Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is (PYMOWYM) principle: All research on historical phenomena both assumes and makes conclusions about the workings of the relevant phenomena. The commitments limit and shape the possible structures of the phenomena in the future. — How can a historian (or a historiographical community) identify a chunk of actual history […]

This post is a brief abstract for a talk I will give. Further discussion about the topics can be found in (at least) the following posts: Rational Reconstructions from History to Future Future of Science. How to Build and Assess Scenarios? Theoretical Structures in the Estimating the Futures of Science [ABOUT VALUE-LADENNESS] History and Causality. […]

I have defended causal presentism in the historiography of science before. (See here for a blog text; see here for 200 page defense.) Quite often I have been asked whether causal presentism is applicable to other fields of historiography, such as historiography of war or historiography of politics. This is presented as a critique towards […]

In this post, I discuss further how we can build scenarios of the future of science by using theoretical taxonomies. I also discuss how it is possible to assess the merits of the taxonomies and scenarios. … In order to understand how and to what extent we can estimate the future of science, we need […]

In this post, I discuss the topic of the future of values (axiological futurism) and provide my own interpretation of when and why it is important and what tensions it might have. … In an excellent paper ”Axiological futurism: The systematic study of the future of values” (2021), John Danaher discusses the issue of value-change […]

Here you can find a manuscript that discusses philosophy of science from a novel perspective.

In this post, I point towards interesting connections between the “poststructural toolbox” (Inayatullah 2004; 1998) and philosophical analysis of science. The poststructural toolbox consists of deconstruction, genealogy, distance, alternative pasts and futures, reordering knowledge. Next, I show how each element can be found from the philosophy of science and how the insights in the field […]

This post is a continuation from the previous post. Sohail Inayatullah (1998) has formulated a method of futures studies called Causal layered analysis (CLA). This method “is concerned less with predicting a particular future and more with opening up the present and past to create alternative futures” (815). It is a “method that reveals deep worldview committments [sic] […]

The philosophy of science has improved our understanding of science, but this understanding has not been developed into future-oriented thinking. However, there are many interesting connections and similarities between the philosophy of science and causal layered analysis. Explicating these connections and similarities makes it possible to open “up the present and past to create alternative […]

Not too serious. Most references can be found from Wikipedia… “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hairWarm smell of colitas, rising up through the air” A reference to Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus (c. 586 – c. 526 BC) who said “Just as our soul… being air holds us together, so pneuma and air encompass […]