This workshop uses the 50th anniversary of the publication of Carl Hempel’s book Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science as an occasion to reflect on the future of the philosophical study of scientific explanation.
It all started with Hempel’s deductive-nomological model, that was proposed as the one and only format for all scientific explanations. Hempel soon added the inductive-statistical model. Other authors have come up with amongst others the causal-mechanical model (Salmon), the unification model (Kitcher) and the counterfactual model (Woodward). At this moment an abundance of models is available for describing the shapes that scientific explanations can have.
The core questions of this workshop are:
- why study scientific explanation as a philosopher?
- what are interesting aims in studying scientific explanation and what are the appropriate methods (formal as well as informal)?
- how should different philosophical models of explanation be treated: as competitors or as complementary to each other?
- what do philosophers of science working on scientific explanation have to offer to scientists?
- what should be the role of scientific practice (e.g. historical case studies) in philosophical reflection on explanation?
The keynote speakers will address (some of) these issues in their talks. Contributed papers can be on any topic in the area of scientific explanation, but we prefer talks that pay some attention to the issues listed above.
Submission details:
Authors are invited to submit an abstract of 300 to 500 words, on any of the topics listed above. Send your abstract before August 31 to: lrr@ugent.be
Important dates:
Abstract submission deadline: August 31, 2015
Notification: September 11, 2015