The Scientific Revolution spawned not just one methodology, but two. We have emphasized Bacon's inductivism at the expense of Galileo's more abstract, sophisticated method of successive approximation, and so have failed to appreciate Galileo's contribution to the ceteris paribus problem in philosophy of science. My purpose here is to help redress this imbalance. I first briefly review the old unsolved problems, and then point out the Baconian basis of ceteris paribus, as this clause is conventionally understood, and its history from (...) Aristotle to twentieth century Positivism. Then I explore Galileo's method of dealing with unwanted impediments, and the more general problem of 'accidents.' I trace his methodology back to Archimedes and forward through the economic theories of Adam Smith (18th century), J. S. Mill (19th) and Milton Friedman (20th). Finally, I point out ways in which I think Galileo's scientific method sheds light on, and provides a partial solution to, the ceteris paribus problem. (shrink)

The thought of Bernard Lonergan provides an epistemological position that is both true to the exigencies of modern science and yet open to the possibility of God and revealed religion. In this paper I outline Lonergan's “transcendental method,” which describes the basic pattern of operations involved in any act of human knowing, and discuss how Lonergan uses this cognitional theory as a basis for an epistemological position of critical realism. Then I explain how his approach handles some philosophical problems raised (...) by classical and modern science and show how his thought provides an intelligible link between the scientific and religious horizons. (shrink)

The ‘model approach’ facilitates a quantitative-oriented study of conceptual changes in large corpora. This paper implements the ‘model approach’ to investigate the erosion of the traditional art-nature distinction in early modern natural philosophy. I argue that a condition for this transformation has to be located in the late scholastic conception of final causation. I design a conceptual model to capture the art-nature distinction and formulate a working hypothesis about its early modern fate. I test my hypothesis on a selected corpus (...) of 25 works published in the Dutch academic milieu between 1607 and 1748. I analyse the corpus through a procedure based on concordancing of keywords associated with the model. I argue that the results obtained constitute a successful pilot study for the implementation of the model approach on larger scale research. (shrink)

The ArgumentScience consists in progress by innovation. Scientists, however, are committed to all kinds of traditions that persist or recur in society regardless of intellectual and institutional changes. Merton's thesis about the origins of the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England offers a sociohistorical confirmation of this revisionist view: the emergence of a highly rational scientific method out of the religious-ethical sentiments of the English Puritans implies that scientific knowledge does indeed grow out of – and not really against – customary (...) modes of thought.In tracing the intellectual origins of this view back to the religious controversy between Protestants and Catholics, the essay demonstrates that the essential conflict between them with regard to natural science stemmed from their antagonistic conceptions of tradition and its function in the production of genuineknowledge– of religious as well as of natural affairs. Whereas the Protestants believed only in those truths that are immediately revealed by God to each man through his reason, the Catholics adhered to truths that are related to men or “made” by them through culture and history. (shrink)

SummaryThe conspicuous role of taxonomy and debates about taxonomy in the well‐established physical science of pedology throws into question the Popperian rejection of definition and classification.

In 1675, Burchard de Volder became the first university physics professor to introduce the demonstration of experiments into his lectures and to create a special university classroom, The Leiden Physics Theatre, for this specific purpose. This is surprising for two reasons: first, early pre-Newtonian experiment is commonly associated with Italy and England, and second, de Volder is committed to Cartesian philosophy, including the view that knowledge gathered through the senses is subject to doubt, while that deducted from first principles is (...) certain. On the surface, it is curious that such a man would bring experiments to university physics. After all, in demonstrating experiments to his students, he was teaching them through their senses, not reason. However, if we consider the institutional context of de Volder’s teaching, we come to see de Volder’s Cartesian experimentalism as representative of a certain form of pre-Newtonian Dutch Cartesian science, as well as part of a larger tradition of teaching through observation at the University of Leiden. Considering de Volder’s institutional context will help us see that de Volder’s experimentalism was not in spite of his Cartesianism, but motivated by it. This paper will describe de Volder’s physics curriculum, the Theatre in which it was taught and how his work predates similar efforts in other European Universities. The second part will consider three aspects of the culture at the University of Leiden: a tradition of teaching through observation, a particular reception of Cartesianism, and an eclectic approach to the New Philosophy. The concluding portion shows how de Volder would have understood his enterprise in Cartesian terms. (shrink)

In this essay we introduce the idea of an epistemic triangle, with factual, theoretical, and conceptual investigations at its vertices, and argue that whereas scientific progress requires a balance among the three types of investigations, psychology's epistemic triangle is stretched disproportionately in the direction of factual investigations. Expressed by a variety of different problems, this unbalance may be created by a main operative theme—the obsession of psychology with a narrow and mechanical view of the scientific method and a misguided aversion (...) to conceptual inquiries. Hence, to redress psychology's epistemic triangle, a broader and more realistic conception of method is needed and, in particular, conceptual investigations must be promoted. Using examples from different research domains, we describe the nature of conceptual investigations, relate them to theoretical investigations, and illustrate their purposes, forms, and limitations. (shrink)

The paper addresses issues of scientific conduct regarding relations between science and the media, relations between scientists and journalists, and attitudes towards the public at large. In the large and increasing body of literature on scientific conduct and misconduct, these issues seem underexposed as ethical challenges. Consequently, individual scientists here tend to be left alone with problems and dilemmas, with no guidance for good conduct. Ideas are presented about how to make up for this omission. Using a practical, ethical approach, (...) the paper attempts to identify ways scientists might deal with ethical public relations issues, guided by a norm or maxim of openness. Drawing on and rethinking the CUDOS codification of the scientific ethos, as it was worked out by Robert K. Merton in 1942, we propose that this, which is echoed in current codifications of norms for good scientific conduct, contains a tacit maxim of openness which may naturally be extended to cover the public relations of science. Discussing openness as access, accountability, transparency and receptiveness, the argumentation concentrates on the possible prevention of misconduct with respect to, on the one hand, sins of omission—withholding important information from the public—and, on the other hand, abuses of the authority of science in order to gain publicity. Statements from interviews with scientists are used to illustrate how scientists might view the relevance of the issues raised. (shrink)

It is argued that the traditional distinction between artificial intelligence and cognitive simulation amounts to little more than a difference in style of research - a different ordering in goal priorities and different methodological allegiances. Both enterprises are constrained by empirical considerations and both are directed at understanding classes of tasks that are defined by essentially psychological criteria. Because of the different ordering of priorities, however, they occasionally take somewhat different stands on such issues as the power/generality trade-off and on (...) the relevance of the sort of data collected in experimental psychology laboratories. (shrink)

After a definition of ?common sense? it is argued that sociology and common sense both do and ought to interact with one another. Four positions on the sociology?common sense relation in the light of the interaction thesis are then critically discussed: sociology must break with common sense; sociology must be based on common sense; sociology and common sense are incomparable; and sociology and common sense are identical. The first two of these positions are further sub?divided in terms of whether the (...) arguments in their favour are or are not independent of one's conceptions of sociology and common sense. Each of these positions is illustrated by means of a case study of one author. The final section involves a consideration of ethnomethodology on the basis of the above typology: it is argued that ethnomethodology cannot find a site on the sociology?common sense question which is compatible with its basic commitments. (shrink)

The main question addressed in this essay is whether quarks have been observed in any sense and, if so, what might be meant by this use of the term, observation. In the first (or introductory) section of the paper, I explain that well-known researchers are divided on the answers to these important questions. In the second section, I investigate microphysical observation in general. Here I argue that Wilson's analogy between observation by means of high-energy accelerators and observation by means of (...) microscopes is misleading, for at least three reasons. Moreover, so long as high-energy observation is accomplished by means of spark or bubble chambers, then sentences about these observations do not meet Maxwell's criterion, that observation statements are quickly decidable. I argue, however, that this criterion is not a good norm for what is observable in high-energy physics, both because it would result in our describing a great many allegedly observed particle events as unobserved or theoretical, and because it fails to distinguish the reasons why some observation statements might not be quickly decidable. Most important, Maxwell's criterion fails because, contrary to Hanson's analysis, it presupposes that seeing does not involve both seeing as and seeing that.With this background concerning what is meant by general microphysical observation, in the third section of the essay, I discuss what might be meant by a more particular type of observation, that of the quark via scattering events. I employ Feinberg's distinction concerning observation of manifest, versus existent, particles and claim that the alleged indirect observation of quarks as existent particles is really based on a retroductive inference. I explain which premise in the retroductive argument appears most open to the charge of being theoretical (in a damaging sense) and less substantiated by observation. (shrink)

This article explores the cultural and philosophical foundations of factory farming. Modes of capitalist production play a role: Marx’s analysis of the fourfold alienation of labor can be applied to animal-laborers. However, the harshness with which animals are treated exceeds the harshness directed toward human workers. At root is a cultural anthropocentrism that prohibits viewing animals as moral subjects, removing ethical restraints. Ultimately, the modernist ways in which animals are treated as both like and unlike human workers are related to (...) the rise of Cartesian mechanism. The categories of “human” and “animal” are reconfigured by the image of the “machine.”. (shrink)

The present dissertation focuses on the examination of the methods of natural inquiry during the sixteenth-century. The historico-epistemological analysis of the different methodologies, which naturalists used to read the book of nature, shows that natural history, medicine, and alchemy were closely interconnected during the sixteenth-century. How did the naturalist thinkers justify and validate their knowledge? The present dissertation answers this question by means of two relevant historical examples of the pharmaceutical domain: Maranta’s theriac and Imperato’s philosophical medicine. They both show (...) the way in which experience and authority actually interacted within the naturalistic discourse of the sixteenth-century. In other words, the dissertation shows how experience aided naturalist philosophers to interpret correctly authorities and vice versa; more importantly, it shows under which circumstances experience could dethrone authority. In this manner, one can understand how the methods of natural inquiry justify and validate the pharmaceutical agenda of the sixteenth-century. (shrink)

That science is fundamentally universal has been proclaimed innumerable times. But the precise geographical meaning of this universality has changed historically. This article examines conceptions of scientific internationalism from the Enlightenment to the Cold War, and their varying relations to cosmopolitanism, nationalism, socialism, and ‘the West’. These views are confronted with recent tendencies to cast science as a uniquely European product.

In 1756 Joseph Black published a new theory of the nature of lime, one that is now viewed as essentially correct. Black's theory was not immediately accepted, and a competing theory, published in 1764 by Johann Meyer, was widely preferred to Black's for some years. In this paper, probability theory is used to show that, and why, some of Black's evidence made his theory more probable than Meyer's.

Much speculation on the sources of Duhem's historical interests fails to account for the major shifts in these interests: neither his belief in the continuous development of physics nor his Catholicism, when his Church was encouraging the study of generally Aristotelian scholastic thought, led to any interest in mediaeval science before 1904. Equally, his own claim that he was merely testing his views on the nature of physical theory is easily squared only with earlier work with no trace of mediaeval (...) science. Behind this discontinuity lies a major crisis. Though not a positivist, Duhem had based all his work on assumptions acceptable to positivists. One of these, the sterility of the Middle Ages, was refuted by his chance discovery of evidence of genuine mediaeval science in the autumn of 1903, but that left the doctrine of scholastic sterility intact. (shrink)

It is with no feigned modesty that I acknowledge, as a limited and superficial student of philosophy, the honour you have done me by your invitation to deliver the Manson Lecture. But if the honour is undeserved, it is by fortuitous circumstance the more appreciated. Dr. Manson was a family doctor in Warrington, Lancs., with whom I was privileged to have close professional associations. He was a man of many parts who regarded the isolation of medicine from philosophy as an (...) unintelligible and lamentable phenomenon of our time. He wished to see philosophy restored to its earlier and rightful basic rôle in medical education. He recognized that medicine and, indeed, the cognate basic sciences were occupying themselves almost exclusively with so rapidly accelerating an accumulation of facts, that little time remained for reflection and interpretation, and for pondering on the place of medicine in, and its contribution to, the general corpus of knowledge. And he was especially interested in the topic which I have chosen for this commemorative lecture, for he recognized, and translated into practice, the dictum that “No disease is wholly physical, and none wholly mental.” He saw in his patient the “whole” man, not a summation of such isolates as body, mind, environment, and family. (shrink)