Program Committee

The Chair of the programme committee together with the representatives of the Executive Committee, and the Local Organising Committee formed the Core Team of the programme committee.

Local Organising Committee

Chair. Eleonora Cresto.

Members. Eduardo Barrio, Verónica Becher, Gustavo Bodanza, Bruno Borge, Manuela Busaniche, Alejandro Cassini, Nélida Gentile, Santiago Ginnobili, Eduardo N. Giovannini, Cecilia Hidalgo, Federico Holik, Catalina Hynes, Javier Legris, Diego Letzen, Bruno Lopes, Pablo Lorenzano, Hernán Miguel, Federico Pailos, Ricardo Rodriguez, Víctor Rodríguez, Ariel Jonathan Roffé, Luis Urtubey, Sandra Visokolskis.

Volunteer Coordinators. Bruno Da Ré, Damián Szmuc, Paula Teijeiro.

General remarks

The Council term from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023 was very different from what was expected when the current Council was elected at the General Assembly in Prague in August 2019.

The previous term (2016–2019) had seen an unprecedented amount of travel, in particular in relationship to the merger of ICSU and ISSC to the new International Science Council (ISC) with an extraordinary General Assembly and two General Assemblies within less than two years, all conducted as in-person meetings. As a result of this increase in international travel, the Executive Committee budgeted for large amounts of travel expenses in the new term (2020–2023).

Once the new Council started its term, the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, stopped international travel and replaced it with virtual alternatives to the great benefit of the environment; when international travel resumed, many institutions reflected on the necessity of in-person meetings and many have decided that it is a moral obligation to reduce in-person meetings to those that are absolutely and structurally necessary.

As a consequence, the entire Council term 2020–2023 was a term of virtual and electronic interactions with hardly any travel. This was considered a very positive development: while the Executive Committee acknowledged a certain amount of sad melancholy about the lack of in-person interactions, they think that many of the in-person meetings of the (recent) past are unjustifiable in light of the existence of virtual alternatives.

Internal matters

The Executive Committee during the term 2020–2023 consisting of the President, the two Vice Presidents, the Past President, the Secretary General, and the Treasurer had regular e-mail discussions. There were no in-person or virtual meetings of the Executive Committee.

The Council, consisting of the members of the Executive Committee and the ten Assessors had planned a physical meeting in Buenos Aires in the year 2021: this meeting was thwarted by the global Covid-19 pandemic. There was a virtual Council meeting held on 12 November 2021, to which the chairs of the organising and programme committee of CLMPST 2023 as well as the Secretary General of DHST were invited.

Relationship with members

As reported at the last General Assembly, the Executive Committee has started during the last two Council terms (2012–2015 & 2016–2019) to increase engagement with the membership by the Small conference grant scheme and by directly involving the membership in the Council elections. During the last General Assembly, two of the Division's members, the ordinary member France and the international member Societé de Philosophie des Sciences had proposed a formalised system of Council nominations and elections to further increase membership engagement. At the 2019 General Assembly, Council had promised to make this the topic of a membership consultation to propose a future nomination procedure.

An ad hoc committee on nominations, consisting of Verónica Becher, Chen Bo, Jen Davoren, Valeria Giardino, Benedikt Löwe, and Alasdair Urquhart was created on 18 March 2022; the committee designed a questionnaire which was sent to the membership and commissions on 3 February 2023. The outcome of the consultation gave the Executive Committee a clear steer to formulate a nomination policy largely based on current practices that is agreed on by the General Assembly (cf. Agenda item 10 and § 7).

At the same time, the Executive Committee continued its efforts to increase membership engagement in the election process by inviting all member organisations and commissions to submit recommendations for nominations. Many members submitted recommendations and in total, forty recommendations were received. Of these, three agreed to be nominated for officer positions and 32 more agreed to be nominated as Assessors. The election procedure (approval voting with no fixed maximum of Assessors elected) was chosen to guarantee that everyone willing to contribute to the Division's governance who has support of the General Assembly will be able to do so, using the flexibility given to the Division by its statutes (no maximum number of Assessors). Cf. Agenda item 7.

The IUHPST

The Division is one of the two Divisions of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (IUHPST). The governance of the Union is determined by the IUHPST statutes and a Memorandum of Cooperation between its two Divisions, the DLMPST and the Division for History of Science and Technology (DHST). The Memorandum is available on the DLMPST webpage. The statutes determine that the Presidency of the Union rotates between the DLMPST President and the DHST President. The following were the officers of the Union in the past four years:

The Secretary General used this opportunity to ask Marcos Cueto, the DHST President, to deliver words of greeting from the sister Division. The DHST President announced that the next International Congress of History of Science and Technology (ICHST) will be held in Dunedin, New Zealand and virtually from 29 June to 5 July 2025.

The IUHPST statutes before the General Assembly determined that the IUHPST Board consists of four members, asymmetrically selected from the officers of the two Divisions: at each point in time, one of the Divisions will have three Board members (President, Secretary General, and Treasurer) and the other Division only one (Vice President). The two Divisions aimed to symmetrise the IUHPST Board by including the President, Secretary General, and Treasurer of both Divisions. In 2020, Marcos Cueto (at the time, DHST President Elect) and Benedikt Löwe drafted a change of IUHPST Statutes which was agreed on by the DHST Council on 6 December 2020 and by the DLMPST Council on 12 November 2021; the changes were accepted by the DHST General Assembly on 28 July 2021 (planned to be held in Prague, but run virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic). Cf. Agenda item 8.

As established in the Memorandum, the Divisions send a representative to the Council meetings and General Assemblies of the other Division. DLMPST was represented by Benedikt Löwe at DHST Council meetings on 7 December 2019 (Prague), 5 & 6 December 2020, 1 August 2021, 10 December 2021, 9 December 2022, and 22 June 2023 (all virtual) and at the DHST General Assemblies on 28 & 31 July 2021 (virtual); it was represented by Verónica Becher at the DHST Council meeting on 24 July 2021 (virtual). DHST was represented by Liesbeth De Mol at the virtual DLMPST Council meeting on 12 November 2021 and by Marcos Cueto at the General Assembly in Buenos Aires on 27 July 2023.

During the last term, the DLMPST and the DHST shared four inter-division commissions: History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC), the International Association for Science and Cultural Diversity (IASCUD), the Inter-Division Teaching Commission (IDTC), and the Joint Commission (JC). The Joint Commission has a special status and is governed by the Memorandum. Its chair is appointed by DLMPST in the year of CLMPST and the preceding year and by DHST in the year of ICHST and the preceding year. For 2022 and 2023, DLMPST appointed Agnieszka Bolinska as JC chair. The JC continued the successful IUHPST Essay Prize in History and Philosophy of Science. Cf. Agenda item 6.

The successful project The Gender Gap in Science (where IUHPST was one of the partners) resulted in a Memorandum of Understanding of several Unions on Gender Equality in Science. This MoU, co-signed by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), the International Union for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), and IUHPST created the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES). IUHPST is represented by Catherine Jami from DHST who is also the chair of the committee; DLMPST provides a deputy: this was Delia Kesner from 2020 to 2021 and is now Hanne Andersen (since 2021). During the final conference of the Gender Gap project ICTP in Trieste in 2019, the project co-leader, Meihung Chiu, was denied access to ICPT since she is from Taiwan. On 10 January 2020, IUHPST wrote in protest against this discriminatory policy to the International Science Council and received a reply from ISC President Daya Reddy on 16 January 2020.

The years 2022 & 2023 were designated the International Year for Basic Sciences & Sustainable Development (IYBSSD), coordinated by the International Union of Pure & Applied Physics (IUPAP). IUHPST is one of the IYBSSD partner unions and is represented on the IYBSSD Steering Committee by Benedikt Löwe.

Currently, there is an initiative by IUPAP to create an International Year for Quantum Science & Technology (IYQST) in 2025; this initiative has obtained the support of the UNESCO Executive Board (216 EX/37). In July 2023, IUHPST has agreed to endorse the initiative and has nominated Sonja Smets to serve as a member of the International Advisory Board for IYQST.

The Gruber Foundation awards the annual Gruber Cosmology Prize and has a representative of IUHPST on its advisory board. On 20 September 2022, the IUHPST Board nominated Jeremy Butterfield to serve on the Gruber Cosmology Prize Board for a three year term, renewable once.

Relationship with ISC

The IUHPST has been a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU) since 1955 and is a founding member of the merged International Science Council (ISC). At the last General Assembly, it was reported that Craig Callender had been appointed as an IUHPST representative on the the Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science (CFRS), one of the four statutory ISC committees. When their first term came to an end in 2021, IUHPST nominated one candidate for each of the four committees. Of these, ISC appointed Sandra Mitchell to the Committee for Science Planning (CSP) and Jahnavi Phalkey (a member of the DHST Council) to the the Committee for Outreach and Engagement (COE), each for three-year terms from 2021 to 2024.

The ISC held three General Assemblies during the last four years, all virtual. IUHPST was represented at the Extraordinary General Assembly in January 2021 by Catherine Jami and Benedikt Löwe and at the General Assembly in October 2021 by Marcos Cueto, Catherine Jami, and Benedikt Löwe. Only those two General Assemblies had a live videoconference component, the third (Extraordinary) General Assembly in May 2023 was an online vote where Benedikt Löwe was the voting delegate of IUHPST.

A working group, co-facilitated by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) and the International Science Council (ISC), had been tasked with developing new hazard definitions and classifications. In October 2019, the working group asked for input from stakeholders to ensure that their list was robust and reflected the full spectrum of local and regional terminology. IUHPST identified philosophers of science working on the concept of risk and requested that they fill in the consultation questionnaire.

The ISC World Data System (WDS) is an initiative of the ISC that aims to preserve quality assured scientific data and information, to facilitate open access, and to promote the adoption of uniform standards. WDS aims to have a liaison for the ISC union members. In October 2019, IUHPST appointed Sabina Leonelli as the WDS liaison of the Union. Related to this, CODATA, the ISC Committee on Data created a task group on Digital Representation of Units of Measure (DRUM) and IUHPST appointed Sabina Leonelli as the contact person for this task group in September 2020. During the last four years, WDS had two nomination rounds for their Scientific Committee. IUHPST nominated two candidates in November 2019 and one candidate in May 2021, neither of which was appointed.

One of the major ISC endeavours of the last few years was a discussion about the future of scientific publishing. Virtual consultations were held as part of this project in July 2020 and January 2021, during which Benedikt Löwe represented IUHPST.

Another ISC committee, the Small Islands and Developing States Liaison Committee (SIDS) was asking for nominations of members; IUHPST unsuccessfully nominated a member in December 2019.

ISC also started a new Fellowship programme in which individuals are recognised for their outstanding contributions to the promotion of science as a global public good. The Fellowship is the highest honour that can be conferred on an individual by the International Science Council. In 2022, IUHPST unsuccessfully co-nominated two individuals for an ISC Fellowship (one with the national ISC member New Zealand and one with CIPSH). Nominations for ISC Fellowships remain active for three years; both of the nominations were successful in the 2023 nomination round (to be reported on in Bulletin No. 25).

In general, the ISC greatly improved their membership engagement: e.g., on 13 February 2020, Catherine Jami and Benedikt Löwe had a joint virtual meeting with ISC staff to discuss what IUHPST considers important about their ISC membership. In May 2023, the ISC implemented a system of Regional Focal Points, people who act as liaison for the ISC Regional Offices. IUHPST nominated Takehiko Hashimoto and Mitsuhiro Okada for the Regional Office Asia-Pacific, Marcos Cueto and Eleonora Cresto for the Regional Office Latin America, and Don Ross for the Regional Office Africa.

Relationship with CIPSH

DLMPST is a member of the Conseil International de Philosophie et des Sciences Humaines (CIPSH); in this council, DLMPST and DHST are separately members as opposed to the ISC where the Union is a member. Both DLMPST and DHST have been very active in CIPSH during the last four years: the former Secretary General of DHST, Catherine Jami, is currently one of the Vice Presidents of CIPSH, CIPSH and DLMPST jointly coordinate the UNESCO World Logic Day (WLD; see below), furthermore, our Japanese National Committee will host the CIPSH General Assembly in Tokyo in August 2023.

In 2017, Benedikt Löwe had become the representative of DLMPST on the CIPSH Executive Committee; he was re-nominated in 2020 and 2023 and represented the interests of DLMPST within the Council. In the 2020 and 2023 elections, DLMPST also nominated Luiz Oosterbeek for the office of President of CIPSH.

The CIPSH General Assembly (originally planned in Odense, Denmark) was held virtually on 14 & 15 December 2020. DLMPST was represented by Benedikt Löwe. The General Assembly in August 2023 took place as a hybrid event in Tokyo a month after the DLMPST General Assembly in Buenos Aires; Rachel Ankeny represented DLMPST in person and Benedikt Löwe represented DLMPST virtually. There was also a conference held in Tokyo after the General Assembly where Rachel Ankeny represented DLMPST.

In 2018, CIPSH had announced a new programme of so-called CIPSH Chairs, modelled after the programme of UNESCO Chairs, but focused on the humanities. One of these chairs was created at the Universität Hamburg under the name Diversity of Mathematical Research Cultures and Practices (DMRCP) with Benedikt Löwe as the chair-holder (September 2021 to September 2026, renewable).

Shortly after the Division's last General Assembly in 2019, an unexpected development took place: there was a motion for the 40th UNESCO General Conference to declare 14 January to become UNESCO World Logic Day (WLD). UNESCO coordinated the proposal with CIPSH who involved DLMPST as the natural institution to be responsible for the endeavour. On 26 November 2019, the motion was successful and in 2020, CIPSH took responsibility for World Logic Day. The CIPSH Board created the positions of WLD Coordinator and WLD Assistant Coordinator and appointed Benedikt Löwe and Deniz Sarikaya to these positions for a three year term, respectively. The global Covid-19 pandemic changed the character of WLD substantially: the overwhelming majority of WLD events are virtual and open for everyone around the globe.

The first CIPSH-coordinated WLD on 14 January 2021 included video messages from the ISC President Daya Reddy and several DLMPST representatives (Past President Menachem Magidor, Second Vice President Verónica Becher, Assessors Valeria de Paiva and Andrés Villaveces, and Mitsuhiro Okada, representative of the Division's Japanese National Committee). The WLD Coordinator and Assistant Coordinator also provided the institutional foundations for WLD 2022 and 2023. The coordination arrangements for WLD have been re-examined in 2023 and a cooperation agreement between CIPSH and DLMPST has been drafted, creating a WLD Advisory Panel. This agreement was approved by the Executive Committee on 18 July 2023 and is currently awaiting approval from the CIPSH Board and endorsement of the CIPSH General Assembly in August 2023. Deniz Sarikaya has been recommended by the Executive Committee to CIPSH as the next WLD Coordinator.

CIPSH organised the European Humanities Conference in May 2021. The event was mostly virtual, but had a significant in-person component in Lisbon. Benedikt Löwe served on the programme committee for that event and participated as a panel member in a panel entitled Multidisciplinary Dynamics as Education and R&D strategies for meaningful problem solving. For this conference, CIPSH asked for reflections on the topics of debate: DLMPST Assessors Hanne Andersen and Rachel Ankeny provided a reflection document on 1 February 2021 that can be found on the DLMPST website.

Other activities

In 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2018, the DLMPST offered small conference grants to organisers of events proposed by the members. The intention was to do this again in 2021 and 2022, but the Covid-19 pandemic created so much uncertainty that these grants were not advertised during this Council term. The Executive Committee felt that grants that are mainly aiming at encouraging academic travel to conferences are not appropriate anymore and some re-thinking of the grant scheme is in order: the next Executive Committee is encouraged to do so.

DLMPST co-organised a meeting entitled Fairness, Integrity and Transparency in Formal Systems: Challenges for a Society Increasingly Dominated by Technology with the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science (JAPS). That meeting was originally planned for the summer of 2020, then postponed and ultimately held as a mostly virtual event on 19 June 2021.

DLMPST was and is one of the non-financial sponsors of the tenth Congress of the Spanish Society of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (X SLMFCE) held in Salamanca, 16–19 November 2021 and the triennial conference SILFS 2023: Logic, Philosophy of Science, & Global Challenges that was scheduled to be held in Urbino, 4–7 September 2023.

For the World Humanities Report, Nancy Cartwright and Benedikt Löwe wrote a short text in July 2020 entitled Intermediaries between the Two Cultures. Similarly, they wrote a statement on the occasion of World Philosophy Day 2021 on 18 November 2021. Both of these documents can be found on the DLMPST website.

The International Association of Physics Students organised an online event on Philosophy and Ethics in Physics for students and asked the DLMPST to provide speakers. Craig Callender and Benedikt Löwe attended this virtual event and gave talks in August 2020.

On 27 & 28 November 2020, the Russian Society for History and Philosophy of Science (RSHPS) organised its Second Congress and Benedikt Löwe delivered words of greeting on behalf of the DLMPST.

The DLMPST Executive Committee was asked whether the DLMPST wanted to co-sign the Jena Declaration on the necessity of a move “from talking about sustainability to living sustainably”. The Executive Committee decided that while the members as individuals supported the declaration, the topic was not within the expertise of the DLMPST and it was therefore not appropriate to sign it as an institution.

The sister division DHST is organising the Global History of Science and Technology Festival 2023 as a virtual event on 29 September 2023 and asked the Division to nominate a speaker for it. The Division nominated Sara Uckelman as speaker.

In July 2023, DLMPST took institutional responsibility for the LOGIC mailing list. This mailing list had existed since the year 2000, maintained by various institutions in informal arrangements; on 19 July 2023, the DLMPST Executive Committee adopted a document with regulations and agreements and appointed Deniz Sarikaya as moderator of the list for a (renewable) term of four years. The LOGIC list is generously supported by the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the Universiteit van Amsterdam which provides the webspace and some automation facilities.

CLMPS XVI proceedings volume

The volume is freely available online on the DLMPST website.

CLMPST XVII in Buenos Aires

At this congress, this tradition was continued with an ISC-DLMPST joint symposium on Assessment of Research and Knowledge that was held on 24 July 2023. Four of the Division's six Commissions are organising symposia at the congress in Buenos Aires. The publication of the proceedings of CLMPST XVII is planned as a volume entitled Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Congress, Science and Values in an Uncertain World with College Publications.

The Assembly explicitly thanked the members of the organising and programme committee of CLMPST 2023 for their work in arranging the congress.

Joint Commission and IUHPST Essay Prize

The Chair of the Joint Commission reported on the IUHPST Essay Prize which was awarded in 2021 and 2023.

The prize question of the 2021 IUHPST Essay Prize was “What can history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine contribute to our current global challenges?”. The panel of judges for the 2021 competition consisted of Rachel Ankeny, Agnes Bolinska, Hasok Chang (chair), Benedikt Löwe, Helen Longino, Joseph Martin, Michael Osborne, and Dirk Schlimm; the submission deadline was 15 January 2021. The winner of the 2021 prize was the essay entitled “Misinformation age: What early modern scientific fakes can tell us about today's online fabrications” by Marlis Hinckley of Johns Hopkins University. Hinckley received her prize and presented the content of the essay in a special session at the online ICHST in July 2021.

The prize question of the 2023 IUHPST Essay Prize was “How can history and philosophy of science, technology, and medicine help us to understand and evaluate the role of values in science?”. The panel of judges for the 2023 competition consisted of Agnes Bolinska (chair), Marlis Hinckley, Helen Longino, and Joseph Martin; the submission deadline was 15 January 2023. The winner of the 2023 prize was the essay entitled “The curatorial view of assessment and the ethics of scientific advice: Beyond decisional autonomy towards distributive epistemic justice” by Ahmad Elabbar of the University of Cambridge. Elabbar presented his essay at CLMPST 2023 in Buenos Aires. The panel of judges was also pleased to recognize the essay “Beyond democratic legitimacy of value-judgments in science: a closer look at science in the early Soviet Union” by Karoliina Pulkkinen of the University of Helsinki as the runner-up.

Re-commissioning

The Executive Committee gave a report on the activities and functioning of the existing six commissions. It reported that there have been issues with the Inter-Division Commission on Teaching (IDTC) since at least 2015: disputes around governance issues and resignations of officers have resulted in a commission that cannot serve its important role within the Division. Furthermore, the Executive Committee reported that all members of the commission on Arabic Logic have resigned and that there are currently no members of the commission.

It was emphasised that this proposal means that the other two commissions (the Inter-Division Teaching Commission and the Commission on Arabic Logic) are not re-commissioned and will thus cease to be Commissions of the Division.

The ordinary member France commented that work related to logic and philosophy of science in Arabic or more generally in non-European languages are not well represented by the commissions of the Division and that therefore the Commission on Arabic logic is very valuable and should not be discontinued. Karine Chemla expressed willingness to volunteer to find active researchers to continue the work of the commission.

It was proposed to the Assembly that the newly elected Council for the term 2024–2027 should be given the task to revive the Commission on Arabic Logic or, more generally, commissions that work on non-European aspects of logic and philosophy of science and technology and propose to commission them at the General Assembly in 2027, provided that active members for these commissions can be found.

After this discussion, the proposal to commission the mentioned four commissions (and therefore not commission the remaining two) was accepted unanimously by acclamation. CoPhiTES announced their intent to apply to the Division's sister Division DHST to become an inter-division commission.

New commissions

The Executive Committee proposed to commission two new commissions for the term of 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2027: the Commission on Logic Education (steering group: Valentin Goranko, Cathy Kessel, Fenrong Liu, Maria Manzano, and Ram Ramanujam (chair), as well as the Secretary General of DLMPST ex officio). and the IUHPST Commission on Science & Education (steering group: Hanne Andersen, Theodore Arabatzis, Sibel Erduran, Snezana Lawrence, Simon Modeste, Ram Ramanujam, as well as the Second Vice President of DHST and the Secretary General of DLMPST ex officio). Brief descriptions of the scope of these commissions and their steering groups were made available to the delegates in advance.

CoPhiTES suggested expanding the remit of the IUHPST Commission on Science & Education to cover technology and engineering education. Members of the proposed steering group indicated that there is currently no philosopher of technology or the engineering sciences on the steering group; it was suggested to proactively aim to change this; if successful, a name change could be considered at the next General Assembly.

The Assembly unanimously approved the commissioning of the two new commissions with the listed steering groups.

Commission on philosophy of physics

On 21 July 2021, the sister division DHST and the IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create a new Inter-Union Commission on the History and Philosophy of Physics (IUCHPP). As the name suggests, this commission intends to eventually become a DLMPST commission. The Executive Committee was given the mandate to negotiate with DHST and IUCHPP with the aim to create a commission with proper involvement of DHST, DLMPST, IUPAP to be commissioned at the next General Assembly in 2027.

Officers' Ballot

The Assembly unanimously approved the proposed officers by acclamation.

Assessors' Ballot

The Nominations Committee had received forty recommendations of which three had already agreed to be nominated for the officers' ballot; every remaining recommended candidate was contacted and asked whether they agreed to be nominated for election; of these, 32 candidates agreed to be nominated for election.

In the spirit of avoiding the competitive nature of elections and welcoming the involvement of everyone who is willing to invest time and energy, the Nomination Committee decided that the General Assembly shall elect the assessors on 27 July 2023 by Approval Voting according to the following specifications: Every delegation can vote in favour for every candidate with as many votes (or any part thereof) as they have according to the statutes (e.g., a member with four votes can approve of any given candidate with either 4, 3, 2, 1, or no votes). All candidates who receive approval votes summing up to a strict majority of the validly submitted votes will be elected as assessors (with no upper limit to the number of candidates elected). Should that number be below the statutory minimum number of six, then the six candidates with the highest number of approval votes are elected. Should there be a tie in the process of determining the six highest numbers of votes, all candidates with equal number of approval votes are elected (e.g., if the eight highest vote counts are 80, 70, 60, 55, 40, 40, 40, and 35, then all candidates with at least 40 approval votes will be elected and there will be seven assessors).

The Nomination Committee reminded the Assembly that elected members of Council are not representing members of the Division: they are elected as individuals and have no relation to any of the member organisations. The Nomination Committee also expressed its desire to have disciplinary, geographical, and gender balance in the new Council. While there was no formal mechanisms to enforce such balance via the election procedure, the delegates were requested to keep disciplinary, geographical, and gender balance in their minds as they submit their approval votes. In order to give some indication about discipline and geography, each candidate was asked to indicate their main country of employment and their self-identification as “Logic” (L), “Philosophy of Science & Technology” (P), or both (L+P). It was emphasised that the listing of the main country of employment did not indicate that the ordinary member corresponding to that country was endorsing that candidate. The thirty-two candidates on the ballot were Atocha Aliseda (Mexico, L+P), Matthias Aschenbrenner (Austria, L), Agnes Bolinska (United States of America, P), Christina Brech (Brazil, L), Tim Childers (Czech Republic, P), Leo Corry (Israel, P), Nevia Dolcini (Macau, China, P), Rod Downey (New Zealand, L), Elena Dragalina Chernaya (Russia, L+P), Juliet Floyd (United States of America, L+P), Johanna Franklin (United States of America, L), Valeria Giardino (France, P), Marion Godman (Denmark, P), Inkeri Koskinen (Finland, P), Javier Legris (Argentina, P), Sabina Leonelli (United Kingdom, P), Fenrong Liu (China, L), Ed Mares (New Zealand, L), Genoveva Marti (Spain, L), Peeter Müürsepp (Estonia, P), Rune Nyrup (Denmark, P), Marco Panza (France, P), Rafaele Pisano (France, P), Tomasz Placek (Poland, P), Giuseppe Primiero (Italy, L+P), Ram Ramanujam (India, L), Andrei Rodin (France, L+P), Margaret Schabas (Canada, P), Ralf Schindler (Germany, L), Smita Sirker (India, P), Katie Steele (Australia, P), and Rineke Verbrugge (The Netherlands, L).

The Assembly cast paper ballots. The total number of votes in the Assembly is 98, therefore 50 approval votes constituted a strict majority and a candidate receiving 50 or more approval votes was elected as an assessor according to the voting procedure.

Out of the thirty-two candidates, eight received 50 or more approval votes and were elected as assessors for the term from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2027: Atocha Aliseda (71 approval votes), Agnes Bolinska (52 approval votes), Juliet Floyd (54 approval votes), Valeria Giardino (62 approval votes), Sabina Leonelli (62 approval votes), Fenrong Liu (54 approval votes), Marco Panza (51 approval votes), and Giuseppe Primiero (51 approval votes).

ARTICLE 1

ARTICLE 2

The Division is affiliated, through the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, to the International Science Council (ISC) for the purpose of achieving its scientific and scholarly objectives and furthering international understanding and cooperation in its field.

ARTICLE 3

ARTICLE 4

ARTICLE 5

An International Member shall be an international body or international scientific organisation; it may become and remain affiliated to the Division provided that it observes the requirements of the present Statutes.

ARTICLE 6

ARTICLE 7

ARTICLE 8

ARTICLE 9

The General Assembly consists of the delegates of the Ordinary and International Members and delegates of the Division's Commissions, including Inter-Division and Inter-Union Commissions.

ARTICLE 10

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ARTICLE 12

The Ordinary General Assembly is convened at least every fourth year by the President in office, normally during an International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology. At the request of a majority of the Ordinary Members or a majority of the Executive Committee, the President shall within six months convene an Extraordinary General Assembly.

ARTICLE 13

ARTICLE 14

The summonses to each General Assembly with the complete agenda must be sent by the Secretary General to all Ordinary and International Members at least four months before the date of the meeting. Any question not appearing on the agenda may not be considered except with the prior assent of two-thirds of the votes cast, or, in the case of a proposal to modify the Statutes of the Union or the Division, of three-quarters of the votes cast.

ARTICLE 15

ARTICLE 16

The Council consists of the six members of the Executive Committee and at least six assessors.

ARTICLE 17

ARTICLE 18

ARTICLE 19

The Executive Committee is charged with the administration of the Division's business and finance, and with the implementation of the resolutions taken by the General Assembly and the policies of the Council. It is responsible for approving the payment of subsidies to these Commissions. Three members of the Committee, other than the Past President, constitute a quorum.

ARTICLE 20

The Commissions of the Division shall have full freedom in arranging their own internal structure and work within the framework of the Statutes of the Division. If special funds are provided for their use, they may make their own financial arrangements, subject to the approal of the Executive Committee. Each Commission will be entitled to one delegate and one vote at General Assemblies.

ARTICLE 21

The Inter-Division Commissions of the Division include the DHST-DLMPST Joint Commission. The main responsibility of the DHST-DLMPST Joint Commission is to explore research fields of interest both to historians of science and technology, and to logicians and philosophers of science and technology, by means of Joint Conferences and/or symposia. The members of the Joint Commission are the Chair of the Joint Commission, together with each Division's President and Secretary General who serve as ex officio members together with additional members, co-opted by the Joint Commission for a fixed period of time. The Chair of the Joint Commission holds office for two years, and is appointed alternately by the DHST and the DLMPST. The Chair of the Joint Commission appointed by a Division takes up office at the beginning of the calendar year before the international congress of that Division.

ARTICLE 22

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ARTICLE 24

Each Ordinary Member is responsible for the payment of the required subscription. If it has not done so for two years preceding the year of the General Assembly, it will not be permitted to vote in that Assembly.

ARTICLE 25

The official domicile of the Division is Montpellier, France.

ARTICLE 26

These Statutes may only be amended by the General Assembly, with the provision that the total number of votes in favour of the change proposed is equal to at least two-thirds of the number of votes cast.

ARTICLE 27

Proposals formulated by a member for amendment of the Statutes of the Union or the Division must be sent to the Secretary General at least five months before the date of the General Assembly at which they will be considered. The Secretary General must bring to the knowledge of all Ordinary and International Members at least four months before the General Assembly, any proposal of this nature that she or he has received.

ARTICLE 28

ARTICLE 29

Any Ordinary or International Member which leaves the Division automatically forfeits all rights and privileges of membership.

Article 1

Article 2

The Union is affiliated to the International Council for Science (ICSU). It strives to cooperate with the other unions that are part of ICSU, with a view to reaching the scientific goals and the international understanding which they all pursue.1

Article 3

The Union consists of two divisions: the Division of History of Science and Technology (hereafter DHST) and the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology (hereafter DLMPST).

Article 4

Each of these two divisions has its own statutes. These specify the details of the activities and composition of these divisions. The statutes of both divisions supplement and form an integral part of the present Statutes of the Union.

Article 5

Article 6

The respective general assemblies and councils of the two divisions are regulated by the respective statutes of these divisions.

Article 7

Article 8

All decisions made by the Board of the Union require the agreement of the majority of its members, including at least one from each division. The President of the Union may, with the approval of the Vice President and the assistance of the secretaries general of the two Divisions, call for a vote, typically in electronic form, on any question.

Article 9

Article 10

The presidents and secretaries general of the two divisions shall send the Secretary General of the Union all information on the scientific activity of their respective divisions, to enable her or him to respond at any time to questionnaires received from UNESCO, ICSU or all other international organizations to which the Union has institutional relations.

Article 11a

Article 11b

Article 12

These Statutes may be amended only by general assemblies convened by each division, provided that the total number of votes cast in favour of the proposed amendment in each division is at least equal to two-thirds the number of votes cast in that division.

Article 13

Proposals made by a member, scientific section, or commission of one of the divisions to amend the Statutes must be received in writing by the Secretary General of the Union at least five months before the date of the first general assembly during which they are to be examined. The secretaries general of both divisions shall inform all members, scientific sections, and commissions of their division of any proposal they have received in accordance with the statutes of that division.

Article 14

The councils of both divisions can jointly decide to implement rules of procedure of the Union in accordance with the present Statutes.

Article 15

Under these Statutes, the Union shall continue to operate without any limitation of time. The duration of the Union is unlimited, unless dissolved according to the provisions laid down in the present article. The dissolution of the Union can be approved by a joint General Assembly of both divisions called for that purpose. The resolution of dissolution is valid only if it is approved by at least three-quarters of the votes in each of the divisions. In case of dissolution, the assets of the Union shall be passed on to an international organization with activities similar to those of the Union.

Article 16

In the event that a member, scientific section, or commission of one of the divisions ceases its affiliation with the division, it retains no right on the assets of the Union.