Chères et chers collègues, Nous lançons un séminaire d’épistémologie sociale et formelle, ouvert à toutes et tous. Les séances auront lieu le mercredi, d’ordinaire entre 13h00 et 15h00. Pourriez-vous avoir l’amabilité de faire circuler cette information, notamment auprès de vos étudiants de master et doctorants?
Pour la première séance du 6 novembre, nous avons le plaisir d’accueillir Dunja Šešelja (TU Eindhoven) qui fera une intervention intitulée: “Can computational methods be of use to integrated history and philosophy of science?” (résumé en fin de message). La conférence se tiendra à la maison de la Recherche, 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris, salle S002 (prévoir une carte d’étudiant, une carte professionnelle ou une pièce d’identité pour accéder au bâtiment). Ce séminaire est financé par les laboratoires SND (Sorbonne Université, UMR8011, Paris), les Archives Poincaré (Université de Lorraine, UMR 7117, Nancy) et le MAPP (Université de Poitiers, EA 2626). En vous remerciant de votre attention, Les organisateurs (Thomas Boyer-Kassem, Cyrille Imbert, Isabelle Drouet, Cédric Paternotte). Contact : thomas.boyer.kassem (at) univ-poitiers (point) fr ; Cyrille.Imbert (at) univ-lorraine (point) fr *Calendrier prévisionnel des séances en 2019-2020* 6 novembre 2019 : Dunja Šešelja (TU Eindhoven) 27 novembre 2019 : Igor Douven (Paris, CNRS, SND) 22 janvier 2020 : à préciser 4 mars 2020 : Liam Kofi Bright (London School of Economics) 6 mai : à préciser 17 juin : à préciser Stephen John (University of Cambridge): 6 mai ou 17 juin, date à confirmer *Mercredi 6 Novembre :* *Dunja Šešelja. “**Can computational methods be of use to integrated history and philosophy of science**?”* Agent-based models (ABMs) have in recent years become an increasingly popular method for the study of social aspects of scientific inquiry. A common feature of ABMs developed in philosophy of science and social epistemology is that they are simple, highly idealized representations of science. Nevertheless, many of these models have been motivated by concrete episodes from the history of science, suggesting potential explanations of the given cases. The aim of this talk is two-fold. On the one hand, I will present a specific type of *targeted robustness analysis*, which helps in assessing the explanatory power of a given ABM with respect to a concrete historical episode. On the other hand, I will argue that such an analysis can reveal possible problems in received historical narratives about scientific episodes, leading to their re-examination. I will illustrate this point by a concrete episode from the history of medicine, the research on peptic ulcer disease, which has often served as a motivation for ABMs of science. Beside discussing simulations aimed to represent this case-study, I will show how digital textual analysis can serve as a complementary computational method, useful to the research in integrated history and philosophy of science. (The first part of the talk will be based on joint work with AnneMarie Borg, Daniel Frey and Christian Straßer; the second part will be based on joint work with Kim Naumann and Bartosz Radomski.) *Related papers:* 1. Frey D. and Šešelja D. (2018) Robustness and Idealizations in Agent-Based Models of Scientific Interaction, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, *https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axy039*. 2. Frey D. and Šešelja D. (2018) What is the Epistemic Function of Highly Idealized Agent-Based Models of Scientific Inquiry?, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, *https://doi.org/10.1177/0048393118767085*. 3. Borg, A., Frey D., Šešelja D. and Straßer C. (2018) Epistemic effects of scientific interaction: approaching the question with an argumentative agent-based model, Historical Social Research 43.1, pp. 285–309. 4. Borg A., Frey D., Šešelja D. and Straßer C. (2019) Theory-Choice, Transient Diversity and the Efficiency of Scientific Inquiry, European Journal of Philosophy of Science, *http://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-019-0249-5* . -- https://www.vidal-rosset.net/[email protected]
