Revolutions, Research Traditions and Rationality

Period 01-10-2007 to 30-09-2009
Type Predoctoral Fellowship
Promotor(s) Prof. Dr. Erik Weber
Fellow Dunja Seselja
Funding agency Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF)

The research is devoted to the notion of rationality and its dynamics underlying scientific practice, especially in the times of scientific revolutions. The aim of the research is to discuss the following issues:
1. The stability and identity of research traditions. What sort of changes can a research tradition sustain before it is seen as a new one? Is it at all possible to delineate research traditions by means of strict criteria?
2. The concept of scientific revolution. Is there a difference between the most prominent conceptions of scientific revolutions in the field of philosophy of science and ways in which this term has been used in the history of sciences?
3. The rationality of pursuit decisions. Can a decision to pursue one research tradition rather than another one be rational?
4. The rationality of theory choice and its modeling in terms of argumentation frameworks.
These questions will be answered by means of historical case studies. The cases will be analysed from three perspectives: a formal-logical one, an argumentation-theoretic one, and a language-philosophical one.