Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of original essays focusing on a wide range of topics in the History and Philosophy of Science. It is a festschrift for Peter Machamer, which includes contributions from scholars who, at one time or another, were his students. The essays bring together analyses of issues and debates spanning from early modern science and philosophy through the 21st century. Machamer’s influence is reflected in the volume’s broad range of topics. These include: underdetermination, scientific practice, scientific (...) models, mechanistic explanation in contemporary and historical science, values in science, the relationship between philosophy and psychology, experimentation, supervenience and reductionism. (shrink)

The paper intends to identify some particular basic assumptions, approaches and means of proceeding, which are spontaneously shared by philosophers, sociologists and historians of science, besides the common interchange of meta-notions describing science. To this end, the specific subject matter, scope, meta-cognitive goals and methodological background of each of the three domains of science study is first outlined. Only two shared proceedings are further discussed in details: the objective attitude, called 'playing a stranger', and the historiographers' involvement in demarcational problem (...) resolution. A far-reaching prospect is finally suggested for philosophers and historiographers: methodological partnership, leading towards the elaboration of an impending integral metatheory of science. (shrink)

Scientific thought and its burdens is a book to search for the ways in which science has been understood in history and the way we conceive it today. It argues that every human phenomenon has certain mental frameworks through which it is manifested. Then it raises the question: through which mental frameworks is science manifested? First of all, science is a cognitive activity and as such it is an attempt to acquire knowledge of certain objects or phenomena around us. (...) In that case, it must have an epistemological framework, which is developed in this book as the epistemology of science; then, it is an activity carried out by a community of scholars and their students in an uninterrupted chain of tradition. This gives us the sociological framework. Based on these fundamental frameworks, i.e. the cognitive and sociological approach, the concept of science is defined. Due to the lack of a satisfactory epistemological and sociological framework, taken together, many crucial concepts, such as scientific process, scientific consciousness and worldview, concerning the rise and development of science within a civilization has not adequately been explained. This book thus brings a fresh understanding of sociological concepts concerning science, such as scientific community and tradition. Sufficient material is brought in from the history of science unfolding itself within three civilizations; Greek, Islamic and Western, in order to vindicate the framework in which scientific thought in these communities emerged. (shrink)

This article describes the effect of a teaching–learning sequence based on the discovery of oxygen in promoting students’ argumentation. It examines the written and oral arguments produced by 63 high school students in France during a complete TLS supervised by the same teacher. The data used in this analysis was derived from students’ written responses, audio and video recordings, and written field notes. The first goal of this investigation was to provide evidence that an approach combining history and philosophy (...) of science and argumentation could increase students’ awareness of the relevance of experimentation and communication to scientific progress. The second goal was to assess the effectiveness of the TLS to engage students in argumentative classroom interactions relating to the discovery of oxygen at the end of the 18th century. The findings show that this historical case can be useful for promoting students’ argumentation and is also appropriate for high school students. Future research should include students of other ages, other historical episodes and experiences in other parts of the world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay considers the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science from Thomas Kuhn to the present. This relationship, of course, has often been troubled, but there is now new hope for an ongoing productive interaction—due to an increasing awareness, among other things, of the mutual entanglement between the development of modern science and the development of modern philosophy on the part of both professional (historically minded) philosophers and professional historians of science. This idea is illustrated (...) with several examples, including the entanglement of Einstein's theory of relativity with logical empiricism and its precursors and the entanglement of the analytic tradition in philosophy first with mathematical logic and then (through mathematical logic) with the cognitive sciences. Against this background, finally, the essay considers the emergence of contemporary social and cultural history of science from the Kantian and neo‐Kantian philosophical traditions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay presents an alternative to interpretations of laboratories as institutions for controlled investigation of nature that are either placeless or “set apart.” It historicizes the claim by showing how the meaning of “laboratory” has both changed and diversified over the last two centuries. Originally a laboratory could be a site of organic growth or material manufacture, but it can now be a specialized domain for technological development, educational training, or quality testing. The essay then introduces some contingencies of (...) geography and gender by showing how boundaries between laboratories and other spaces—especially domestic kitchens—could be permeable or nonexistent; importantly, some spaces served as experimental laboratories without ever being designated as such. A key corollary, however, is that there were limits to this permeability: not all social spaces could be turned consensually into laboratories, and laboratory users could be intolerant of certain imported technical cultures. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay considers the relationship between history of science and philosophy of science from Thomas Kuhn to the present. This relationship, of course, has often been troubled, but there is now new hope for an ongoing productive interaction—due to an increasing awareness, among other things, of the mutual entanglement between the development of modern science and the development of modern philosophy on the part of both professional (historically minded) philosophers and professional historians of science. This idea is illustrated (...) with several examples, including the entanglement of Einstein's theory of relativity with logical empiricism and its precursors and the entanglement of the analytic tradition in philosophy first with mathematical logic and then (through mathematical logic) with the cognitive sciences. Against this background, finally, the essay considers the emergence of contemporary social and cultural history of science from the Kantian and neo‐Kantian philosophical traditions. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that the history of science is, in some significant sense, rational and thus that historical episodes may serve as evidence in choosing between competing normative methodologies of science, the question arises: "Just what is this history-methodology evidential relation?" After examining the proposals of Laudan, a more plausible account is proposed.

The twentieth century witnessed the birth of analytic philosophy. This volume covers some of its key movements and philosophers, including Frege and Wittgenstein's Tractatus.

Within French epistemology the question is central whether the present can be a reference point for the history of science or whether scientific practices should be understood within their own historical context. Both positions are linked with problems: either it results in a ‘whig history’ written from the perspective of the victors or it leads to the accusation of relativism and to resistance from the scientists themselves. Isabelle Stengers claims that this resistance by scientists must be considered as (...) an essential element in the historiography of the sciences. She is part of a more recent generation of French philosophers of science, who build on the work of the earlier generation but with significant differences. Stengers interprets the scientist’s work as ‘in the service of history’: everyone must be forced to recognize their work not as the product of personal construction but as a necessary discovery in the history of science. The work of the historian of science is in conflict with the aims of the scientists themselves, who want to be seen as the norm of the present by which one should read the history of science. This service of history is not some external ideological factor, but an internal part of the scientific practice itself. The construction of the difference between the discovery of a pre-given fact and the construction of a fiction is for Stengers the core of the scientific practices. This use of history will be illustrated by the case of synthetic biology, as described by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent. Synthetic biologists are invoking specific past or future scenario’s, such as that of synthetic chemistry or computer engineering, to legitimatize their current research projects and ambitions. From this perspective, the problematic tension between the past and the present is so hard to cope with because it is not merely a struggle among historians and philosophers of science, but also among the scientists themselves. (shrink)

This paper aims to evaluate the different approaches to history within contemporary French philosophy of science, especially related to the benefits and necessity of normative judging. Within the French tradition of historical epistemology, there has always been a combination between a historical and philosophical perspective. This has resulted in numerous methodological reflections on this topic still relevant for contemporary debates within IHPS. Generally this centered around the question to what extent clear philosophical starting points where a merit and necessity, (...) or rather a bias and obstacle. In recent French philosophy of science this tension let to the search for a third approach. Inspired by developments within sociology of science, they criticize the overemphasis on judging history from the present. But rather than abandoning all philosophical perspective, their claim is that history of science itself produces philosophical norms or ‘obligations’ within particular sciences. This, however, does not result in abandoning the earlier approaches, but rather their reappraisal. Earlier internal criticisms within HEP can be reread as claiming that the opponent fails to live up to this requirement, i.e. to follow history’s own obligations, rather than imposing them. The claim defended in this paper is that the merit of certain philosophical approaches must be tested linked to obligations within specific disciplines. Concretely, this will be evaluated through examples from recent history of molecular biology, especially synthetic biology and metagenomics. The specific obligations of these disciplines will be analysed and evaluated according to the different frameworks within French philosophy of science. (shrink)

History of science and philosophy of science are interrelated despite the separation that predominantly occurred in xx th century, at least in cultural contexts influenced by the “anglo-saxon” philosophy. But, actually, history of science provides a rich field of philosophical problems, and this consideration may powerfully help renewing many “standard” considerations of the philosophy of science, such as, for instance, the changes and evolutions of scientific theories and representations, to take only one example, but which has been significantly (...) related with the structural or systemic character of these theories or representation, with known consequences from the “impossibility solutions” (claimed for rationality) on the debates about the social aspects of science. If, instead, history and rational concerns are to be taken together in considering, both philosophically and historically, the problem of scientific changes, then the a priori impossibility shows no more relevant, as the existence of changes is taken as factual, and we have to think deeper to understand how they occur. (shrink)