10th Annual Conference of the Society for Metaphysics of Science

The Society for the Metaphysics of Science (SMS) will be hosting its 10th Annual Conference on 30 June -2 July 2025 in person at USI in Lugano, Switzerland.

We will have two keynote speakers:Elena Casetta(University of Turin) andJessica Wilson(University of Toronto). In addition,Tyler Hildebrand(Dalhousie University) will deliver the Presidential Address.

Submission is invited for papers on any aspect of the metaphysics of science, broadly construed. We are pleased to see the flourishing of work on the metaphysics of physics and the laws of nature within the Society, but we are equally committed to maintaining a diversity of topics. We thus warmly encourage submissions from other subfields of the metaphysics of science, including (but not limited to) philosophy of biology, philosophy of chemistry, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of the social sciences.

Paper presentations will be 30 minutes, with 10 minutes for a commentator, 5 minutes for the speaker’s reply, and 15 minutes for Q&A. Submissions should be full papers in PDF format, of no more than 4,500 words (excluding references and footnotes), and should include an abstract of 150-250 words and a word count. All papers must employ gender-neutral language and be prepared for anonymous review.

Please send your paper including title and abstract as a PDF document to [email protected] (with your name, affiliation, and the title of the paper in the body of the email and ‘Abstract Submission’ in the subject line).

The submission deadline is January 15, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be delivered by the end of February. Selected speakers should confirm their attendance by March 15, 2025.

As well as various presentations, the conference will also feature an organizational meeting of the Society to elect officers, plan future conferences, etc. Both those interested in presenting papers and/or participating in the Society are invited to attend the conference.

Program committee:

Chair: Baptiste Le Bihan (University of Geneva)

Committee Members:
Sam Baron (University of Melbourne)

Alexandre Billon (University of Lille)

Harjit Boghal (University of Maryland, College Park)

Ellen Clarke (University of Leeds)

Chris Dorst (University of Florida)

David Glick (UC Davies)

Max Kistler (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Vincent Lam (University of Bern)

Kate Lynch (University of Melbourne)

Kerry McKenzie (UC San Diego)

Kristie Miller (University of Sydney)

Matteo Morganti (Roma Tre University)

Alyssa Ney (LMU Munich)

James Read (University of Oxford)

Vanessa Seifert (University of Athens)

Pieter Thyssen (UCLouvain)

Marcel Weber (University of Geneva)

Alastair Wilson (University of Leeds)

Christian Wüthrich (University of Geneva)

… Additional Members TBD

Local organizers: Damiano Costa (USI);Cristian Mariani (USI)

The SMS Annual Conference will be part of a series of events in the metaphysics of science and philosophy of physics in Lugano. These include the Summer School “The Aim and Structure of Cosmological Theory” withChris SmeenkandJames Owen Weatherall, to be held at USI, Lugano, June 23-27. More info at: https://www.usi.ch/en/education/lifelong-learning/summer-winter-school/cosmology