Mathematisation and computation in philosophy and history of science

Contemporary research practices are increasingly dependent on applied mathematics, but this field has been largely overlooked by philosophers of science.

The goal of this conference is to provide a venue for the discussion of novel approaches to mathematisation and similar issues related to the use of formal and digital methods in the natural, social and human sciences. The conference explores the intersection of mathematics and other scientific disciplines, and in particular the interdisciplinary nature of applied mathematics and its entanglements with other disciplinary modes of research.

How does mathematisation and computation change the methodological structure of science? How do mathematics, logic and coding as auxiliary disciplines relate to their own professional practices, standards and theoretical assumptions? Should we think of new computational tools as offering only provocations, surfacing evidence, suggesting patterns and structures and adumbrating trends, or should we consider computation as pointing towards a new way of working with representation and mediation, what might be called the mathematical ‘folding’ of reality, whereby the researcher is able to approach reality in entirely new ways?

Programme

09:45 - Introduction to the conference.
            Jesper Lützen, Chair of the National Committee for the History and Philosophy of
            Science & Hanne Andersen, PI of the Danish Research Network on Philosophy of
            Science.

10:00 - Alfred Lotka and Nicolas Rashesky: Different modelling strategies in the beginning
            of mathematical biology.
            Tinne Hoff Kjeldsen (University of Copenhagen) and Andrea Loettgers (University
            of Geneva)

10:30 - Models, images and visualization in Heinrich Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics.
            Jesper Lützen (University of Copenhagen)

11:00 - TBA.
            Henrik Kragh Sørensen (Aarhus University)

11:30 - Lunch.

13:00 - Automating Diagnostics.
            Karin Tybjerg (University of Copenhagen)

13:30 - Mathematical abstractions and biological possibility spaces.
            Sara Green (University of Copenhagen)

14:00 - Pulling and pushing propositional algorithms – The case of operational  definitions
            in psychiatry.
            Rolf Hvidtfeldt (University of Southern Denmark)

14:30 - Coffee break.

15:00 - When Climate Models Speak.
            Gabriel Henderson (Aarhus University)

15:30 - Models in biology according to Gunawardena.
            Henrik Nielsen (Danish Technical University)

16:00 - The computational turn in the humanities – Ontology, algorithms and
            interdisciplinarity.
            David Budtz-Pedersen (University of Copenhagen)