Helen Longino: „Why Center Interaction? (In science and elsewhere)“

In collaboration with Duke University in the United States, the Institute of Philosophy is instituting a new annual lecture series where renowned international scholars are invited to Iceland to give a lecture on their research.

The first lecture is by Helen Longino, emerita professor of philosophy at Stanford University. The talk will take place on Wedneday, October 8th, at 3-5pm, in room 101, Lögberg, University of Iceland. The talk is entitled “Why Center Interaction? (In science and elsewhere)” and will be in English.

Abstract

This talk is about the concept of interaction.  Our scientific ontologies are for the most part constituted of objects and their properties. I will propose that interaction should play as fundamental a role in scientific analysis and investigation as individuals and their states and properties do.  I will argue that interactions satisfy criteria for reality proposed by philosophers of science as well as individual entities do and offer examples from the sciences to demonstrate their importance to scientific investigation.  I will conclude by suggesting the questions philosophers can address about interaction that would make the concept more salient. This talk is, then, a plea for ontological pluralism.

A short biography of the speaker

Helen E. Longino is the Clarence Irving Lewis Professor of Philosophy, Emerita, at Stanford University and the former president of the Philosophy of Science Association and the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).

Longino is both one of the most important contemporary philosophers of science alive today and one of the most influential feminist philosophers in recent decades. Longino’s work on objectivity and values in science, in books such as Science as Social Knowledge and the The Fate of Knowledge, have not only served to create entirely new research programs within philosophy of science, such as research on role of values in science, but also transformed mainstream thinking about the nature of science in profound ways.