Paul Hoyningen-Huene

Paul Hoyningen-Huene (* born July 31, 1946 in Pfronten/Allgäu, West-Germany) is a German philosopher who specializes in general philosophy of science and ethics of science. He is best known for his Neo-Kantian interpretation of Thomas S. Kuhn´s ideas. Hoyningen-Huene holds the chair for theoretical philosophy, particularly philosophy of science at Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany) and is director of the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science.

Biography

Hoyningen-Huene studied physics as well as philosophy at the University of Munich, the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, and the University of Zurich. He received a graduate degree in theoretical physics from the University of Munich in 1971 and earned his doctorate in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich in 1975. He was then an assistant with Hermann Lübbe at the Seminar for Philosophy at the University of Zurich.

Hoyningen-Huene taught at the Universities of Zurich and Bern (Switzerland) and at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology). In 1984-1985, he was a visiting scholar with Thomas S. Kuhn at the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, and from 1987-1988 he was a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science in Pittsburgh.

In the period of 1990-1997, Hoyningen-Huene held the chair for foundational theory and history of the sciences, particularly the exact sciences, at the University of Konstanz (Germany). In 1997 he became the founding director of the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science at the University of Hannover (Germany). In 2010, the center was integrated into the newly founded Institute of Philosophy under the direction of Hoyningen-Huene.
Hoyningen-Huene held positions as visiting professor in Switzerland (1980; 1987; 2010; 2012), Jugoslavia (1989, 1990), Denmark (1995, 2000) and Norway (1999).

Areas of Work

Hoyningen-Huene´s work has focused on issues in general philosophy of science, particularly on the philosophical writings of Thomas S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend and the subject of incommensurability. In his influential book Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science he presents a Neo-Kantian reconstruction of Kuhn´s philosophy of science and opposes an irrationalist interpretation of Kuhn.
In addition, Hoyningen-Huene is interested in the limits of reductionism in science, emergentism and the development of a theory of anti-reductionist arguments. His most recent book Systematicity: The Nature of Science is devoted to the question of the nature of science (including the social sciences and humanities) and develops the thesis that scientific knowledge is primarily distinguished from other forms of knowledge by being more systematic.
In the field of ethics of science, Hoyningen-Huene has primarily dealt with questions concerning the responsibility of scientists and engineers.

Major Works

Selected Books

Reductionism and Systems Theory in the Life Sciences: Some Problems and Perspectives (ed. with F.M. Wuketits), Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989

Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science. Translated by Alexander T. Levine. (With a Foreword by Thomas S. Kuhn.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2. Ed., 1993. [1]

Incommensurability and Related Matters. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 216 (ed. with Howard Sankey). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001

Formal Logic. A philosophical approach. Translated by Alexander T. Levine. Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 2004.

Rethinking Scientific Change and Theory Comparison: Stabilities, Ruptures, Incommensurabilities. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 255 (ed. with Léna Soler and Howard Sankey). Berlin: Springer, 2008

Systematicity: The Nature of Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. [2]

Selected Papers

• Hoyningen-Huene, P. 1987. “Context of Discovery and the Context of Justification.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18: 501–515.
• ———. 1989. "Epistemological Reductionism in Biology: Intuitions, Explications, and Objections" P. Hoyningen-Huene, F. Wuketits (eds.): Reductionism and Systems Theory in the Life Sciences: Some Problems and Perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 29-44.
• ———. 1990. “Kuhn’s Conception of Incommensurability.” Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (3): 481–492.
• ———. 1992a. “On the Way to a Theory of Antireductionist Arguments.” A. Beckermann, H. Flohr, J. Kim (Ed.): Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism. Berlin: de Gruyter, 289–301.
• ———. 1992b. “The Interrelations Between the Philosophy, History and Sociology of Science in Thomas Kuhn‘s Theory of Scientific Development.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (4): 487–501.
• ———. 2005. " "Three Biographies: Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Incommensurability." R. Harris (ed.): Rhetoric and Incommensurability. West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 150-175.
• ———. 2010. "Why Is Football So Fascinating?" Ted Richards (Ed.): Soccer and Philosophy: Beautiful Thoughts on the Beautiful Game. Chicago: Open Court, 7-22.
• ———. (in print) "The Ultimate Argument against Convergent Realism and Structural Realism: The Impasse Objection." D. Dieks et al. (eds.): Recent Progress in Philosophy of Science: Perspectives and Foundational Problems. Dordrecht: Springer.
• Hoyningen-Huene, P., E. Oberheim, and H. Andersen. 1996. “On Incommensurability.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 27 (1): 131–142.
• Kummer, H., V. Dasser, and P. Hoyningen-Huene. 1990. “Exploring Primate Social Cognition: Some Critical Remarks.” Behaviour 112 1 (2): 84–98.
• Oberheim, E. and P. Hoyningen-Huene. 2009. "The Incommensurability of Scientific Theories". E. N. Zalta (ed.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), [3].

Talks, Lectures and Interviews

• Talks on the Web by Paul Hoyningen-Huene

• Lecture Series Introduction to Logic, in German
• Lecture Series Theories and Methods of Research
• Lecture Series Introduction to Theoretical Philosophy, in German

• Links to Radio- and TV-interviews with Paul Hoyningen-Huene, mostly in German

External links

• Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science at Leibniz Universität Hannover