Prof. Dr. Mauricio Suarez PhD, MSc, BSc
January 1st - 31th 2020 and July 1st - 31st 2022
Affiliation: Universidad Complutense Madrid
Research for a study about:
Research for a study for the book "Representation and Inference in Scientific Practice" about the modelling attitude in 19th century physics
Lecture
Representation in Art and Science
Date: March 17, 2021 | 15:00-17:00
Venue: online
Abstract:
I argue that artistic and scientific representation alike are best understood, in a deflationary spirit, to minimally require surrogative reasoning from what I call representational sources towards their (real or imagined; self-standing or constructed) targets. No other condition is universally required in either case, as shown by a variety of historically significant cases in both domains. I argue in particular against resemblance theories, showing that they do not deliver what an account of representation demands in general. Instead I provide a minimal logical characterisation of a suitably extended version of 'denotative function', broadly considered so as to apply to all types of representational sources.
Report on a fellowship at the Institute Vienna Circle (IVC) / Institut Wiener Kreis (IWK): 2020-2022
My original plan was for a fellowship at the IVC from January to July 2020. This had to be modified for obvious reasons during the pandemic. In the event I spent the whole of January 2020 in Vienna at the IVC and managed to finally return to complete the fellowship for another month in July 2022. A positive result of such interruptions is that I consequently enjoyed continued online involvement with the IVC community from February 2020 all the way to July 2022, including giving an online talk on my research to the IVC seminar on 17th March 2021.
Although my time physically at IVC was curtailed for such reasons beyond my control, the intellectual plan for the fellowship was very successfully carried out in precisely the terms described in the original application. I had proposed to carry out research in connection with my ongoing book for the University of Chicago Press on scientific modelling. I used January 2020 to delve into archives and do some work on Ludwig Boltzmann and the Bildtheorie, as part of the initial historical discussion in chapter 2. By the time I returned to Vienna two and a half years later I was culminating the project and managed to produce the final version of the manuscript, in response to referees, while a resident in Vienna. The book was submitted to publishers from my desk at the IVC in the morning on July 28, 2022, and obviously, its preface carries a grateful acknowledgement to the IVC and those who supported me in Vienna. It is already advertised and available for pre-order at the University of Chicago Press webpage and will appear in print (in both paperback and hardback) in December 2023: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo207912978.html
"Inference and Representation" is now accessible and referenced in Alma and u:search
17.01.2024
"Inference and Representation" is now accessible and referenced in Alma and u:search: ubdata.univie.ac.at/AC17044330