Chrysostomos Mantzavinos: The Constitution on Science

Tuesday December 1 2026 @11:30 (CET)
Sala B, Edificio de Humanidades, UNED & online

Abstract

Science as an arena of epistemic activities has grown organically during a long process of cultural evolution. It is a major cultural achievement that was planned by no individual mind but emerged spontaneously as the unintended outcome of interaction between individuals engaging in epistemic activities. Science is a human endeavour, permanently unfinished, a project of humanity of astonishing range and success. Such a complex phenomenon excites our intellectual curiosity inducing us to adopt a descriptive stance explaining its emergence and its mode of operation and incites our admiration inducing us to adopt a normative stance providing good reasons for supporting its further existence and for securing its accomplishments. 

In this talk I will develop a specific outlook on science from within the normative stance by virtue of introducing the idea of a Constitution of Science. Scientific activities are special kinds of epistemic problem solving activities unfolding in an institutional context. The scientific enterprise is a social process unfolding within an intricate institutional framework that structures the daily activities of scientists and shapes their outcomes. Those institutions of science which are of the highest generality make up the Constitution of Science and are of fundamental importance for channelling the scientific process effectively. If science as the incubator of the most successful solutions to problems of representation of reality and as the basis of the most effective interventions in the natural and social world is valued positively, then its constitutional foundations must be protected. How exactly, by whom and at what level are the questions that I will address in this lecture based on my new book The Constitution of Science (Cambridge University Press, December 2024).

Bio
C. Mantzavinos is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Athens. He is an elected member of the Academia Europaea – The Academy of Europe, the European Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Philosophy of Science. His new book entitled The Constitution of Science has been published by Cambridge University Press in December 2024. He is also the author of Wettbewerbstheorie (Berlin, 1994), Individuals, Institutions, and Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2001), Naturalistic Hermeneutics (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Explanatory Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2016), A Dialogue on Explanation (Springer, 2018), A Dialogue on Institutions (Springer, 2021), and the editor of Philosophy of the Social Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Before his current appointment in Athens, he held the Chair of Economics and Philosophy at Witten/Herdecke University, Germany (2004-2011). He has also taught at Freiburg, Bayreuth, and Stanford and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn. He served as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard, at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, and has been a Visiting Fellow at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. He holds two Ph.D degrees, in Economics and in Philosophy, both from the University of Tübingen. He is the recipient of the Meyer-Struckmann-Preis 2026 awarded by the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Düsseldorf for his work on institutions.