Teams and Topics

Team A: Formal Methods

The toolbox of modern logic has traditionally been employed to clarify concepts such as scientific explanation, confirmation, and intertheoretic reduction. Despite their merits, it is widely recognized that purely logical accounts are not flexible enough to capture the details of actual scientific practice. A variety of formal methods is currently employed in the philosophy of science, complementing purely logical accounts, including Bayesian methods, combinations of logic and probability theory and various kinds of applied logics. Team A will focus on a methodological analysis of these methods and show how they can be used to solve problems in the philosophy of science and illuminate episodes from the history of science. Such study has the potential not only to enhance our understanding of science, but also to increase productivity in science.

The activities organized by Team A will revolve around the following topics:

Year 1. Formal Methods and their Applications to the Philosophy of Science.
Year 2. Formal Models of Explanation and Confirmation.
Year 3. Pluralism in the Foundation of Statistics.
Year 4. Philosophical Problems of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.
Year 5. New Directions in the Foundations of Science: Modelling Uncertainty.

Team B: Philosophy of the Natural and Life Sciences

Team B will focus on a set of specific foundational and methodological issues arising in the life sciences and medicine, with a special interest in evolutionary biology and systematics, biodiversity, genomics and proteomics, cell and molecular biology, neurobiology, systems biology, and biomedical research. Team B will be concerned also with cross-disciplinary comparisons within the natural sciences, with relations between the life sciences and the physical sciences, and with the status of chemistry.

The activities organized by Team B will revolve around the following topics:

Year 1: Approaches to the Foundations of Science: The Place of the Life Sciences.
Year 2. Explanation, Prediction and Confirmation.
Year 3. Probability and Statistics in the Life Sciences.
Year 4: The Advent of Systems Biology.
Year 5: Pluralism in the Natural Sciences.

Team C: Philosophy of the Cultural and Social Sciences

Foundational and methodological debate has a central role in building of the cultural and social sciences. It follows at least three different lines: 1) the general scientific status of the social sciences, which calls attention to the different components of science, like language, structure, knowledge, method, etc.; 2) the scientific status of the social sciences as compared to that of the natural sciences; this includes methodological controversies such as Erklären-Verstehen and prediction-understanding; 3) the scientific status of each discipline. Here the foundational and methodological debate intersects with general trends (such as economic imperialism, sociologism and cognitivism).

The activities organized by Team C will revolve around the following topics:

Year 1: The Present Situation of the Philosophy of the Cultural and Social Sciences: The "Naturalist Turn", the "Social Turn", and the Discussion on Scientific Realism.
Year 2: Explanation vs. Description in the Cultural Sciences, and the Realm and Limits of Explanation and Prediction in the Social Sciences.
Year 3: The Debate on Mathematical Modelling in the Social Sciences.
Year 4: The Sciences of the Artificial vs. the Cultural and Social Sciences.
Year 5: New Approaches in the Social Concern on Science: Social Constructivism and Realism on the Cultural and Social Sciences.

Team D: Philosophy of the Physical Sciences

Team D's main focus will be on two related themes: probability in physics and the applications of ideas from physics to other fields. Probability is a central concept in both quantum theory and in classical and quantum statistical mechanics. It is not only used in the practical application of these theories: it is also central to the major conceptual issues surrounding them, in particular to the formulation of the quantum collapse postulate and thus to the quantum measurement problem, and to the arrow of time in statistical mechanics. Investigating these topics provides a direct line of attack on the main relationships between physics and other disciplines.

The activities organized by Team D will revolve around the following topics:

Year 1. Philosophical Foundations.
Year 2. Quantum Physics, Space-time Theories and Probabilities.
Year 3. Statistical Mechanics.
Year 4. Applications of Physics in other Sciences.
Year 5. New Directions.

Team E: History of the Philosophy of Science

Like other fields of human endeavour, science possesses distinctive roots in the cultures to which its practitioners belong. Despite the intrinsic internationalism which determines its ethos of investigation and validation, the practice and the content of science, its dissemination and reception are not just fixed by the conscious cognitive concerns of a free-floating scientific intelligentsia. It is also influenced by distinctive, long-standing philosophical traditions, quite separate from the practical exigencies faced by their host cultures. Moreover, science has shown uneven development over its history. Team E will bring into focus, studying the history of foundational controversies, the distinctive reflection about natural and social sciences in the European tradition and explore its bearing on contemporary debates.

The activities organized by Team E will revolve around the following topics:

Year 1. Foundational and Methodological Debates.
Year 2. History of Explanation, Prediction and Confirmation.
Year 3. Historical Debates about Probability and Statistics.
Year 4. History of Philosophically Neglected, Marginalised and Recently Emergent Disciplines.
Year 5. Contemporary Relevance of Neglected Approaches.