180171 SE History and philosophy of the sciences (2017S)

“History of science without philosophy of science is blind, philosophy of science without history of science is empty.“ This aphorism of the philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson, inspired by Kant, became in the last decades a credo for a new and independent academic discipline: History and Philosophy of Science (HPS). Behind this association of philosophy of science and history of science one can find an integrative program: Philosophers and historians depend on each other in their research. On the one hand the historian of science needs the philosopher of science in order to organize the historical material from a coherent theoretical perspective. On the other hand the philosopher of science needs history of science in order to test and illustrate empirically his theoretical hypotheses in concrete historical cases. The aim of HPS is to overcome a simplistic understanding of science and of scientific progress. This is done by enabling philosophers and historians to take mutually into account the methodological standards of each other. One cannot understand science without an adequate understanding of the empirical and historical sources, nor without the appropriate theoretical and conceptual instruments.
In our seminar we want to use this basic understanding of HPS by relating central debates in the philosophy of science to specific historical case studies. On the philosophical level, we want to address the following questions: What is induction? What is a scientific explanation? What role do scientific thought experiments have in science? What is the epistemological and ontological status of theoretical concepts like the electron, force or the wavefunction? All these questions will be illustrated by examples from the history of science. We will consider, for example, Kepler´s laws of planetary motion, the research of Semmelweis on childbed fever (puerperal fever), or Newton´s famous “bucket experiment”. The course´s aim is to do philosophy with the aid of history in order to understand and clarify debates in contemporary philosophy of science.