Hans Radder

This personal website is limited to matters of professional interest. Below you find a brief biographical note. The links will lead you to a short CV, a list of publications and a list of lectures and presentations.

At the moment, I am professor emeritus and affiliated researcher in the Department of Philosophy at VU University Amsterdam. The subject of my teaching and research is the philosophy of science and technology, broadly conceived by substantially including socio-political and moral issues. I hold degrees in physics (BA and MSc.) and in philosophy (BA, MA and PhD).

Major themes in my teaching and research are: scientific observation and experimentation, the historical, epistemological and ontological meaning of concepts, scientific realism, metaphilosophical issues related to historical and sociological approaches to science and technology, the social and moral significance of science and technology, the commodification of science, and the alternative of science in the public interest and for the common good. My publications include the edited volume The commodification of academic research: Science and the modern university (2010) and the books In and about the world (1996), The world observed/The world conceived (2006), The material realization of science: From Habermas to experimentation and referential realism (2012), and From commodification to the common good: Reconstructing science, technology, and society (2019). For more about these subjects, see the full publication list and the list of lectures and presentations.

The volume Building bridges: Connecting science, technology and philosophy (Essays presented to Hans Radder), edited by Henk de Regt and Chunglin Kwa (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2014; freely available here), includes discussion of a range of aspects of my work. See also the Wikipedia page Hans Radder - Wikipedia (in Dutch).