EPSA09: Second Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association

Abstract

European philosophy of science has come of age. Of course, philosophy of science was born in Europe already a long time ago: some will say it happened in Vienna in 1929, while others might mention Athens, 335 BC, or some other place and time in between. And there has been mature European philosophy of science for at least a number of decades if not centuries. But only since 2006 have philosophers of science joined forces in EPSA, the European Philosophy of Science Association, a true sign of maturation. One of the aims of EPSA is to organize biennial meetings in years alternating with the well-known PSA meetings. The first EPSA conference (EPSA07) took place in Madrid in November 2007 and was very successful; see JGPS 39 (2008) 157-159 for a report. The second conference (EPSA09) was held at VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 2009. Thus, the goal of establishing a tradition of biennial meetings has been reached. It has already been decided that the next meeting will be in Athens, Greece, in 2011. EPSA09 was organized by a Local Organizing Committee chaired by Henk de Regt and Hans Radder (VU University Amsterdam). The format of the conference was similar to that of the first meeting in Madrid, with the exception that not only individuals contributed papers but also symposia were programmed. In addition, three invited speakers from different countries and different subfields gave plenary lectures. As in Madrid, the call for papers generated a lot of response: 293 contributed papers and 34 symposium proposals were submitted, many of which were of high quality. Thus, the Programme Committee, consisting of experienced philosophers of science from Europe and elsewhere and chaired by Stephan Hartmann (Tilburg University) and Samir Okasha (University of Bristol), faced the difficult task of selecting the very best papers in a wide range of subfields. They succeeded very well, and the result was a programme that reflected the broad spectrum of philosophy of science and contained many interesting, high-quality papers and symposia. The final programme featured three plenary lectures and about 186 papers in 6 parallel sessions: 20 symposia (with about four papers per symposium) and 106 contributed papers. The full programme of EPSA09 is available on the conference website: http://www. epsa09.org/.