Events

KLI Colloquia are informal, public talks that are followed by extensive dissussions. Speakers are KLI fellows or visiting researchers who are interested in presenting their work to an interdisciplinary audience and discussing it in a wider research context. We offer three types of talks:

1. Current Research Talks. KLI fellows or visiting researchers present and discuss their most recent research with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.

2. Future Research Talks. Visiting researchers present and discuss future projects and ideas togehter with the KLI fellows and the Vienna scientific community.

3. Professional Developmental Talks. Experts about research grants and applications at the Austrian and European levels present career opportunities and strategies to late-PhD and post-doctoral researchers.

  • The presentation language is English.
  • If you are interested in presenting your current or future work at the KLI, please contact the Scientific Director or the Executive Manager.

Event Details

KLI Brown Bag
A Cognitive Approach to Theorizing in the Empirical Sciences
Marion VORMS (IHPST, CNRS, Paris)
2010-07-08 13:15 - 2010-07-08 13:15
KLI for Evolution and Cognition Research, Altenberg, Austria
Organized by KLI

Topic description:
Philosophers of science have traditionally approached scientific theories from an abstract point of view, aiming at reconstructing their logical structure with formal tools. In this paper, I shall argue in favor of an alternative approach to theorizing, taking seriously the idea that a theory has to serve a double function, namely a representational and an inferential function. As I shall argue, if one wants to understand the relation between these two functions, one has to pay attention both to the actual reasoning scientists do when they use and develop scientific hypotheses, and to the particular form under which these hypotheses are expressed. I shall show the fruitfulness of such an approach by applying it to an analysis of the invention and development of genetic maps in the 1920s.

 

Biographical note:
Marion Vorms is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (IHPST, CNRS, Paris). She recently defended her PhD dissertation in philosophy of science, advocating a cognitive approach to scientific theories, and applying it to case studies in classical mechanics classical genetics.