History and Philosophy of Sciences

The course discusses fundamental topics of epistemology and general philosophy of science through case studies from the history of diverse scientific disciplines. In the first part of the course we shall pay particular attention to the following themes: methodology of scientific enquiry, nature and role of conventions in science, mutual relationship between experimentation and theorization, the problem of demarcation between science, pseudoscience and other domains of human thinking, the notion of scientific change and scientific revolution, the structure of scientific explanation, social aspects of scientific enterprise.
The second part of the course will deal with explorations and biodiversity in visual and material history. During the 18th and 19th centuries, specifically the decades when scientific explorations of unknown lands became increasingly intensive and well-aimed, visual and material data acquired a crucial role. Returning to their home countries, both female and male explorers faced an extreme need of displaying what they had discovered, observed and studied during their voyages. They had to offer tangible evidence to support their theories. This occurred in essentially three ways: travel journals and written accounts (also sent as pieces of correspondence); detailed drawings; collections of exemplars. Meanwhile, images and exemplars proved to be fundamental in preserving and circulating new knowledge: private collections, herbaria, as well as educational tools of different kind opened the most recent discoveries and theories to a large audience, which was not confined to the women and men of science only.