Philosophy and History of Science

The course provides a historically informed investigation of some of the fundamental issues in philosophy of science. Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with methodological, epistemological and metaphysical foundations of science, and its impacts on other disciplines and society at large. History of science is the study of historical development of science and scientific knowledge.

The aim of the course is to develop students’ knowledge of:
- most important authors and schools of thought in philosophy of science in analytic philosophy (the Vienna circle and logical positivism, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend);
- most important authors and schools of thought in philosophy of science in Continental philosophy (Edmund Husserl and Phenomenology, Ernst Cassirer and Neo-Kantianism, Lebensphilosophie and its criticism of natural sciences, sociological and postmodernist criticism of science);
- fundamental philosophical issues in philosophy of science: status and nature of science; (non)existence of a unified scientific method; scientific explanation; natural laws; role of historical, social, and value factors in science; problem of scientific realism/antirealism/relativism;
- so-called “scientific wars” between “realists” and “postmodernists” (end of the 20th, beginning of the 21st century) and their impact on different conceptions of science;
- historical development of science;
- case studies of main scientific revolutions in specific scientific fields, with special emphasis on Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Neuroscience.