CfA: Analogies in Modern Science and Philosophy: Theory and Practice (KU Leuven)
Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, October 2-4, 2025
Foucault claims in The Order of Things that, from the early seventeenth century onward, “thought ceases to move in the element of resemblance” and that “similitude” comes to be regarded as the source of error rather than knowledge (Foucault 1966/1970, 56). Yet there is little doubt that modern scientists and philosophers continued to rely on the use of analogies at least to substantiate working hypotheses concerning lesser-known objects of inquiry. Thus, Newton’s third rule defends the use of analogical inferences on the ground that nature is “ever consonant with itself” (Newton 1687/1999, 795). Very few steps were taken in eighteenth-century physiology without drawing analogies between features of Newtonian celestial mechanics and organic phenomena. Goethe and Schelling, among others, made abundant use of analogies to penetrate aspects of nature considered to resist a purely mechanical explanation. Philosophers such as Hume and Kant, for their part, transferred features of mathematics and the natural sciences to objects of inquiry that transcend the phenomenal realm, in particular the human mind.
In the case of Bacon and Kant, the employment of analogies went hand in hand with reflections on the structure, function, and epistemic import of analogical inferences. On the whole, however, little attention seems to have been paid to the tension between, on the one hand, the commonly accepted principles of rigorous scientific inquiry and, on the other hand, the extent to which analogies and types of analogical reasoning continued to inform philosophy, the natural sciences, and emerging disciplines such as chemistry and the life sciences.
The aim of this conference is to inquire into the indebtedness of the modern natural sciences and philosophy to pre-modern conceptual tools through the lens of the concept of analogy. We welcome abstracts that address the role of analogies in philosophy and/or the sciences between the publication of Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the final edition of Hegel’s Science of Logic (1831).
Keynote speakers:
Courtney Fugate (State University of Florida)
Philippe Hamou (Sorbonne Université)
Kirsten Walsh (University of Exeter)
Paul Ziche (University of Utrecht
Submission deadline: May 15, 2025
Format: on-campus and online (Zoom)
Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted through the electronic form available at the website. The abstracts, including the title, should be prepared for double-blind review by removing any identification details.
Presentation time will be 25 minutes + 20 minutes for discussion. We offer limited travel grants to PhD students and other early career researchers without funding of their own.
Notification of acceptance by June 15, 2025.
Website: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/
Organizers: Karin de Boer (KU Leuven), Raphaël Authier (KU Leuven), and Leone Zellini (KU Leuven)
The conference is organized in the context of the research project Responses to Newton’s Mathematical-Experimental Paradigm in 18th-Century Philosophy