This essay argues that techniques for assessing testimonial credibility were well established in English legal contexts before they appeared in English natural philosophy. ‘Matters of fact’ supported by testimony referred to human actions and events before the concept was applied to natural phenomena. The article surveys English legal views about testimony and argues that the criteria for credible testimony in both legal and scientific venues were not limited to those of gentle status. Natural philosophers became concerned with testimony when they (...) shifted their attention from universal statements about nature to particular natural and experimental events. Testimony thus became important in the construction of natural and experimental histories constructed by English naturalists. The shift to a more Baconian approach to natural investigation, itself shaped in part by legal concepts and practice, made it possible for members of the Royal Society to adopt an already familiar and societally approved approach to testimony. However, the essay also suggests how the use of scientific instruments and the desire to avoid the adversarial processes of the law modified legal conditions for fact determination, and made it possible for later generations to associate the concept of fact, supported by credible testimony, with the natural rather than the human sciences.Author Keywords: Natural history; Natural philosophy; Testimony; Credibility; Science and law. (shrink)

Oma algses mitmetähenduslikkuses on see F. Baconi aforism kõige tihendatum tõdemus, mis tõmbab olemusliku eraldusjoone ühelt poolt antiikse ja keskaegse ning teisalt uusaegse arusaama vahele teadusest ja teadusteadmisest. Artiklis püüab autor anda võimaluste piires tervikpildi uusaja teaduse industriaalselt (tehnoloogiliselt) orienteeritud teadmistüübi tekkimisest. Uusaja teaduse kujunemiseks vajaliku pöörde maailmavaateliste eeldustena tuleb käsitleda: (1) põhimõtteliselt uut subjekti ja objekti käsitust; (2) täiesti uut väärtusruumi, uut teaduse ideoloogiat (ilmalikkus, kriitiline vaim, tõesus ja praktiline kasulikkus); (3) tunnetuslaadi muutust — kontemplatsioonilt interventsioonile, kvaliteedi kirjeldamiselt kvantiteedi (...) uurimisele; (4) looduse käsitlemist Kosmose asemel seaduspäraselt korrastatud objektide “väljana”. Uue tunnetusstiili — empiirilise ja teoreetilise tunnetuse kokkuviimine, hüpoteetilis-deduktiivse metodoloogia kujundamine Galilei poolt, abstraktse ja sünteetilis-tekstilise loomuga spekulatsiooni asendumine uurimisobjekti ehituse, korrapära ja põhjuslikkuse objektiivse analüüsiga, universaalsete loodusseaduste doktriini kujunemine jms—kujunemine konstitueeris uut tüüpi teadmise. Teadmise kui nähtava maailma piltkoopia asemele luuakse teadmine kui loodusobjektide seaduspära analüütiline rekonstruktsioon. See on vormiltmatemaatiline, päritolult eksperimentaalne ning loodusobjektide kontrollimisele ja ümbertegemisele suunatud nn valdamisteadmine. This F. Bacon's aphorism in its original ambiguity is the most condensed belief that draws a distinctive essential line between ancient and medieval understanding of science and scientific knowledge on one hand and modern understanding on the other. The author aims at providing, as far as possible, an integral overview of emerging of the industrially (technologically) orientated type of knowledge of modern times. Ideological/philosophical preconditions of the change necessary for emerging of modern science are: (1) a fundamentally new approach to the subject and object; (2) a completely new system of values, a new ideology of science (secularity, critical spirit, trueness and utilitarianism); (3) a change in manner of cognizance - from contemplation to intervention, from describing quality to studying quantity; (4) treating nature as a naturally organised "field" of objects instead of the Cosmos. Emerging of a new style of cognizance - bringing together of empirical and theoretical cognition, the devise of the hypothetical-deductive method by Galilei, replacement of speculations abstract and synthetic-textual in nature with objective study of the structure, regularity and causality of the object of study, establishment of the doctrine of universal natural laws etc - constituted a new type of knowledge. Knowledge as a copy of the visible world is replaced by knowledge as an analytical reconstruction of the regularity of natural objects. It is so-called dispositive knowledge, morphologically mathematical, originally experimental and aimed at control and alteration of natural objects. (shrink)

This paper lays the groundwork for normative-yet-naturalistic social epistemology. I start by presenting two scenarios for the history of epistemology since Kant, one in which social epistemology is the natural outcome and the other in which it represents a not entirely satisfactory break with classical theories of knowledge. Next I argue that the current trend toward naturalizing epistemology threatens to destroy the distinctiveness of the sociological approach by presuming that it complements standard psychological and historical approaches. I then try to (...) reassert, in Comtean fashion, the epistemologist's credentials in regulating knowledge production. Finally, I consider how social epistemology may have something exciting and relevant to say about contemporary debates in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

First Published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science, which he developed by focusing on physics, was later applied by other authors to virtually all areas or disciplines of culture. What interests me here, however, is the movement in the opposite direction: the role that one of these disciplines, history of art, played in the conception of Kuhn'stheoryof science.In a 1969 article, his only published text concerning science and art, Kuhn makes a brief and intriguing observation about The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He says (...) the book was a belated product of his discovery of the parallels between science and art. This is a retrospective assertion about Structure, as well as that of the... (shrink)

SUMMARYAmong the elements of the modern scientific ethos, as identified by R.K. Merton and others, is the commitment of individual effort to a long-term inquiry that may not bring substantial results in a lifetime. The challenge this presents was encapsulated in the aphorism of the ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates of Kos: vita brevis, ars longa. This article explores how this complaint was answered in the early modern period by Francis Bacon’s call for the inauguration of the sciences over several generations, (...) thereby imagining a succession of lives added together over time. However, Bacon also explored another response to Hippocrates: the devotion of a ‘whole life’, whether brief or long, to science. The endorsement of long-term inquiry in combination with intensive lifetime involvement was embraced by some leading Fellows of the Royal Society, such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. The problem for individuals, however, was to find satisfaction in science despite concerns, in some fields, that current observations and experiments would not yield material able to be extended by future investigations. (shrink)

This paper deals with Ágnes Heller’s suggestion, in A Theory of Modernity (1999), to ascribe to science a central role in the ongoing development of modernity. As we shall argue, this is not merely a historical issue but, rather, a historical-philosophical one that entails the problem of defining modernity, science and technology and their mutual interconnections. As for modernity, according to Heller, it is a free developmental project without any foundations other than freedom itself. In particular, the evolution of science (...) and technology is one of its main developmental tendencies. Science, she argues, has become the dominant world explanation while technological thought is the corresponding dominant (but not unique) imaginary institution. Her attempt to isolate the essential cultural features of science-technology owes much to Habermas’s analyses of the 1960s on the technocratic developments of contemporary societies legitimized through an ideological employment of science. Like Habermas, Heller embraces an instrumental and problem-solving conception of technology and ‘normal’ science which appears questionable, however, in the light of conclusions on the intrinsic creativity of the science-technology interface deriving from historical epistemology and an externalist history of science. Considerations and examples derived from the recent agenda of historical epistemology could integrate Heller’s philosophical and cultural analysis of the role of science in modernity while challenging some of her assumptions. (shrink)

Authors and printers together created the New Book of Nature—the printed literature of science—in early modern Europe. Careful attention has been given in recent years to the development of literary and rhetorical techniques in science. This article proposes that these developments were linked to printing technology and the typographic culture that produced the early printed book of science. We focus on several cases in which the roles of author and printer-publisher were joined and thereby highlight connections between knowledge production and (...) reproduction during the Scientific Revolution. Examples include Regiomontanus, Tycho Brake, Galileo, William Leybourn, Joseph Moxon, and the collective practices and privileges of the Royal Society of London and the Paris Academy of Sciences. (shrink)