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Exploratory Workshop: Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice

Workshop Organizers: Uljana Feest (TU Berlin) & 
Friedrich Steinle (Bergische UniversitätWuppertal)

Place: Technische Universität Berlin, 
Hauptgebaeude, Strasse des 17. Juni, Raum H3005

Date: May 22/23, 2009

Program

May 22
9:00 – 9:15: Arrival
9:15 – 9:30: Introduction (Feest/Steinle)

1. Concept Formation and Knowledge Generation
9:30 – 10:30
Mieke Boon (Universiteit Twente): “Circumventing 
the realism-debate -- How concepts are made and shape the thinkable world”

10:30 – 11:30
Hanne Andersen (Aarhus University): “Concepts, knowledge, and groups”

11:30-12:00: break

2. Models and Modeling in Conceptual Innovation
12:00 – 1:00
Nancy Nersessian (Georgia Institute of 
Technology): “Modeling practices in conceptual innovation”

1:00 – 2:30: lunch

2:30 – 3:30
Dirk Schlimm (McGill University): “New approaches 
to the creation of mathematical concepts in the nineteenth century”

3:30-4:00: coffee break

3. Definitions in Scientific Practice
4:00 – 5:00
Uljana Feest (Technische Universität Berlin): 
“Concept formation and theory-construction: The 
role of operational definitions”

5:00 – 6:00
Corinne Bloch (Tel Aviv University/University of 
Pittsburgh): “Definitions as tools in investigative practice”

May 23
4. Concepts, Meaning, and Experiments
9:00 – 10:00
Theodore Arabatzis (National and Kapodistrian 
University of Athens): “Experimentation and the meaning of scientific concepts”

10:0 – 11:00
Friedrich Steinle (Bergische Universität Wuppertal): “Concepts and experiments”

11:00 – 11:30 break

5. Philosophical Appraisals
11:30 – 12:30
Allan Gotthelf (University of Pittsburgh): 
“Concepts and their Formation: philosophical support for the Steinle thesis”

12:30 – 2:00: lunch

2:00 – 3:00
Andreas Bartels (Universität Bonn): “Skepticism 
about Concepts. What is its point and what does 
it mean for historians of science?”

3:00 – 3:30: coffee

3:30 – 4:30: Final Discussion

Workshop Description
In the philosophy of science, concepts have 
traditionally been treated from the perspective 
of the rationality of conceptual change. 
Recently, however, there has been a surge of 
interest in the issue of how concepts themselves 
function in the research that gives rise to new 
scientific insights. While some philosophers and 
historians have framed their inquiries in terms 
of questions about the formation of empirical 
concepts in the investigative process, others 
have asked about the role of definitions in 
empirical research, or have started to examine 
the ways in which theoretical concepts figure in 
experimental practice. Yet others have attempted 
to model the cognitive mechanisms of the 
processes that can lead to creative conceptual 
innovations. Much of the work just mentioned is 
concerned with the empirical sciences, often 
quite explicitly focusing on the epistemology of 
experimentation. However, it is interesting to 
note that some recent work in the history and 
philosophy of mathematics has also investigated 
the ways in which conceptual structures contribute to knowledge generation.

While there are surely many differences among 
these various approaches, they share a few core 
elements. They focus on scientific concepts, 
rather than theories, as units of analysis, and 
on the ways in which concepts are formed and used 
rather than on what they represent. They analyze 
what has traditionally been called the context of 
discovery, rather than (or in addition to) the 
context of justification. And they examine the 
dynamics of research rather than the status of the finished research results.

These points raise several questions. For example:
-         Can concepts be clearly distinguished 
from the sets of beliefs we have about their referents?
-         What – if any – sense can be made of 
the separation between concepts and theories?
-         What are we to make of the 
terminological distinction between empirical and 
theoretical concepts in the light of Quine’s 
attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction?
-         Are there interesting similarities and 
differences between the productive role of 
concepts in the empirical sciences and in mathematics?
-         What underlying notion of investigative 
practice could be drawn on to explicate the role 
of concept use as an important scientific activity?
-         Is the distinction between discovery 
and justification really a helpful way of 
characterizing the research agendas pursued by 
scholars who are examining the role of concepts in investigative practice?
-         What is the philosophical import of 
inquiring into a dynamic (i.e., historical) 
process, and (conversely), from a 
historiographical point of view, does a focus on 
concepts face the danger of falling back into an 
old-fashioned version of the history of ideas?

Rationale of the Workshop
The workshop seeks to bring together scholars 
interested in the role of concepts in 
investigative practice in order to identify some 
key questions and issues, and to map out some 
directions for current and future research. We 
will invite participants to prepare a brief 
statement (10-15 minutes) in which they outline 
their own research interest, preferably by 
relating it to a scientific example. Speakers 
will be asked specifically to address at least 
some of the above questions, insofar as they are 
relevant to their research. However, they will, 
of course, also be encouraged to draw attention 
to other relevant questions. In addition, we 
would like speakers to reflect on what (if any) 
theory of concepts informs their research, and 
what bearing this has on the kinds of questions they ask.


Friedrich Steinle
Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte/ Historisches Seminar
Bergische Universitaet Wuppertal/ Fachbereich A
Gaussstr. 20, 42119 Wuppertal / Germany
Tel. +49-202-439-2897, Fax +49-202-439-3851
http://www2.uni-wuppertal.de/FBA/geschichte/index.htm
http://www.izwt.uni-wuppertal.de/