Prof Friedel Weinert

History and Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences; Philosophy of Time; Political Philosophy

Students Supervised:

• John Ackroyd, The Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin

• Revolutions in Thought: Copernicus, Darwin and Freud

• The Temporalization of the World and Changing Conceptions of Time

• Philosophy of Natural and Social Science 

• Philosophy of Mind and Ethics

• Political Philosophy

• Critical Thinking

I am interested in the interrelations between science and philosophy or 'integrated history and philosophy of science'. That is, I am interested in questions like the following: How does science influence philosophy and how does philosophy influence science? Which philosophical assumptions exist in science? Which form do philosophical questions take when asked in the context of scientific problem situations? And more generally: How has science changed our philosophical assumptions about the world?  These questions form the topics of my books The Scientist as Philosopher(2004) and Copernicus, Darwin & Freud (2009) and The March of Time (2013).

• The Demons of Science: what they tell us and don't tell us about our world (2016)

  The March of Time: Evolving Conceptions of Time in the Light of Scientific Discoveries', 2013

• 'Darwinian Inferences' (co-author Robert Nola), in Evolution 2.0: Implications of Darwinism in the Social and Natural Sciences. Edited by Martin Brinkworth/Friedel Weinert, The Frontiers Collection, Springer 2011, 111-28

• Copernicus, Darwin, Freud: Revolutions in the History and Philosophy of Science (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell 2009)

• The Scientist as Philosopher: Philosophical Consequences of Great Scientific Discoveries. (New York/Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer 2004)

Edited Books

• Evolution 2.0: Implications of Darwinism in Philosophy, in the Natural and the Social sciences, edited by Martin Brinkworth and Friedel Weinert (The Frontiers Collection, Heidelberg/Berlin/New York: SPRINGER 2012)
• Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy. Edited by D. Greenberger, K. Hentschel & F. Weinert (New York/Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer 2009)
• Laws of Nature. Edited with an introduction by F. Weinert. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1995)

Some selected articles

• 'Relativistic Thermodynamics and the Passage of Time', Humana.Mente 13 (2010), pp. 175-91
• The Role of Probability Arguments in the History of Science', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 41 (2010), pp. 95-104
• ‘Wrong Theory - Right Experiment: The Significance of the Stern-Gerlach Experiments.’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 26/1(1995), pp. 75-86
• ‘The Duhem Quine Problem Revisited.’ International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 9/2 (1995), pp. 147-156
• ‘On the Status of Social Laws.’ Dialectica 51 (1997), pp. 225-42
• ‘Fundamental Physical Constants, Null Experiments and the Duhem-Quine Thesis.’ Philosophia Naturalis 35/2(1998), pp. 225-52
• ‘Theories, Models and Constraints.’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30/2 (1999), pp. 303-333
• 'The Construction of Atom Models: Eliminative Inductivism and its Relation to Falsificationism'. Foundations of Science 5 (2000), pp. 491-531
• 'Relationism and Relativity’, in VIII. International Leibniz Congress, Einheit in der Vielfalt, eds.H.Breger/J.Herbst/S.Erdner (Hanover 2006), pp. 1138-46 (as pdf file)
• 'Einstein and the Representation of Reality', Facta Philosophica 8 (2006), pp. 229-52
• 'A Conditional View of Causality’, in Causality and Probability in the Sciences. Edited by Federica Russo and Jon Williamson. London: College Publications, Texts In Philosophy 5 (2007), pp. 415-37
• 'Einstein and the Laws of Physics', in Physics and Philosophy (Issue 2007), pp. 1-27
• 'Time and Invariance', Conceptus 92 (2008), 55-81
• ‘Einstein, Science and Philosophy’, Philosophia Scientiae 13/1 (2009), pp. 99-133
• ’Emergent Minds’, Teorema 28/2 (May 2009), pp. 189-99
• 'The Role of Probability Arguments in the History of Science’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 41 (2010), pp. 95-104
• 'Relativistic Thermodynamics and the Passage of Time', Humana.Mente 13(2010), pp. 175-91 (as pdf file)
• ‘The Past-Future Asymmetry’, in Origins and Future (The Study of Time XI).Edited by Raji C. Steineck and Claudia Clausius. Leiden/Boston: Brill 2013, 139-66
• Temporal Arrows in Space-Time.’ Foundations of Science 19/4 (2014), pp. 331-52 (online December 2013, (DOI) 10.1007/s10699-013-9342-y)
• ‘Temporal Arrows in Space-Time.’ Kairos 8 (2013), 13-44 (as pdf file)
• 'EPR and the Passage of Time’, in Philosophia Naturalis 50/2 (2013): 171-197

Complete list of publications (PDF)

Conference Presentations (selected):

• 'Temporal Asymmetry and Relativity', International Society for the Study of Time Conference (Monterey 2007), in J.A. Parker/ P. Harris/C. Steineck (Eds.): Time: Limits and Constraints (2010). Leiden/Boston: Brill (2010), 109-33 (The Study of Time, Volume 13);
• 'Minkowski Space-time and Thermodynamics', Third Space-time Conference (Montreal 2008), in V. Petkov (Ed.),Space, Time and Spacetime. Heidelberg, Berlin, New York: Springer (2010), 239-56 (Fundamental Theories of Physics Vol. 167)
• 'The Past-Future Asymmetry', International Society for the Study of Time Conference (Costa Rica 2010)
• The Past-Future Asymmetry' in Origins and Future (The Study of Time XI). Edited by Raji C. Steineck and Claudia Clausius. Leiden/Boston: Brill 2013, 139-66
• Social Mechanism and Social Causation', Venice 2013

International Darwin Conference 2009