Intellectual Humility in Early Modern Science and Philosophy

Intellectual humility and hubris have been the focus of recent interest within epistemology, but epistemologists have not yet engaged sufficiently closely with the history of philosophy and science. Doing so is important, since it is important to gain a better understanding of intellectual humility and hubris in different intellectual, social and cultural contexts in addition to the conceptual analysis that has so far been provided by epistemologists and by the research we conducted at Durham. This workshop will contribute to filling that gap by bringing in an historical examination of the work of early modern thinkers and their reception through the lens of intellectual humility. It will include new scholarship on John Locke, Isaac Newton and his collaborators, women philosophers such as Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft and the Cambridge Platonists.  The workshop is intended to lead to new publications in high-ranking history of philosophy and history of science journals. 

This interdisciplinary workshop will examine (i) how the reasoning of philosophers and scientists exhibits the virtues and vices of intellectual humility and hubris, and (ii) the role that these concepts play in their explicit thinking about epistemic normativity.