Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Promotionsstudium Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit / doctoral courses Faculty of Sustainabiliy (Promotion / doctorate) -> Promotionskolleg Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaft -> Wissenschaftstheorie Nachhaltigkeitswissenschaften

Lehrveranstaltungen

Wissenschaftstheoretische Kontroversen (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Thomas Saretzki

Inhalt: Modern science has been shaped by controversies right from the start. Until today, its epistemic development is driven by processes of questioning and justifying knowledge claims in scientific publics. Scientific controversies have not only focused on hypotheses, models or theories related to specific objects or fields of study. In scientific controversies sooner or later basic epistemological questions related to truth claims and their critical appraisal reappear: What is science? How can we distinguish between scientific knowledge and non-scientific believe? How should scientific research proceed to produce new knowledge that can be justified intelligibly in order to be recognized intersubjectively as “true”? Can we assume a unity of science? If not, what kind of knowledge can and should different scientific disciplines try to achieve in terms of its scope, quality or significance for practice? This seminar starts from the hypothesis that the analysis and assessment of scientific controversies provides an instructive approach to understand basic issues in theories of science. These issues can be studied in classical controversies in the theory of science that have been performed or reconstructed under headings such as inductivism vs. falsificationism, realism vs. constructivism, positivism vs. critical theory, explanation vs. understanding, among others. Some of these controversies focused on the role of norms and values (e.g. Werturteilsstreit), on conceptual alternatives to classical action-theoretical foundations (e.g. behaviour, structure, or systems theory), on methodological approaches (e.g. experimentalism), on concepts of interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity or on the relation of science to its social, cultural or political context (e.g. enlightenment, democracy).