Category:Scientonomy Seminar

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The main goal of the scientonomy seminar is to scrutinize different aspects of our current scientonomic knowledge and formulate as many open questions as possible. As opposed to the workshop format, the seminar's primary objective is unearthing the drawbacks of our current scientonomic knowledge, i.e. understanding what does not work. While the seminar also often generates interesting ideas on how this or that problem can be solved, the primary outcome of the seminar is the list of open questions for future research.

The seminar is held annually by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The seminar usually starts in January and ends in April consisting of 10-12 discussion sessions.

History

The seminar was first designed and run by Hakob Barseghyan in 2013. Originally, the seminar had a wider agenda and tried to accomplish the following two tasks:

  • scrutinizing each aspect of the current theory and understanding what is not working;
  • generating ideas on how the theory can be improved by finding solutions to its topical issues.

It took three full iterations of the seminar before it became clear that it should be mainly focusing on the former task, i.e. on compiling a list of open questions for future research. As for finding answers to open questions, it was appreciated that the seminar is not the best format for it. Solutions to open problems require proper research papers; only when an idea is published can the community begin to appraise it and decide whether it is acceptable or not. This idea is in the foundation of the Journal of Scientonomy.

Although the previous iterations of the seminar produced a number of interesting open questions, the seminar of 2016 was the first to aim directly at producing open questions. It was the first year when a comprehensive list of open questions was generated.

Here is the complete list of all scientonomy seminars:

SeminarTitleStartEnd
Scientonomy Seminar 2013The first annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change11 January 20135 April 2013
Scientonomy Seminar 2014The second annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change10 January 20144 April 2014
Scientonomy Seminar 2015The third annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change9 January 201527 March 2015
Scientonomy Seminar 2016The fourth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change15 January 20168 April 2016
Scientonomy Seminar 2017The fifth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change6 January 201731 March 2017
Scientonomy Seminar 2018The sixth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change11 January 201829 March 2018
Scientonomy Seminar 2018 FallThe seventh annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change6 September 201829 November 2018
Scientonomy Seminar 2019The eight annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change5 September 201928 November 2019
Scientonomy Seminar 2020VIC Scientonomy Seminar Fall 202012 September 202010 December 2020
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2021VIC Scientonomy Seminar Fall 202111 September 20219 December 2021
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2022VIC Scientonomy Seminar 202210 September 20223 December 2022
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2023VIC Scientonomy Seminar 20239 September 20232 December 2023

Present

The seminar currently takes place at the beginning of every calendar year and focuses on the task of unearthing the drawbacks in our current scientonomic knowledge.

If a question raises a sufficient level of interest or disagreement, it is considered an open question. Clearly, this criterion is somewhat vague and not very strict; as a result, the list of open questions can sometimes include questions the answers to which may appear trivial. However, this is done on purpose; the assumption here is that an occasional inclusion of a trivial question outweighs the risk of missing an important question.

Future

As the format of the seminar is exportable, scientonomists throughout the world are encouraged to organize similar seminars and formulate open questions. These questions will be entered into the encyclopedia and will become possible topics for future research.

Related Articles

Scientonomy Workshop

Journal of Scientonomy

Encyclopedia of Scientonomy

This category uses the form Scientonomy_Seminar.