Overview
A long-lasting tradition of investigations on the nature of scientific knowledge took shape in Europe at the beginning of the last century. Such a tradition started within a wide range of different disciplines, and in a number of different European countries. It included renowned scientists, such as Ernst Mach, Ludwig Boltzmann, Carl Menger, Ludwig and Richard von Mises, Otto Neurath, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Pierre Duhem, Henri Poincaré, Karl Pearson, to mention but a few, and involved not only empirical disciplines, but formal ones too (David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel, Federigo Enriques, Jan Lukasiewicz, Alfred Tarski, Bertrand Russell). This scientific movement, involving Central Logical Empiricism in Vienna, Berlin and Prague, was strongly interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary. It produced an extended and stimulating literature and prepared the ground for a wide array of reflections on the structure of science, its aim and limits. Investigating the methods and the foundations of science from a European perspective does neither presuppose nor support or encourage chauvinist claims of superiority, but merely expresses recognition of an undeniable historical contingency: the prior concerns of European culture entered into the discourse of science from its very beginning. Until about the last mid-century, Europe was where most of modern science underwent very decisive periods of development, and where inquiry on the aims and methods of science was begun. After all, Scientific Revolution in the 16th and 17th century took place in Europe, and the so-called "Second Revolution" in natural science around 1900 had its first developments in Europe.
After such a tremendous growth, towards the end of the Thirties the movement was dissolved by the takeover of Nazism. The liberal tendencies shared by its members and the Jewish origin of some of them made its survival impossible, and its focus moved abroad, especially to the United States, where a large number of its exponents eventually settled. Even though Europe is no longer alone in setting the parameters for discourse in and about science, ever since the last few decades a renewed and increasing interest in foundational and methodological issues has been shown by scholars all over Europe again. The most recent stage of this revival is testified by the remarkable number of Research Centres focusing on such topics, and the recent creation of the European Philosophy of Science Association (http://www.epsa.ac.at/).
“The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective” Research Networking Programme (PSE) focuses on the philosophy and foundations of the natural and social sciences and aims at enhancing the European tradition in the philosophy of science. Its ultimate goal is to promote exchanges between scholars from all over Europe, in order to build up a network of strong and durable relations to broaden and deepen the current debate on the topic.
