Interdisciplinarity in Philosophy of Science

Kaiser MI, Kronfeldner M, Meunier R. Interdisciplinarity in Philosophy of Science. Journal for General Philosophy of Science. 2014;45(2):59-70.This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much Philosophy in the Philosophy of Science?” In Part 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We briefly explicate how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Part 2, we apply these distinctions to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded, and a descriptive or normative style