Stevin Seminar: Understanding and Controlling Climate. The development of climatology and its importance for philosophy in the 18th century

Speaker: Silvia de Bianchi

Abstract: To control climate is believed to be a priority in current policies and International agreements, but has it been already the case before? How do we understand “controlling climate” today? And how was it before? In this paper I shall analyse the approach that scientists and philosophers endorsed in the 18th century in discussing climate. I shall clarify in which sense they talked about understanding and controlling it. Furthermore, I shall highlight the relevance of climatology for the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This in turn will lead us to discuss the way in which we portray the relationship between philosophy and climate science today and to investigate the nature of their interrelation.”

Silvia De Bianchi is Ramón y Cajal fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.