Università Roma Tre

The course is an introduction to central themes and problems in philosophy of science and theory of knowledge, such as scientific explanation, the nature of reasoning and hypotheses in the sciences, the cognitive content of theories, seen also in the light of key episodes in the history of science, and the demarcation between science, philosophy, religion and ethics. While in the first part of the course we will present these general issues using Okasha's text, in the second part we will make direct reference to texts and authors, reading and commenting on texts and articles by three important 20th century philosophers of science: Karl Popper Karl Hempel and Rudolf Carnap. The fundamental problem addressed by the course is the objectivity of scientific knowledge and thus an attempt to respond to Kant's question: what can we know?

Okasha S. Philosophy of science: a very short introduction
K. Popper Science and Philosophy
C. Hempel Philosophy of the natural sciences , some chapters available online on the professor's website
R. Carnap Philosophical foundations of physics available online on the professor's website

For physicists 3 CUF.
Okasha Il mio primo libro di filosofia della scienza, Einaudi
Carnap I fondamenti filosofici della fisica, Il saggiatore (capitoli disponibili sul sito del docente)