L'essor de la perspective linéaire a suscité de nombreuses polémiques tout au long du Quattrocento et du Cinquecento, opposant les partisans d'une géométrisation artificialiste de la vision à ceux qui vantaient les qualités du dessin d'après nature ou invoquaient des arguments de nature physiologique. Ces débats peuvent être retracés à partir des quatre alternatives qui en constituent le noyau dur : champ de vision restreint vs. large ; immobilité vs. mobilité oculaire ; tableau plan vs. curviligne ; vision monoculaire vs. (...) binoculaire. En retenant les premiers termes de ces quatre alternatives, l'histoire de la perspective a rejeté de nombreux systèmes hétérodoxes. Du point de vue de la mathématisation, l'intérêt de ces débats tient à ce qu'ils ont succédé, et non précédé, l'adoption du dispositif perspectif comme intersection de la pyramide visuelle. L'histoire de la perspective linéaire offre ainsi un authentique cas de justification a posteriori des fondements ou, pour ainsi dire, de mathématisation à rebours. (shrink)

Through an in-depth analysis of the notes that Leibniz made while reading Pascal’s manuscript treatise on conic sections, we aim to show the real extension of what he called “hexagrammum mysticum”, and to highlight the main results he achieved in this field, as well as proposing plausible proofs of them according to the methods he seems to have developed.

The aim of this work is to elucidate John F. W. Herschel’s distinctive contribution to nineteenth-century British inductivism by exploring his understanding of experimental methods. Drawing on both his explicit discussion of experiment in his Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy and his published account of experiments he conducted in the domain of electromagnetism, I argue that the most basic principle underlying Herschel’s epistemology of experiment is that experiment enables a particular kind of lower-level experimental understanding of phenomena. Experimental practices provide (...) knowledge of a particular phenomenon as a genuine effect produced under precise material conditions whose connections with other phenomena can be traced by variations in experimental parameters. The orienting concern of experimental inquiry seems to be the production of a secure understanding of phenomena even if it has no direct theoretical significance. Insofar as one can generate this lower-level understanding, it can function both as a fertile source for explanatory principles about phenomena and as a body of evidence against which one can test the adequacy of an explanatory hypothesis. This project provides evidence of Herschel’s inductivism not merely as a philosophical approach to understanding the sciences but as a methodological commitment in scientific practice. (shrink)

John Herschel's discussion of hypotheses in the Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy has generated questions concerning his commitment to the principle that hypothetical speculation is legitimate only if warranted by inductive evidence. While Herschel explicitly articulates an inductivist philosophy of science, he also asserts that “it matters little how {a hypothesis or theory} has been originally framed” when it can withstand extensive testing and empirical scrutiny. This evidence has convinced some that Herschel endorses an early form of hypothetico-deductivism. I aim (...) to clarify this interpretive puzzle and adduce evidence in support of the inductivist interpretation of Herschel's philosophy of science by examining his published account of a series of experiments in the domain of electromagnetism. (shrink)

In what follows, I consider the role of analogy in the first edition of Darwin’s Origin. I argue that Darwin follows Herschel’s methodology and hence exploits an analogy between artificial and natural selection that allows him generalize selection as a cause of evolutionary change. This argument strategy is not equivalent to an argument from analogy. Reading Darwin’s argument as conforming to Herschel’s two-step methodology of causal analysis followed by generalization allows us to understand the role and placement of Darwin’s discussion (...) of artificial selection in the Origin, without making the mistake of portraying Darwin’s argument for the existence and character of natural selection as an analogical argument. (shrink)