CamPoS

CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) is a network of academics and students working in the philosophy of science in various parts of the University of Cambridge, including the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Faculty of Philosophy. The Wednesday afternoon seminar series features current research by CamPoS members as well as visitors to Cambridge and scholars based in nearby institutions.

Seminars are held on Wednesdays, 1.00–2.30pm in Seminar Room 2. Organised by Matt Farr.

Easter Term 2026

20 May

Svit Komel (Ljubljana) and Staffan Müller-Wille (HPS, Cambridge)
Let a hundred flowers blossom: philosophies and histories of science in continental Europe

The talk will present divergent ways of conceptualizing and institutionalizing the philosophy and history of science in continental Europe by looking at two examples: Germany and former Yugoslavia. In Germany, Begriffsgeschichte played a particularly prominent role, which among left-leaning reading groups at universities also was receptive to French epistemology and a re-reading of Hegel on history of philosophy and philosophy of natural sciences, as well as Marx on the science as generalized labour. The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, with its early emphasis on historical epistemology, was a curious outcome of this amalgam. On the other hand, in socialist Yugoslavia, epistemology was not predominantly institutionalized in specialized departments but in large interdisciplinary research centres. Considering epistemological debates in the 1980s on the relationship between philosophy – particularly Marxist philosophy – and science shows that within this context epistemology came to be understood primarily as a philosophical critique of historical scientific notions and rationalities. This led to a particular interpretation of historical epistemology and Anglo-American writings on the Scientific Revolution, viewing them as tools of radical critique rather than as opposing Marxist approaches to science.

10 June

Ovidiu Babeș (Free University Brussels)
Early moderns against mathematical sciences of nature

This is a talk about how several early modern philosophers argued against mathematizing natural philosophy. We all know that heroes of modern science – like Galileo, Huygens, or Newton – made natural philosophy mathematical. Yet recent literature increasingly points out that some disagreed: they believed that mathematics is not a proper part of natural knowledge. I reconstruct a specific strand of 18th-century British anti-mathematical philosophy. John Sergeant, Robert Greene, George Berkeley, and Thomas Reid resisted the mathematization of natural science. I claim that they did so for a similar reason: a shared philosophy of perception. They all held that the complexity of nature is a perceptual primitive, to the effect that mathematization necessarily involves ideas disconnected from nature. By articulating this philosophy, I also readdress the label of 'anti-mathematicism', thus gaining an analytical tool for understanding more critiques of early science.

17 June

CANCELLED