EYE OF THE STORM - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY

EYE OF THE STORM - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY, 19 / 20 June 2009, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, UK. CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: The Arts Catalyst and Tate Britain announce an international call for artists, scientists, social scientists, theorists, policy-makers and other disciplines, to present in EYE OF THE STORM, a conference exploring scientific controversy from an interdisciplinary perspective. EYE OF THE STORM aims to explore a range of controversies, from esoteric arguments between physicists over the structure of the universe, to disputes about the causes of species decline and climate change, and highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells and the distribution of genetically modified organisms. When heated debates around the challenge of climate change have shown how abstruse uncertainties within a scientific community can be amplified and distorted to challenge the whole notion of human-caused greenhouse warming, EYE OF THE STORM sets out to examine the relationship between scientific uncertainty and public controversies around science. We invite abstracts for papers and proposals for artists' presentations and talks for EYE OF THE STORM that consider questions such as the following: When the whole culture and ethic of science is based on disagreement and alternative explanations, how does this essential scientific uncertainty work in the quest for knowledge? How do scientific disputes affect political decision-making and society's relationship with science? As scientific and technological developments produce their own controversies, such as those around GM crops, what are the current critical controversies in and around science and technology? What alternative societal and cultural perspectives and contributions do artists and social scientists bring to this area? When the influential science sociologist Bruno Latour has worried that social science - in questioning the 'reality' that science examines - may have contributed to political abuses of science: what is the relationship between scholarship, science and politics? -- Submissions: Please send 200-word abstracts for papers and presentations (20 minutes maximum) to . Artists may attach images (2MB maximum). Deadline: 31 March 2009.