The Philosophy Department of the Central European University, the Institute Vienna Circle and the Unit for Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology (of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna) are jointly organizing a series of talks this term.
The meetings will be online via ZOOM. Please contact evelyn.gasiorek@univie.ac.at for the link!
October 13, 3:45pm
Joel Katzav (Queensland) "Speculative philosophy of science and its influence on logical empiricism"
Abstract: I provide a sketch of speculative philosophy of science during the period 1900-1930, including of some key figures, of its dominant theoretical and methodological framework and of some of the key topics that were examined within this framework, topics such as the nature of scientific explanation, the methodology of research programs, the role of idealisation in science, the sociology of science and speculative metaphysics of science. I further suggest that, while many of these topics were inherited by, and even helped to make, logical empiricism when its advocates later arrived in America, it neglected key topics, especially regarding idealisation, sociology and metaphysics. Finally, I suggest that this neglect was due to a logical empiricist dogma–specifically, epistemic conservatism–and might help to explain its quick demise as well, perhaps, as some of the persistent problems within analytic philosophy of science.