History and philosophy of science research
Situated at the crossroads of science and the humanities
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History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) is situated at the crossroads of science and the humanities. Our discipline provides a framework to engage critically with the social and philosophical significance of the sciences that shape our world.
HPS examines past and current developments in all areas of science, technology and medicine from a range of humanistic perspectives, using sociohistorical and philosophical techniques to explore the broader implications of scientific findings and how they were obtained. This research scholarship informs all HPS’s teaching.
Our community of researchers is one of the largest in the world. It specialises in the history and philosophy of physics, biology, psychology and psychiatry, taking a range of different perspectives on these areas of science.
In the 16th and early 17th century, science as we know it took shape when a small number of natural philosophers started to conduct experiments. This inaugurated one of the most exciting periods in the history of science, a period which has been dubbed the Scientific Revolution.
Research in this area focuses on the role of scientific instruments in scientific experimentation, the structure of scientific experiments, the founding of scientific societies, their characteristics and functioning, and the correspondence between philosophers and early scientists. In addition, more general philosophical concerns about the nature and status of scientific knowledge and historical ontology are investigated.
This research focuses on both the historical and philosophical foundations of physical theories, with a primary focus on quantum theories of gravity. We investigate the peculiar nature of quantum gravity as well as what the new theories of quantum gravity would tell us about the structure of the world. This overlaps with the study of space and time (see the associated Centre for Time).
This strand of research focuses on both basic biology and applied biomedicine. The biological focus takes in a broad sweep of evolutionary history (from the origins of life to the evolution of humans and other animals) and biodiversity (from the microscopic to the macroscopic). It looks both generally at how biological science has been practised and critically at specific episodes of biological research.
The biomedicine perspectives range equally broadly from the history of modern medicine, the development of medical institutions, the impact of medicine on everyday life, and the significance of modern medical technologies. There is also a comparative angle examining the development of medical traditions in other time periods and cultures.
Researchers in this area of HPS look into topics that range from the nature of minds and how they evolved to how evaluations of abnormal mental states have come about.This involves the study of how meant disorders have been explained and classified and the assumptions about science and human nature made by psychiatry and other fields, together with the lived experience of those who are labelled.
This emerging stream of research will look into technological innovations, such as AI and Synthetic Biology, and their impact on science and society.
