Changes

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|Summary=Since the 1990’s, few have attempted to formulate general theories of scientific change like those proposed by Fleck, Kuhn, Lakatos, and Laudan. The quest for such a theory seems to have been abandoned due to a growing awareness that science’s history was far more diverse, and employed far more methods, than general theories of scientific change could account for. For an increasing number of scholars, however, this historical and sociological data is not an obstacle to the search for a theory of scientific change. Rather it is an opportunity to craft a more nuanced theory that would explain how our theories and methods of their evaluation change through time. Such a theory must be historical rather than whiggish, and descriptive rather than normative. Developing such a theory of scientific change is in line with the growing interest in Integrated History and Philosophy of Science, Social Epistemology, and Cognitive Historiography.

The main goal of this conference & workshop is twofold:

In the spirit of the Scientonomy community’s belief that our knowledge of scientific change is best advanced collectively, this conference/workshop brings the best scholarship from the history, philosophy, and sociology of science to bear on the current state of scientonomy and its prospects. Some potential topics include, but are not limited to:

* Does the descriptive theory of scientific change have normative implications for the conduct of science? Can descriptive scientonomy help address the traditional issues in normative philosophy of science, such as realism, rationality, progress, etc.?

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