Conference Announcement
	
	PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
	
	Thursday 25 August - Saturday 27 August, 2005
	Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
	
	Invited Speakers: Hasok Chang (University College London), Peter Lipton
	(University of Cambridge), Margaret Morrison (University of Toronto)
	
	Organizers: Henk W. de Regt, Sabina Leonelli, and Kai Eigner
	(Faculty of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
	
	Call for papers: deadline for submission 1 March 2005; see the conference
	website for details.
	
	Website http://www.ph.vu.nl/~understanding
	
	Contact: h.w.de.regt@ph.vu.nl
	
	Aim and scope of the conference:
	This conference centers around the theme of 'scientific understanding'. The
	notion of scientific understanding is closely related to that of scientific
	explanation, but while explanation is widely discussed in philosophy of
	science, not much work has focused explicitly on understanding. One reason is
	that traditional philosophers of science have long regarded it as 'merely' a
	psychological notion, and thereby as philosophically irrelevant. This
	attitude, however, is slowly disappearing, and interest in the topic of
	understanding is growing. With this conference we hope to stimulate the
	development of philosophical research into scientific understanding.
	
	We aim at a varied programme, in which philosophical questions about the
	nature of scientific understanding will be approached in different ways. In
	addition to contributions of a general philosophical nature, we hope to be
	able to present studies focused on a wide range of sciences, both natural and
	social.
	
	The conference is intended for philosophers of science working on the topic of
	scientific understanding itself, or on related topics such as explanation,
	modelling, representation, etc.; and for historians and sociologists of
	science, cognitive scientists, and others having an interest in philosophical
	questions regarding scientific understanding.
	
	[apologies for cross-posting]

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