September 3-4, 2012
Rubens Auditorium, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts, Brussels.

This workshop will be an ideal opportunity for young researchers (PhD students, young postdocs) working in the cited fields to communicate their results to a larger community, and for all researchers in these fields to meet and reinforce scientific and personal links.

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he developed an epoch making theory on scientific methodology and organization. Kuhn's concept of paradigm became a hallmark of modern philosophy of science, identifying the philosophical architecture of the paradigm and analyzing scientists' internal strategies to strengthen and defend the core research program of the paradigm. At the same time, the social embeddedness of the paradigm opened new vistas in historical research, leading to an externalist view of science, to the 'strong program' of the Edinburgh School, and to social constructivism. Whereas philosophers of science studied the foundations of the paradigm and its stability over time, historians tended to regard the paradigm as permeable to social influences, and as a product of negotiating the boundaries of the scientific endeavor. These divergent developments caused philosophy and history of science to lose sight of each other, each of them even considering the other field as irrelevant or misguided. Fifty years after Kuhn's work, a new interest in overlapping themes between history and philosophy of science has emerged. The development of the Science and Technology Studies has incited historians of science to formulate abstract and 'ahistorical' theories about e.g. scientific innovation and circulation of knowledge, which have invited comments from philosophers. New debates have taken shape, focusing less on methodology but raising questions on scientific authority, expertise and public space. This meeting will seek to explore the many ways in which history, philosophy and logic can find fruitful ways to collaborate towards a better understanding of modern science, without however excluding any other relevant contributions.

Karine Chemla (CNRS, Equipe REHSEIS, Paris)
Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen (University of Leiden)
Thomas Nickles (University of Nevada)
Josep Simon (Université Paris Ouest)

We strongly recommend to present papers in English (although also Dutch and French are accepted). Every contributed paper has a time slot of 30 minutes, including 10 minutes for discussion.

For the full schedule, click here.

A book of abstracts can be downloaded here (version 31 August).

Patrick Allo (Brussel), Kenneth Bertrams (Bruxelles), Bruno Leclercq (Liège), Erik Myin (Antwerpen), Geert Vanpaemel (Leuven), Bart Van Kerkhove (Brussel).