Reasoning in Measurement

Nicola Mosner, Junior Fellow at Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in Germany. She received her M.A. in German Literature and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Munster. Her thesis is about the epistemology of testimony and the special case of media reports, published as Wissen aus dem Zeugnis anderer – der Sonderfall medialer Berichterstattung (Paderborn: mentis 2010). Currently she works on a research project concerning the epistemic role of visualisations in science. In this context, she edited (together with Dimitri Liebsch) Visualisierung und Erkenntnis – Bildverstehen und Bildverwenden in Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften (Cologne: Herbert von Halem 2012). Her main interests comprise philosophy of science and social epistemology.

Alfred Nordmann, professor of Philosophy at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt and adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Nordmann’s interests in the philosophy of science concern the formation and contestation of fields of inquiry such as chemistry and theories of electricity in the 18th century, mechanics, evolutionary biology, and sociology in the 19th century. In particular, he sought to articulate implicit concepts of science and objectivity. In 2000, he embarked on a similar endeavor in regard to nanoscience and converging technologies which has led him to promote and develop a comprehensive philosophy of technoscience. Since the technosciences require new answers to the familiar questions of knowledge and objectivity, theory and evidence, explanation and validation, representation and experimentation, Nordmann is seeking to address these and related questions in his current work.