The Boston University
Center for Philosophy and History of Science is one
of seventeen independent academic units of the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. The Center was initiated
by the series of colloquia established in 1960 by Professors
Marx Wartofsky and Robert S. Cohen, with colleagues
from other institutions of Greater Boston. They conceived
a forum of scholarly exchange in the broadest framework
of interdisciplinary and international concerns. In 2010, Professor Alisa Bokulich was appointed Director, succeeding Professor Alfred I. Tauber, who had been Director since 1993, who assumed the role of Director Emeritus, along with Professor Cohen.
The Center’s mission is to examine the historical,
philosophical, and social factors that govern the theory
and practice of science. By regarding all sciences,
from astronomy to zoology, as influenced by their cultural
environment, historical development, linguistic convention,
psychodynamic interrelations, logical systems, and epistemological
and metaphysical foundations (to name only the most
obvious), our scholarship is dedicated to demonstrating
the complex intellectual and social infrastructure of
science. In so doing, the Center encourages the pursuit
of both traditional and novel approaches to science
as a form of general knowledge. Subject to investigation
of how science progresses, what are its criteria of
truth, and what we learn in the broadest sense from
the scientific enterprise, modern science becomes the
subject of critical examination. Such study secures
our understanding of what increasingly has come to define
our knowledge of the world.
The Center is best known for its sponsorship of the
Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science, which began
as an informal interuniversity collaboration of scholars
in philosophy, the natural and social sciences, psychology,
religious studies, and the arts. This lecture series
has become a premier forum for national and international
dialogue concerning all aspects of the philosophy and
history of the sciences, mathematics, and logic. Each
year, the Center hosts an eclectic program of symposia
and lectures that is world-renowned for its diversity
and originality.
The Center also sponsors visiting professors, scholars,
and research
fellows who conduct investigations in the
rich intellectual milieu of Boston’s notable universities.
These scholars have come from some thirty-five countries,
spending up to two years at Boston University.
The Center promotes an active publication program. The annual colloquia offer
a forum for discussion of work in progress and of research
ready to be published, either as portions of longer
books or individual articles in scholarly journals.
Under the editorship of Robert Cohen, the Boston
Studies in the Philosophy of Science (published
by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht) produced more
than 200 volumes in the areas of philosophy of the natural
and social sciences, logic, mathematics, and the history
and social relations of science. These studies include
critical examination of current scientific theory and
practice, and a wide range of scholarship focused on
particular national traditions (e.g., of China, Poland,
Greece), historical periods and persons (e.g., Goethe,
Spinoza, Hegel, Bohr, Mach), and critical Festschriften
for notable scholars or scientists. (The series is now
edited by Jürgen Renn, Berlin, and Kostas Gavroglu,
Athens.)
The Center for Philosophy and History of Science is closely linked to the Center for Einstein Studies, also based at Boston University and directed by John Stachel. Boston University's Mugar Library holds a complete copy of physicist Albert Einstein's papers.
The Robert S. Cohen Archives
To consult the Robert S. Cohen Archives that contains correspondence, unpublished and published manuscripts and typescripts, reprints, journal issues, news clippings, photographic prints, sound recordings, memos and notebooks, please contact the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University:
771 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: 617 353 3696
Fax: 617 353 2838
Email: archives@bu.edu |
