Claude Bernard's idea of the 'milieu intérieur' has been incorporated into modern physiology as a fundamental unifying concept. Bernard developed his conception, however, with a framework of nineteenth century concerns that differ in important ways from those of the present. This article summarizes the origins of Bernard's idea, the contemporary issues in physiology to which it was a response, and the gradual evolution of the idea in his thought up until the end of his career. Only in the late stages (...) of development did Bernard make regulatory mechanisms central to the idea of the internal environment, even though he had himself much earlier made important discoveries concerning specific physiological regulatory systems. The paper discusses Bernard's views on physiological regulation, comparing them to the views of other pioneers in this field particularly those of Carl Bergmann. (shrink)

This essay argues that shifts in patronage for the postwar behavioral and social sciences were linked intimately to both intellectual and institutional changes. This broad argument comprises two subarguments: first, that there were in fact two distinct, successive patronage systems for postwar social science—not one, as is commonly assumed; and, second, that the first postwar patronage system played a major role in enabling a series of behavioral revolutions and interdisciplinary syntheses across the social sciences, while the second postwar patronage system (...) encouraged the development of specialized concepts, techniques, and technologies within the disciplines. The essay also suggests that the widespread concern among social scientists in the 1970s and 1980s that their fields were fragmenting was at least in part an unintended consequence of the rise of the second system. (shrink)

In this article, I pursue two related goals. First, I aim to put theory back into our picture of the development of the American human sciences during the Cold War. While historians have rightly highlighted the empiricist methodologies employed by postwar human scientists, I show how an influential group of social scientists, led by the sociologist Talcott Parsons, attempted to establish theorizing as the primary means of interdisciplinary inquiry. My second goal is to show that the “abstract” theory envisioned by (...) Parsons and his followers can and should be studied as a material practice. (shrink)

Graeme Earl's paper on computer graphic modeling in archaeology raises many themes of interest for the philosopher of science, although, as is to be expected of complex social and technical disciplinary practices, these philosophical issues are not to be easily separated or neatly labeled. On the one hand, the modeling practices and concerns of the archaeologists dispute (or even disrupt) the philosophers' traditional notions, while the formers' reective commentaries offer sophisticated analyses that go beyond the latters' traditional reflections on models. (...) On the other hand, the paper raises new questions about how human and social scientists—as humans with social lives—engage with models in their different .. (shrink)