Flavia Padovani
University of Geneva, Switzerland
Academic Year 2008-09
Probability and causality in the early works of Hans Reichenbach

Flavia received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Geneva, where she became a scientific collaborator in the HPS section. Her interests span the interplay between science and philosophy, especially in the early XX century. Most recently, she has increasingly been working on logical empiricism, which brought her to do intense archival research in Pittsburgh, Konstanz, Zurich, and Los Angeles. In her doctoral dissertation, she used part of this material and put forth various revisionist theses concerning the development of Hans Reichenbach’s philosophy from 1915 to 1925, in particular with respect to his alleged shift from a neo-Kantian to an empiricist stance. While at the Centre, Flavia will be focussing on extending this research and publishing the results in a monograph. She also intends to finalise another project related to the comparison of three parallel attempts to lay down the basis of a “topology of time” making use of the principle of genidentity, that were presented by Reichenbach, Carnap and the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin in the early twenties.

Flavia enjoys classical as well as alternative music, modern art and theatre. As a good Swiss, she loves hiking and climbing, but while in Pittsburgh, she is planning to go back to her first passion, figure skating.