Nietzsches Wissenschaftsphilosophie / Nietzsche’s Philosophy of Science
International Conference at the Technische Universität Berlin 18–21 July 2010
Keynote speakers: Günter Abel (Berlin), R. Lanier Anderson (Stanford), Babette E. Babich (Fordham), Christian Benne (Odense), Tilman Borsche (Hildesheim), Thomas H. Brobjer (Uppsala), Marco Brusotti (Lecce / Berlin), Giuliano Campioni (Pisa), Maudemarie Clark (Hamilton), Klaus Fischer (Trier), Ronald N. Giere (Minnesota), Helmut Heit (Berlin), Andrea Orsucci (Cagliari), John Richardson (NYU), Richard Schacht (Urbana-Champaign), Werner Stegmaier (Greifswald), Paul van Tongeren (Nijmegen).
Science in the wide sense of the German word Wissenschaft, covering the natural and the social sciences as well as the humanities, is one of the most significant and efficient features of modern culture. Nietzsche’s philosophical work counts among the most prominent and influential reflections on this modern culture and he always put special emphasis on Wissenschaft. From Nietzsche’s philosophical point of view, science on the one hand is a specific mode of
constructing and defending knowledge-claims, which could be qualified epistemologically, but on the other hand it is a historically contextualized and socially relevant cultural technique. On the basis of these ideas, this conference focuses on the significance and current topicality of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science. Moreover, we would like to contextualize Nietzsche within the framework of his contemporary debates and investigate how his thoughts about “the problem of science” influenced the development of 20th and 21st-century philosophy of science. Therefore, we will have keynote-lectures and contributed papers on these four internally connected fields:
1. Topicality: What would be Nietzsche’s contribution to current issues in the philosophy of science?
2. Reception: How were Nietzsche’s ideas adopted by philosophers of natural and social sciences and humanities in the 20th and 21st centuries?
3. Content: How should we understand central themes and motives of Nietzsche’s philosophy of science?
4. Context: What is the significance of Nietzsche’s reception of the sciences and contemporary and classical text for his philosophy of science?
Conference languages are German and English.
Send a one-page abstract of your paper and a brief CV to Dr. Helmut Heit. Further information can be found here.
The deadline for submissions is 17 January 2010.
