Μάθημα : Ιστορία της Φιλοσοφίας της Επιστήμης (86Υ17) - Χειμερινό εξάμηνο 2025-26

Αγαπητοί/ές,

Την ερχόμενη Τρίτη 24/3 (19.00-21.00, Νέο κτήριο ΙΦΕ, αίθουσα Γκουνταρούλη) στο σεμινάριο του Τομέα ΦΘΕΤ θα έχουμε τη χαρά να έχουμε τον Philipp Haueis (Department of Philosophy and Institute for Studies of Science (ISOS), Bielefeld University), που θα μιλήσει με θέμα: “The conceptual fabric of science: Patchwork concepts and the dynamics of scientific understanding”. 

Abstract: When does conceptual change succeed or fail to advance our understanding of the world? Traditionally, philosophers have answered this problem of conceptual change by assuming that good concepts are precise and simple building blocks of scientific thought. Yet historical case studies repeatedly show that scientific concepts develop well-known forms of linguistic indeterminacy such as polysemy, ambiguity or vagueness. Central terms like “force”, “gene” or “memory” have advanced our understanding, without any general definition unifying its diverse uses.

In my book project, I propose a novel approach to solve the problem of conceptual change – the patchwork approach to scientific concepts. The approach distinguishes when developing concepts succeeds or fail to advance scientific understanding while also taking the looseness and flexibility of scientific language at face value. Scientific concepts develop via local uses or ‘patches’, which involve different experimental or modeling techniques, apply to specific domains of entities or processes, and target scale-dependent properties. Different patches of e.g. “force” are connected by general reasoning strategies and local inferential relations into a pragmatically unified patchwork concept. Such concepts advance understanding when researchers can combine patches to describe, classify or explain clusters of interrelated phenomena. They fail when patches wear thin, fray or rip apart because we have extended them too far.

The talk uses cases like “force” or “gene” to explicate norms by which we construct and repair patches and stitch them together into the conceptual fabric of science. It also discusses psycholinguistic evidence which explains why such polysemy is not only epistemically useful, but also communicatively efficient.

Όλοι/ες ευπρόσδεκτοι/ες!

Πολλούς χαιρετισμούς,

Σ.


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Πρόγραμμα επόμενων ομιλιών για το εαρινό εξάμηνο:

21/4 Alkistis Elliott-Graves, University of Bielefeld, TBA

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