CFP: [Philosophies] Special Issue "Meta-Philosophy of Science"

Dear colleagues,

How should we conceive of science as an historical entity over time? Is it typically a cumulative, progressive process, as various forms of scientific realism might suggest? Does it display cyclic developmental patterns with radical discontinuities, as Kuhn famously argued? Is it just one thing after another subject to historical contingency and perhaps methodological anarchy, as Feyerabend appears to have advocated? What categories are proper and adequate to describe its development? Or is the very idea of theoretical history of science misguided to begin with?

We invite papers that address these questions and related issues, including but not limited to the following. Is theory change continuous or discontinuous, or does it depend on the level of resolution? Are there micro-patterns and macro-patterns? Should particular phases in the history of science traditionally regarded as paradigmatic or revolutionary be reevaluated and reclassified? Can resources from evolutionary biology be tapped to explain scientific development or change? Are theories, hypotheses and concepts proliferated and then winnowed by a form of natural selection? If so, should we expect to find those resources in population genetics, or in the approach combining evolution and development known as evodevo, or in both? We also encourage submissions illuminating the emergence of historical views concerning the theory of science in the historical sense going back at least through Whewell, to Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers.

Robert Rynasiewicz

Guest Editor