Explores the science and creative process behind Poe’s cosmological treatise. Silver Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly been overlooked (...) or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers’ paradox. In this book—the first devoted specifically to Poe’s science side—David N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poe’s life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poe’s literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poe’s understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poe’s theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution. David N. Stamos teaches philosophy at York University in Toronto. He is the author of several books, including Darwin and the Nature of Species, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

Theories of epistemology make reference—via the perspective of an observer—to the structure of information transfer, which generates reality, of which the observer himself forms a part. It can be shown that any epistemological approach which implies the participation of tautological structural elements in the information transfer necessarily leads to an antinomy. Nevertheless, since the time of Aristotle the paradigm of mathematics—and thus tautological structure—has always been a hidden ingredient in the various concepts of knowledge acquisition or general theories of information (...) transfer. We hold that Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory is the first scientific theory which consistently presupposes a non-tautological structure for the information transfer and, at the same time, keeps it strictly distinct from the tautological metric of scientific observation. The consequences of this technique—namely the dissociation of information from intentionality—have not yet been fully drawn. (shrink)

This book presents a history of the volitional theory of causation—the philosophical proposal that volition, or will, of the same or broadly the same stamp as that which we experience in our own deliberate and voluntary doings, should be taken as the basis for all causality. Few today know much about the volitional theory of causation, and even fewer have given it any serious attention. But if current opinion regards this suggestion as an unusual one, of minor importance, the historical (...) record shows otherwise, revealing that it is a theory which has been proposed and developed again and again throughout the modern era. Its obscurity is only a recent phenomenon. Starting at the beginning of the Early Modern period and progressing right up modern times, the historical discussion takes in both supporters and critics, as well as both famous and less well-known figures, to tell the story of a long-running debate which contemporary history of philosophy has forgotten. (shrink)

The inaugural title in the new, Open Access series BSPS Open, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. The fundamental burden of a theory of inductive inference is to determine which are the good inductive inferences or relations of inductive support and why it is that they are so. The traditional approach is modeled on that taken in accounts of deductive inference. It seeks universally applicable schemas or rules or a single (...) formal device, such as the probability calculus. After millennia of halting efforts, none of these approaches has been unequivocally successful and debates between approaches persist. The Material Theory of Induction identifies the source of these enduring problems in the assumption taken at the outset: that inductive inference can be accommodated by a single formal account with universal applicability. Instead, it argues that that there is no single, universally applicable formal account. Rather, each domain has an inductive logic native to it. Which that is, and its extent, is determined by the facts prevailing in that domain. Paying close attention to how inductive inference is conducted in science and copiously illustrated with real-world examples, The Material Theory of Induction will initiate a new tradition in the analysis of inductive inference. (shrink)

This paper aims to assess the credibility of the legitimation thesis; the claim that the development of experimental science involved a legitimation of certain aspects of artisanal practice or craft knowledge. My goal will be to provide a critique of this idea by examining Francis Bacon’s notion of ‘mechanical history’ and the influence it exerted on attempts by later generations of scholars to appropriate the knowledge of craft traditions. Specifically, I aim to show how such projects were often premised upon (...) socio-epistemological ideals that served to reinforce, rather than relinquish boundaries between artisans and natural philosophers. It will be my claim that a closer examination of the presuppositions underlying attempts by early modern natural philosophers to appropriate craft knowledge reveals, not a desire to legitimize aspects of artisanal practice, but rather strategies aimed at demonstrating the inferiority of the local ways of knowing upon which it was based. (shrink)

Having been neglected or maligned for most of this century, Newton's method of 'deduction from the phenomena' has recently attracted renewed attention and support. John Norton, for example, has argued that this method has been applied with notable success in a variety of cases in the history of physics and that this explains why the massive underdetermination of theory by evidence, seemingly entailed by hypothetico-deductive methods, is invisible to working physicists. This paper, through a detailed analysis of Newton's deduction of (...) one particular 'proposition' in optics 'from the phenomena', gives a clearer account than hitherto of the method - highlighting the fact that it is really one of deduction from the phenomena plus 'background knowledge'. It argues, that, although the method has certain heuristic virtues, examination of its putative accreditational strengths reveals a range of important problems that its defenders have yet adequately to address. (shrink)

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience Online (...) ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe societal context within which science is pursued generally acts as a productive force in the generation of knowledge. To analyze this action it is helpful to consider particular modes of mediation through which societal concerns are projected into the very local and esoteric concerns of a particular domain of research. One such mode of mediation occurs through material systems. Here I treat two such systems – the steam engine and the electric telegraph – in the natural philosophy of (...) William Thomson (Lord Kelvin).The steam engine illustratesconceptualmediation. It simultaneously instantiates “labor value” in political economy and “work” in engineering mechanics, thereby identifying the two concepts in the region of their common reference. The partial identification carries with it a structural analogy between a network of concepts from political economy and a similar network in natural philosophy, providing a potent heuristic for the reformulation and further development of dynamics.The electric telegraph illustratesmethodologicalmediation. It projects the interests of engineering and industry into the interests of electromagnetic theory and vice versa, thereby establishing, in Thomson's view, a Baconian unity of truth and utility. As the common reference of theory and practice, the telegraph locates the truth of theoretical knowledge in its utility and the utility of practical knowledge in its truth.These particular cases of conceptual and methodological mediation indicate how the local practices, concepts, and interests of a research specialty, or subculture, draw on and are adapted to those of the larger culture within which they develop. Thus the analysis of mediation leads to an ecological model of the social construction of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

ArgumentDarwin's narrative of the earthquake at Concepción, set within the frameworks of Lyellian uniformitarianism, romantic aesthetics, and the emergence of geology as a popular science, is suggestive of the role of the sublime in geological enquiry and theory in the early nineteenth century. Darwin'sBeaglediary and later notebooks and publications show that the aesthetic of the sublime was both a form of representing geology to a popular audience, and a crucial structure for the observation and recording of the event from the (...) beginning. The awesome spectacle of the earthquake proved in turn the magnitude of the forces at stake in earth history, and helped to make geology an epic conjoining the history of civilization with the history of the earth. (shrink)

The essay revisits the puzzle of the ‘passage’ of time in relation to EPR-type measurements and asks what philosophical consequences can be drawn from them. Some argue that the lack of invariance of temporal order in the measurement of a space-like related EPR pair, under relativistic motion, casts serious doubts on the ‘reality’ of the lapse of time. Others argue thatcertain features of quantum mechanics establisha tensed theory of time – understood here as Possibilism or the growing block universe. The (...) paper analyzes the employment of frame-invariant entropic clocks in a relativistic setting and argues that tenselessness does not imply timelessness. But this conclusion does not support a tensed theory of time, which requires a preferred foliation. It is argued that the only reliable inference from the EPR example and the use of entropic clocks is an inference not just to a Leibnizian order of the succession of events but a frame-invariant order according to some selected clocks. (shrink)

The history of the luminiferous ether is sketched with a view to ascertaining what factors may have kept this idea alive until 1905, when Einstein declared it superfluous.

Much has been written through the years of the clash between Darwinism and natural theology, and the basic tenants of this debate are well understood (Gillispie 1959; Bowler 1977; Ruse 2003; McGrath 2011). However, the literature is still growing, and one may wonder if anything new may yet be added. Of these new literary sources, one of the richest is the online Darwin Correspondence Project, which makes it possible to search and read the full texts of all correspondence either sent (...) or received by Darwin, up to the year 1868. (This project is ongoing and letters are still being recovered and added.) The purpose of this article is to outline the role of the intelligent design argument, as espoused by its principal .. (shrink)

Abstract. A historical perspective allows for a different view on the compatibility of theistic views with a crucial foundation of modern scientific practice: the uniformity of nature, which states that the laws of nature are unbroken through time and space. Uniformity is generally understood to be part of a worldview called “scientific naturalism,” in which there is no room for divine forces or a spiritual realm. This association comes from the Victorian era, but a historical examination of scientists from that (...) period shows that uniformity was an important part of both theistic and naturalistic worldviews. Victorian efforts to maintain the viability of miracles and divine action within a universe ruled by natural laws receives special attention. The methodological practices of theistic and naturalistic scientists in the nineteenth century were effectively indistinguishable despite each group's argument that uniformity was closely dependent on their worldview. This similarity is used to reexamine both the reasons for the decline of the role of religion within the scientific community and claims made by the intelligent design movement about the relationship of science and religion. (shrink)

Current Perspectives in Philosophy of Biology.

There is something distinctively different about explanation in the biological sciences, as opposed to explanation in the physical sciences. In the former one has functional arguments, arguments making reference to what Aristotle called “final causes.” As in: “The function of the plates on the back of the Stegosaurus was to keep the body at a constant temperature.” Since the Scientific Revolution, such explanations have been forbidden in the physical sciences. Does this then mean that biology is second rate, as is (...) suggested by many including Immanuel Kant? It is argued that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection explains why there is need of functional explanation in biology and that once this point is grasped, there is no reason to judge biology second rate. (shrink)

The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account.

I argue for the causal character of modeling in data-intensive science, contrary to widespread claims that big data is only concerned with the search for correlations. After discussing the concept of data-intensive science and introducing two examples as illustration, several algorithms are examined. It is shown how they are able to identify causal relevance on the basis of eliminative induction and a related difference-making account of causation. I then situate data-intensive modeling within a broader framework of an epistemology of scientific (...) knowledge. In particular, it is shown to lack a pronounced hierarchical, nested structure. The significance of the transition to such “horizontal” modeling is underlined by the concurrent emergence of novel inductive methodology in statistics such as non-parametric statistics. Data-intensive modeling is well equipped to deal with various aspects of causal complexity arising especially in the higher level and applied sciences. (shrink)

There are a bewildering variety of claims connecting Darwin to nineteenth-century philosophy of science—including to Herschel, Whewell, Lyell, German Romanticism, Comte, and others. I argue here that Herschel’s influence on Darwin is undeniable. The form of this influence, however, is often misunderstood. Darwin was not merely taking the concept of “analogy” from Herschel, nor was he combining such an analogy with a consilience as argued for by Whewell. On the contrary, Darwin’s Origin is written in precisely the manner that one (...) would expect were Darwin attempting to model his work on the precepts found in Herschel’s Preliminary Discourse on Natural Science. While Hodge has worked out a careful interpretation of both Darwin and Herschel, drawing similar conclusions, his interpretation misreads Herschel’s use of the vera causa principle and the verification of hypotheses. The new reading that I present here resolves this trouble, combining Hodge’s careful treatment of the structure of the Origin with a more cautious understanding of Herschel’s philosophy of science. This interpretation lets us understand why Darwin laid out the Origin in the way that he did and also why Herschel so strongly disagreed, including in Herschel’s heretofore unanalyzed marginalia in his copy of Darwin’s book. (shrink)

Moderate realists hold that scientific theories are truthlike, rather than exactly true. Although scientific realism has been challenged by arguments such as the pessimistic induction, moderate realism hasn’t been challenged directly on the grounds that it makes scientific progress rely on inferences from theories that are only truthlike. This paper shows that moderate realism is incompatible with the claim that deductive arguments from scientific theories are reliable. Using truthlike claims as the premises of some patterns of deductive reasoning renders the (...) argument dramatically unreliable. The conclusion is not guaranteed to be true. Nor is the conclusion guaranteed to be at least as truthlike as the premises. Nor even is the conclusion shown to be likely to be true. This is because the consequences of truthlike theories are neither guaranteed to be true, nor even more likely to be truthlike than not. Truthlike theories cannot function like true theories in deductive arguments; instead they function as radically false theories would. In short, truthlike theories behave exactly like radically false theories for the purposes of their deductive consequences. And since scientists would not trust deductions from radically false theories, they should not trust deductions from truthlike theories either. Furthermore, this applies to a wide range of logics and patterns of deductive argument. The moderate realist must either reject bivalence, deny that theories are truth-apt, or accept that scientific theories are not used in deductive arguments. (shrink)

L.A. Paul has recently defended the methodology of metaphysics on the grounds that it is continuous with the sciences. She claims that both scientists and metaphysicians use inference to the best explanation to choose between competing theories, and that the success of science vindicates the use of IBE in metaphysics. Specifically, the success of science shows that the theoretical virtues are truth-conducive. I challenge Paul’s claims on two grounds. First, I argue that, at least in biology, scientists adhere to the (...) vera causa ideal, which allows the theoretical virtues to play a much more limited role in scientific reasoning than Paul requires for metaphysical reasoning. The success of biology thus does not vindicate the methodology of metaphysics. Second, I argue that, at least in many cases, the successful reliance on the theoretical virtues in scientific contexts shows only that the theoretical virtues are truth-conducive within those local contexts, and not that they are truth-conducive generally. The upshots are that Paul’s defense of the methodology of metaphysics fails, and that any attempt to rescue her defense must pay more careful attention to what precisely is vindicated by successful science. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Highlights of Past Literature Current Work Future Work.

Nineteenth-century Harvard faculty and students looked to philosophical ideas about the proper and effective study of nature as the model of rationality to which their religion must conform. As these ideas changed, notions of rationality changed and so did Harvard religion.

This paper analyses a kinematic model for the solar motion by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, a thirteenth-century Iranian astronomer at the Marāgha observatory in northwestern Iran. The purpose of this model is to account for the continuous decrease of the obliquity of the ecliptic and the solar eccentricity since the time of Ptolemy. Shīrāzī puts forward different versions of the model in his three major cosmographical works. In the final version, in his Tuḥfa, the mean ecliptic is defined by an eccentric (...) of fixed mean eccentricity and a mean obliquity fixed with respect to the celestial equator, and the center of the epicycle, which is inclined to the eccentric, moves on the eccentric with an annual period. By an additional slow motion of the sun on the epicycle, the true eccentricity of the solar deferent, defined by the annual motion of the sun, and the sun’s extreme declination from the equator change, accounting for the reduction of the eccentricity and the obliquity of the ecliptic since the time of Ptolemy. (shrink)

In his new book, "The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe," Robert J. Richards argues that Charles Darwin's true evolutionary roots lie in the German Romantic biology that flourished around the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is argued that Richards is quite wrong in this claim and that Darwin's roots are in the British society within which he was born, educated, and lived.

In this article, I argue that there is philosophy of science since philosophy existed. Thus, the idea that the philosophy of science was born with neopositivism is historically wrong and detrimental to the development of the philosophy of science itself. Neopositivism tried to found the philosophy of science as an anti-philosophical discipline, as a field of study that came to replace simple philosophy. The attempt was maintained for thirty years, but failed. Now, this does not mean that we cannot make (...) good philosophy of science today, but that the philosophy of science has returned to the common house of philosophy, it is gradually recovering the connection that it should never have lost with the main philosophical traditions and disciplines. (shrink)

A necessary condition for having a revolution named after you is that you are an innovator in your field. I argue that if Charles Darwin meets this condition, it is as a philosopher and methodologist. In 1991, I made the case for Darwin's innovative use of "thought experiment" in the "Origin." Here I place this innovative practice in the context of Darwin's methodological commitments, trace its origins back into Darwin's notebooks, and pursue Darwin's suggestion that it owes its inspiration to (...) Charles Lyell. (shrink)

Theories of epistemology make reference—via the perspective of an observer—to the structure of information transfer, which generates reality, of which the observer himself forms a part. It can be shown that any epistemological approach which implies the participation of tautological structural elements in the information transfer necessarily leads to an antinomy. Nevertheless, since the time of Aristotle the paradigm of mathematics—and thus tautological structure—has always been a hidden ingredient in the various concepts of knowledge acquisition or general theories of information (...) transfer. We hold that Darwin's Evolutionary Theory is the first scientific theory which consistently presupposes a non-tautological structure for the information transfer and, at the same time, keeps it strictly distinct from the tautological metric of scientific observation. The consequences of this technique—namely the dissociation of information from intentionality—have not yet been fully drawn. Erkenntnistheorien beziehen sich über die Perspektive eines Beobachters auf die Struktur des Informationstransfers, der die Realität erzeugt, von der der Beobachter selbst ein Element ist. Man kann zeigen, dass jeder erkenntnistheoretische Ansatz, der an diesem Transfer von Information tautologische Strukturelemente teilnehmen lässt, zu einer Antinomie führt. Dennoch bilden das Paradigma der Mathematik—und damit tautologische Strukturen—seit Aristoteles einen festen Bestandteil von Erkenntnistheorien und generell von Theorien des Informationstransfers. Unserer These zufolge ist Darwins Evolutionstheorie die erste wissenschaftliche Theorie, die den Informations-transfer ausschließlich als nicht-tautologische Struktur auffasst und diese zugleich strikt von der tautologischen Struktur der Beobachtungsmetrik getrennt hält. Die Konsequenzen für die Erkenntnistheorie—namentlich die Trennung von Information und Intentionalitätsind bisher nicht gezogen worden. (shrink)

The article is about metaphysical studies of Peter Linitskyi’s (1839–1906), a professor of the Department of Logic and Metaphysics in the Kyiv Theological Academy. For many years P. Linitskyi taught students of the Academy all parts of metaphysics. The author of the article examines all approaches to metaphysical issues that the Kyiv professor held. Special attention is paid to the arguments that P. Linitskyі used to protect metaphysics from attempts to prove its inability to formulate theoretical knowledge about transcendental objects (...) – God, Soul, World. Deep analysis conducted by P. Linitskyi with regard to the purpose and task of metaphysics revealed different principles of construction and substantiation of metaphysical knowledge, significant impact that metaphysics of materialistic philosophy of that time had on metaphysics, as well as positivism, which despite all the criticism of metaphysical doctrine, showed a strong connection with and dependence on metaphysical principles and concepts of positivism even derived from metaphysics. A concept of “Matter” in materialistic philosophy (C. Vogt, L. Büchner, J. Moleschott), “the Unknowable” concepts of the positivists (H. Spencer) – all these doctrines meet the basic criteria of transcendent reality, which is the subject of traditional metaphysics. In his studies of the origins of metaphysics, P. Linitskyi draws the reader’s attention to those conceptual approaches that reduced metaphysics to psychical motives such as interest, curiosity, desire to discover new truths about “hidden” things, search for answers to questions caused by fear of death, egoism or altruism, intent on explaining transcendent things based on his knowledge. Not ignoring these subjective motives of metaphysics, Kyiv professor believed that metaphysics needs to be studied and explained more thoroughly, namely, what is a logical-epistemological and categorical definition of the subject of metaphysics, as well as the recognition of theological basis which lays in cognition of it. Only a combination of all these factors allows existence of metaphysics as a philosophical science. (shrink)

Traditional logical empiricist and more recent historicist positions on the logic of discovery are briefly reviewed and both are found wanting. None have examined the historical detail now available from recent research on Darwin, from which there is evidence for gradual transition in descriptive and explanatory concepts. This episode also shows that revolutionary research can be directed by borrowed metascientific objectives and heuristics from other disciplines. Darwin's own revolutionary research took place within an ontological context borrowed from non evolutionary predecessors (...) with methodological objectives borrowed from and justified by their success in Newton's physics. The logic of discovery is not a special form of inference from observation to theory, but rather a theory of the rationality of research, including principles bearing upon the rational choice of problems, or epistemic objectives, and heuristic, or means to solving the problems. Such choices can be justified only locally in the context of a relatively stable background ontology and substantive epistemology, not globally for all science. (shrink)

: In 1842, British astronomer Sir John Herschel wrote a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss seeking his advice about how to make data collection more efficient on the Magnetic Crusade, a large-scale initiative to study the earth's magnetic field. Surprisingly, even though Gauss had managed a similar initiative, he refused to give Herschel the advice he wanted, claiming that he needed to see Herschel's results before he could reply. Taking this miscommunication as a point of departure, this article traces the (...) cause of this miscommunication to differences in how each scientist viewed scientific training and the communicability of different kinds of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The imagination has always been thought to operate primarily in conjunction with the sense of vision, imagined objects and scenes being conjured up before the ‘mind’s eye’. In early nineteenth-century Scotland the natural philosopher David Brewster developed a theory of the imagination that explained its operation through a reversal of the normal processes of visual perception. These ideas were rooted in the mental philosophy of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. For Brewster the mind’s eye was also the eye of the (...) body, and images from the memory and imagination were projected onto the retina in the same manner that images were projected onto the screen in a magic lantern show. This theory underpinned his belief that imagination played an essential role in scientific discovery. Brewster believed that this process was as essential to the discoveries of science as it was to the creation of great poetry. The writings of Brewster can tell us a great deal about the connections between science and literature in the early nineteenth century, as well as showing that the philosophy of science in contemporary Britain was far from monolithic. (shrink)

Mayr has made both conceptual and professional contributions to the establishment of the history and philosophy of biology. His conceptual contributions include, among many others, the notion of population thinking. He has also played an important role in the establishment of history and philosophy of biology as viable professional disciplines.

Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means (...) to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists, but also some comparative disadvantages. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Farmers all over the world perform experiments, and have done so since long before modern experimental science and its recognized forerunners. There is a rich anthropological literature on these experiments, but the philosophical issues that they give rise to have not received much attention. Based on the anthropological literature, this study investigates methodological and philosophical issues pertaining to farmers’ experiments, including the choice of interventions to be tested, the planning of experiments, and the use of control fields and other means (...) to deal with confounding factors. Farmers’ experiments have some advantages over the field trials of agricultural scientists, but also some comparative disadvantages. The two experimental traditions are complementary, and neither of them can replace the other. Several aspects of farmers’ experiments are shown to have a direct bearing on central topics in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Throughout his career David Hull has sought to bring the philosophy of science into closer contact with science and especially with biological science (Hull 1969, 1997b). This effort has taken many forms. Sometimes it has meant ‘either explaining basic biology to philosophers or explaining basic philosophy to biologists’ (Hull 1996, p. 77). The first of these tasks, simple as it sounds, has been responsible for revolutionary changes. It is well known that traditional philosophy of science, modeled as it was on (...) theoretical physics, proved inadequate when philosophers turned their attention to biological science. Biological examples have driven major revisions of accounts of reduction (Hull 1974; Schaffner 1993, Ch. 9), laws of nature (Beatty et al. 1997), theories (Lloyd 1988) and natural kinds (Wilson 1999, Part III). Nor is explaining basic philosophy to biologists a task to be looked down upon. It is useful, not because philosophy has all the answers, but because scientists must think about how to do science, that is doing philosophy of science and scientists frequently reinvent philosophical views with known flaws. Early in his career Hull found biological systematists in the grip of a crude operationalism about scientific concepts and said so in the pages of Systematic Zoology (Hull 1968). For the next thirty years, as biologists debated the nature of species and the correct principles of classification, Hull added a philosophical note at the same congresses and in the same journals (Hull 1970, 1976, 1980, 1997a, 1999). (shrink)

There have been attempts to subsume Charles Darwin's theory of evolution under either one of two distinct intellectual traditions: early Victorian natural science and its descendants in political economy (as exemplified by Herschel, Lyell, or Malthus) and the romantic approach to art and science emanating from Germany (as exemplified by Humboldt and Goethe). In this paper, it will be shown how these traditions may have jointly contributed to the design of Darwin's theory. The hypothesis is that their encounter created a (...) particular tension in the conception of his theory which first opened up its characteristic field and mode of explanation. On the one hand, the domain of the explanandum was conceived of under a holistic and aesthetic view of nature that, in its combination with refined techniques of observation, was deeply indebted to Humboldt in particular. On the other hand, Darwin fashioned explanations for natural phenomena, so conceived, in order to identify their proper causes in a Herschelian spirit. The particular interaction between these two traditions in Darwin, it is concluded, paved the way for a transfer of the idea of causal laws to animate nature while salvaging the romantic idea of a complex, teleological and harmonious order of nature. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

What makes any investigative field a scientific discipline? This article argues that disciplines are ever-changing frameworks within which scientific activity is organised. Moreover, disciplinarity is not a yes or no proposition: scientific activities may achieve degrees of identity development. Degree of consensus is the key, and consensus on many questions (conceptual, methodological, institutional, and social) varies among sciences. Lastly, disciplinary development is non-teleological. Disciplines pass through no regular stages on their way from immature to mature status, designations articulated within the (...) rhetoric of discipline formation. Scientists assemble disciplines using many elements: phenomena, methods, instruments, theories, analytical techniques, and institutional tools such as journals, government bureaus, and university positions. Scientists created geophysics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through such a combination. Whether geophysics became a discipline depends on how discipline is defined. (shrink)