Europe – notoriously hard to define, just like its eastern part. For some of us, the “East European” reminds us of the bitter cold-war era division of Europe. The term might cover many different regions – Central Europe, Balkans, Baltic and Black sea regions and Eastern Europe in a narrow sense. For instance, if Central Europe is a part of the East, then so is Switzerland. But again, even the notion of “Mitteleuropa” might be understood positively by some, to others, it might not sound very appealing for its more obscure connotations.
Europe – the continent shares its name with the mythical Phoenician princess of Greek origins – Europa. It is hard to know if one should count Europa among Europeans or if one should even start counting. It is just as hard to decide how or whom to count among philosophers of science from Central and Eastern Europe, or if one should even try. Some of the following names might ring a bell – Kurt Gödel, Ernest Nagel, Alfred Tarski, Maria Kokoszyńska, Stefan Banach, Andrey Markov, Andrey Kolmogorov, László Kalmár, … But are these philosophers and are they from the East? And you might rightly ask, how about Immanuel Kant?
There was a time when this, hard to define, region of Eastern and Central Europe was one of the main centres of philosophy of science with solid connections to other parts of the world. The tragedies of 20th century almost wiped out the tradition. However, there are still many researchers in the region specialising in philosophy of science and open to academic cooperation. In any case, the aim of this article is not to provide a geographical or historical analysis of Europe, or of the concept of philosophy of science, but to introduce the East European Network for Philosophy of Science (EENPS).
The main goal of the EENPS, encoded in its Statute, is to promote and advance the philosophy of science in Eastern and Central Europe by i) establishing and strengthening contacts and collaborations among philosophers of science in Eastern and Central Europe; ii) encouraging and facilitating the sharing of information regarding philosophy of science among its members; iii) encouraging and facilitating the communication of philosophical research to the general public.
The membership in the EENPS is free of any fees and open to individuals of all nationalities. As we know, a picture is worth 2^ℵ0 sentences (Kitcher and Varzi 2000). So what better way to illustrate our membership than by using the quincuncial projection of the sphere, not respecting the usual depictions of East and West, developed by, among other things, a philosopher of science, this time not from the East, Charles Sanders Peirce (1879)?
Our members come from various regions of the world and often do not live in their country of origin, as is often the case for researchers in academia. The EENPS counts several active members from or conducting their research in Switzerland. The network is organised according to the Statute of the EENPS and run by the Steering Committee whose members are elected by the General Assembly for a term of four years (for more details, see the Statute).
The means to achieve the EENPS goals is mainly through organisation of activities for its members and for the broader community of philosophers of science which includes also non-members. The main event organised by the network is the EENPS biennial conference, alternating with the biennial meetings of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA), with whom we maintain contact. As EENPS and EPSA share many of the goals and interests, it is not surprising that many EENPS members are also members of the EPSA. The Inaugural Conference of the EENPS took place in Sofia, Bulgaria (2016), followed by meetings in Bratislava, Slovakia (2018); in Belgrade, Serbia, (moved from 2020 to 2021 due to Covid) and in Tartu, Estonia, 2022. The topics of the conference cover the following areas:
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Natural Science
- Philosophy of Cognitive and Behavioural Sciences
- Philosophy of Social Sciences
- History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science
- Formal Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mathematics
The next EENPS biennial conference should take place in 2024 and is in preparation.
The EENPS also organises a reading group, an online seminar and a research seminar dedicated to work in progress presentations. The EENPS reading group was initiated in 2020 with the discussion on Henk de Regt's book “Understanding Scientific Understanding” and continued throughout the 2021. Henk de Regt also gave a talk on “Understanding, values and the aims of science” in our online research seminar. Other speakers invited to the online seminar covered the following themes: scientific modelling, scientific disagreements, scientific understanding, climate, public policy, academic freedom. You can find the abstracts of the talks on our web site with the links to the video recordings accessible through our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/EastEuropeanNetworkforPhilosophyofScience).
In order to reach younger audience, the EENPS teamed up with the International conference for Students of Analytic Philosophy (ic.SoAP) and organised a satellite student conference at the Belgrade 2021 biennial meeting (see: https://icsoap.wordpress.com/ic-soap-2021-eenps).
Furthermore, EENPS gathers information of interest for researchers about new initiatives, ongoing activities, regional journals and research output of its members.
In 2022, shortly after the large scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation, EENPS, as many other academic institutions and associations, has issued a Statement of solidarity with our colleagues in Ukraine. As we believe in a ‘solidarité de fait’, we have created the EENPS-Ukraine working group that gathers information about projects for Ukrainian scholars and philosophers of science, provides contact persons for each particular initiative and monitors the ongoing initiatives. The information gathered is accessible through a section of our web page dedicated to Ukraine. More recently, after thorough discussions, the EENPS declared a Moratorium on cooperation with institutions supporting the invasion. Through these initiatives, we have noticed that the sentiment of solidarity goes far beyond the region and the EENPS was contacted by several scholars with proposals of concrete forms of support.
As mentioned above, the EENPS already has several active members from Swiss Universities. Researchers interested in philosophy of science and related areas, including formal methods and philosophy of mathematics, history and sociology of science, philosophy of cognitive and behavioural sciences, philosophy of social sciences, scientific metaphysics, from Switzerland and beyond are welcome to join our network.
If you would like to know more, you can visit the EENPS web, contact us via email or become a member by filling the membership form on our web site and receive updates via EENPS mailing list. The membership is free and open to all nationalities.
EENPS web : https://eenps.weebly.com
EENPS contact : eenphilsci@gmail.com
EENPS membership form : https://eenps.weebly.com/become-a-member.html
EENPS Statute : https://eenps.weebly.com/statute.html
EENPS Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/EastEuropeanNetworkforPhilosophyofScience
EENPS Twitter : https://twitter.com/easteurpnphlsci