This paper explains how Kepler in his ``War onMars'' applied systems of models organized bothin a perspectival and in a stratifiedconceptual sense. With the help of thesesystems Kepler worked out successively moredeterminate models for the planetary orbits.Along the way he discovered the Keplerian lawsas consequences of the distance rule, hisleading regulative principle. The selection ofdecisive, so called privileged, observations,as well as the determinate geometrical andkinematical description of the phenomena,result from the application of this principleto the developing of models. Kepler's method (...) ofdiscovery may therefore appropriately bedesignated converse abduction. (shrink)

Through an examination of the controversy between Clairaut and Buffon occasioned by Clairaut's proposed revision of Newton's inverse-square law, Clairaut's understanding of Newtonianism is revealed. The interplay in his thought between the possibility of falsification , and the necessity of seeking verification in terms of mathematically precise consequences, indicates a fruitful development of Newtonianism into probabilism. That Clairaut's principles stem from Newton rather than from the Cartesians is indicated by his retention of a delicate balance between the claims of mathematics (...) and those of observation, a balance in which the claims of metaphysics are weightless. (shrink)

In this essay, I attempt to assess Henk de Regt and Dennis Dieks recent pragmatic and contextual account of scientific understanding on the basis of an important historical case-study: understanding in Newton’s theory of universal gravitation and Huygens’ reception of universal gravitation. It will be shown that de Regt and Dieks’ Criterion for the Intelligibility of a Theory (CIT), which stipulates that the appropriate combination of scientists’ skills and intelligibility-enhancing theoretical virtues is a condition for scientific understanding, is too strong. (...) On the basis of this case-study, it will be shown that scientists can understand each others’ positions qualitatively and quantitatively, despite their endorsement of different worldviews and despite their convictions as what counts as a proper explanation. (shrink)

This paper explains how Kepler in his ``War onMars'' applied systems of models organized bothin a perspectival and in a stratifiedconceptual sense. With the help of thesesystems Kepler worked out successively moredeterminate models for the planetary orbits.Along the way he discovered the Keplerian lawsas consequences of the distance rule, hisleading regulative principle. The selection ofdecisive, so called privileged, observations,as well as the determinate geometrical andkinematical description of the phenomena,result from the application of this principleto the developing of models. Kepler's method (...) ofdiscovery may therefore appropriately bedesignated converse abduction. (shrink)