Saturday, March 28, 2015

Project Einstein 2015's site: www.theingeniousproject.org

It's been up but still under construction. The deadlines have been extended too.



www.theingeniousproject.org




Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Why Albert Einstein and Philosophy of Science (see previous post too ;) )

Instead of writing and working on Einstein and his relation to philosophy, I have narrowed it to Einstein and his relation to philosophy of science. Part of it is significantly historical. For instance, one can look Einstein's connections to logical positivism/ logical empiricism. One can situate the classic problems of philosophy of science in terms of the issues raised by Einstein's theory of relativity (special or general). Or one might ask further of Einstein whether he was a verificationist, a conventionalist or a realist (none of the above?). I don't think it too problematic to say that "philosophy of science" is also just shorthand for "history and philosophy of science."

The other part is that there is much to learn from the study of philosophy of science for the layperson. If this claim is correct, then the implication there is that at the very least one can learn something from philosophy!  Hehe :)  What is there to learn from philosophy of science for the layperson? Well that would be another topic for another day.


Saturday, March 14, 2015

Albert Einstein: The Scientist as Activist at De La Salle University Manila 20 March 2015

On the 20th of March, I will be one of 3 speakers on Albert Einstein. I will be talking about Einstein's relationship to philosophy of science (as contrasted to recent physicists like Hawking and deGrasse Tyson). Hawking's pronouncement is that philosophy is dead. DeGrasse Tyson claims that philosophy is distracting. Never mind if they both have, and are probably still making, philosophical comments and recommendations (i.e. with some of the classic issues/problems in philosophy). It is a different question, however, if their comments and recommendations that recall philosophy are any good.

It is true that many intellectuals, philosophers included, have neglected the advancements and contributions in/from science. But it would appear the a similar charge may be given to Hawking and deGrasse Tyson regarding the developments in philosophy of science. Yes they can really be quite different. Still Einstein was not averse to them.



Enough rambling for the moment :)  This particular series of lectures is also for Project Einstein 2015

Something to read and refer to :)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8520033/Stephen-Hawking-tells-Google-philosophy-is-dead.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/82/Hawking_contra_Philosophy
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2014/05/22/why_does_neil_degrasse_tyson_hate_philosophy.html

Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science 2015

More than a month ago, I received the notification of acceptance for CLMPS 2015. I will be fixing a number of things before I can really go there. From their page (http://clmps.helsinki.fi/history.php):

Starting from 1960 the International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science has been held every four years in capital cities and/or by famous university centres.
  • 1960 Stanford, California, USA
  • 1964 Jerusalem, Israel
  • 1967 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • 1971 Bucharest, Romania
  • 1975 London, Ontario, Canada
  • 1979 Hanover, Federal Republic of Germany
  • 1983 Salzburg, Austria
  • 1987 Moscow, USSR
  • 1991 Uppsala, Sweden
  • 1995 Florence, Italy
  • 1999 Krakow, Poland
  • 2003 Oviedo, Spain
  • 2007 Beijing, China
  • 2011, Nancy France