Current issue · Volume 13, Issue 1
Four articles examine scientific mediation, values in dementia measurement, multispecies biosecurity, and epistemic trust in conversational AI.
Inside the issue
This article examines John William Draper’s practice of lunar photography and his proposal of the so-called “tithonic rays” to argue that scientific phenomena emerge through the material and operational affordances of technical media rather than being merely recorded by them. The article offers...
Article pageDementia staging—the tracking of the progression of dementia—has become a crucial exercise in meeting the healthcare needs of an aging global population with unprecedentedly high life expectancies. Dementia-staging instruments—the tests and/or interviews used to assess the severity of...
Article pageThis paper uses the 2022 mass culling of pet hamsters in Hong Kong during COVID-19 to explore the biosecurity logics that guide responses to zoonotic outbreaks. Drawing on post-humanist perspectives and infrastructure studies, this paper demonstrates how disease transmission emerges through...
Article pageWhy do we distrust conversational AI (CAI) testifiers? That is to say, why do many have the intuition that CAI are less epistemically trustworthy than a standard human testifier? While it seems like we have such a pre-theoretical intuition, we are often lacking a philosophical defense of this...
Article pageAbout the journal
Spontaneous Generations is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal publishing graduate scholarship in the history and philosophy of science and science and technology studies.
Each thematic issue brings together focused discussions, research articles, opinion pieces, and reviews. The archive brings together every published issue, with article PDFs and available bibliographic information in one place.
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Volume 12 brings together articles and faculty commentaries on participation, consumption, and authority in science.
