I realized it is been a few months since my last post here. I have been completely immersed in an extensive research and analysis project that has consumed all my time and mental energy lately. Without breaching confidentiality, I was commissioned to conduct a literature review synthesizing research insights on the future of universities globally. […]

This talk argues for the value of using philosophy of science to construct scenarios about possible futures of science. Scenarios are structured descriptions of hypothetical future situations and events. Philosophy provides theoretical resources for scenario construction by offering accounts of scientific change. Different philosophical theories lead to different scenarios, revealing unique possibilities for the future. […]

In this post, I discuss what is peculiar in the debate over realism in philosophy of history when compared to realism-debate in philosophy of science. I argue that the arguments for historical antirealism are of a poor quality or, at least, unclear. Scientific realism can be characterized in three theses: The Metaphysical Thesis: The world […]

The post is based on a lecture given to researchers in human and social sciences. Science and Its Futures In this post, I want to discuss about how we can think about potential futures for scientific research and consider our role in shaping those futures responsibly, with a focus on the human and social sciences. […]

A quote from a review report: This is how philosophers of science understand futures research. I get the same criticism about the field as such every time I write to PoS journal. Some thoughts: Yes, surely scientists in a domain can and do study possible outcomes in that domain. However, understanding the futures of interesting […]

When it comes to the future trajectory of academic institutions, a noteworthy development has become identifiable: the growing tendency of universities towards increased specialization in specific fields. This post aims to analyze the potential ramifications of such a trend by drawing on concepts within the philosophy of science, specifically, the idea of localism. The objective […]

Futures research, despite being a dedicated field with unique goals, methods, and assumptions, carries a mystery. This specialized discipline delves into potential scenarios across all domains of life, every single one of which is also studied by another research field. Hence, the existence of futures research as an independent field poses a significant mystery: Why […]

Introduction Scientific realism, one of the main positions in the philosophy of science, is a stance towards the ontology of scientific knowledge. Philosophers such as Stathis Psillos articulate it as the view that the world described by our best scientific theories is a largely accurate representation of a mind-independent reality. Scientific realism stands on three […]

The Black-Scholes model provides a nice case study of performativity in financial markets. Performativity, as a notion, refers to how economic models and theories can shape the markets they aim to describe, influencing behavior and, in turn, the dynamics of the market itself. This post will discuss the rise and fall of the Black-Scholes model, […]

1. Introduction “Had Eddington lost his faith in humanity, the (amount of) gravitational deflection would not have been observed”. This statement is about events that did not happen. The antecedent is against the facts – it is counterfactual. The whole statement is a counterfactual conditional that describes how things would have gone, had something gone […]