You are very welcome to join us at the following talk on philosophy and
history of science. Attendance is free and open to all. Apologies for
cross-postings.
best wishes
Damien Fennell
Dr Towfic Shomar*
'Theories as Obstacles'
Thursday February 14th, 4-6pm
Contingency and Dissent in Science Special Invited Speaker
T206, Lakatos Building,
London School of Economics
Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE
Abstract
Scientific theories, sometimes, play a major role in preventing the
advancement in science. Theories set the framework of thinking in certain
directions, it forces scientists to discard certain information because it
does not fit with the way these theories perceive the world, and hence a
huge amount of information is lost. Now, have these information being
processed and analyzed, we would have been presented with a different
version of events, with a different science. History of physics provide us
with many examples where theories prevented scientists from advancing in
certain ways. The breakthrough came always from minds that had not yet
been poisoned with the theories’ posits. Some of these examples are
presented here. Can our understanding to such history help us in solving
the current crisis in physics? A discussion of the role of String Theory
in theoretical physics, and the idea of unification in general, might help
in giving an answer to such question.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
* Vice dean, Head of the Dept. of Human and Social Sciences, Faculty of
Arts, Philadelphia University - Jordan. Research Associate, CPNSS, LSE -
London.
This event is part of the (AHRC funded) Contingency and Dissent in Science
Project at the CPNSS, London School of Economics.
For more information, please see:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/projects/ContingencyDissentInScience
/Default.htm
|