1-3 Jun 2014
Norwich, U.K.
MATHEMATISING SCIENCE: LIMITS AND PERSPECTIVES 2 UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA, NORWICH 1-3 June 2014 Official conference website: http://www.confhub.net/mathematising-science/ CONFERENCE THEME This event follows from the 2013 MSLP (Mathematising Science: Limits and Perspectives) conference and is entirely devoted to mathematisation, understood in two interrelated ways: as the creation of new mathematical objects from originally intuitive objects or problems (e.g. knots, games, colourings) or as the mathematical treatment of empirical problems that emerge in science. We seek to examine mathematisation both from the ?internal? point of view of pure mathematics, and the ?external? point of view of mathematical applications. INVITED SPEAKERS Jessica Carter (Southern Denmark) Hasok Chang (Cambridge) Roman Frigg (LSE) Elaine Landry (UC Davis) Richard Pettigrew (Bristol) Mark Wilson (Pittsburgh) INPORTANT DATES 1. Abstract Submission deadline: 1 March 2013 2. Notification of decisions: 31 March 2013 3. Conference dates: 1 - 3 June 2013 TOPICS AND SUBMISSION DETAILS Authors are invited to submit an abstract of 100 words and an extended abstract of 1000 words. Please prepare your abstracts for blind review and save your extended abstract as a PDF file. There are 8 slots for contributed papers, each of which will be allocated 30 minutes for presentation, followed by a 15 minute discussion. We support the Gendered Conference Campaign by applying its strategy to our conference: http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/gendered-conference-campaign/ For submissions, go to: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mslp2 When logged in, click on the 'New Submission' tab. Include your 100 words abstract and upload the PDF file of your extended abstract. Please feel free to contact the organisers with any questions you may have at: mathematising@gmail.com Possible contributed topics include, but are not limited to, the following: - Does intuition provide only the initial material, soon to be discarded, for mathematical theorising, or does it assist it in its full development? - Do mathematical proofs rely on intuitive support, e.g. diagrammatic or geometrical reasoning, in any significant way or does intuition intervene only at a preliminary, heuristic stage? - Is there a specific sense in which the choice of a particular intuitive content (e.g. knots, networks) guides the articulation of a mathematical theory by selecting the concepts worth introducing, the theorems worth proving, the connections with other mathematical theories worth making? - Is it possible to decide whether a field of scientific inquiry is amenable to a certain mathematical treatment? - Is it possible to determine uniform criteria for mathematisation? - Is there a cost at forcibly fitting an empirical field of inquiry to the structure of a mathematical object (an especially pressing problem in mathematical social science)? - Is mathematics just a tool of empirical enquiry or does it play a more substantial role, e.g. by generating explanations or yielding a unified picture of disparate phenomena? - Is it possible to subject the same empirical settings to alternative, non-equivalent mathematical treatments? REGISTRATION FEE There is a 30 registration standard fee for non-student participants and a 10 fee for students.