8-10 Dec 2021
Gent, Belgium
CALL FOR PAPERS Workshop on MATHEMATICS AS/IN SCIENCE Ghent University, 8-10 December 2021 The scope of this workshop The relationship between mathematics and science continues to be of considerable philosophical interest. Within contemporary philosophy of science, for example, pinpointing the exact role of mathematics in the sciences remains a hotly debated issue. Does mathematics play a mere inferential role in that it allows for the derivations of one substantial truth from another or is mathematics more than a ?theoretical juice-extractor?? Are there distinctive mathematical explanations of physical phenomena? Similar questions can be asked about the role of logic in science. These issues connect with discussions within the philosophy of mathematics (and the philosophy of logic) concerning the nature of mathematics (or logic). Within the philosophy of mathematics, Platonists, nominalists and structuralists consider mathematics to be fundamentally different in kind from empirical science, while empiricists have argued that mathematics is, just like other sciences, fundamentally about aspects of the empirical world. Different positions within the debate about the nature of mathematics will, arguably, lead to different answers to the question as to how mathematics and science are related. In this workshop we want to focus on how these different philosophies of mathematics fare in giving an account of mathematical practice and the role of mathematics in scientific practice. Examples of topics of interest therefore include (but are not restricted to): - How do we get mathematical knowledge? - What is the role of sensory perception in mathematics? - Can there be mathematical experiments? If so, how do they relate to experiments in other disciplines? - What is (are) the role(s) of proof in mathematics? - What is the epistemic role of mathematical communities (dependence, peer review, joint commitments, ?)? - Are there explanations in mathematics? Are mathematical explanations similar to scientific explanations? - Are there distinctively mathematical explanations in science? - What is the role of aesthetic virtues (beauty, symmetry, simplicity, ?) in mathematical practice? - What role does mathematics play in empirical science? - Does empirical science play any role in mathematics? - How can mathematics be successfully applied in empirical science and engineering? We welcome contributions that approach these (and related) topics either from a systematic or a historic angle. In other words, we welcome contributions that elaborate and defend your own position, but also contributions that discuss the views that philosophers and scientists had on these topics in the past. Keynote speakers Valeria Giardino (Institut Jean Nicod ? Paris) Victor Gijsbers (Leiden University) How to submit an abstract We welcome submissions on any topic that fits into the scope as described above. Send your abstract of 300 to 500 words to: lrr@ugent.be<mailto:lrr@ugent.be> before 18 October 2021. Notification of acceptance: 25 October 2021. Venue KANTL, Koningstraat 18, 9000 Gent, Belgium. We plan this as a purely physical workshop, without online participation. Website More information about the workshop is available at https://www.lrr.ugent.be/mathematicsscience/. The program will be available around 1 November. Background This workshop is organized by the scientific research network Logical and Methodological Analysis of Scientific Reasoning Processes (LMASRP) which is sponsored by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). All information about the network can be found at http://www.lmasrp.ugent.be/. An overview of the previous workshops of the network can be found at http://www.lrr.ugent.be/. -- [LOGIC] mailing list http://www.dvmlg.de/mailingliste.html Archive: http://www.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/ provided by a collaboration of the DVMLG, the Maths Departments in Bonn and Hamburg, and the ILLC at the Universiteit van Amsterdam