CST
Profile Center for Science and Thought
Center for Science and Thought
The CST is a radically interdisciplinary platform, designed to address urgent questions that arise at the intersection of the scientific disciplines involved in CASCADE. It is based on a bottom-up-epistemology: Hard questions, that emerge at the frontiers of science and have interdisciplinary impact, will be analyzed in five subprojects clustering around research topics identified through workshops and conferences. Currently, in the wake of the computational turn, we are in a position to run simulations of models and test their theoretical adequacy even in domains where empirical testing is out of reach for the time being. This raises the central question how we conceptualize the borders of scientific knowledge and extend them into regions presently only accessible to metaphysics. Metaphysics is the discipline which deals with problems that are only accessible for theoretical evaluations. It overlaps with science at its frontiers. The CST brings science and philosophy together in order to achieve a better understanding of the current limits of scientific knowledge and to discuss the overall issue what, if any, the principle limits of scientific knowledge are. This issue is addressed within science itself in the form of case studies that arise from research in the RUs of CASCADE, see the schematic representation.