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  1. (1 other version)Hysteria, race, and phlogiston. A model of ontological elimination in the human sciences.David Ludwig - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (1):68-77.
    Elimination controversies are ubiquitous in philosophy and the human sciences. For example, it has been suggested that human races, hysteria, intelligence, mental disorder, propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, the self, and the super-ego should be eliminated from the list of respectable entities in the human sciences. I argue that eliminativist proposals are often presented in the framework of an oversimplified “phlogiston model” and suggest an alternative account that describes ontological elimination on a gradual scale between criticism of empirical (...)
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  • Scientific pluralism and the Chemical Revolution.Martin Kusch - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:69-79.
    In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment (...)
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  • On the Historicity of Scientific Objects.Theodore Arabatzis - 2011 - Erkenntnis 75 (3):377-390.
    The historical variation of scientific knowledge has lent itself to the development of historical epistemology, which attempts to historicize the origin and establishment of knowledge claims. The questions I address in this paper revolve around the historicity of the objects of those claims: How and why do new scientific objects appear? What exactly comes into being in such cases? Do scientific objects evolve over time and in what ways? I put forward and defend two theses: First, the ontology of science (...)
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  • Désuétude et neuroplasticité.Sacha Behrend & Marie Michon - 2022 - Philosophia Scientiae 26 (1):11-28.
    The history of science is often understood as a succession of theories. However, this conception of the history of science does not do justice to the complexity of the dynamics implemented in scientific development. To illustrate this, we focus on a type of phenomena that cannot be described as a simple linear succession : the desuetude of certain theories and particularly the temporary desuetude of the theory of neuroplasticity. We argue that studying this theory reveals some of the inadequacies of (...)
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  • Centenary Workshop on the Bifurcation of Acidity -Protonism vs. Electronism.Klaus Ruthenberg - 2024 - Foundations of Chemistry 26 (2):193-196.
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  • Hasok Chang on the nature of acids.Eric R. Scerri - 2022 - Foundations of Chemistry 24 (3):389-404.
    For a period of several years the philosopher of science Hasok Chang has promoted various inter-related views including pluralism, pragmatism, and an associated view of natural kinds. He has also argued for what he calls the persistence of everyday terms in the scientific view. Chang claims that terms like phlogiston were never truly abandoned but became transformed into different concepts that remain useful. On the other hand, Chang argues that some scientific terms such as acidity have suffered a form of (...)
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  • Reality in Perspectives.Mahdi Khalili - 2022 - Dissertation, Vu University Amsterdam
    This dissertation is about human knowledge of reality. In particular, it argues that scientific knowledge is bounded by historically available instruments and theories; nevertheless, the use of several independent instruments and theories can provide access to the persistent potentialities of reality. The replicability of scientific observations and experiments allows us to obtain explorable evidence of robust entities and properties. The dissertation includes seven chapters. It also studies three cases – namely, Higgs bosons and hypothetical Ϝ-particles (section 2.4), the Ptolemaic and (...)
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  • Sombrillas y operaciones en la construcción científica del mundo.Alfonso Arroyo-Santos - 2017 - Metatheoria – Revista de Filosofía E Historia de la Ciencia 8:107--116.
    This paper argues that many of the conceptual controversies in evolutionary biology are due to the use of different operational definitions. Since the set of operations is not consistent, then there are many ways to understand, in practice, how concepts should be investigated. In this paper we introduce a formal analysis to study the scope of operationalism and we conclude that the controversial concepts are in fact umbrella variables, that is, a single term can be referring to different processes, phenomena (...)
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  • Explaining the laser’s light: classical versus quantum electrodynamics in the 1960s.Joan Lisa Bromberg - 2016 - Archive for History of Exact Sciences 70 (3):243-266.
    The laser, first operated in 1960, produced light with coherence properties that demanded explanation. While some attempted a treatment within the framework of classical coherence theory, others insisted that only quantum electrodynamics could give adequate insight and generality. The result was a sharp and rather bitter controversy, conducted over the physics and mathematics that were being deployed, but also over the criteria for doing good science. Three physicists were at the center of this dispute, Emil Wolf, Max Born’s collaborator on (...)
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  • On Lavoisier's Achievement in Chemistry.Geoffrey Blumenthal - 2013 - Centaurus 55 (1):20-47.
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  • (1 other version)Rationality: Constraints and Contexts.Timothy Joseph Lane & Tzu-Wei Hung (eds.) - 2016 - London, U.K.: Elsevier Academic Press.
    "Rationality: Contexts and Constraints" is an interdisciplinary reappraisal of the nature of rationality. In method, it is pluralistic, drawing upon the analytic approaches of philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and more. These methods guide exploration of the intersection between traditional scholarship and cutting-edge philosophical or scientific research. In this way, the book contributes to development of a suitably revised, comprehensive understanding of rationality, one that befits the 21st century, one that is adequately informed by recent investigations of science, pathology, non-human thought, emotion, (...)
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  • The History of Science as a Graveyard of Theories: A Philosophers’ Myth?Moti Mizrahi - 2016 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 30 (3):263-278.
    According to the antirealist argument known as the pessimistic induction, the history of science is a graveyard of dead scientific theories and abandoned theoretical posits. Support for this pessimistic picture of the history of science usually comes from a few case histories, such as the demise of the phlogiston theory and the abandonment of caloric as the substance of heat. In this article, I wish to take a new approach to examining the ‘history of science as a graveyard of theories’ (...)
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  • Retail Realism and Wholesale Treatments of Theoretical Entities.Jonathon Hricko - manuscript
    According to retail realism, we ought to abandon wholesale arguments, which purport to demonstrate realism or anti-realism about theoretical entities in general, and embrace retail arguments, which purport to demonstrate realism or anti-realism about specific kinds of theoretical entities. My aim is to argue that there is a further wholesale element that retail realism must avoid in order to qualify as a viable position. In order to do so, I distinguish between what I call wholesale and retail treatments of theoretical (...)
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  • Hypothetical Entities and Realistic Interpretation: The Case of the Muriatic Radical.Jonathon Hricko - manuscript
    Scientific realists are committed to the claim that scientific discourse should be interpreted realistically, so that theoretical terms are understood as putatively referring expressions that have putative reference to empirical entities. In order to argue against realistic interpretation, I draw on an episode from the history of chemistry. One of the hypothetical entities of late 18th century chemistry was the muriatic radical, a hitherto unknown element that was thought to be a constituent of muriatic acid. I argue that the term (...)
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  • Epistemic justification in the context of pursuit: a coherentist approach.Dunja Šešelja & Christian Straßer - 2014 - Synthese 191 (13):3111-3141.
    The aim of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic justification suitable for the context of theory pursuit, that is, for the context in which new scientific ideas, possibly incompatible with the already established theories, emerge and are pursued by scientists. We will frame our account paradigmatically on the basis of one of the influential systems of epistemic justification: Laurence Bonjour’s coherence theory of justification. The idea underlying our approach is to develop a set of criteria which indicate (...)
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  • Introduction. Conceptual Desuetude – Abandon or Transformation?Caroline Angleraux & Perceval Pillon - 2022 - Philosophia Scientiae 26:5-10.
    L’étude qui nous occupe est motivée par l’apparente ambivalence du traitement historique des objets épistémiques par la philosophie des sciences. Cette dernière tend à étudier les objets soit sous l’angle de leur émergence et de leur persistance, soit sous celui de leur abandon, en conjonction avec une approche linéaire et unidirectionnelle de l’histoire. La notion de désuétude semble idoine pour désigner un état des objets épistémiques...
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  • (1 other version)Hysteria, Race, Phlogiston. A Model of Ontological Elimination in the Human Sciences.David Ludwig - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (1):68-77.
    Elimination controversies are ubiquitous in philosophy and the human sciences. For example, it has been suggested that human races, hysteria, intelligence, mental disorder, propositional attitudes such as beliefs and desires, the self, and the super-ego should be eliminated from the list of respectable entities in the human sciences. I argue that eliminativist proposals are often presented in the framework of an oversimplified “phlogiston model” and suggest an alternative account that describes ontological elimination on a gradual scale between criticism of empirical (...)
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  • Chemistry and the problem of pluralism in science: an analysis concerning philosophical and scientific disagreements.Rein Vihalemm - 2015 - Foundations of Chemistry 18 (2):91-102.
    Chemistry, especially its historical practice, has in the philosophy of science in recent decades attracted more and more attention, influencing the turn from the vision of science as a timeless logic-centred system of statements towards the history- and practice-centred approach. The problem of pluralism in science has become a popular topic in that context. Hasok Chang’s “active normative epistemic pluralism” manifested in his book Is water H2O? Evidence, realism and pluralism, pursuing an integrated study of history and philosophy of science, (...)
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  • The rationality of scientific reasoning in the context of pursuit: Drawing appropriate distinctions.Dunja Seselja, Laszlo Kosolosky & Christian Strasser - 2012 - Philosophica 86 (3):51-82.
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  • Remembering (Short-Term) Memory: Oscillations of an Epistemic Thing.Uljana Feest - 2011 - Erkenntnis 75 (3):391-411.
    This paper provides an interpretation of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s notions of epistemic things and historical epistemology . I argue that Rheinberger’s approach articulates a unique contribution to current debates about integrated HPS, and I propose some modifications and extensions of this contribution. Drawing on examples from memory research, I show that Rheinberger is right to highlight a particular feature of many objects of empirical research (“epistemic things”)—especially in the contexts of exploratory experimentation—namely our lack of knowledge about them. I argue that (...)
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  • Creativity, pursuit and epistemic tradition.Julia Sánchez-Dorado - 2023 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 100 (C):81-89.
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  • From naturalness to materiality: reimagining philosophy of scientific classification.David Ludwig - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-23.
    The notion of natural kinds has been widely criticized in philosophy of science but also appears indispensable for philosophical engagement with classificatory practices. Rather than addressing this tension through a new definition of “natural kind”, this article suggests materiality as a substitute for naturalness in philosophical debates about scientific classification. It is argued that a theory of material kinds provides an alternative and more inclusive entry point for analyzing classificatory practices, which is specified through an account of “restricted malleability” of (...)
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  • Scientific realism: quo vadis? Introduction: new thinking about scientific realism.Stathis Psillos & Emma Ruttkamp-Bloem - 1999 - Synthese 194 (9):3187-3201.
    This Introduction has two foci: the first is a discussion of the motivation for and the aims of the 2014 conference on New Thinking about Scientific Realism in Cape Town South Africa, and the second is a brief contextualization of the contributed articles in this special issue of Synthese in the framework of the conference. Each focus is discussed in a separate section.
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  • Acidity: Modes of characterization and quantification.Klaus Ruthenberg & Hasok Chang - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 65:121-131.
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  • Les structures bourbakistes: objets ou concepts épistémiques?Paola Cantù & Frédéric Patras - 2023 - Philosophia Scientiae 2:233-259.
    Deux courants de pensée jouent un rôle important dans la philosophie des mathématiques contemporaine. Le structuralisme, s’il n’est pas une idée nouvelle, continue de se déployer en des directions multiples – de la pratique mathématique jusqu’à ses dimensions ontologiques –, et de faire l’objet d’études, par exemple en direction des modalités de sa genèse. L’épistémologie historique, dont la conception classique a été largement enrichie récemment, est également au cœur de débats qui renouvellent la philosophie des sciences bien au-delà de ses (...)
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  • About continuity and rupture in the history of chemistry: the fourth chemical revolution.José A. Chamizo - 2018 - Foundations of Chemistry 21 (1):11-29.
    A layered interpretation of the history of chemistry is discussed through chemical revolutions. A chemical revolution mainly by emplacement, instead of replacement, procedures were identified by: a radical reinterpretation of existing thought recognized by contemporaries themselves, which means the appearance of new concepts and the arrival of new theories; the use of new instruments changed the way in which its practitioners looked and worked in the world and through exemplars, new entities were discovered or incorporated; the opening of new subdisciplines, (...)
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  • Retail Realism, the Individuation of Theoretical Entities, and the Case of the Muriatic Radical.Jonathon Hricko - 2018 - In Melinda Fagan, Otávio Bueno & Ruey-Lin Chen (eds.), Individuation, Process, and Scientific Practices. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
    Retail realists advocate abandoning wholesale arguments, which concern the reality of theoretical entities in general, and embracing retail arguments, which concern the reality of particular kinds of theoretical entities. They can thus be realists about some and anti-realists about others. But realism about a kind of entity can take different forms depending on how retail realists individuate kinds of entities. This chapter introduces the notion of the inclusiveness of individuation: the more inclusively we individuate a kind of entity, the more (...)
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  • Identifying Pseudoscience: A Social Process Criterion.Gregory W. Dawes - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (3):283-298.
    Many philosophers have come to believe there is no single criterion by which one can distinguish between a science and a pseudoscience. But it need not follow that no distinction can be made: a multifactorial account of what constitutes a pseudoscience remains possible. On this view, knowledge-seeking activities fall on a spectrum, with the clearly scientific at one end and the clearly non-scientific at the other. When proponents claim a clearly non-scientific activity to be scientific, it can be described as (...)
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  • Scientific Rationality: Phlogiston as a Case Study.Jonathon Hricko - 2016 - In Timothy Joseph Lane & Tzu-Wei Hung (eds.), Rationality: Constraints and Contexts. London, U.K.: Elsevier Academic Press. pp. 37-59.
    I argue that it was rational for chemists to eliminate phlogiston, but that it also would have been rational for them to retain it. I do so on the grounds that a number of prominent phlogiston theorists identified phlogiston with hydrogen in the late 18th century, and this identification became fairly well entrenched by the early 19th century. In light of this identification, I critically evaluate Hasok Chang’s argument that chemists should have retained phlogiston, and that doing so would have (...)
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  • Kuhn on Incommensurability and Theory Choice.Alex Davies - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):571-579.
    The incommensurability of two theories seems to problematize theory comparisons, which allow for the selection of the better of the two theories. If so, it becomes puzzling how the quality of theories can improve with time, i.e. how science can progress across changes in incommensurable theories. I argue that in papers published in the 1990s, Kuhn provided a novel way to resolve this apparent tension between incommensurability and scientific progress. He put forward an account of their compatibility which worked not (...)
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  • Kuhn and the Question of Pursuit Worthiness.Dunja Šešelja & Christian Straßer - 2013 - Topoi 32 (1):9-19.
    The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to critically investigate Kuhn’s stance on the assessment of the pursuit worthiness of scientific theories, and, on the other hand, to show the actuality of some of Kuhn’s points on this issue, in view of their critical analysis. To this end we show that Kuhn presents certain tools, which may help scientists to overcome communication breakdowns when engaging in the process of rational deliberation regarding the question whether a theory is (...)
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