It is our pleasure to announce Professor Alexander Bird’s talk in Kraków next Wednesday (June 5th). The title is “Themes from Knowing Science” and the abstract is below. The talk will take place at the meeting of the Epistemology Unit of the Philosophy Department, Jagiellonian University on June 6, 2024 at 11 AM in room 39 (in person only!).
Alexander Bird is the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge and a fellow of St John’s College. His talk will be based on his recent book Knowing Science published by Oxford University Press.
Abstract: In this talk I will introduce the main ideas from my recent book Knowing Science (Oxford 2022). I will explain how the integration of knowledge-first epistemology into philosophy of science leads to a radically new epistemology for science. More importantly this epistemology is anti-empiricist. It also identifies the aim of science as being the acquisition of (scientific) knowledge, and progress in science as the accumulation of scientific knowledge. I explain how this integrates with a social epistemology with a central place for group knowledge. I conclude with reflections on meta-scientific knowledge—the realism versus anti-realism debate.