Visiting Fellows

Visiting Fellows are hosted in 747 Heller Hall, phone: 612-624-4896.

Marie Kaiser, Visiting Graduate Student Fellow, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster	January-May 2010	marie.isabel.kaiser@web.de
Mary Morgan	June 2009	M.Morgan@lse.ac.uk
Peter Truran Independent Scholar	January 2009–August 2010	mail@petertruran.co.uk
Hector Salas Professor, School of Management, National University of Mexico (UNAM)	June–December 2008	hsalas@correo.fca.unam.mx
JJ Yuann Professor, Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University	August–September 2008	jjyuann@ntu.edu.tw
Edward S. Slowik Professor, Department of Philosophy, Winona State University	Fall 2008	ESlowik@winona.edu
Thomas Reydon Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science (ZEWW), Leibniz University of Hannover	Fall 2008	reydon@ww.uni-hannover.de
Staffan Mueller-Wille ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis), University of Exeter	September–October 2007 and June 2009	S.E.W.Mueller-Wille@exeter.ac.uk

Upcoming visitors to the Center in 2010 an 2011 include visiting graduate student fellow, Marie Kaiser from the Philosophy Department of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany for the Spring semester.

We were pleased to welcome six visiting fellows in the 2008-2009 academic year. Professor Hector Salas from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for Summer and Fall 2008, Professor Edward S. Slowik from Winona State in Fall 2008, Dr. Thomas Reydon from Zentrale Einrichtung für Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsethik, Leibniz University of Hannover in October and November 2008 and Professor J. J. Yuann from the Philosophy Department of the National University of Taiwan during August and September 2008. In January 2009, Peter Truran, from Bristol, UK will visit the Center from the Spring 2009 semester through the 2009-2010 academic year.

Hector Salas is a Professor at the School of Management, National University of Mexico (UNAM). While at the Center he will continue his enquiry on the presence of regularities in the social phenomena, and on the feasibility of studying them according to a methodological monism.

History of science outlines a temporary order in which the evolution of the disciplines and even that of their specialties has culminated in their scientific maturity, as well as an order in which their theories have attained precision in explaining and predicting their phenomena. This order can be seen to correspond to the complexity of the events which are studied by each field, and at present both maturity and precision are distinctive in the natural sciences only.

The social disciplines remain today in a pre-paradigmatic, pre-scientific stage of development –research communities disagreeing even on the nature of social facts. Methodological dualism claims that the natural world exhibits uniformity and universal laws, but human events can at best be comprehended and interpreted on a case by case basis; while according to the view of methodological monism, research in the social disciplines also attempts to discern and explain regularities through the testing of hypotheses with causal models, methodological thoroughness and findings that can be generalized and replicated.

The purpose of this project is to probe on the nature of the facts and regularities which are exhibited by the social phenomena, and on the degree of certainty and validity with which they can be established for members of research communities of a given field.

Papers which have been produced so far have discussed regularities and facts which are found in disciplines such as management and economics, and especially in their quantitative areas, finance and econometrics, which regularly apply naturalistic methodologies in research. These papers have also discussed how the determinants of different social phenomena can be defined by analyses ex ante—thus substituting traditional ex post facto research designs—including those whose variables are not susceptible of quantification.

Edward Slowik is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Winona State University, Winona, Minnesota. His main research area is the history and philosophy of science, with special emphasis on the philosophy of space and time, matter and motion, from the Early Modern period to the present. Specifically, the focus of Ed's research lies in the ontology of space and spacetime, with special emphasis placed on the substantival/relational debate, and the search for alternative ontologies. Other interests in the history and philosophy of the natural sciences include the realism/anti-realism dispute, the demarcation problem between science and pseudo-science, as well as the controversy between religion and science. In addition, Ed has interests in many other philosophical topics, such as the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, analytic philosophy, existentialism, and the philosophy of art/music.

While at the Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, Ed will investigate alternative ontological and epistemological approaches to the philosophy of space and spacetime that eschew the traditional substantivalist and relationist categories (i.e., space as either a substance or a mere relation among substances). Among these alternative approaches, the most important are the various structuralist and structural realist conceptions, although the property theory and the Positivist-influenced definitional approach will also figure prominently in the investigation. The viability of these alternative approaches will be investigated within the context of a larger research program aimed at delineating the various ontological categories and assumptions that have shaped the debate on the ontology of space in the Western tradition from the early Modern period to the present.

After a brief aviation career, Ed went on to receive his B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Ohio State University. His previous works include, Cartesian Spacetime (Kluwer, 2002), and articles in various philosophy journals.

Thomas Reydon is Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science, Leibniz University of Hannover (Germany). He holds Master's degrees in physics and philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in philosophy of biology, all from Leiden University (The Netherlands). He is Associate Editor of the journal Acta Biotheoretica (published by Springer) for the field of philosophy of biology, as well as book reviews editor of that journal. His main research interests are in philosophy of biology and in several core topics in general philosophy of science (such as classification in science, laws of nature, (anti-)realism, and (anti-)reductionism). In philosophy of biology he has worked on the epistemology and metaphysics of biological species and is currently carrying out a research project on natural kinds in the life (and other natural) sciences, funded by the German research Council (DFG). In addition, he is developing a new project on the explanatory scope of evolutionary theory and the feasibility of Darwinian research programs in fields of work outside biology.

While at MCPS, Thomas will work on his DFG-project on natural kinds. The principal aim of this project is to contribute to the development of a general theory of natural kinds that can provide an ontological foundation for scientific practices of classification and generalization. While in the philosophy of science scientific classificatory practices are commonly understood as involving natural kinds, traditional (essentialist) natural kind theories were found unable to account for many classifications that are actually used in the special sciences. While philosophers of science have long been searching for a natural kind theory that avoids the problems that essentialist theories confront, such a theory is still lacking. In the past decade or so a number of philosophers of science have begun to explore the possibility of an alternative conception of natural kinds that breaks with the essentialist tradition. The research project follows this new line of work, focusing on the life sciences sensu lato.

Jeu-Jenq Yuann is an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the National University of Taiwan. His research, selected for both historical and methodological reasons, concentrates on, “The Vienna Circle and the Popperians”. Historically, it is insightful to see how an essential part of the history of philosophy of science can be caricaturized as “a period of naïve positivists” without paying attention to the fact that the so-called “post-positivism” is, as a matter of fact, a continuation, rather than a revolution of its positivistic predecessor. Methodologically, it is crucial to see how the growth of scientific knowledge is intended to be safeguarded first by proposing “normative methodologies” and then by admitting “a pluralistic methodology”. By taking the significance of history and methodology into account, it is reasonable to see that while T. Kuhn plays the role of central importance in the former part, P. Feyerabend is considered an essential figure of the latter part. They both exerted similar influences on the heritage of the Vienna Circle by offering an alternative way of philosophizing what has for long been deemed as normative and conformist. The most rewarding feature of this “philosophization” is the demonstration of the fundamental function of “practice” which exists not merely in scientific activities, but also in all kinds of human activities. For this reason, I follow the track of Feyerabend by extending the argument from the nature of science to that of culture. I then apply the ideas extracted from the study of scientific methodologies to an inquiry concerning what can be the “tenacity” of a culture which refers to a related function of a theory.

Peter Truran PhD The aim of his project is to develop a primer for science students and emerging professionals as well as those who are involved in clinical areas of research. The intention is to provide a clear introduction to the philosophy of science which takes account of its current pluralistic nature as it attempts to comes to terms with the diversity of modern science. It should be accessible to researchers who may be challenged by a limited understanding of the philosophy of science and its relevance within their scope of practice. A key focus will be the demonstration of how the application of philosophical principles can be of practical benefit to scientific research.

A core element of the project will be the identification of the needs of researchers and teachers of undergraduate and post-graduate students. Interview survey techniques will be used to identify problems, encountered in carrying out research work, which would have been prevented by a better understanding of the philosophy of science. This information will be used to present instructional and illustrative examples to facilitate the explanation of the basic concepts of the philosophy of science, and to show how they provide a sound foundation for experimental design and statistical analysis.

Marie Kaiser, Visiting Graduate Student Fellow January-May 2010.

Center Administrator: Janet McKernan
email: mcps@umn.edu
phone: 612-625-6635
fax: 612-626-8380