The relatively recent trend seems to be to move away from General Philosophy of Science and towards the philosophies of the individual sciences and to relocate whatever content GPoS is supposed to have to the philosophies of the sciences. I argue that scepticism or pessimism about the prospects of GPoS is unwarranted. I also argue that there can be no philosophies of the various sciences without GPoS. Defending these two claims is the main target of this chapter. I will show, (...) however, that there is osmosis between GPoS and the Philosphies of the Sciences and that this osmosis is grounded on what I will call‘Science in general’ and the two important functions GPoS plays vis-à-vis Science-in-general: an explicative function and a critical function. (shrink)

. Philosophers and scientists often cite ontic factors when explaining the methods and success of scientific inquiry. That is, the adoption of a method or approach is explained in reference to the kind of system in which the scientist is interested: these are explanations of why scientists do what they do, that appeal to properties of their target systems. We present a framework for understanding such “Opticks to his Principia. Newton’s optical work is largely experiment-driven, while the Principia is primarily (...) mathematical, so usually, each work is taken to exemplify a different kind of science. However, Newton himself often presented them in terms of a largely consistent method. We use our framework to articulate an original and plausible position: that the differences between the Opticks and the Principia are due to the kinds of systems targeted. That is, we provide an ontic-driven explanation of methodological differences. We suspect that ontic factors should have a more prominent role in historical explanations of scientific method and development. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Physics brings together cutting-edge writing by more than twenty leading authorities on the history of physics from the seventeenth century to the present day. By presenting a wide diversity of studies in a single volume, it provides authoritative introductions to scholarly contributions that have tended to be dispersed in journals and books not easily accessible to the general reader. While the core thread remains the theories and experimental practices of physics, the Handbook contains (...) chapters on other dimensions that have their place in any rounded history. These include the role of lecturing and textbooks in the communication of knowledge, the contribution of instrument-makers and instrument-making companies in providing for the needs of both research and lecture demonstrations, and the growing importance of the many interfaces between academic physics, industry, and the military. (shrink)

Newton’s earliest publications contained scandalous epistemological claims: not only did he aim for certainty; he also claimed success. Some commentators argue that Newton ultimately gave up claims of certainty in favor of a high degree of probability. I argue that no such shift occurred. I examine the evidence of a probabilistic shift: a passage from query 23/31 of the Opticks and rule 4 of the Principia. Neither passage supports a probabilistic approach to natural philosophy. The aim of certainty, then, was (...) an enduring feature of Newton’s methodology. (shrink)

There are a bewildering variety of claims connecting Darwin to nineteenth-century philosophy of science—including to Herschel, Whewell, Lyell, German Romanticism, Comte, and others. I argue here that Herschel’s influence on Darwin is undeniable. The form of this influence, however, is often misunderstood. Darwin was not merely taking the concept of “analogy” from Herschel, nor was he combining such an analogy with a consilience as argued for by Whewell. On the contrary, Darwin’s Origin is written in precisely the manner that one (...) would expect were Darwin attempting to model his work on the precepts found in Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on Natural Science. While Hodge has worked out a careful interpretation of both Darwin and Herschel, drawing similar conclusions, his interpretation misreads Herschel’s use of the vera causa principle and the verification of hypotheses. The new reading that I present here resolves this trouble, combining Hodge’s careful treatment of the structure of the Origin with a more cautious understanding of Herschel’s philosophy of science. This interpretation lets us understand why Darwin laid out the Origin in the way that he did and also why Herschel so strongly disagreed, including in Herschel’s heretofore unanalyzed marginalia in his copy of Darwin’s book. (shrink)

This article offers a discussion of Duhemian analysis of Newton's method in the Principia considering both the traditional response to this analysis and the more recent ones. It is argued that in General Scholium to the Principia, Newton is not advocating what Duhem suggests in his best-known criticism, but he is proposing something very close to the establishment of a logical priority of physics over metaphysics, a familiar thesis defended by the French physicist himself.