Month: September 2022

In the next Perspectives on Science seminar, Mary S. Morgan (London School of Economics) will give a talk on “Narrative: A General Purpose Technology for Science”.

The seminar takes place online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 3rd of October. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the Zoom invitation.

Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.

Abstract:

Narrative is ubiquitous inside the sciences. While it might be hidden, evident only from its traces, it can be found regularly in scientists’ accounts both of their research, and of the natural, human and social worlds they study.  Investigating the functions of narrative, it becomes clear that narrative-making provides scientists a means of making sense of the phenomena in their field, that narrative provides a means of representing that knowledge, and that narrative may even provide the site for scientific reasoning.  Narrative emerges as a ‘general purpose technology’, used in many different forms in different sites of science, enabling scientists to figure out and express their scientific knowledge claims. Understanding scientists’ use of narrative as a sense-making technology suggests that narrative functions as a bridge between the interventionist practices of science and the knowledge gained from those practices.

Abstract from Narrative Science: Reasoning, Representing and Knowing since 1800, edited M.S. Morgan, K.M. Hajek and D.M. Berry (CUP, 2022).]

Author bio:

Mary S. Morgan is the Albert O. Hirschman Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the London School of Economics; she is a Fellow of the British Academy (and served as Vice President 2014-6), and an Overseas Fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She is currently President-Elect of the Royal Economic Society, to become President for 2023-4.

In the first Perspectives on Science seminar of autumn 2022, Adrian Blau (King’s College London) will give a talk on “The Logic of Inference of Thought Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy: Scientific Parallels”.

The seminar takes place in hybrid format, both in person at Metsätalo (University of Helsinki) and online via Zoom from 14:15 to 15:45 on the 19th of September. To join the seminar, please contact jessica.north@helsinki.fi for the location details or Zoom invitation.

Perspectives on Science is a weekly research seminar which brings together experts from science studies and philosophy of science. It is organized by TINT – Centre for Philosophy of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. More information about the seminar here.

Abstract:

Thought experiments are a key tool in political theory and philosophy, but they remain controversial. I first justify thought experiments in new ways, for instance by showing their role in conceptual analysis, and by denying the false dichotomy between ‘real’ examples and hypothetical thought experiments. I then highlight important and largely overlooked parallels between thought experiments in political philosophy and comparison in the natural and social sciences. This gives us powerful tools for testing and improving thought experiments, by using ideas like internal and external validity, controlled comparison, omitted variable bias, interaction effects, spurious correlations, testable implications, and parsimony. Focusing on variables is the key. This helps me address longstanding debates about ‘weird’ and ‘wacky’ thought experiments. Without exaggerating the scientific parallels – there are also important differences – this paper shows significant links between political philosophy and political science, and offers new insights into whether and how to use thought experiments, and about their limitations.
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Author bio:

Adrian Blau was an undergraduate at Cambridge and did his Masters and PhD in Oxford. Since 2011 he has worked in the Political Economy department at King’s College London, where he is now a professor. He edited the first ever textbook in political theory methods, Methods in Analytical Political Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and has published more than 10 articles and book chapters on the methodology of history of political thought, including articles in the American Journal of Political Science (“How [not] to use the history of political thought for contemporary purposes”, 2021) and the Journal of Politics (“Anti-Strauss”, 2012). He also works on democratic theory and practice, on post-truth politics, on rationality, on Habermas, and on the political theory of Thomas Hobbes.

The seminar program for autumn 2022 is here, with international experts giving talks on their recent research as well as upcoming and published papers. This semester the seminar will be organised in hybrid format, with the possibility of in-person meetings as well as keeping the option to join via Zoom.

The seminar runs on a bi-weekly basis, the first session being on the 19th of September with Adrian Blau from King’s College London giving a talk on The Logic of Inference of Thought Experiments in Moral and Political Philosophy: Scientific Parallels.

Everyone is welcome to join! See the seminar page for updates and to attend.