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Notes
Cf., for a different orientation on the modern, post-nineteenth-century scientist, Shapin (2008).
I shall say nothing about the fascinating chapter, “Trained Judgment”, but allow myself a comment on the paradigm picture, fig. 1.3, which is also reproduced as the first colored plate at the end of the book, and which is a detail of fig. 6.10, which is there called a “magnetogram of the sun”. The description under fig. 1.3 is: “This image of the magnetic field of the sun mixed the output of sophisticated equipment with a ‘subjective’ smoothing of the data—the authors deemed this intervention necessary to remove instrumental artifacts.” Pedantry calls: (1.3) is not an “image of the magnetic field of the sun”, it is a chart (as the authors of the chart call it) of the changes in the magnetic field of the sun during 6 days in August, 1959. And (6.10) is not a “magnetogram of the sun”, but a visual summary of data derived from a series of solar magnetograms (images of magnetic field distributions) obtained in Pasadena, Los Angeles, during one rotation of the sun’s equator, of which the 6 days of (1.3) form the first part. Indeed, (1.3) is the beginning of the longest continuous record of observed magnetic fields of the sun (using the Zeeman Effect); it still continues in Pasadena, although now one may prefer to watch online the minute-by-minute results of the SOHO satellite (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory). The authors at the Mount Wilson Observatory published numerous sophisticated discussions of reliability and of difficulties that are far more intense than removing “instrumental artifacts”. There are at least a dozen kinds of technical difficulty—this is the first time the apparatus has been up and running—and the issue is not ‘smoothing’. For a popular discussion, see Bumba and Howard (1965a); otherwise Babcock (1953), Howard and Babcock (1960), Bumba and Howard (1965b). The use of the adjectives “subjective”, “objective”, and “reliable” in these texts is a model of clarity. These remarks in no way conflict with D&G’s use of the chart, but point to a complex story in its own right.
Michel Foucault, whom I am co-opting here, always included diagrams and other pictorial inscriptions among the énoncés, the “statements” that serve as data.
Beck (1969, p. 284). The locus classicus for this assertion is Eucken (1879, p. 134). Prantl (1855, p. 145) asserts that the French theologian Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429) foreshadowed the transition. D&G note 9, (p. 422), mention recent studies of the words before Kant, but as is often the case, those tireless German scholars of the nineteenth century did it best.
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788, Part I, Book I, Chapter 1, §1, as translated by Beck (1949).
de Staël (1958). The first print run (10,000 copies!) of 1810 was suppressed by Bonaparte’s administration.
Cited in Ashton (1977).
From Huxley’s notebook, begun in 1840. D&G, p. 214. The entry is dated January 30, 1842.
The problem, as stated by Whewell, is precisely the problem that Bertrand Russell sought to resolve (or dismiss) in three rather isolated, and rather sarcastic, pages in his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, written from jail and published 1919 (Russell 1924, pp. 60–62), and cited by D&G, pp. 293–295 in their chapter on structural objectivity. Russell uses the concept of structure (half the time in quotation marks) to show how the notions of “a phenomenal world” (supposedly subjective), and of “a world behind the phenomena” (supposedly objective), if they have any sense at all, must have the same structure. Hence, most of the philosophical debates about Appearance and Reality collapse. Whewell might not have assented to the argument, but he would have well understood what Russell was up to.
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Dear, P., Hacking, I., Jones, M.L. et al. Objectivity in historical perspective. Metascience 21, 11–39 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-011-9597-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-011-9597-2