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Conference: Philosophical Perspectives on Scientific Understanding (VU Amsterdam, August 2005)

Conference Announcement

PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING

http://www.ph.vu.nl/~understanding

Thursday 25 August - Saturday 27 August, 2005
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Invited Speakers: Hasok Chang (University College London), Peter Lipton
(University of Cambridge), Margaret Morrison (University of Toronto)

Organizers: Henk W. de Regt, Sabina Leonelli, and Kai Eigner (Faculty of
Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Call for papers: deadline for submission 1 March 2005; see the conference
website for details.

Website http://www.ph.vu.nl/~understanding
Contact: h.w.de.regt@ph.vu.nl

Aim and scope of the conference: This conference centers around the theme
of 'scientific understanding'. The notion of scientific understanding is
closely related to that of scientific explanation, but while explanation
is widely discussed in philosophy of science, not much work has focused
explicitly on understanding. One reason is that traditional philosophers
of science have long regarded it as 'merely' a psychological notion, and
thereby as philosophically irrelevant. This attitude, however, is slowly
disappearing, and interest in the topic of understanding is growing. With
this conference we hope to stimulate the development of philosophical
research into scientific understanding.

We aim at a varied programme, in which philosophical questions about the
nature of scientific understanding will be approached in different ways.
In addition to contributions of a general philosophical nature, we hope to
be able to present studies focused on a wide range of sciences, both
natural and social.

The conference is intended for philosophers of science working on the
topic of scientific understanding itself, or on related topics such as
explanation, modelling, representation, etc.; and for historians and
sociologists of science, cognitive scientists, and others having an
interest in philosophical questions regarding scientific understanding.

Dr. Henk W. de Regt
Faculteit der Wijsbegeerte, Vrije Universiteit
De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam
tel.: 020-4446681
email: h.w.de.regt@ph.vu.nl
homepage: http://www.ph.vu.nl/~regt/