Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science
Encyclopedia
Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science is an interdepartmental, interuniversity forum on the nature of science, and each year organizes the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science.
's Center for Philosophy and History of Science was founded in 1960 as an interdepartmental, interuniversity forum on the nature of science. As the only such center in the Northeast, its mission is to bring together local and international scholars in the humanities and sciences to engage in research and education on the philosophical, historical, and social dimensions of science.
The Center is best known for its sponsorship of the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, which began as an informal interuniversity collaboration of scholars in philosophy, the various sciences, medicine, religious studies, and the arts.
Alisa Bokulich, who is an Associate Professor of philosophy at Boston University, has recently been named director of the Center, succeeding Alfred I. Tauber
.
. The Colloquium was an offshoot of the Institute for the Unity of Science, which was itself the American transplant of the Vienna Circle
. The Institute's central figure, Philipp Frank
, had been one of the Vienna Circle's member and founder, and took part in the development of the Boston Colloquium.
The Center was founded by Robert S. Cohen, who was a professor of philosophy and physics at BU, and Marx W. Wartofsky
, a professor of philosophy at BU. In 1993, Alfred I. Tauber, the Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, was appointed Director, succeeding Professor Cohen. In 2010, Alisa Bokulich was appointed Director.
There is only one older such center in North America, and that is the University of Minnesota
’s Center for Philosophy of Science, which was founded in 1953 around Herbert Feigl
. Both Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank fled Europe for the U.S. when the Nazi’s came to power.
Beginning in 1963, the proceedings of many colloquia were published in the series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (first by the D. Reidel
Publishing Company, then by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, and now by Springer
). Under the editorship of Robert Cohen, the "Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science" produced more than 200 volumes in the areas of philosophy of the natural and social sciences, logic, mathematics, and the history and social relations of science.
Over the past 50 years, the Colloquium has hosted talks by the most prominent figures in the philosophy of science, such as: Karl Popper
, Imre Lakatos
, Thomas Kuhn
, Isaac Asimov
, Benoît Mandelbrot
, Paul Feyerabend
, W. V. O. Quine, Hilary Putnam
, Noam Chomsky
, Stephen Toulmin
, Carl Hempel, Nelson Goodman
, Ernan McMullin
, Bas van Fraassen, Ernst Mayr
, Gerald Holton
, Herbert Feigl
, Alasdair MacIntyre
, Paul Dirac
, Roger Penrose
, Stephen Jay Gould
, Jürgen Habermas
, Max Jammer, Michael Polanyi
, Mary Hesse
, Leon Rosenfeld
, Richard Lewontin
, Alonzo Church
, etc.
Each year, the Center hosts the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, an eclectic program of symposia and lectures about all aspects of the philosophy and history of the sciences, mathematics, and logic.
. Boston University
's Mugar Memorial Library
holds a complete copy of physicist Albert Einstein
's papers. Such copies, whose originals are in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
, can only be found at Boston University
, Princeton University
, and at the California Institute of Technology
where the Einstein Papers Project
is now located.
Along with Don Howard, John Stachel is the editor of the book series Einstein Studies (Springer).
Mission & profile
Boston UniversityBoston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
's Center for Philosophy and History of Science was founded in 1960 as an interdepartmental, interuniversity forum on the nature of science. As the only such center in the Northeast, its mission is to bring together local and international scholars in the humanities and sciences to engage in research and education on the philosophical, historical, and social dimensions of science.
The Center is best known for its sponsorship of the Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, which began as an informal interuniversity collaboration of scholars in philosophy, the various sciences, medicine, religious studies, and the arts.
Alisa Bokulich, who is an Associate Professor of philosophy at Boston University, has recently been named director of the Center, succeeding Alfred I. Tauber
Alfred I. Tauber
Alfred I. Tauber , Zoltan Kohn Professor emeritus of Medicine and Professor emeritus of Philosophy at Boston University, is a philosopher and historian of science, who, from 1993 to 2010, served as Director of the Boston University Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University...
.
History
The Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science was founded in 1960 as an interdisciplinary, interuniversity collaboration, based at Boston University, with a small seed grant from the National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
. The Colloquium was an offshoot of the Institute for the Unity of Science, which was itself the American transplant of the Vienna Circle
Vienna Circle
The Vienna Circle was an association of philosophers gathered around the University of Vienna in 1922, chaired by Moritz Schlick, also known as the Ernst Mach Society in honour of Ernst Mach...
. The Institute's central figure, Philipp Frank
Philipp Frank
Philipp Frank was a physicist, mathematician and also an influential philosopher during the first half of the 20th century. He was a logical-positivist, and a member of the Vienna Circle.He was born on 20 March 1884 in Vienna, Austria, and died on 21 July 1966 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
, had been one of the Vienna Circle's member and founder, and took part in the development of the Boston Colloquium.
The Center was founded by Robert S. Cohen, who was a professor of philosophy and physics at BU, and Marx W. Wartofsky
Marx W. Wartofsky
Marx W. Wartofsky was a philosopher, specialising in historical epistemology. He was a professor of philosophy at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the editor of The Philosophical Forum.. With Robert S...
, a professor of philosophy at BU. In 1993, Alfred I. Tauber, the Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine and Professor of Philosophy at Boston University, was appointed Director, succeeding Professor Cohen. In 2010, Alisa Bokulich was appointed Director.
There is only one older such center in North America, and that is the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
’s Center for Philosophy of Science, which was founded in 1953 around Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle.-Biography:The son of a weaver, Feigl was born in Reichenberg , Bohemia, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922...
. Both Herbert Feigl and Philipp Frank fled Europe for the U.S. when the Nazi’s came to power.
Beginning in 1963, the proceedings of many colloquia were published in the series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science (first by the D. Reidel
D. Reidel
D. Reidel was an academic publishing company based in Dordrecht. It joined with Kluwer in the 1990s as Kluwer/Reidel, together being purchased by Cinven and Candover in 2003. Cinven and Candover also purchased Springer, merging the operations of all the publishers into one conglomerate, Springer...
Publishing Company, then by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, and now by Springer
Springer Science+Business Media
- Selected publications :* Encyclopaedia of Mathematics* Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete * Graduate Texts in Mathematics * Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique...
). Under the editorship of Robert Cohen, the "Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science" produced more than 200 volumes in the areas of philosophy of the natural and social sciences, logic, mathematics, and the history and social relations of science.
Over the past 50 years, the Colloquium has hosted talks by the most prominent figures in the philosophy of science, such as: Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
, Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos
Imre Lakatos was a Hungarian philosopher of mathematics and science, known for his thesis of the fallibility of mathematics and its 'methodology of proofs and refutations' in its pre-axiomatic stages of development, and also for introducing the concept of the 'research programme' in his...
, Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Samuel Kuhn was an American historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was deeply influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term "paradigm shift," which has since become an English-language staple.Kuhn...
, Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000...
, Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît Mandelbrot
Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child...
, Paul Feyerabend
Paul Feyerabend
Paul Karl Feyerabend was an Austrian-born philosopher of science best known for his work as a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked for three decades . He lived a peripatetic life, living at various times in England, the United States, New Zealand,...
, W. V. O. Quine, Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam is an American philosopher, mathematician and computer scientist, who has been a central figure in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen Edelston Toulmin was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to develop practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind...
, Carl Hempel, Nelson Goodman
Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism and aesthetics.-Career:...
, Ernan McMullin
Ernan McMullin
Ernan McMullin was the O’Hara Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He was an internationally-respected philosopher of science who has written and lectured extensively on subjects ranging from the relationship between cosmology and theology, to the role of values in...
, Bas van Fraassen, Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
, Gerald Holton
Gerald Holton
Gerald Holton is Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics and Research Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, at Harvard University.Born 1922 in Berlin, he grew up in Vienna before emigrating in 1938...
, Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl
Herbert Feigl was an Austrian philosopher and a member of the Vienna Circle.-Biography:The son of a weaver, Feigl was born in Reichenberg , Bohemia, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in 1922...
, Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a British philosopher primarily known for his contribution to moral and political philosophy but known also for his work in history of philosophy and theology...
, Paul Dirac
Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS was an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics...
, Roger Penrose
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose OM FRS is an English mathematical physicist and Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College...
, Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
, Max Jammer, Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...
, Mary Hesse
Mary Hesse
Mary Brenda Hesse is a contemporary English philosopher of science. She is now professor emerita of the philosophy of science at Cambridge University....
, Leon Rosenfeld
Léon Rosenfeld
Léon Rosenfeld was a Belgian physicist. He obtained a PhD at the University of Liège in 1926, and he was a collaborator of the physicist Niels Bohr. He did early work in quantum electrodynamics that predates by two decades the work by Dirac and Bergmann. He coined the name lepton...
, Richard Lewontin
Richard Lewontin
Richard Charles "Dick" Lewontin is an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he pioneered the notion of using techniques from molecular biology such as gel electrophoresis to...
, Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church
Alonzo Church was an American mathematician and logician who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science. He is best known for the lambda calculus, Church–Turing thesis, Frege–Church ontology, and the Church–Rosser theorem.-Life:Alonzo Church...
, etc.
Activities
Affiliated Center (Einstein Studies)
The CPHS is closely linked to the Center for Einstein Studies, also based at Boston University. The Center for Einstein Studies is directed by John StachelJohn Stachel
John Stachel is an American physicist and philosopher of science.Stachel earned his PhD at Stevens Institute of Technology in Physics about a topic in General relativity in 1958...
. Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
's Mugar Memorial Library
Mugar Memorial Library
The Mugar Memorial Library is the primary library for study, teaching, and research in the humanities and social sciences for Boston University and Boston University Academy. It was opened in 1966. Stephen P. Mugar, an Armenian immigrant who was successful in the grocery business, provided the...
holds a complete copy of physicist Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
's papers. Such copies, whose originals are in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
, can only be found at Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, and at the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
where the Einstein Papers Project
Einstein Papers Project
The Einstein Papers Project was established in 1986 to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein and from other collections .Sponsored by the Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since its inception, the...
is now located.
Along with Don Howard, John Stachel is the editor of the book series Einstein Studies (Springer).