Welcome to the homepage of the

Dutch-Flemish Network for Philosophy of Science and Technology

The aim of the network is to promote the philosophy of science and technology in The Netherlands and Flanders. This aim will be realized through the organisation of workshops, symposia and other meetings. The targeted audience of these meetings is PhD students and other 'promovendi'. The meetings might also be of interest to advanced masters students and postdocs. The planning, preparation and realisation of the activities requires regular contact between senior researchers from the universities involved. Thus, these contacts may create additional opportunities for co-operation between those researchers. The language of the meetings will be either Dutch or English.

For an overview of research in philosophy of science and technology in Flanders and the Netherlands, see directory.

The common perspective of the Network is a philosophical approach to science and technology. That is to say, this approach is primarily theoretical or conceptual; it does make use of empirical studies of science and technology without itself being empirical. Issues that may be addressed within this philosophical framework include ontological, epistemological or methodological questions (for instance, questions about realism, experiment and observation, or technological design) as well as those ethical or social questions that are directly connected with the content or methods of science and technology (for instance, questions about nature and the environment, the role of values in science or technology, or the issue of science, technology and gender). The Network as such does not advocate an a priori stance on how to approach or answer such philosophical questions.

The Network aims to cover a broad range of sciences: formal, physical, technological, biomedical, cognitive and socio-cultural sciences. Combining science and technology is a natural thing, given the greatly increased interconnections between science and technology over the past 150 years. Indeed, in some cases (for example, computer science or biotechnology) the two can hardly be kept apart.

The core activities of the Network are two-day workshops for PhD students in the area of philosophy of science and technology. Some events may be of interest to researchers in the areas of foundational studies of specific sciences, history of science, general epistemology or social and cultural philosophy of science and technology.

More information can be obtained from the contact person of your university (see participating universities) or the president (m.boon@gw.utwente.nl).