Max Charlesworth was a Professor of Philosophy at Deakin University, Australia. He wrote extensively on science, bioethics, religion, Australian Aboriginal culture, and tertiary education, by combining approaches and traditions grounded in philosophy and anthropology.
Charlesworth earned his Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Arts at the University of Melbourne, and his PhD at the Université Catholique de Louvian in Belgium. He was appointed Lecturer at the University of Auckland in 1956 and founding Dean of the School of Humanities at Deakin University in Geelong in 1975, where he worked for the remainder of his career.
At Deakin University, Charlesworth established a tradition of Critical Science and Technology Studies. He recruited scholars such as Helen Verran, who had worked as a Lecturer in science education at Awolowo Obafemi University in Nigeria, and David Wade Chambers, who had established Science and Technology Studies curricula at McGill and Concordia Universities in Canada. Chambers brought to Deakin a commitment to Indigenous Studies, which Charlesworth further developed through his research on Australian Aboriginal knowledge traditions. Inspired by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's emerging anthropological studies of laboratory life, in the 1980s Charlesworth was chief investigator on a significant ethnographic study of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, funded by the Australia Research Grants Committee.
The STS Across Borders Archive includes several examples of Charlesworth's writing and influence, including previously unpublished material. Throughout his career, Charlesworth argued for the relevance of anthropology to the philosophy of science, which is illustrated in his essays 'The Anthropology of Science' and 'Life Among the Scientists'. He was interested in the ideological, social, and psychological forces that often shaped and overlapped with the supposedly objective enterprise of scientific research, as in essays 'Hard and Soft Science' and 'Brave New Genetics?'. Charlesworth was also a prominent public intellectual, and believed in making his thought accessible to a lay audience. He gave a two-part talk on ABC Radio National, the first of which is included in the STS Across Borders Archive, and his collaborative ethnographic research at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute was covered by several newspapers and magazines. As mentioned above, Charlesworth also wrote extensively on Australian Aboriginal culture, as evidenced in his essay 'Australian Aboriginal Philosohpy' and his dialogue with Edward Woodward and Nicolas Peterson on the 1974-75 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory. Charlesworth was also committed to the development of tertiary education, particularly in relation to the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary teaching and the need to accomodate regional students.
The establishment of a Deakin University STS research and teaching tradition in the 1980s and 1990s is documented in Helen Verran's essay 'Doing Difference Differently: Deakin STS in the late 1980s'; Warwick Anderson's essay 'A Deakinite Knowledge Regime for STS?'; and David Turnbull's essay 'Finding My Way Through Messy Contingencies: autoethnographic reflections on working in Social Studies of Science at Deakin University'. These essays have been produced by the authors specifcially for the STS Across Borders Archive.
This essay, which was written in response to a paper by Dr. Jevon on teaching methods at Deakin University, reflects on the values and challenges of embracing interdisciplinary teaching, and considers the implications of 'off-campus' students and teaching, particular in relation to regional...Read more
This artifact includes three separate articles published in the mainstream media that feature interviews and commentary from Max Charlesworth. The articles each address the Anthropological study of science, particularly in relation to research that was conducted by Charlesworth and other STS...Read more
This essay considers the relationship between the 'hard' natural sciences and the 'soft' social sciences, and explores the ideologies and 'psychological factors' that inform the hard/soft distinction. To do this, it draws on ideas from Sigmund Freud and Max Weber.
The artifact comes...Read more