Brief Introduction Top

Axel Gelfert completed his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge in 2005, having previously studied Physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the University of Oxford. Before coming to Singapore, he held a Junior Fellowship at Collegium Budapest (Institute for Advanced Study) in Hungary, where he also guest-lectured in the Department of Philosophy and History of Science (Budapest University of Technology and Economics). In the summer of 2009, and again in the first half of 2011, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. He is an Associate Fellow at NUS's Tembusu College.

Teaching Areas Top

Philosophy of Science and Technology, Epistemology, History of Western Philosophy.

Previously taught courses: PH2201 Introduction to Philosophy of Science (2007, 2009); PH2207 Hume & Kant (2008); PH2223 Introduction to Philosophy of Technology (2008, 2009); PH3213 Knowledge, Modernity, and Global Change (2008, 2010); PH4201 Philosophy of Science (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2010); PH4210 Topics in Western Philosophy (The Value of Knowledge, 2010); PH5423 Philosophy of Science and Technology (Scientific Models; 2009); PH6210 History of Western Philosophy (2009); PH6540 Topics in Analytic Philosophy (Thought Experiments, 2010); PH6760 Philosophical Topics (Social Epistemology; 2007)

Courses in 2011-12:
PH2201 (Semester 1) Introduction to Philosophy of Science
PH6540 (Semester 1) Topics in Analytic Philosophy (Social Epistemology and Epistemology of Disagreement)
PH2223 (Semester 2) Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
PH3201 (Semester 2) Philosophy of Social Science

Current Research Top

• Philosophical problems of model-based representation (see 2008 Workshop and special issue)
• Experimentation, evidence, and simulation
• History of social epistemology
• Ethics and epistemology of testimony

Publications Top

EDITORIAL WORK ON JOURNALS

• Science, Technology, and Society, Special Issue: Technologies, Lives and Futures in Asia (co-editors: Catelijne Coopmans, Connor Graham, Axel Gelfert, Gregory Clancey), (forthcoming).
   
  
• Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Special Issue: Model-Based Representation in Scientific Practice, Vol. 42 No. 2, 2011.
   
  

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

• "Strategies of Model-Building in Condensed Matter Physics: Trade-Offs as a Demarcation Criterion Between Physics and Biology?" Synthese (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Who is an Epistemic Peer?", Logos & Episteme: An International Journal of Epistemology, Vol. 2 (4) 2011, pp. 507-514.
   
  
• "Expertise, Argumentation, and the End of Inquiry", Argumentation Vol. 25 (3) 2011, pp. 297-312.
   
  
• "Mathematical Formalisms in Scientific Practice: From Denotation to Model-Based Representation", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 42 (2) 2011, pp. 272-286.
   
  
• "Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of ‘Converging Technologies’", Science, Technology, and Society (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Steps to an Ecology of Knowledge: Continuity and Change in the Genealogy of Knowledge", Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 8 (1) 2011, pp. 67-82
   
  
• "Art History, the Problem of Style, and Arnold Hauser’s Contribution to the History and Sociology of Knowledge", Studies in East European Thought (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Reconsidering the Role of Inference to the Best Explanation in the Epistemology of Testimony", Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 41 (4) 2010, pp. 386-396
   
  
• "Hume on Testimony Revisited", Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy Vol. 13 (2010) pp. 60-75.
   
  
• "Kant and the Enlightenment's Contribution to Social Epistemology", Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology, Vol. 7 (1) 2010, pp. 79-99
   
  
• "Indefensible Middle Ground for Local Reductionism about Testimony", Ratio, Vol. 22 (2) 2009, pp. 170-190
   
  
• "Rigorous Results, Cross-Model Justification, and the Transfer of Empirical Warrant", Synthese, Vol. 169 (3) 2009, pp. 497-519
   
  
• "Kant on Testimony", British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 14 (4) 2006, pp. 627-652
   
  
• "Mathematical Rigor in Physics: Putting Exact Results in Their Place", Philosophy of Science, Vol. 72 (5) 2005, pp. 723-738
   
  
• "Manipulative Success and the Unreal", International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 17 (3) 2003, pp. 245-263
   
  
• "Perception and prejudice. Uncertainty and the investment in gender", Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 37 (2002) 4382-4389 (with P.H.L. Nillesen)
   
  
• "The absence of finite-temperature phase transitions in low-dimensional many-body models: a survey and new results" (Topical review), Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter Vol. 13 (2001) R505-R524 (with W. Nolting)
   
  
• "Absence of a Magnetic Phase Transition in Heisenberg, Hubbard, and Kondo-lattice Films", physica status solidi (b), Vol. 217 (2000) 805-818.
   
  

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

• "Scientific Models, Simulation, and the Experimenter's Regress", in P. Humphreys and C. Imbert (eds), Representation, Models and Simulations, London: Routledge 2011, pp. 145-167
   
  
• "Rumour, Gossip, and Conspiracy Theories: Pathologies of Testimony and the Principle of Publicity", in Rumours and Communication in Asia in the Internet Age, ed. G. Dalziel. London: Routledge (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Communicability and the Public Misuse of Communication: Kant on the Pathologies of Testimony", in Proceedings of the 11th International Kant Congress, Berlin: de Gruyter (forthcoming)
   
  
• Encyclopedia article "Zeugnis" [Testimony], in Kant-Lexikon (3 vols.), eds. G. Mohr, J. Stolzenberg, and M. Willaschek. Berlin: de Gruyter (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Learning from Testimony: Cognitive Cultures and the Epistemic Status of Testimony-Based Beliefs", in Culture, Nature, Memes: Dynamic Cognitive Theories, ed. Thorsten Botz-Bornstein. Newcastle: CSP 2008, pp. 34-56.
   
  
• "Education and the Republic of Science", in Philosophical Reflections for Educators, ed. Charlene Tan. Singapore: Cengage Publishing 2008, pp. 115-140.
   
  
• Encyclopedia articles "Aufklärung" [informed consent], "Forensik" [forensics], "Lebensqualität" [quality of life], "Placebo", "Prion", "Simulation/Dissimulation" in Literatur und Medizin. Ein Lexikon [Encyclopedia of Literature and Medicine], eds. Bettina v. Jagow and Florian Steger, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2005.
   
  
• "Das Zweifelhafte und das Pathologische: Skeptizismus zwischen Therapie, 'philosophischer Krankheit' und Bioethik" [The doubtful and the pathological: scepticism between therapy, 'philosophical disease' and bioethics], in Repräsentationen: Medizin und Ethik in Kunst und Literatur der Moderne [Representations of Medicine and Ethics in Art and Literature of the Modern Age], eds. Bettina v. Jagow and Florian Steger. Heidelberg: Winter Universitätsverlag 2004. pp. 115-140
   
  
• "Zeugnis und Differenz: Über die Epistemologie des Beim-Wort-Nehmens und In-Erfahrung-Bringens" [Testimony and difference: on the epistemology of experience and the word of others], in Differenzerfahrung und Selbst [Experiences of Difference and The Self], eds. Bettina v. Jagow and Florian Steger. Heidelberg: Winter Universitätsverlag 2003. pp. 123-140
   
  

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTIONS

• "Introduction: Technologies, Lives and Futures in Asia" (Editorial introduction to special issue; with C. Coopmans, C. Graham, and G. Clancey) Science, Technology, and Society (forthcoming)
   
  
• "Model-Based Representation in Scientific Practice: New Perspectives" (Editorial introduction to special issue), Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 42 (2) 2011, pp. 251-2.
   
  

BOOK REVIEWS

• Review of Miranda Fricker: Epistemic Injustice. Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2007). Times Literary Supplement, 3 October 2008, p. 25
   
  
• Critical notice of Tamás Demeter (ed.) Essays on Wittgenstein and Austrian Philosophy (Amsterdam: Rodopi 2004). Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy (Vol. 10, 'Philosophy of Mind', 2007), 206-211
   
  
• Critical notice of Richard Foley Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001). Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy (Vol. 8, 'History of Epistemology', 2005), 220-227
   
  
• Review of Freeman Dyson: The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, and of Michio Kaku: Visions. Science and Public Policy Vol. 28 (2001) 230-232
   
  

CONTRIBUTIONS TO NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES

• "The Narcissism of the Plagiarist", The Berlin Review of Books, 23 February 2011.
   
  
• "Letter from Singapore: Where the Ivory Tower Meets the Crystal Palace", The Philosophers' Magazine No. 46 (July 2009) pp. 36-39.
   
  
• "Lektionen für die Elite", Deutsche Universitäts-Zeitung, No. 9/2007, pp. 8-9 (with M. Vogt)
   
  
• "How democratic is the New Left?", International Herald Tribune, 03 Sept 2005
   
  
• "Nobelpreise zählen ist nicht genug: Ein Plädoyer für die Lehre", Berliner Republik, No. 3/2005, pp. 12-13 (with M. Vogt)
   
  
• "Random Realism", Navigationen: Siegener Beiträge zur Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft, Vol. 3 (2003) 113-118 (first published in Foreign Policy in Focus)
   
  

Other Information Top

Axel Gelfert is a member of the Steering Committee of the Faculty's STS Research Cluster and an Associate at the Asia Research Institute (ARI). He is also a member of the Scientific Board of the BMBF Collaborative Research Project "Embodied Information: Conceiving and Envisioning 'Converging Technologies'" (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research). He is the editor of The Berlin Review of Books.

Recent Talks and Conference Presentations Top

• November 2011: "Hume's Endorsement of Testimony as a Source of Knowledge", David Hume and Contemporary Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy (Russian Academy of the Sciences), Moscow State University, and the Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.
  
• September 2011: "The Reductionism That Never Was: Elements of a History of Epistemology of Testimony", 2nd Berlin Conference on Meta-Epistemology, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. (invited lecture)
  
• June 2011: "Synthetic Biology as Thing Knowledge", 3rd Biennial Conference of the Society for the Philosophy of Science in Practice, University of Exeter, England.
  
• May 2011: "Synthetic Biology as Thing Knowledge", Workshop on Synthetic Biology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
  
• March 2011: Knowing From Testimony, Theory in Practice Workshop, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
  
• February 2011: "Epistemic Filters, Informational Cascades, and the Epistemic Status of Rumours", 2nd Copenhagen-Lund Workshop in Social Epistemology, Lund University, Sweden.
  
• February 2011: "Epistemic Filters, Informational Cascades, and the Epistemic Status of Rumours", Epistemology Research Group, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
  
• January 2011: "Before Biopolis: Representations of the Biotechnology Discourse in Singapore", Workshop on 'Asian Biopoleis: Biotechnology & Biomedicine as Emergent Forms of Life and Practice', Asia Research Institute, NUS, Singapore.
  
• August 2010: "Nanotechnology as Ideology: Towards a Critical Theory of 'Converging Technologies'", 4S 2010 (Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science), University of Tokyo, Japan.
  
• August 2010: "Asian Biopoleis: Biotechnology and Biomedicine as Emergent Forms of Life and Practice" (Project presentation), Laboratory of Science Communication and Bioethics, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Japan.
  
• June 2010: "Observation, Inference, and Imagination: Elements of Edgar Allan Poe's Philosophy of Science", HOPOS 2010 (The International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science), Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
  
• June 2010: "Genealogies of the Concept of Knowledge and Their Cognitive-Ecological Dimension", Episteme 2010 Conference, School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
  
• May 2010: "Communicability and the Public Misuse of Communication: Kant on the Pathologies of Testimony", 11th International Kant Congress, Pisa, Italy.
  
• May 2010: "Trade-offs in model-building for complex systems", Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi de L'Aquila, Italy.
  
• May 2010: "The Dual Role of Inference to the Best Explanation in the Epistemology of Testimony", Department of Philosophy (Epistemology Brown Bag Seminar Series), Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
  
• May 2010: "Strategies of Model-Building in Condensed-Matter Physics", Models and Simulations 4, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Canada.
  
• February 2010: "Of Rumours and Conspiracy Theories: Philosophical Perspectives on Pathological Communication in the Public Sphere", Workshop: The Political and Social Impact of Rumours, Centre of Excellence for National Security, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
  
• October 2009: "Representational Force and the Role of Mathematical Formalism", EPSA09: 2nd Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
  
• July 2009: "Kant's Maxims of Enlightenment and the Pathologies of Testimony", Enlightenment Work-In-Progress Seminar, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
  
• May 2009: "Communicability and the Misuse of Public Reason", Kant in Asia, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong.
  
• March 2009: "Scientific models, simulation, and the experimenter's regress", Models and Simulations 3, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, U.S.
  
• September 2008: "Denotation, Representation, and the Minimality Constraint", Workshop on Model-Based Representation in Scientific Practice, National University of Singapore.
  
• November 2007: “Local reductionism, epistemic injustice, and the epistemology of testimony", Institut für Philosophie, Freie Universität Berlin. (invited talk)
  
• November 2007: “Coherence and indirect confirmation across scientific models: a case study and its epistemological implications", EPSA07: 1st Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association, Complutense University, Madrid, Spain.
  
• August 2007: “Philosophy of Science and Technology: Implications for Professionals in Education", National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. (invited talk)
  
• July 2007: “Model-based Representation and the Minimality Constraint", Annual Meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, Bristol, England.
  
• May 2007: “Learning from others: testimony and the cognitive role of culture", International Conference on Cognition and the Study of Culture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
  
• May 2007: “Coherence and indirect confirmation across scientific models: a case study and its epistemological implications", Dept. of History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology. (invited talk)
  

NB: All my flights since 2005 have been carbon neutral, by paying to offset carbon emissions using climatecare.org or (since 2010) atmosfair.de. While this may not delay climate change by more than a fraction of a second, it is a good way of supporting sustainable development projects all across the world.