Science and speculation

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• Adrian Currie (University of Exeter)
• Wednesday 21 October 2020, 13:00-14:30
• Teams.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Matt Farr.

Despite wide recognition that speculation is critical for successful science, philosophers of science have attended little to it. When they have, speculation has been characterized in narrowly epistemic terms: a hypothesis is speculative due to its (lack of) evidential support. These accounts provide little guidance to what makes speculation productive or egregious, and how to foster the former while avoiding the latter. I examine how scientists discuss speculation and identify various functions speculations play. On this basis, I provide an account which starts with the epistemic function of speculation. This analysis grounds a richer discussion of when speculation is egregious and when it is productive, based in both fine-grained analysis of the speculation’s purpose, and what I call the ‘epistemic situation’ scientists face.

This talk is part of the CamPoS (Cambridge Philosophy of Science) seminar series.

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