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Scientific Rationality: Phlogiston as a Case Study

In Timothy Joseph Lane & Tzu-Wei Hung (eds.), Rationality: Constraints and Contexts. London, U.K.: Elsevier Academic Press. pp. 37-59 (2016)

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  1. Positivism, Whiggism, and the Chemical Revolution: A Study in the Historiography of Chemistry.John G. McEvoy - 1997 - History of Science 35 (1):1-33.
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  • The Epistemic Benefit of Transient Diversity.Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2010 - Erkenntnis 72 (1):17-35.
    There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity is maintained indefinitely, (...)
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  • Is Water H2O? Evidence, Realism and Pluralism.Hasok Chang - 2012 - Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science.
    This book exhibits deep philosophical quandaries and intricacies of the historical development of science lying behind a simple and fundamental item of common sense in modern science, namely the composition of water as H2O. Three main phases of development are critically re-examined, covering the historical period from the 1760s to the 1860s: the Chemical Revolution, early electrochemistry, and early atomic chemistry. In each case, the author concludes that the empirical evidence available at the time was not decisive in settling the (...)
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  • State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable?Katherina Kinzel - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 52:55-66.
    This paper presents a survey of the literature on the problem of contingency in science. The survey is structured around three challenges faced by current attempts at understanding the conflict between “contingentist” and “inevitabilist” interpretations of scientific knowledge and practice. First, the challenge of definition: it proves hard to define the positions that are at stake in a way that is both conceptually rigorous and does justice to the plethora of views on the issue. Second, the challenge of distinction: some (...)
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  • Scientific pluralism and the Chemical Revolution.Martin Kusch - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:69-79.
    In a number of papers and in his recent book, Is Water H₂O? Evidence, Realism, Pluralism (2012), Hasok Chang has argued that the correct interpretation of the Chemical Revolution provides a strong case for the view that progress in science is served by maintaining several incommensurable “systems of practice” in the same discipline, and concerning the same region of nature. This paper is a critical discussion of Chang's reading of the Chemical Revolution. It seeks to establish, first, that Chang's assessment (...)
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  • The Hidden History of Phlogiston: How Philosophical Failure Can Generate Historiographical Refinement.Hasok Chang - 2010 - Hyle 16 (2):47 - 79.
    Historians often feel that standard philosophical doctrines about the nature and development of science are not adequate for representing the real history of science. However, when philosophers of science fail to make sense of certain historical events, it is also possible that there is something wrong with the standard historical descriptions of those events, precluding any sensible explanation. If so, philosophical failure can be useful as a guide for improving historiography, and this constitutes a significant mode of productive interaction between (...)
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  • Are the results of our science contingent or inevitable?Léna Soler - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2):221-229.
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  • Historicizing H2O. [REVIEW]Seymour H. Mauskopf - 2013 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (4):623-630.
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  • (4 other versions)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas Samuel Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Otto Neurath.
    A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...)
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  • Laws and symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality; scientists, in terms of symmetry and invariance. In this book van Fraassen argues that no metaphysical account of laws can succeed. He analyzes and rejects the arguments that there are laws of nature, or that we must believe there are, and argues that we should disregard the idea of law as an adequate clue to science. After exploring what this means for general epistemology, the author develops the empiricist (...)
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  • (4 other versions)The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
    Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index.
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  • (1 other version)The division of cognitive labor.Philip Kitcher - 1990 - Journal of Philosophy 87 (1):5-22.
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  • (1 other version)The Division of Cognitive Labor.Philip Kitcher - 1990 - Journal of Philosophy 87 (1):5-22.
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  • A Revolution that never happened.Ursula Klein - 2015 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 49:80-90.
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  • Science and Rationality for One and All.P. D. Magnus - 2014 - Ergo 1 (5):129-138.
    It seems obvious that a community of one thousand scientists working together to make discoveries and solve puzzles should arrange itself differently than would one thousand scientist-hermits working independently. Because of limited time, resources, and attention, an independent scientist can explore only some of the possible approaches to a problem. Working alone, each hermit would explore the most promising approaches. They would needlessly duplicate the work of others and would be unlikely to develop approaches which look unpromising but really have (...)
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  • The Phlogistic Role of Heat in the Chemical Revolution and the Origins of Kirwan's ‘Ingenious Modifications… Into the Theory of Phlogiston’1.Victor Boantza - 2008 - Annals of Science 65 (3):309-338.
    Summary Contrary to common belief, Lavoisier's greatest phlogistic rival was not Joseph Priestley but Richard Kirwan, a fact that was firmly recognized by both the Lavoisians as well as Priestley himself. During the 1780s, which saw the unprecedented rise of the chemistry of air(s), Kirwan's ‘ingenious modifications…into the theory of phlogiston’, in Mme. Lavoisier's words, became the most dominant alternative to the revisionist pneumatic interpretations of the French. A genealogical contextualization of Kirwan's phlogistic contributions, the circumstances of their emergence and (...)
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  • Introduction: Why What If?Gregory Radick - 2008 - Isis 99 (3):547-551.
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  • The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.David Bohm - 1964 - Philosophical Quarterly 14 (57):377-379.
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  • The Persistence of Epistemic Objects Through Scientific Change.Hasok Chang - 2011 - Erkenntnis 75 (3):413-429.
    Why do some epistemic objects persist despite undergoing serious changes, while others go extinct in similar situations? Scientists have often been careless in deciding which epistemic objects to retain and which ones to eliminate; historians and philosophers of science have been on the whole much too unreflective in accepting the scientists’ decisions in this regard. Through a re-examination of the history of oxygen and phlogiston, I will illustrate the benefits to be gained from challenging and disturbing the commonly accepted continuities (...)
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  • Counterfactuals, thought experiments, and singular causal analysis in history.Julian Reiss - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):712-723.
    Thought experiments are ubiquitous in science and especially prominent in domains in which experimental and observational evidence is scarce. One such domain is the causal analysis of singular events in history. A long‐standing tradition that goes back to Max Weber addresses the issue by means of ‘what‐if’ counterfactuals. In this paper I give a descriptive account of this widely used method and argue that historians following it examine difference makers rather than causes in the philosopher’s sense. While difference making is (...)
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  • We Have Never Been Whiggish (About Phlogiston)1.Hasok Chang - 2009 - Centaurus 51 (4):239-264.
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  • The Reality of Phlogiston in Great Britain.John Stewart - 2012 - Hyle 18 (2):175 - 194.
    Mi Gyung Kim (2008) has challenged the historiographical assumption that phlogiston was the paradigmatic concept in eighteenth century chemistry. Her analysis of the operational, theoretical, and philosophical identities of phlogiston demonstrates how Stahlian phlogiston was appropriated into the burgeoning field of affinity theory. However, this new French conception of phlogiston was destabilized by the introduction of Boerhaave's thermometrics. By extending this story through 1790, I will show that British pneumatic chemists integrated new understandings of heat with an affinity based operational (...)
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  • (1 other version)Laws and Symmetry.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 1989 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 182 (3):327-329.
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