The ArgumentThis paper focuses on several Italian Jewish philosophers in the second half of the sixteenth century and the first third of the seventeenth century. It argues that their writings share a certain theology of nature. Because of it, the interest of Jews in the study of nature was not a proto-scientific but a hermeneutical activity based on the essential correspondence between God, Torah, and Israel. While the theology of nature analyzed in the paper did not prevent Jews from being (...) informed about and selectively endorsing the first phase of the scientific revolution, it did render the Jews marginal to it. So long as Jewish thinkers adhered to this theology of nature, Jews could not adopt the scientific mentality that presupposed a qualitative distinction between the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is neither valid deductive support nor strong inductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis. There is no valid deductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis because, from the fact that the reference of the same kind terms changes or discontinues from one theoretical framework to another, it does not necessarily follow that these two theoretical frameworks are taxonomically incommensurable. There is no strong inductive support for Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis, since there are rebutting defeaters against it (...) in the form of episodes from the history of science that do not exhibit discontinuity and replacement, as Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis predicts, but rather continuity and supplementation. If this is correct, then there are no compelling epistemic reasons to believe that Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis is true or probable. (shrink)

The comparative method, closely identified with Darwinian evolutionary biology, also has a long pre-Darwinian history. The method derives its scientific power from its ability to interpret comparative observations with reference to a theory of relatedness among the entities being compared. Such scientifically powerful strong comparison is distinguished from weak comparison, which lacks such theoretical grounding. This paper examines the history of the strong comparison permitted by the comparative method from the early modern period to the threshold of the Darwinian revolution (...) in the mid nineteenth century. It interprets the work of early pioneers such as Belon, Willis, Perrault, and Tyson from this methodological perspective, rather than focusing on their particular anatomical findings. Although these early writers made formative scientific contributions through their comparative investigations, the more theoretically grounded application of the comparative method by Geoffroy, Cuvier, and Owen was instrumental in laying the foundation for its later incorporation into Darwinian evolutionary theory. (shrink)

In the present article, we discuss the specificity of the object of the history of science as an autonomous and interdisciplinary field of studies by nature and origin, placed at the interface of history, epistemology and science, and focus on some key historiographical views. Within this context, Georges Canguilhem stands out for contributions such as calling the attention to the relevance of epistemology in science history research and the discontinuity-continuity antithesis, among many others. An accurate understanding of Canguilhem’s ideas demands (...) an unbiased review of Auguste Comte’s work, particularly his views on science in general, the various sciences in particular and the methods to present them, to wit, the historical and the dogmatic. We finish with a short description of our theoretical-methodological work and its implications for studies in the history of science. (shrink)

Ecophilosophy is an attempt to render a new philosophy of nature, generated by the need to liberate nature from the inherently domineering disposition of humankind. Although I am sympathetic to this effort, I believe that the current ambiguity of its content carries with it the potentiality for new forms of oppression. I argue that ecophilosophy suffers from a kind of Habermasian self-deception, taking on a vague concept of nature that deceptively appears to do the philosophical work of healing the epistemological (...) gap between nature and humans. My reconstruction unifies this loosely-defined vision along the lines of an equivocal use of two key concepts, the domination of nature and nature itself, revealing the potentially subversive character of its implicitly universalist philosophy of nature. ;Ecophilosophers, rather than distinguishing themselves, fail to improve upon Francis Bacon's suggestion that attention to nature will liberate us. Their satisfaction with ecological solutions indicates that they miss the essential ideological consequence of the modern project: the domination by some humans over others has been covered over by a self-deceptive belief in the liberating character of scientific methodology. By arguing for the emancipatory capacity of ecology, they get themselves into a Marcusian-like bind, advocating this new science while at the same time rejecting scientific rationality as a pivotal component of their notion of the domination of nature. Because of this they are forced to argue that ecology is qualitatively different, offering a new kind of rationality that contains the necessary ingredients for radically changing society. ;Ecophilosophers must reconsider the epistemologically naive and ideologically negative repercussions of this position as I demonstrate with an analysis of the potentially repressive relationships that exist between fourth world cultures and the environmental community. I conclude by subjecting the Habermasian, universalist framework to revision as indicated by the possibilities of a new eco-vision, emerging from the contextual episteme of a reworked ecofeminist perspective. (shrink)

In an address presented on August 20, 1891 at the Sixty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science the President of the Association’s Section of Mathematics and Physical Science discussed various scientific developments. The speaker started with brief mentions of Michael Faraday’s centenary, and the death of Wilhelm Weber, and then went on to detailed discussions of a binary system of stars, the discovery of ways to achieve color photography, and the importance of professional systematic physics research (...) leaving behind amateur efforts. Then he changed directions and said he was going to discuss a “topic which is as yet beyond the pale of scientific orthodoxy” (p. 551). The topic, the study of psychic phenomena, was called by the speaker the “borderland of physics and psychology,” an area “bounded on the north by psychology, on the south by physics, on the east by physiology, and on the west by pathology and medicine” (p. 553). “I have spoken,” our speaker continued, “of the apparently direct action of mind on mind, and of a possible action of mind on matter. But the whole region is unexplored territory... I care not what the end may be. I do care that inquiry shall be conducted by us” (p. 555, my italics). The speaker was English physicist Oliver J. Lodge (1892; see Figure 1), who by that time was well known for his interest and work in psychical research.1 The “us” in the last quote above was a reference to the community of physicists. Such interest in the topic by some physicists, of which Lodge was a main player, is the subject of the book reviewed here. (shrink)

The present dissertation focuses on the examination of the methods of natural inquiry during the sixteenth-century. The historico-epistemological analysis of the different methodologies, which naturalists used to read the book of nature, shows that natural history, medicine, and alchemy were closely interconnected during the sixteenth-century. How did the naturalist thinkers justify and validate their knowledge? The present dissertation answers this question by means of two relevant historical examples of the pharmaceutical domain: Maranta’s theriac and Imperato’s philosophical medicine. They both show (...) the way in which experience and authority actually interacted within the naturalistic discourse of the sixteenth-century. In other words, the dissertation shows how experience aided naturalist philosophers to interpret correctly authorities and vice versa; more importantly, it shows under which circumstances experience could dethrone authority. In this manner, one can understand how the methods of natural inquiry justify and validate the pharmaceutical agenda of the sixteenth-century. (shrink)

This paper studies the history of teleological thought in Antiquity, after Aristotle, analyzing three relevant episodes: the contribution of Theophrastus – a companion and successor of Aristotle; Stoicism, as described by Cicero in his work On the nature of gods; and Galen’s anatomical and physiological works, especially his book On the utility of the parts of the human body. This analysis exhibits the broad diversity of views concerning final causes in Antiquity, all of them widely different from Aristotle’s one, and (...) the strong influence of theological concerns in some of those philosophers – such as the Stoics and Galen. (shrink)