Category:Scientonomy Seminar
The main goal of the scientonomy seminar is to scrutinize different aspects of our current scientonomic knowledge and formulate as many open questions as possible. As opposed to the workshop format, the seminar's primary objective is unearthing the drawbacks of our current scientonomic knowledge, i.e. understanding what does not work. While the seminar also often generates interesting ideas on how this or that problem can be solved, the primary outcome of the seminar is the list of open questions for future research.
The seminar is held annually by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. The seminar usually starts in January and ends in April consisting of 10-12 discussion sessions.
History
The seminar was first designed and run by Hakob Barseghyan in 2013. Originally, the seminar had a wider agenda and tried to accomplish the following two tasks:
- scrutinizing each aspect of the current theory and understanding what is not working;
- generating ideas on how the theory can be improved by finding solutions to its topical issues.
It took three full iterations of the seminar before it became clear that it should be mainly focusing on the former task, i.e. on compiling a list of open questions for future research. As for finding answers to open questions, it was appreciated that the seminar is not the best format for it. Solutions to open problems require proper research papers; only when an idea is published can the community begin to appraise it and decide whether it is acceptable or not. This idea is in the foundation of the Journal of Scientonomy.
Although the previous iterations of the seminar produced a number of interesting open questions, the seminar of 2016 was the first to aim directly at producing open questions. It was the first year when a comprehensive list of open questions was generated.
Here is the complete list of all scientonomy seminars:
Seminar | Title | Start | End |
---|---|---|---|
Scientonomy Seminar 2013 | The first annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 11 January 2013 | 5 April 2013 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2014 | The second annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 10 January 2014 | 4 April 2014 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2015 | The third annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 9 January 2015 | 27 March 2015 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2016 | The fourth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 15 January 2016 | 8 April 2016 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2017 | The fifth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 6 January 2017 | 31 March 2017 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2018 | The sixth annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 11 January 2018 | 29 March 2018 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2018 Fall | The seventh annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 6 September 2018 | 29 November 2018 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2019 | The eight annual IHPST seminar on the theory of scientific change | 5 September 2019 | 28 November 2019 |
Scientonomy Seminar 2020 | VIC Scientonomy Seminar Fall 2020 | 12 September 2020 | 10 December 2020 |
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2021 | VIC Scientonomy Seminar Fall 2021 | 11 September 2021 | 9 December 2021 |
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2022 | VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2022 | 10 September 2022 | 3 December 2022 |
VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2023 | VIC Scientonomy Seminar 2023 | 9 September 2023 | 2 December 2023 |
To create a page for a new seminar please enter the name of the seminar and click the button below.
Present
The seminar currently takes place at the beginning of every calendar year and focuses on the task of unearthing the drawbacks of our current scientonomic knowledge.
If a question raises a sufficient level of interest or disagreement, it is considered an open question. Clearly, this criterion is somewhat vague and not very strict; as a result, the list of open questions can sometimes include questions the answers to which may appear trivial. However, this is done on purpose; the assumption here is that an occasional inclusion of a trivial question outweighs the risk of missing an important question.
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Pages in category "Scientonomy Seminar"
The following 12 pages are in this category, out of 12 total.