13.12.2018, 18.00 – 20.00 TUM. Podium-discussion: Scientific Evidence in the post-fact society

13.12.2018, 18.00 - 20.00 TUM.  Podium-discussion: Scientific Evidence in the post-fact society

Thursday, 13.12.2018, 18.00 – 20.00 in the Vorhoelzer-Forum of the Technical University Munich

“Was kann ich wissen?” (“What can I know?”)

When Immanuel Kant asked this question more than 200 years ago, the scientists of his time did not have a clear answer.  To discover facts, collect, weigh up, and interpret them was understood as the silver bullet towards gaining certain knowledge and allocating the power of explaining the world and dissolving conflicts on scientific evidence. In the 20th century this certainty began to crumble. And at the beginning of the 21st century this authority of facts seems to be continuously eroded, in such a way that the talk of the post factual age is everywhere. The reasons and the effects of this development, in which truth and lies, fact and fiction, etc. are remeasured, are manifold and contradictory. New technologies, especially the digitalization, augmented claims for participation in participatory democracies, the need for certitude of the future and certain prognoses, but also concrete interests of economy and massive political shifts — this field of forces is where scientific evidence is produced and negotiated nowadays. These challenges for the science and the questions that arise from it are what we want to discuss.

Program

 

Prof. Dr. Karin Zachmann, Historian of Technology, TUM

Introduction and Moderation

Impulse-presentations

Prof. Dr. Jens Kersten, Law, LMU

Prekäre Evidenz: Die personalisierte Medizin aus juristischer Perspektive (Precarious Evidence: The personalized medicine from a juridical perspective)

Prof. Dr. Senja Post, Communication Science, Universität Göttingen

Zur Wahrheitssuche im Journalismus und in der Wissenschaft (About the search for truth in journalism and science)

Prof. Dr. Miranda Schreurs, Political Science, TUM School of Governance

Klimapolitik im postfaktischen Zeitalter: Die Ausbreitung der Klimaskepsis in den USA und der EU (Climate-politics in the post factual age: The spread of climate scepticism in the US and EU)

Flyer

Poster