Prof. Dr. em. Dr. h.c. mult. Carlos Ulises Moulines

C. Ulises Moulines completed a Masters (1971) in philosophy at the University of Barcelona and a PhD degree (1975) in logic and philosophy of science (“Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie”) at the University of Munich, where he also worked as an Assistant Professor at the Seminar für Philosophie, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie from 1975 to 1976. In 1976 he obtained a tenured position as a researcher at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas of the Mexican National University in Mexico-City. From 1977 to 1978 he was Visiting Professor at the University
of California in Santa Cruz, and from 1978 to 1979 Visiting Researcher at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung in Bielefeld. In 1984 he got a chair as Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bielefeld, and in 1988 as Professor of Theory and History of the Natural Sciences at the Free University of Berlin. In 1993 he became Director of the Seminar für Philosophie, Logik und Wissenschaftstheorie at the University of Munich. From 2003 to 2004 he had the “Chaire Blaise Pascal” at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He retired in 2012.

Research Interests

General philosophy of science (the structuralist metatheory of empirical theories, holism, theoretical terms, intertheoretical relations, diachronic structures in science, ontology of scientific theories); formal reconstructions of physical theories (in particular classical mechanics and thermodynamics, both synchronically and diachronically); phenomenalism; Carnap’s Aufbau der Welt; scientific realism; general theory of knowledge (in particular, skepticism about the external world); history of the philosophy of science in the 19 th and 20th centuries; the issue of nationalism and its ethnological foundations.

Further Activities

C. Ulises Moulines was co-editor of Philosophia Naturalis from 1988 until 2012; he is in the Consulting Board of Erkenntnis, Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, Axiomathes, Teorema (Spain), Theoria (Spain), and Metatheoria (Argentine). He was President of the Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie from 1997 to 2000 and Dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Munich from 2000 to 2002. He organized the 4th Congress of the Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, Bielefeld, September 2000. In 2000 he was admitted as member of the Académie Internationale de Philosophie des Sciences. In 2004 he was admitted as ordinary member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. From 2004 to 2006 he was member of the Conseil ’Administration of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2008 he became corresponding member of the Frege Center for Structural Sciences, in Jena, and in 2010 corresponding member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Catalan Research Society).

Awards

Extraordinary Prize for a Masters thesis from the University of Barcelona, September 1971; National Prize from the Mexican Academy of Science, December 1983; UNESCO Chair in Philosophy, October 1996; honorary member of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, April 1997; prize “Blaise Pascal” of the Foundation of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, March 2003; honorary member of the Catalan Society for Philosophy, October 2004; honorary member of the Spanish Society for Analytical Philosophy, February 2005.

Recent and Forthcoming Publications

• 2011: “La notion de progrès scientifique et ses problèmes épistémologiques“. Le Philosophoire, vol. 35, 25 pages.
• 2012: “Ontoepistemosemántica en perspectiva estructuralista”. In: L. M. Peris-Viñé (ed.), Filosofía de la ciencia en Iberoamérica: metateoría estructural, Madrid, 12 pages.
• 2013: “Crystallizations as a Form of Scientific Change”, to appear in: B.-O. Küppers (ed.), Semantic Systems. Springer, New York et al. 21 pages.