This essay offers some preliminary and general considerations of big picture historiography of science, attempting an introductory specification of the topic by means of narratological analysis. It takes no strong, substantive position eitherpro or contrabig pictures themselves, preferring an approach which is more diagnostic and heuristic in nature. After considering what may be meant by a term such as ‘big picture’ and its cognates, it interrogates the kind of desire which could lie behind the wish expressed by the conference title (...) ‘Getting the Big Picture’: namely, that a big picture may be worth getting. It proceeds by way of a limited enquiry into what seems to be felt as a relative absence of big picture works in contemporary historiography, criticizing one very general historicocultural thesis which accounts for such an absence, advancing instead evolving features of the professional history of science community over the last thirty years as reasons for this relative absence. Concludingly, it turns the issues raised thus far on their head, in some measure at least. In trying for a more precise specification of the contemporary historiographical formation, we will discover eventually a situation not so much of relative absence of big pictures, rather one where there exists both frame and title for the picture, together with some distinguished painters' names; but where the canvas is only minimally marked, a partial and shadowy sketch, stylistically disjoined. Although this sounds paradoxical, a concrete paradox is not intended. The existence of frame and title enclosing mainly empty canvas indicates only the limitations of the pictorial metaphor for describing complex and developing sets of historiographical practice. What is instanced concludingly is less a theoretical paradox than an intelligible sequence and form of development which issues in a potential problem of practice. (shrink)

If the defenders of typical postmodern accounts of science (and their less extreme social-constructivist partners) are at one end of the scale in current philosophy of science, who shall we place at the other end? Old-style metaphysical realists? Neo-neo-positivists? ... Are the choices concerning realist issues as simple as being centered around either, on the one hand, whether it is the way reality is “constructed” in accordance with some contingent language game that determines scientific “truth”; or, on the other hand, (...) whether it is the way things are in an independent reality that makes our theories true or false? If, in terms of realism, “strong” implies “metaphysical” in the traditional sense, and “weak” implies “non-absolutist” or “non-unique”, what – if anything – could realism after Rorty's shattering of the mirror of nature still entail? In accordance with my position as a model-theoretic realist, I shall show in this article the relevance of the assumption of an independent reality for postmodern (philosophy of) science – against Lyotard's dismissal of the necessity of this assumption for science which he interprets as a non-privileged game among many others. I shall imply that science is neither the “child” of positivist philosophy who has outgrown her mother, freeing herself from metaphysics and epistemology, nor is science, at the other end of the scale, foundationless and up for grabs. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.22(3) 2003: 220–235. (shrink)

Modernism in the philosophy of science demands a unified story about what makes an inquiry scientific (or a successful science). Fine's "natural ontological attitude" (NOA) is "postmodern" in joining trust in local scientific practice with suspicion toward any global interpretation of science to legitimate or undercut that trust. I consider four readings of this combination of trust and suspicion and their consequences for the autonomy and cultural credibility of the sciences. Three readings take respectively Fine's trusting attitude, his emphasis upon (...) local practice, and his antiessentialism about science as most fundamental to NOA. A fourth, more adequate reading, prompted by recent feminist interpretations of science, offers less restrictive readings of both Fine's trust and his suspicion toward approaching science with "ready-made philosophical engines" (Fine 1986b, 177). (shrink)

Philosophers of science have paid little attention, positive or negative, to Lyotard’s book The postmodern condition, even though it has been popular in other fields. We set out some of the reasons for this neglect. Lyotard thought that sciences could be justified by non-scientific narratives. We show why this is unacceptable, and why many of Lyotard’s characterisations of science are either implausible or are narrowly positivist. One of Lyotard’s themes is that the nature of knowledge has changed and thereby so (...) has society itself. However much of what Lyotard says muddles epistemological matters about the definition of ‘knowledge’ with sociological claims about how information circulates in modern society. We distinguish two kinds of legitimation of science: epistemic and socio-political. In proclaiming ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ Lyotard has nothing to say about how epistemic and methodological principles are to be justified. He also gives a bad argument as to why there can be no epistemic legitimation, which is based on an act/content confusion, and a confusion between making an agreement and the content of what is agreed to. As for socio-political legitimation, Lyotard’s discussion remains at the abstract level of science as a whole rather than at the level of the particular applications of sciences. Moreover his positive points can be accepted without taking on board any of his postmodernist account of science. Finally we argue that Lyotard’s account of paralogy, which is meant to provide a ‘postmodern’ style of justification, is a failure.Author Keywords: Lyotard; Postmodernism; Science; Knowledge; Legitimation; Philosophy of science. (shrink)

What is cognition? Despite the existence of a science of cognition there is no clear agreement on what makes certain phenomena cognitive, and others not. Within cognitivism the issue was neglected. Human intelligence was used as a standard, and any process—natural or artificial—that fitted this standard sufficiently could be considered ‘cognitive’. For post-cognitivist psychology the situation is different. It cannot rely on the ‘human standard’ in the same way. One might even say that the need for a post-cognitivist psychology arose (...) because cognitivism began with this most complex of all cognitive systems without a good understanding and appreciation of more basic, biological cases. Embodied cognition approaches remedy this anthropocentric bias by addressing a more varied set of processes that are not strictly limited to humans. Under these circumstances the question what we take cognition to be is more urgent. Are phenomena like insect walking (Brooks) and goal-seeking missiles (O’Regan and Noë) examples of cognition or not? What criteria do we use to answer such questions? Given this problem, the notion of perception-action coupling (or sensorimotor contingencies) becomes an important and fairly obvious option to provide a foundation for the notion of cognition. However, and intriguingly, the same problem occurs again: What are perception-action couplings? What would make something an example of perception-action coupling? Where are we to draw a line, if anywhere? It is self-evident that O’Regan and Noë’s (2001) example of a goal-seeking missile is controversial, but why exactly? What is missing? Can we ever do more than making intuitive judgments here? A way out of this dilemma may be found by developing the claim that perception-action coupling must be grounded in a biological context (Keijzer, 2001), and following what Lyon (2005) calls a biogenic approach. This option raises a whole new field of issues and topics that is of central concern for a postcognitivist psychology. (shrink)

Despite the flood of philosophical texts on postmodernism, relatively few attempts have been made to gauge the importance of postmodern ideas for the philosophy of science. However, Lyotard's enormously influential text The postmodern condition (1979) focussed on science and knowledge. He put the term metanarrative (grand narrative) into circulation. Lyotard defines the term modern to refer to the way in which science tries to legitimate its own status by means of philosophical discourse which appeal to some kind of grand narrative (...) (Lyotard 1984:xxiii). Science needs to legitimate itself as being true knowledge by making use of another kind of knowledge, which Lyotard calls narrative knowledge (Lyotard 1984:29,30). Without this legitimation science would presuppose its own validity and proceed on prejudice (Lyotard 1984:29). He examines two such grand narratives that previously legitimated science in the modern world, but now have lost their credibility. One is science as the liberator of humanity and the other science as a good influence on the character of its participants. He describes his now famous definition of the concept postmodern, namely an incredulity toward metanarratives, as being extremely simplified (Lyotard 1984:xxiv). Lyotard (1984:18-27) also strongly focuses attention on the important role of narratives in human life in that narratives provide a certain kind of knowledge that cannot be had in any other way. He regards narrative and scientific knowledge as two distinct species of discourse (Lyotard 1984:26-27), which both fulfill legitimate functions and no one's existence is more or less necessary than the other's. Lyotard himself sees the function of legitimation as the primary role for narrative knowledge, and discusses it mostly in that context (1984:27-37). In this article I want to look at philosophers who give different appraisals of the merits of postmodern ideas - with Lyotardian ones featuring prominently - for philosophy of science and our understanding of science. I will examine the attempts by Nancey Murphy (1990), Pauline-Marie Rosenau (1992), Zuzana Parusnikova (1992) and Joseph Rouse (1990, 1991a, 1991b) to develop (or reject) a postmodern philosophy of science. In a final section I will determine the worth of their views for our understanding of science and philosophy of science. (shrink)