Philosophy of Science

This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling.

Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian Salimkhani, Andrea Reichenberger, Anne Sophie Meincke, Javier Suárez, Roger Deulofeu, Ludger Jansen, Peter Hucklenbroich, Martin Carrier, Elizaveta Kostrova, Lara Huber, Jens Harbecke, Antonio Piccolomini dAragona and Axel Gelfert. This collection fosters dialogue between philosophers of science working in different subfields, and brings readers the finest and latest work across the breadth of the field, illustrating that contemporary philosophy of science has successfully broadened its scope of reflection. It will interest and inspire a wide audience of philosophers as well as scholars of the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities.

The volume shares selected contributions from the prestigious second triennial conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science/ Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsphilosophie (GWP.2016, March 8, 2016 March 11, 2016).

Alexander Christian is a research fellow at the Düsseldorf center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His main research areas are general philosophy of science and ethics of science, with a particular focus on bias, questionable research practices and scientific misconduct in medical research. He published about the demarcation problem ("Wissenschaft und Pseudowissenschaft", Peter Lang, 2013), values in science and the suppression of empirical evidence.

David Hommen is currently Post-Doctoral research fellow in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre "The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science" at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. His main research areas are philosophy of mind, the theory of concepts, causal theory and the metaphysics of absences. He is co-author of "Negative Kausalität" (de Gruyter 2012, with Dieter Birnbacher) and author of "Mentale Verursachung, innere Erfahrung und handelnde Personen" (mentis 2013).

Nina Retzlaff is a research fellow at the Düsseldorf center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Her main research interests lie in philosophy of science, causality and metaphysics. In the context of her PhD thesis, she is investigating causality with regard to quantum mechanics. 

Gerhard Schurz holds the Chair for Theoretical Philosophy at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and is the Director of the Düsseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS). His research areas include general and special philosophy of science, logic, epistemology, generalized evolution theory, artificial intelligence and metaethics. He published more than 200 papers. Among other books, he published "The Is-Ought Problem", Dordrecht: Kluwer (1997), "Einführung in die Wissenschaftstheorie", Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (2006, 4. Aufl.2014), "Evolution in Natur und Kultur", Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag (2011), "Philosophy of Science: A Unified Approach", New York: Routledge (2013) and "Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie", Berlin: DeGruyter (2015).

Introduction (Alexander Christian, David Hommen, Nina Retzlaff and Gerhard Schurz).- Part I: Philosophy of physics.- Chapter 1: Quantum Gravity: An Ideology of Unification? (Kian Salimkhani).- Chapter 2: On Predictions and Explanations in Multiverse Scenarios (Keizo Matsubara).- Chapter 3: The Role of the Concept of Causation in Physics (Enno Fischer).- Chapter 4: Causality in General Relativity. Partial Determination Revisited (Andrea Reichenberger).- Part II. Philosophy of life sciences.- Chapter 5: The Philosophical Concept of Agency between Systems Biology and Artificial Intelligence (Anne Sophie Meincke).- Chapter 6. Functions, Malfunctioning, and Negative Causation (Ludger Jansen).- Chapter 7. The Quantitative Problem for Theories of Function and Dysfunction (Thomas Schramme).- Chapter 8. On the Explanatory Character of the Serial Endosymbiotic Theory of the Origin of Eukaryotic Cells (Javier Suárez and Roger Deulofeu).- Part III. Philosophy of social sciences& values inscience.- Chapter 9. Agnotological Challenges: How to Capture the Production of Ignorance (Martin Carrier).- Chapter 10. The Invisible Hand as a Natural Law (Judith Würgler).- Chapter 11. Micro Economics Between the Natural Sciences and the Humanities (Karsten Klint Jensen).- Chapter 12. The Role of Ought in Value Theory: Philosophical and Sociological Perspectives (Elizaveta Kostrova).- Chapter 13. From Stability to Validity: How Standards Serve Epistemic Ends (Lara Huber).- Part IV. Philosophy of mathematics& formal modeling.- Chapter 14. A Theory of Constitutive Inference for the Regularity Account of Mechanistic Constitution (Jens Harbecke). Chapter 15. Recognition Procedures and Dag Prawitzs Theory of Grounds (Antonio Piccolomini dAragona).- Chapter 16. Exploratory Modes of Scientific Inquiry: From Experimentation to Modeling (Axel Gelfert).