31 Mar
2025
31 Mar
'25
5:55 p.m.
Dear all,
our next speakers in the Philosophy of Science Colloquium organized by
the Institute Vienna Circle are Paolo Tripodi and Guido Bonino
(University of Turin), who will give a talk on April 3, 4.45-6.15 pm.
All are welcome!
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Philosophy of Science Colloquium TALK: Paolo Tripodi & Guido Bonino
(University of Turin)
ACADEMIC SUCCESS IN AMERICA: ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY AND THE DECLINE OF
WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophy of Science Colloquium
The Institute Vienna Circle holds a Philosophy of Science Colloquium
with talks by our present fellows.
Date: 03/04/2025
Time: 16h45
Venue: New Institute Building (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien, HS
3A
Abstract:
There is a rather widespread consensus, among historians of philosophy,
concerning the decline of Wittgenstein amid recent analytic philosophy.
However, the exact import of such a decline, its chronological
development, as well as its causes and several other features, are
difficult to ascertain with the traditional methods of the history of
philosophy. In this talk we apply a distant reading approach, and a
variety of other quantitative methods, to provide a more reliable and
accurate account of Wittgenstein's decline. We focus on a corpus
consisting of the metadata of US PhD dissertations in philosophy from
1981 to 2010 (although other kinds of data are also taken into
consideration), and we try to relate the topic of the dissertation to
the success of the candidate in his/her subsequent academic career. The
results of this analysis, corroborated by other evidence, allow us to
put forth the more reliable and accurate account just hinted at, and at
the same time to suggest - as a contribution to external history of
philosophy - a plausible mechanism at the basis of the decline itself,
notably a process driven by those who controlled the recruitment
policies in the philosophy departments.