Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
Date and Time
Location
"What is a Scientific Conception of the World?"
Speaker:
Joseph Rouse, Hedding Professor of Moral Science, the Philosophy Department and the Science in Society Program, Wesleyan University.
Contact:
Shana Rabinowich
shana_rabinowich@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Thursday of the week before the event.
Abstract:
The question of how to characterize a scientific conception of the world arises in multiple contexts, from philosophical debates over naturalism to consideration of scientific contributions to public policy. Philosophers and science studies scholars have offered various accounts of scientific understanding, but in a common form: scientific understanding is embodied in scientific knowledge. In Part II of Articulating the World (Chicago, November 2015), I argue that a viable naturalistic philosophy requires a different conception of scientific understanding. This talk provides an overview of some its central features.
Biography:
Joseph Rouse is the Hedding Professor of Moral Science in the Philosophy Department and the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University. A specialist in the philosophy of science, the history of 20th Century philosophy, and interdisciplinary science studies, he is the author of Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image (Chicago, 2015), How Scientific Practices Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism (Chicago, 2002), Engaging Science: How to Understand its Practices Philosophically (Cornell, 1996), and Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science (Cornell, 1987). He also edited John Haugeland’s posthumously published Dasein Disclosed: John Haugeland’s Heidegger (Harvard, 2013).