Skip to content

Friedel Weinert

Emeritus/a Professor

Area
School of Social Sciences
Faculty of Mgmt, Law & Social Sciences
E-mail
Friedel Weinert

Biography

I am an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy. I lectured mainly on the History and Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences. I also taught Political Philosophy and History of Philosophy. My main research interest lies in the exploration of the interconnections between science and philosophy, both the natural and the social sciences. Great discoveries in science have an impact on our philosophical understanding of the world.  I believe that scientific discoveries, especially great discoveries, have philosophical consequences, for instance regarding our very concept of nature, and fundamental notions such as causality, determinism and time.  But philosophical stances can also exert influences on scientific approaches to the world around us. For instance, it makes a difference to scientific inquiry whether scientists regard the physical world as a deterministic or indeterministic system. It also makes a difference whether social scientists regard the study of society and human beings as akin to explanation in the natural sciences or closer to understanding in the historical sciences.

I have investigated these interconnections in five books, three edited volumes as well as philosophical papers in professional journals. See Google Sites: FRIEDEL WEINERT for more details.

 At the beginning of 2024, I started a Podcast with the title IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS …PHILOSOPHY, in which I discuss topics in Philosophy and History of Science as well as Political Philosophy. It can be found on both Apple and Spotify.


Research

Summary: History and Philosophy of Science, especially Physics and Evolutionary Biology. Philosophy of Time. Philosophy of the Social Sciences and Political Philosophy. 

am particularly interested in exploring the connections between science and philosophy. Science operates with a toolbox of mathematical techniques, empirical findings, a variety of models and philosophical approaches. Important scientific discoveries - say in evolutionary biology, classical mechanics, relativity theory and quantum mechanics - necessarily have consequences for the employment of the tools. Hence scientific discoveries have an impact on our philosophical interpretation of the world; and our philosophical understanding will influence scientific approaches to the empirical world.

Whilst I have investigated these connections in previous work, I am currently editing (in collaboration with John Ackroyd) a special issue of the journal SOCIAL SCIENCES, with the title: The Open Society 2.0: Democracy in the Age of Social Media and Populism.

For more details about my publications see Google Sites: FRIEDEL WEINERT 

Teaching

My teaching and research was inspired by the idea that there are philosophical problems, to which philosophers seek solutions. But it makes no sense to present the solution without also explaining what the problem is and which methods are being used to solve the problem. This approach sets out the logic of the problem situation. 

I applied this method to the classes I taught: Introduction to Philosophy, History and Philosophy of the Natural Sciences, Philosophy  of Time, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Political Philosophy.


Here is a list of the classes I taught:

  • Introduction to Philosophy (17th to  20th century)
  • Introduction to Critical Thinking
  • Ethics (Utilitarianism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics, Business ethics)
  • Political Philosophy (the Greeks, Social Contract theories, Enlightenment, Marx, Theories of Justice)
  • Philosophy of Mind (Views of Human Nature, freedom of the will, nature/nuture debate, evolutionary approaches, Freud)
  • Philosophy of the Natural & Social Sciences (the Scientific Revolution, experiment & observation, Popper’s Fallibilism, Kuhn’s paradigms, models of scientific growth, scientific revolutions, Social sciences: the empirical and hermeneutic models, Weber’s ideal types, explanation and understanding, causation in the social sciences, fact/value question)
  • Revolutions in Thought (geocentric & heliocentric models, Copernicus, Kepler and Newton; Lamarck and Darwin; Freud, evolutionary psychology)
  • Philosophy of Time (Idealism, Realism and Relationism about time; the arrow of time and thermodynamics; the age of the earth and the universe; time in the Special theory of relativity; time travel)