Are scientific collectivities – school of thought, communities, institutions, practices, techniques and traditions – merely the sum of the individuals that comprise, or represent them? Perspectives that present the sciences as the fruits of individual endeavor, and those who view them as the products of such collectivities, over and above individual contributions, are considered dichotomous and mutually exclusive. This problematic, implicit in the works of the best historians of science of the last several decades, pertains to a foundational philosophical disagreement regarding the bilateral constitutive relationship between subject and society, individual and collective.

The seminar with trace and analyze this dichotomy in the history of science and its philosophical roots in the recent works of Michael Bratman,, Margaret Gilbert, Raimo Tuomela, John Searle, Ian Hacking, Bruno Latour, Andrew Pickering, Michael Friedman and Robert Brandom