Public Lecture: Truth and Science

Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York

Tuesday, October 2, 2018, 6:15 p.m.

Marsilius-Kolleg, Lecture Hall, Im Neuenheimer Feld 130.1

The erosion of trust in the sciences raises three important questions:

1.     Does scientific inquiry deserve the status it once enjoyed in democratic societies as a privileged source of truth?

2.     What has happened to undermine its status in some areas of science and among some people?

3.     If the turn against scientific authority is a mistake, what can be done to remedy it?

I shall use the case of climate change (and climate inaction) to illustrate answers to the first two questions, and conclude with some brief reflections on the third.

A video of the lecture is available here.