History and philosophy of science

A unified discipline

The organization &HPS (Integrated History and Philosophy of Science) has set forth a program for a unified discipline: "Good history and philosophy of science is not just history of science into which some philosophy of science may enter, or philosophy of science into which some history of science may enter. It is work that is both historical and philosophical at the same time. The founding insight of the modern discipline of HPS is that history and philosophy have a special affinity and one can effectively advance both simultaneously".

One origin of the unified discipline is the historical approach to the discipline of the philosophy of science. This hybrid approach is reflected in the career of Thomas Kuhn. His first permanent appointment, at the University of California, Berkeley, was to a position advertised by the philosophy department, but he also taught courses from the history department. When he was promoted to full professor in the history department only, Kuhn was offended at the philosophers' rejection because "I sure as hell wanted to be there, and it was my philosophy students who were working with me, not on philosophy but on history, were nevertheless my more important students". This attitude is also reflected in his historicist approach, as outlined in Kuhn's seminal Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 2nd ed. 1970), wherein philosophical questions about scientific theories and, especially, theory change are understood in historical terms, employing concepts such as paradigm shift.

However, Kuhn was also critical of attempts fully to unify the methods of history and philosophy of science: "Subversion is not, I think, too strong a term for the likely result of an attempt to make the two fields into one. They differ in a number of their central constitutive characteristics, of which the most general and apparent is their goals. The final product of most historical research is a narrative, a story, about particulars of the past. [...] The philosopher, on the other hand, aims principally at explicit generalizations and at those with universal scope. He is no teller of stories, true or false. His goal is to discover and state what is true at all times and places rather than to impart understanding of what occurred at a particular time and place." More recent work questions whether these methodological and conceptual divisions are in fact barriers to a unified discipline.

Australia

University of Melbourne

University of New South Wales

University of Sydney

University of Wollongong (Science, Technology, and Society)

Austria

University of Vienna

Canada

McGill University

University of Alberta (Science, Technology, and Society)

University of Toronto

York University (Science & Technology Studies)

China

Peking University

Renmin University of China (Philosophy of Science and Technology)

Shanxi University (Philosophy of Science and Technology)

Czech Republic

Charles University

Denmark

University of Aarhus (History of Science)

France

SPHERE, CNRS, Paris

University of Paris VII: Diderot

Germany

Münchner Zentrum für Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte (History of Science and Technology)

Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und Technik, Univ. Stuttgart (History of Science and Technology)

Greece

University of Athens

Hungary

Eötvös Loránd University

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

India

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Iran

Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran http://www.srbiau.ac.ir/

sharif University , Philosophy of Science Department

Israel

Hebrew University

Tel Aviv University

Italy

Sapienza University of Rome [1]

Japan

Hokkaido University (Natural History Sciences)

University of Kyoto

University of Tokyo

Korea

Chonbuk National University (Science Studies)

KAIST (Science and Technology Policy)

Korea University (Science and Technology Studies)

Seoul National University

Malaysia

University of Malaya

Mexico

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Netherlands

University of Twente (Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society)

University of Utrecht

Portugal

New University of Lisbon

University of Coimbra

University of Lisbon

Switzerland

ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

University of Bern

United Kingdom

London School of Economics (Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method)

University of Aberdeen

University of Bristol

University College London

University of Leeds

University of Cambridge

United States

Arizona State University, Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology

California Institute of Technology

Case Western Reserve University

Duke University

Florida State University

Georgia Institute of Technology

Harvard University (History of Science)

Indiana University

Johns Hopkins University (History of Science, Technology, and Medicine)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michigan State University

Northwestern University (Science in Human Culture)

Princeton University (History of Science)

Stanford University

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Irvine (Logic and Philosophy of Science)

University of California, San Diego (Science Studies)

University of Chicago

University of Notre Dame

University of Pennsylvania (History and Sociology of Science)

University of Pittsburgh

University of Texas

University of Washington

Western Michigan University

Yale University (History of Science and Medicine)