Science and reason: exploring new horizons

Science and reason: exploring new horizons
seminar - discussion of the group Science, Reason and Faith.
Luis Montuenga - Paloma Pérez Ilzarbe. Pamplona, March 18, 2025.

presentation:
Experimental sciences have earned a well-deserved prestige. The experience during the recent Covid pandemic, for example, highlights the important role that science and technology play in the welfare and progress of mankind. Paradoxically, however, this same experience has revealed a growing sense of mistrust - and even fear - of science and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, which some perceive as disconnected from the truth, especially with regard to human nature.
This seminar seeks to deepen this open discussion on the different ways of understanding scientific activity. It addresses whether it is possible to overcome a merely utilitarian view of the empirical sciences and how other modes of rationality can contribute to reinforce the commitment of science to truth and make it more evident. The way in which the relationship between truth and empirical science is conceived could be at the root of both its prestige and the mistrust it arouses.
To address these issues, Luis Montuenga, a scientist with an extensive research career, and Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe, a philosopher specializing in epistemology and the study of science, will participate. After a brief initial intervention by each speaker from their respective perspective, a dialogue will be opened, moderated by Ujué Moreno, professor and researcher at the School of Sciences, in which the audience will also participate.

 Luis Montuenga is Full Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Navarra and Senior researcher at the Applied Medical research center CIMA), where he directs the LUNGSEARCH laboratory of Biomarkers and New Therapies. Dr. Montuenga is the author of more than 230 publications in the fields of Oncology and Cell Biology, has supervised 23 doctoral thesis and has given numerous international conferences and seminars. Between 2007 and 2011 he was Vice President of research at the University of Navarra and between 2014 and 2023 he has been Dean of the School of Sciences. His research activity focuses exclusively on lung cancer, with special interest in biomarkers for early detection and prognosis, animal and cellular models of lung carcinogenesis and new therapeutic strategies based on molecular profile of lung cancer patients. During his degree program professor he has been in position of undergraduate and postgraduate program courses in the areas of Cell Biology, Histology, development Biology, Molecular Oncology and Ethics of Science. He has always maintained an active interest in multidisciplinary dialogue.

 Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Navarra. Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Language. She is currently deputy director of the department of Philosophy at the University of Navarra. Her area of specialization is the history of logic and her interest is mainly focused on the borderline issues between logic, metaphysics and epistemology. In particular, he has studied the relationship between science and Philosophy in the pragmatist tradition. For example, the chapter "Vaz Ferreira as a Pragmatist. The articulation of science and philosophy" (in Pragmatism in the Americas, 2011), and the articles "La búsqueda de la verdad: Philosophy y ciencias en Carlos Vaz Ferreira" (Filosóficoyearbook , 2005) and "La idea de ciencia de Eugenio d'Ors: Un approach 'postpragmático'" (Filosóficoyearbook , 2007), address the topic of scientific rationality, its connection with truth and its place in the whole of human knowledge . She is currently participating in the project "Political Utopia, gender and science in modernity through Margaret Cavendish", where she investigates the philosophical assumptions of seventeenth century science and the conceptions of rationality that interpreted it.