Helene Scott

@hscottfordsmand.bsky.social

2292 Followers 495 Following

Philosophy-medicine-bodies | working on messy categories in clinical enquiry @STSucl | previously @camHPS & @ClareHall | PhD from Medical Museion (@UCPH)

Man in front of slides, balloons on a table by the side. Very fancy room with two human sized portraits and polished wooden floors
Lecture hall, slide showing BA ECRN National Post Doctoral Conference 2025
Book title pages, Science and the human imagination - Aspects of the history and logic of physical science. Mary B. Hesse, lecturer in mathematics in the university of Leeds. SCM Press LTD
View out of window. Messy back courtyard. In reflection silhouette of women wearing white shirt and holding a phone to take the photo.
Man adjusting framed photo on yellow brick wall. Several photos with people writing and performing.
River in front of castle/cathedral (Durham). Soft light.
Indoor space, walls covered in posters with colourful text. Man, standing behind an overhead projector pointing light towards something beyond the image. Big smile. Empty chairs lined up ready for an audience.
Home made card with watercolour flower painting and running shoes, reading “you ran so fast”. In the background: snacks.
Table with papers and coloured pens. Women on pink T-shirt looking around. Visible people standing around the table (but image is cut so their faces aren’t visible)
Panel of three women in front of a slide showing “international women’s day”. In front, and the backs of an audience of mostly young women, some dressed in Cambridge gowns.
Cartoon image, showing four people around a table. Three are sitting with papers in front of them, one is standing, mid-punch on the jaw of the person next to her. At the bottom a text says “an excellent defence. Let’s give her the doctorate”.
From the news, 1962 Two women are virtually controlling the publication used by senior University members to express themselves on policies and topics for the first time in history. The Cambridge review is entirely edited by Dr Mary Hesse and Mrs Karen Needham. The review has no official status but is mostly read and contributed to by senior academics. It recently had its 2,000th edition. Added it handwriting: March 2012
Whiteboard with words: pursuit-worthiness, promise = puzzle solving ?, fertility = new Q [questions], Uberty [weird Peirce word, don’t ask, we’re not sure] = leaping ?, fruitfulness - Peirce / contemporary?, discovery. p-fertility / u-fertility. Heuristic appraisal vs epistemic appraisal. Arrow from epistemic to p-fertility [maybe, who knows]. Backward, forward - pair of eyes [in which direction are we looking ?! Seems important but also confusing]. Justification. Methodology. Economy of research.
Word document. On page in small writing it says “plan” followed by colon. Then just empty white space.
Closeup, hands cutting out an imagine of a female doctor Lego figure.
Yogi tea note saying: intelligence and intuition are two friends
Door with pink and lilac post it’s on window screens
People scattered around a room, writing.
Photo showing the corner of a printer, and an art-like label on the wall. Label reads: Konica Minolta (b. 2003). Title: Temperamental printer, 2019 Materials: plastic, metal, wiring, and human tears. This stunning piece emulates a fully functioning printer. It is an interactive sculpture, which allows the viewers to engage in a deeper level, as the various episodes of operational failure that the viewer may experience confront them with their own frustrations. The piece calls us to engage with the mundane volatility that excuses within each of us.
Pinboard exhibition display from the exhibition on The Cavendish Lab - done as a way to exhibit the kind of collaboration and culture that existed around the lab, and made its journey from newly founded, scorned upon, “practical” space, towards a world-renowned site of scientific excellence possible.
Pot with branch from dead plant in a windows sill. Next to it is another plant and a watering pot. Bellow, a sign is stuck on the wall reading - Artist: unknown. Dead plant, 2024. Glass, plastic, wood and misc. organic material. The precise placement of this piece among a collection of living plants allows the unknowns artist to remind the viewer of the inescapable cycle of life and death, as well as the capricious nature of the Ava rage house plant.
Sun rays, grass with slight frost. Sculpting in front of old house.
Text message: I love your application! It’s so interdisciplinary, and not even in a bad way, big-smile-emoji. Emoji ok message: laughing with tears
Woman reading in front of audience
Wooden (door) background. Six triangular notes with female figures and names on them : Barbara McClintock, Rosalind Franklin (twice), Katherine Johnson, Mae Jemison, Lise Mietner
Big wooden door, half open. Above it an inscription reads “physiology”.
Pieces of hospital cloth with printed body-words. For community art piece, orchestrated by Gudrun Hasle. Pieces in photo say “smilerynker” (smile wrinkles), “hjertekammer” (heart chamber).
Conferences photo. Speaker: woman, blond in a salon blazer, smiling. Standing in front of a big PowerPoint with the text “ethnographic philosophy of science”.
Book shelf marked with category “general new age/metaphysics”. Books with titles like “healing celebrations” and “the secret dowry of Eve”.
Screen shot of text: As a minority – as a non-stereotypical philosopher – you’re thus caught in a double bind. Your legitimacy is questioned, so scholasticism becomes your primary weapon: “Look, I know the jargon; look, I distance myself from the body, from (my) culture, and from (my) history.” But meanwhile, scholasticism helps to perpetuate a philosophy that’s incomplete, conservative, and rigid, discouraging engagement with new topics. The battle for identity as a philosopher is thus filtered into the battle for credibility and against bias.
Train station. Sunshine. Click showing midday.
Poster for the series
Coffee, croissant, tablet with text. Scientific discovery reloaded. Emiliano Ippoliti, Topoi 2020
Tablet w/text: Scientific discovery and the end of natural philosophy. Simon Schaffer.
Tablet with text: Peter Achinstein, Discovery and rule-books. Coffee in the background
Reading pad with article on the sun + coffee cup. Article: why was the logic of discovery abandoned, Larry Laudan.
Woman lecturing to audience, front of slide with title “what we hope to provide”. On the side of the stage a logo with Kings college London.
People around a table. Presenter at the end standing up with screen in background. Screen: LLMs in the news - screenshots of headings from media like “Google’s Bard AI bot mistake wipes $100bn off shares”
Yellow leaf and bright, orange and white spider on asfalt surface.
Habermas’ consensus theory of truth. Mary Hesse. Type written document on electronic reader. Coffee in the background.
Reading pad with text: The creative imagination, Michael Polanyi
Page 208. Handwritten notes in the margin: “I wonder how idea of Hesse’s networks figure into this” and “Haraway’s cats cradle”.
Coffee, flower, reading pad with text: the Australasian journal of philosophy. August 1960. Is there a logic of scientific discovery? By Norwood Russell Hanson
Tea and tablet with text: scientific discovery and logical proof, by F C S Schiller.