Jan Maršálek

researcher

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phone: +420 221 183 371
office: 215a

Jan Marsalek has studied philosophy and sociology at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he holds an MA in Sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Prague), and a Master degree in „Études politiques“ from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. He received his PhD. in Sociology (Charles University, Prague) and in Philosophy (Université de Franche-Comté, France) in 2015. Before joining the Academy of Sciences full-time in the same year, he was an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Charles University, Prague.

There are two poles around which Jan Maršálek organizes his research:

(1) In the field of (historical) philosophy of science, he has formulated the problem of the "degradation" of scientific components and procedures (hypotheses, theories, methods, concepts...), an epistemological phenomenon whose significance he tries to reveal for both the study of the development of the social sciences (sociology) and that of the natural sciences. The history/philosophy of the social sciences was the subject of his doctoral thesis (De la disparition d'une méthode. L'analyse entre philosophies du contrat social et sociologies classiques, 2015) and is still the object of his interest in some of his recent publications. He also looks for examples of "degradation" in the history of science (his "Auguste Comte's Concept of Systematic Obsolescence", 2022, goes in this direction), and in current scientific practice (his current work on the Covid-19 pandemic, and more specifically on the hypothesis of Covid-19 spreading via surface contamination, is framed by this very problem of degradations in sciences).

(2) Jan Maršálek is also PI of the multi-institutional project ScioPolis^CZ, which aims to introduce elements of philosophy of science and science studies, mainly SSK, into the science curriculum of Czech secondary schools (https://sciopolis.cz/). He and his colleagues are conducting a systematic review of the history of the sociology of science and scientific knowledge. Since 2022, the project's research seminar on the philosophy and sociology of physics has been held under the auspices of the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague.

 Curriculum vitae (January 2025)

 Curriculum vitae (Czech) (November 2021)

 Publications (January 2020)

 Publications (Czech) (November 2021)

Recent publications

Fore more, see the ASEP database of the Czech Academy of Sciences.