Xingyu Lyu is a doctoral student at the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy and Philosophy of Language. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Physics at Zhejiang University in 2014, he obtained a master’s degree in Philosophy at Tsinghua University in 2017 with a thesis on Schopenhauer’s epistemology. His dissertation project is dedicated to a philosophical understanding of scientific observation located in the tradition of Perspectivism. His research focuses on scientific perspectivism, color study and scientific observation. His interests also cover some topics in history of philosophy, like logical positivism and its legacy.
Doctoral project
Scientific Observation in Perspective (working title)
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Freitag, Chair of Philosophy I
The dissertation project aims to develop a perspectivist account of scientific observation. The observational ability of human observers has been profoundly enlarged and enhanced with the aid of sophisticatedly designed apparatus. Whether the observational results gained via the use of apparatus could be treated as the outcome of a simple continuum of human sensory perception or not, determines how we interpret observational results in science. I will respond to this question from a perspectivist viewpoint and will thus argue that there is no simple continuum thereof. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a perspectivist theoretical framework with the aim of bridging the gap between the apparatus-based observation and human sense-based observation.