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Life Sciences for Philosophers and Philosophy for Life Scientists: What Should We Teach?

  • Giovanni BonioloEmail author
  • Raffaella Campaner
Notes from the Field
First Online:

Abstract

Following recent debate on the relations between philosophy of science and the sciences, we wish to draw attention to some actual ways of training both young philosophers of science and young life scientists and clinicians. First, we recall a successful case of training philosophers of the life sciences in a strictly scientific environment. Second, after a brief review of the reasons why life scientists and clinicians are currently asking for more ethics, more methodology of science, and more philosophy of science in the training of life scientists and clinicians, we present two training models that could spur the discussion on how to meet the requests coming from the scientific community. We argue that in order to reflect on mutual relations between philosophy of science and the sciences and to foster proper interactions, issues regarding (1) the topics considered, (2) the features of educational curricula, and (3) the institutional organizations should be addressed jointly.

Keywords

Need for the philosophy of science Philosophical curricula Philosophy of science for life scientists and clinicians Science for philosophers of science Scientific curricula 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Thomas Pradeu for his useful comments on a previous version of the paper and three anonymous reviewers whose suggestions have helped to improve this article.

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Copyright information

© Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Biomedical and Surgical SciencesUniversità degli Studi di FerraraFerraraItaly
  2. 2.Department of Philosophy and Communication StudiesUniversità degli Studi di BolognaBolognaItaly

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