Most philosophers of science do philosophy “on” science. By contrast, others do philosophy “in” science (“PinS”), i.e., they use philosophical tools to address scientific problems and to provide scientifically useful proposals. Here, we consider the evidence in favor of a trend of this nature. We proceed in two stages.
First, we identify relevant authors and articles empirically with bibliometric tools, given that PinS would be likely to infiltrate science and thus to be published in scientific journals (“intervention”), cited in scientific journals (“visibility”) and sometimes recognized as a scientific result by scientists (“contribution”). We show that many central figures in philosophy of science have been involved in PinS, and that some philosophers have even “specialized” in this practice.
Second, we propose a conceptual definition of PinS as a process involving three conditions (raising a scientific problem, using philosophical tools to address it, and making a scientific proposal), and we ask whether the articles identified at the first stage fulfill all these conditions. We show that PinS is a distinctive, quantitatively substantial trend within philosophy of science, and that it demonstrates the existence of a methodological continuity from science to philosophy of science.
Please note that the lecture will not start at the normal time, but at 15:30.