International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science

International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science
Name	International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science
Formation	20th century
Type	Learned society
Location	International
Fields	History of philosophy of science
Purpose	Promotion of research and teaching
Leader title	President

Contents

International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science is an international learned society dedicated to the study of the historical development of philosophical reflection on the sciences. It connects scholars working on figures such as Aristotle, Plato, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Popper with historians researching institutions like the Royal Society, the Académie des Sciences, the University of Paris, and the University of Cambridge. The society fosters dialogues across traditions represented by names including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Isaac Newton, John Locke, David Hume, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

History and founding

The society emerged in the wake of postwar internationalism that brought together participants from conferences such as the Dawn of Positivism milieu, meetings influenced by figures like Alexandre Koyré, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, and Norwood Russell Hanson. Early organizers had affiliations with institutions including Harvard University, University of Oxford, University of Chicago, University of Cambridge, and University of Vienna and drew on traditions associated with Vienna Circle, Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, École Normale Supérieure, and Princeton University. Founding members included scholars who had worked on topics connected to Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Blaise Pascal, Pierre Duhem, and Émilie du Châtelet, and they sought to institutionalize networks already visible at events like the International Congress of Philosophy and the History of Science Society meetings.

The society’s mission emphasizes historical scholarship on philosophical figures and episodes such as Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and debates sparked by Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrödinger. Objectives include promoting research on authors like Spinoza, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, George Berkeley, Auguste Comte, Wilhelm Dilthey, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger; supporting study of episodes tied to Industrial Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution, and institutions such as Max Planck Society. The society aims to facilitate exchanges among scholars linked to archives at the British Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bodleian Library, and the Library of Congress.

Membership comprises historians and philosophers affiliated with universities including Columbia University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, New York University, University of Toronto, McGill University, University of Edinburgh, King’s College London, and London School of Economics. Governance follows elected offices—president, secretary, treasurer, and council—with precedents from bodies like the International Congress of Historical Sciences and the Royal Historical Society. Officers have included scholars connected to traditions traced to Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Poincaré, Michael Polanyi, Carl Hempel, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Paul Ricœur. Committees manage ethics, conferences, publications, and outreach, engaging with archival partners such as the Science Museum, London and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

The society sponsors biennial and triennial conferences echoing formats seen at the International Congress of Philosophy, the World Congress of Philosophy, and the History of Science Society annual meeting. Programs feature panels on topics related to Newtonian mechanics, Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics, debates over phrenology, the impact of thermodynamics, and philosophical assessment of work by Gregor Mendel, Barbara McClintock, James Watson, and Rosalind Franklin. Keynote speakers have been drawn from scholars of figures such as Kurt Gödel, Alan Turing, Norbert Wiener, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Jacques Derrida. Conferences often co-locate with events at venues like the British Library, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Smithsonian Institution, and the Palazzo Vecchio.

The society publishes proceedings, monograph series, and occasional volumes resembling outlets associated with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Springer Nature. Edited volumes address the work of Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Pascal, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Peirce, James, and Dewey. The society confers awards named in honor of scholars like Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Alexandre Koyré, and I. B. Cohen to recognize career achievement, early-career research, and best paper or dissertation in areas connected to philosophy of science and history hosted by publishers such as Brill and Johns Hopkins University Press.

Category:Learned societies Category:History of philosophy of science