Dear ISH members,

Please find below a call for paper

Best,
Lucie

*Call for Papers: “The Pursuitworthiness of Experiments Across the
Sciences”*
Topical Collection in the *European Journal for Philosophy of Science*
*Guest Editors: *Enno Fischer (Institute of Philosophy, TU Dresden) &
Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda (Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, KU
Leuven)
Open for submissions:* 1 November 2024 – 30 April 2025*
Originally going back to Larry Laudan’s (1977) distinction between the
‘context of acceptance’ and the ‘context of pursuit,’ the concept of
*pursuitworthiness* has garnered considerable attention in the philosophy
of science in recent years. For instance, philosophers have explored the
different stances on pursuitworthiness adopted by towering figures in the
field such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend (e.g., Šešelja & Straßer,
2013; Shaw, 2022), and have advanced and debated manifold epistemic
criteria on what makes a scientific idea or proposal worthy of being
undertaken (e.g., Achinstein, 1993; Šešelja et al., 2012; Šešelja &
Straßer, 2014; Shan, 2020; DiMarco & Khalifa, 2019, Fleisher, 2022). The
significance of this enlarging body of scholarship notwithstanding,
philosophical reflections on the pursuitworthiness of scientific research
have almost exclusively focused on theories, (and to a lesser extent on)
models and research programmes *in toto *(e.g., Lichtenstein, 2021;
Cabrera, 2021; Haueis & Kästner, 2022; Han, 2023; Fischer, 2024a; Wolf &
Duerr, 2024), whereas systematic and comprehensive reflection on the
*pursuitworthiness
of experiments* is hitherto lacking (but see Laymon & Franklin, 2022;
DiMarco & Khalifa, 2022; Fischer, 2024b). This is an important and somewhat
surprising lacuna because it is often the experiments, out of the many
elements that make up scientific practice, that require large amounts of
funding, deliberations, and long-term planning.
For the philosophy of science, delving into the pursuitworthiness of
experiments is also particularly pressing given that since the years of
Laudan’s initial proposal, the philosophy of experiment has re-established
itself as a central element in the canon of the discipline (see, e.g.,
Hacking, 1983, 1988; Gooding et al., 1989; Steinle, 2002; Radder, 2003;
Weber, 2009; Feest & Steinle, 2016; Bokulich & Bocchi, 2024). Philosophers
of experiment have foregrounded many important considerations (e.g.,
material cultures of experimentation and the role of instruments, the
importance of tacit knowledge in experimental manipulations, and how
experiments affect concept, model and theory formation), but they have not
inquired in detail about the context of pursuit of experiments in different
scientific settings. In this sense, the topic of the pursuitworthiness of
experiments lies at the interface between two salient, overarching problem
spaces in the philosophy of science.
The aim of this topical collection is to put discussions of the
pursuitworthiness of experiments on the agenda of general philosophy of
science and the philosophies of the special sciences. It will bring
together contributions addressing experiments across the sciences, from the
physical and chemical sciences to the life, biomedical, and cognitive
sciences, as well as the social sciences.
For more details on possible topics and questions, references, and
instructions for submission, see the full call for papers:
*https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/iphil/phisci/ressourcen/dateien/CfP_EJPS.pdf
<https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/iphil/phisci/ressourcen/dateien/CfP_EJPS.pdf>*
For more information, please contact the guest editors:
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