivism and unstable sets in indigenous Amazonia

Anne Salmond

Star Canoes, Voyaging Worlds

Thursday 6th June

Francesca Rochberg

Themes in a Cuneiform Worldmaking

Dagmar Schäfer

Loopers and Leavers: Silk and Science in 13-14 c China

Carrie Humphrey

Mongolian maps: directions, orientations and points of view

Marilyn Strathern

Counting Generations

Friday 7 June

Willard McCarty

As perceived, not as known: Computational enquiry, experimental science and divination

Alan Blackwell

Ethnographic Artificial Intelligence

Nicholas Jardine

Philosophical Engagements with Distant Sciences

SFSP III (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, 1-3 June 2022), on health and wellbeing:

Science in the Forest, Science in the Past III, ed. Willard McCarty, G.E.R. Lloyd and Aparecida Vilaça, in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 49.1

Partially downloadable: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/idsa/49/1.

Thursday 9 June

Anne-Christine Taylor and Aparecida Vilaça

Extreme normalcy

Friday 10 June

Marilyn Strathern

Life with and without its antithesis

Dagmar Schäfer

Normalcy and deviations from the normal in humans and other animals

Eva Jablonka

Dimensions of well-being

Nick Jardine

Aristotelian Perplexities

Saturday 11 June

Nicholas Humphrey

Shamans and placebos

Willard McCarty

Towards a therapeutic of inquiry

Alan Blackwell, Joycelyn Longdon and Jennifer Gabrys

Data Science in the Forest

SFSP IV (Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, 6-8 June 2024), on 'regeneration':

Regeneration: Science in the Forest, Science in the Past IV, ed. Willard McCarty. Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books (in peer-review, https://www.tinyurl.com/Berghahn-IRASH).

Thursday 6 June

Marilyn Strathern

Recognizing regeneration: Replacements and displacements

Reviel Netz

“Regeneration” and the Scientific Renaissance

Friday 7 June

Willard McCarty

Generating regenerative questions: Juxtaposing computation and divination

Eva Jablonka (with Michael Levin)

Memory and Agential Plasticity: The Key to Regeneration at Many Scales

Alberto Corsín Jiménez

Capturing regeneration

Geoffrey Lloyd, Aparecida Vilaça and Anne-Christine Taylor

Regeneration as Transformation in Indigenous and Ancient Societies

Saturday 8th June

Alan Blackwell

Re:Generating the Tools of Knowledge

Sarah Franklin

“A Paradise of Rootstock”

Elaine Pagels

Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus

Catherine Rowett

Not growth but regrowth: political and economic implications of the impossibility of unlimited consumption on a finite planet

SFSP V (Darwin College, Cambridge, 4-6 June 2026):, on 'conversation'

Conversation: Science in the Forest, Science in the Past V, ed. Willard McCarty. Details forthcoming in due course.

Information concerning participants will be added in due course.

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