CFP: The Progress Of Science

Submission deadline: November 15, 2011

Conference date(s):
April 25, 2012 - April 27, 2012

Go to the conference's page

Conference Venue:

Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University
Tilburg, Netherlands

Topic areas

Details

This year is the 50th anniversary of Thomas S. Kuhn's seminal book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which forcefully questioned the idea that science makes steady, rational progress towards truth. After half a century his challenge is everything but outdated. Look at the failure of economic science in the financial crisis, or the fierce debate about whether string theory is just a mathematical gimmick, unable to connect to empirical data. At the same time, however, the scientific enterprise appears to be more dynamic than ever, with an explosion of publications and new subdisciplines emerging by almost the hour. Philosophy of science has changed too. The abstract account of 'method' which Kuhn criticized have been replaced by efforts to model how science proceeds, exploring, for example the epistemic benefits and drawbacks of division of scientific labor. What is more, scientometric data and a wealth of case studies are readily available to empirically test theses about what progress in science means today. In this conference, will revisit this classical question in the philosophy of science in the light of current developments and invite contributions on both historical and systematic aspects of the progress of science. We particularly encourage work on progress in the special sciences, the emergence of new disciplines, and empirically informed reassessments of classical positions. The conference language is English.

We invite submissions of extended abstracts of 1000 to 1500 words by 15 November 2011. Decisions will be made by 15 December 2011.

Publication

We plan to publish selected papers presented at the conference in a special issue of a journal or with a major a book publisher (subject to the usual refereeing process). The submission deadline is 1 July 2012. The maximal paper length is 7000 words.

For further information, please contact: Michael Suurendonk ([email protected]).

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