Conference: How do we determine that something is unknowable rather than merely not yet known? - New York, NY, December 2018

The New School, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides partial support for a conference. It is an interdisciplinary, two-day, public conference that addresses an important scientific question: How we determine that something is unknowable rather than merely not yet known? Experts across a range of academic disciplines (including mathematics, cosmology, biology, medicine, economics, psychology, history, and philosophy) will discuss the criteria used to determine that a deep question cannot be answered and whether these criteria differ across fields. The conference is to occur in March 2019 at the campus of The New School for Social Research in New York City. The conference is likely to attract a large audience, from 300 to 400 people, that will include members of the public, the media, and policy makers as well as students and academics. The questions that are to be addressed by conference participants are fundamental and of perennial importance; they require revisiting from time to time. A similar conference on this specific topic occurred at Columbia University in October 2000; it was a workshop on the known, the unknown, and the unknowable; and it was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A generation has passed, and it is both timely and important to address these questions again. It is likely that the conference will attract a large and broad audience, and that it will foster dialogue within and beyond the academy and serve to enhance public understanding of important social, intellectual, and political issues. Papers from the conference will constitute a special issue of Social Research: An International Quarterly. The conference proceedings will have a good chance of inspiring and affecting the discussion of the criteria that define the limits of knowledge, perhaps even leading to changes in those criteria. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.