About Us
The Department of History and Philosophy of Science supports both a graduate and undergraduate program of study of science, its nature and fundamentals, its origins, and its place in modern politics, culture, and society. In the history of science, traditional and non-traditional historical methods are used to develop an understanding of how the sciences originated, how they were practiced, how they developed, and how they related to their intellectual and social contexts. These include archival research, textual analysis, and re-enactment of experiments. In philosophy of science, the sciences themselves are brought under philosophical scrutiny. We investigate the nature of science in general; what distinguishes scientific activity; how theories explain; how they are confirmed; whether they should be read literally; and the moral dilemmas raised by the sciences. We also investigate the fundamental content of individual sciences and how it bears on the ancient philosophical questions: what is the nature of space, time, and matter; what is life; and what is thought? History and philosophy of science is distinctive in integrating these two areas of study, with investigations in each area often closely interwoven.
News & Events
- Congratulations to two of our graduate students who have been awarded post-doctoral fellowships: Bryan Roberts has been awarded a 2-year Provost's Postdoctoral Scholarship at the University of Southern California. He will be hosted by the Department of Philosophy and will continue his studies on the nature of time in the foundations of quantum theory. Catherine Stinson has been awarded a two year post-doc in the Philosophy of Neuroscience group at Universität Tübingen. Her project will be on visual embodiment.
- Papers are now being accepted for a conference entitled Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy, which will be held November 2-4, 2012, at the Center for Philosophy of Science. The submission deadline for papers is June 1, 2012. For more information, see the Call for Papers.
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The 14th Annual Pitt-CMU Graduate Student Philosophy Conference will be held from April 6th-7th. For the program and more information, click here.
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Edouard Machery is the new editor of the Naturalistic Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass. See here for the news release.
Allan Gotthelf's new book, Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle's Biology, has just been published by Oxford University Press, in its distinguished series, Oxford Aristotle Studies. The book will be available in the U.S. at the end of March.
Cooperating Departments and Centers
