April 29, 2026 @ 16:00 – 17:30 CET
This week, we were delighted to welcome Janet Kourany, professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, to our bi-weekly seminar.
In preparation for the session, we read her recent chapter “The Present Plight of Science, and Our Plight”, a text about how philosophy of science can help science serve society better than it currently does. We selected this chapter because it is one of the central aims of this seminar series to gather ideas for how philosophy of climate science could change to better address injustices. Albeit directed at a more general level, Kourany’s text offered us an ideal for what science should be like, three problems that prevent current science from fulfilling this ideal and three ways in which philosophy of science might help.
The ideal for science that Kourany proposes is based on Francis Bacon’s work: science should not only produce knowledge, but knowledge that makes the lives of humans better. Kourany highlights three obstacles for current science achieving this: the so-called “war on science”, incentive structures in science and biases that arise from certain groups being excluded or underrepresented in research. She then discusses three projects for philosophy of science to help address these problems: clarify the role and nature of social values that should shape research, clarify what epistemic affirmative action for historically marginalised groups should look like and, lastly, celebrate good and responsible research.
We began our discussion by reflecting upon how things have gotten worse in the US and Canada since the publication of the chapter, especially with regard to research on gender, race and climate. We talked about what is being done to address this and what, if anything, Europeans can do to support their American colleagues.
We then moved on to the main claims of the text. A central question we touched upon was whether or not we accept Bacon’s ideal, especially from the perspective of the Global South. Is it an ideal for Western science, or rather one that can be endorsed across cultures? One response to this was to take the liberty to reinterpret and adjust Bacon’s picture where necessary. While it is true that for Bacon it was not a global public that science would serve, many of the current societal problems are global, which is why science needs to be, too.
We also discussed to what extent philosophy of science should celebrate research and promote trust in science, given the problems that Kourany herself highlights. Kourany emphasised that it is crucial to consider failures, biases, and shortcomings but not to promote a relativism that undermines the very possibility of science to fulfil its role well.
Some questions were left unanswered: are current philosophy of science debates really on track to fulfil the role that Kourany outlines for us? What does this mean specifically for the philosophy of climate science? We hope to find more answers to those questions in future sessions!
Organisers: Sapna Kumar and Futura Venuto