Summary The first systematic studies on the velocity of chemical reactions (now called reaction rates) were published in the 1850s and 1860s. Inquiring about the course of chemical change, their authors established empirical equations on the basis of their measurement results. But these laws, which represented reaction velocities as proportional to the actual concentration of the reagents, could not be given a physical foundation. The chemists themselves regarded their propositions as mere ad hoc hypotheses. In 1867 Leopold Pfaundler formulated a (...) qualitative theory of chemical processes based on Clausius's version of the kinetic gas theory (and more specifically on his theory of evaporation), and on Saint-Claire Deville's investigations of dissociation processes. Pfaundler's theory was based on farreaching analogies: between evaporation and dissociation; between the gaseous state and the activated state; and between evaporation- and chemical-equilibrium. Four points of Pfaundler's theory must be regarded as essential: (1) the reduction of chemical change to randomly occurring molecular collisions, only showing regularities in great numbers according to the laws of probability; (2) the idea that molecules are in different states of internal and external motion, which determines whether a collision results in a reaction; (3) the view of the reaction step as a transition from internal to external motion and vice versa; and (4) the introduction of a new molecular-kinetic definition of chemical affinity as the maximum of internal motion. With these assumptions, Pfaundler provided the empirical rate equations with a new statistical interpretation and a physical Justification. (shrink)

Mueller et al. discuss the role of acoustic cues in detecting language structure more generally. Across languages, there are clear links between acoustic cues and syntactic structure. They show that AGL experiments implementing analogous links demonstrate that prosodic cues, as well as various auditory biases, facilitate the learning of structural rules. Some of these biases, e.g. for auditory grouping, are also present in other species.

This paper discusses recent evidence that violations of core knowledge offer special learning opportunities for infants and young children. Children make predictions about the world from the youngest ages. When their fail to match observed data, they show an enhanced drive to seek and retain new information about entities that violated their expectations. Finally, the authors draw comparisons between children and adults, and with other species, to explore how surprise shapes thought more broadly.

: This article analyzes the transformation of epistemological and methodological discourses in German microscopy. It is argued that the expansion of microscopy in the early decades of the nineteenth century was pivotal for the emergence of intricate methodologies that characterized the instruments and methods of microscopy in new ways. Close examination of these means of investigation showed them to be intrinsically imperfect. The flaws of the instrument, the faults of the observer's eyes and the obstructive power of the objects of (...) investigation actions came to be crucial issues in epistemological and methodological debates. It became clear that the particulars of the research arrangement not only limited the range of possible microscopical observations but would always impede and interfere with the results: Perfect working conditions could never be achieved. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that ideal theories in political philosophy are a form of ideology. This article examines arguments building on the work of Charles Mills and Raymond Geuss for the claim that ideal theories are cognitively distorting belief systems that have the effect of stabilizing unjust social arrangements. I argue that Mills and Geuss neither succeed in establishing that the content of ideal theories is necessarily cognitively defective in the way characteristic for ideologies, nor can they make plausible which (...) mechanisms ensure the alleged negative effects of the widespread acceptance of ideal theorizing. This does not mean that all hope is lost for the ideology objection, however. By turning to a second Marxian model of ideology, I argue that the ideological character of ideal theories is not so much a matter of their content, but rather of their form. Ideal theories falsely present the normative concepts that they use as semantically practice-independent and thereby block potential challenges from subordinate groups to dominant ideologies. It is therefore not the normative content of ideal theories which proves to be objectionable, but the particular role their concepts play in wider political discourse. (shrink)

Depression is a disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Consequently, examining individual differences in the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies has considerable potential to inform models of this debilitating disorder. The aim of the current study was to identify cognitive processes that may be associated with the use of emotion-regulation strategies and to elucidate their relation to depression. Depression has been found to be associated with difficulties in cognitive control and, more specifically, with difficulties inhibiting the processing of negative material. We (...) used a negative affective priming task to assess the relations among inhibition and individual differences in the habitual use of rumination, reappraisal, and expressive suppression in clinically depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants. We found that depressed participants exhibited the predicted lack of inhibition when processing negative material. Moreover, within the group of depressed participants, reduced inhibition of negative material was associated with greater rumination. Across the entire sample, reduced inhibition of negative material was related to less use of reappraisal and more use of expressive suppression. Finally, within the formerly depressed group, less use of reappraisal, more use of rumination, and greater expressive suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of emotion-regulation strategies play an important role in depression, and that deficits in cognitive control are related to the use of maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in this disorder. (shrink)

This volume thus clears the ground for the productive and fruitful integration of these new developments into philosophy of science.

This essay offers some reflections on the recent history of the disputes about the relation between history and philosophy of science (HPS) and the merits and prospects of HPS as an intellectual endeavor. As everyone knows, the issue was hotly debated in the 1960s and 1970s. That was the hey-day of the slogan "history without philosophy of science is blind, philosophy without history of science is empty" as well as of the many variations on the theme of HPS as a (...) "marriage of convenience," "intimate relation," or "marriage for the sake of reason." There was a flurry of interest in the early 1990s, as evidenced by sections in the 1992 and 1994 issues of PSA, entitled: "Do the History of Science and the Philosophy of .. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is concerned with the diversity of microscopic research in nineteenth-century life sciences. It examines how two researchers, Ernst Wilhelm Brücke and Heinrich Müller, investigated the structure and function of the retina. They did so in significantly different ways, thereby developing quite different accounts of this organ and its role in the process of vision. Both investigators were carrying out microscopic investigations, both were particularly concerned with interpreting their findings in terms of physiological function, and both employed the (...) physical sciences in their microscopic research. Their approaches differed, however, with respect to the manner of handling and preparing the tissues, as well as with respect to the conceptual tools they applied to their findings.The cases indicate that the common tendency to associate microscopic research mainly with morphological studies of organic material is not appropriate. To understand nineteenth-century microscopy and its place in the sciences of life, close attention should be paid to the manner in which microscopic investigations were performed. It is only then that the flexibility and versatility of microscopic research comes into view. (shrink)

This paper examines how scientists conceptualize their research methodologies. Do scientists raise concerns about vague criteria and genuine uncertainties in experimental practice? If so, what sorts of issues do they identify as problematic? Do scientists acknowledge the presence of value judgments in scientific research, and do they reflect on the relation between epistemic and non-epistemic criteria for decisionmaking? We present findings from an analysis of qualitative interviews with 63 scientific researchers who talk about their views on good research practice. We (...) argue that analysts of science should care about scientists’ conceptualizations of the criteria and of the practical judgments that scientific inquiry involves. While scientists’ accounts of their own research methodologies alone do not give us a full picture of how science really works, they can point us to areas of concern. They can inspire and direct philosophical reflections about how science works. Throughout the interviews, the participating researchers provided specific examples from their own research contexts as illustrations of their methodological points. These examples reveal that scientists often struggle to evaluate the quality of their data, to figure out whether the available evidence confirms their hypothesis, whether a replication was successful, or to what extent they can rely on peer-reviewed papers. General ideas about good research methods do not directly translate into specific evaluation criteria or strategies that can guide research and help validate empirical data. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the epistemic roles of error in scientific practice. Usually, error is regarded as something negative, as an impediment or obstacle for the advancement of science. However, we also frequently say that we are learning from error. This common expression suggests that the role of error is not—at least not always—negative but that errors can make a fruitful contribution to the scientific enterprise. My paper explores the latter possibility. Can errors play an epistemically productive role in (...) scientific research? The paper begins with a review of several twentieth-century approaches to error and the various agendas behind them. It is shown that only very few scholars have considered whether errors can be productive. The main part of the paper examines a concrete debate in early nineteenth-century microscopy and analyses how the microscopists coped with the problem of error. Drawing on this material, the article offers some terminological clarifications of the common notion ‘learning from error’. The conclusion argues that error can indeed play epistemically productive roles in scientific practice.Keywords: Error; Nineteenth-century microscopic anatomy. (shrink)

While painted wooden icons of the Nursing Virgin were relatively common in fifteenth-century Ethiopia, only one miniature of the motif of the time has come to light. This image, bound into a later manuscript of the Miracles of Mary, is painted in a decidedly abstract style, comparable to other representations of the Virgin in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book illustration. Relying on Peirce’s distinction between index and icon, this article considers how such abstract representations might have been meant to evoke the divine (...) presence of Mary as a spiritual trace of the artist’s and the audience’s devotional practices, rather than as a potentially miracle-working depiction of her corporeal presence based on figural likeness, as was the case with painted wooden panels. Incorporating references to Ethiopian and Western theorists of modernity, the essay further proposes to view the multiple and interlocking mirror effects in book art as instances of second-order observation, in which, for example, the Virgin sees herself depicted in a book of her miracles, the compilation of which she commissioned and aided; the scribe and artist is featured in one of the miracles he himself is writing and illustrating; and the donor is depicted gazing at the viewer. Whether enabling skeptical distance or a more fully immersive spiritual experience undisturbed by attempts to capture corporeal likeness, or both, this essay proposes to analyze the politics and theology of abstraction in fifteenth-century Ethiopian book art by centering on a rare depiction of the Nursing Virgin. (shrink)

A multitude of techno-natures emerge through discourses and practices of the new technosciences. While some philosophers and science studies scholars argue that model organisms and artefacts are getting more and more disembodied and decontextualised in the laboratory, I want to show how ontic dimensions of model organisms and artefacts are made invisible as well as visible in different practices of technosciences like Artificial Life and robotics.This analysis opens up possibilities for an understanding of how ontic dimensions of non-human actors are (...) made visible and invisible in technoscientific practices. At the same time it allows the development of a concept of nonhuman actors beyond reifying, velontriquist practices of representation as well as a critical intervention in the co-construction of our technoculture. German Mannigfaltige Techno-Naturen an der Schnittstelle von Sozialem, Technischem und Natürlichem entstehen in den und durch die Diskurse und Praktiken der neuen Technowissenschaften. Entgegen der verbreiteten These von der Entkörperung und Dekontextualisierung von Modellorganismen im Labor zeige ich in meinem Beitrag auf, wie auf je unterschiedliche Weise ontische Dimensionen von Modellorganismen und Technofakten in der Artificial Life-Forschung und Robotik sichtbar bzw. unsichtbar gemacht werden.Gerade die Untersuchung der Konstruktion der ontischen Dimension nichtmenschlicher Akteure in unterschiedlichen Forschungspraktiken eröffnet Möglichkeiten, nichtmenschliche Akteure ernst zu nehmen, erlaubt ein genaueres Verständnis des Un/Sichtbarmachens von spezifischen ontischen Dimensionen nichtmenschlicher Akteure und zeigt Wege für kritische Interventionen in unsere Technowissenschaftskultur auf. Sie vermeidet jene bauchrednerischen Erzählpraktiken, die mit der Stimme aus dem Off den nichtmenschlichen Akteuren Eigenschaften verordnen und sie damit einmal mehr zum Verstummen bringen. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices and, thus, not a basic social (...) phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino, Protegé Cosimos, Pieros und Lorenzos von Medici, gilt als Zentralgestalt des italienischen Renaissance-Platonismus. Mit den Übersetzungen der Dialoge Platons, der Schriften Plotins und des Corpus Hermeticum sowie durch eine theoretische Verknüpfung von antiker Philosophie mit christlicher Religion übte er einen unübersehbar grossen Einfluss auf die europäische Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte aus. Im Zentrum seines Theorie-Gebäudes steht ein komplexes Konzept von Magie, dessen Konstruktion bis heute erforscht wird. Es hat dem Band den Titel gegeben, dessen Themen sich Ficinos intellektuellem Horizont (...) entsprechend jedoch in eine Vielzahl weiterer Aspekte ausdifferenzieren. Diese literarisch-künstlerischen, literaturwissenschaftlichen, wissenschaftshistorischen und philosophisch-theologischen Implikationen von Ficinos Schriften werden paradigmatisch und vergleichend behandelt. (shrink)

Das Buch stellt Nietzsches Metaphern – durch die sich seine Philosophie überhaupt erst entfaltet – vor und zur Diskussion. Über seine Metaphern dekonstruiert Nietzsche das abendländische Denken. Seine Philosophie, sein Denken und Schreiben sind ohne seine Metaphorik – der Wille zur Macht, der Leib, das Dionysische, die Musik, Amor fati, die „grosse Gesundheit“, die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen, der Übermensch etc. – nicht zu erfassen. Sie stehen für seine Kritik am begrifflichen Denken und an der Vernunft, an der Verachtung des (...) Leibes und der Triebe, und sie intonieren zudem als Elemente seiner „Experimentalphilosophie“ die Zukunft eines postmoralischen, sinnenorientierten Daseins. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Studien interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung" präsentiert regelmäßig neuere Untersuchungen über Herausbildungen und Bedeutungen von Geschlecht. Verknüpft werden natur-, technik-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Sichtweisen. Ebenfalls thematisiert werden hochschulpolitische Entwicklungen und Perspektiven von Geschlechterforschung in und außerhalb der Hochschule. Die Reihe wird herausgegeben vom Zentrum für interdisziplinäre Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung an der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg (ZFG) und dem Zentrum für feministische Studien, Universität Bremen (ZFS). In diesem Band: In unserer heutigen Technowissenschaftskultur ist die Frage nach dem Verhältnis von Körper und (...) Maschine zentral. Während Körper denaturalisiert und durch die Life- und Cyberscience als turbulent und dynamisch reformuliert werden, wird Maschinen Sozialität zu- und eingeschrieben. An Beispielen aus der Robotik, Embodied Agents-Forschung und anderen Technowissenschaften, mit Bezug auf Philosophie, Wissenschaftsforschung und Literatur wird gezeigt, wie sich transklassische Maschinen und post-humane Körper herausbilden und geschlechtlich neu kodiert werden. (shrink)

This article presents a new framework for the analysis of experimental control. The framework highlights different functions for experimental controls in the realization of an experiment: experimental controls that serve as tests and experimental controls that serve as probes. The approach to experimental control proposed here can illuminate the constitutive role of controls in knowledge production, and it sheds new light on the notion of exploratory experimentation. It also clarifies what can and what cannot be expected from reviewers of scientific (...) journal articles giving feedback on experimental controls. (shrink)

Drawing upon the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in particular their writing on Franz Kafka, this article stakes out the ground for a creative critical writing practice beyond the confines of literature. Exploring the notion of writing in relation to affect constellations, what causes one to write, and expressions without content, how one begins to write, the argument put forth is that in rethinking the distinction Deleuze and Guattari tend to make between artistic practice and philosophical thought, a (...) space is opened up for transversal lines that may cross between these fields in practices that are creative and critical and involve what Deleuze and Guattari refer to as aesthetic figures as well as conceptual personae. These practices, it is argued, provide a potential link between aesthetics, on the one hand, and ethics and politics, on the other. (shrink)

In recent developments in Artificial Intelligence and especially in robotics we can observe a tendency towards building intelligent artefacts that are meant to be social, to have ‘human social’ characteristics like emotions, the ability to conduct dialogue, to learn, to develop personality, character traits, and social competencies. Care, entertainment, pet and educational robots are conceptualised as friendly, understanding partners and credible assistants which communicate ‘naturally’ with users, show emotions and support them in everyday life. Social robots are often designed to (...) interact physically, affectively and socially with humans in order to learn from them. To achieve this goal, roboticists often model the human‐robot interaction on early caregiver‐infant interactions. In this paper I want to analyse prominent visions of these ‘socio‐emotional’ machines as well as early prototypes and commercial products with regard to the human‐machine interface. By means of this I will ask how feminist critiques of technology could be applied to the field of social robotics in which concepts like sociality or emotion are crucial elements while, at the same time, these concepts play an important role in feminist critiques of technology. (shrink)

When we criticize social institutions and practices, what kinds of reasons can we offer for such criticism? Political philosophers often assume that we must rely on universal moral principles that are not necessarily connected to the particular social practices of our communities. Traditionally,continental critical theory has rejected this claim through its endorsement of the method of immanent critique. Immanent critique is a critique of social practices that draws on norms already present within these practices to demand social change, rather than (...) merely conservatively reproducing them. This book defends the claim that such a critique is not only possible, but also has politically powerful potential. Taking up recent developments in analytic collective intentionality theory and in the philosophy of language, the book argues that all social practices rest on structures of mutual recognition between persons that allow social theorists to reconstruct hidden norms present within these practices. Starting from a comprehensive critique of contemporary critical theory, the book also spells out the consequences of this line of thought for the practice of social critique, for the social sciences and for political philosophy. (shrink)

Risk assessment is an evidence-based analytical framework used to evaluate research findings related to environmental and public health decision-making. Different routines have been adopted for assessing the potential risks posed by substances and products to human health. In general, the traditional paradigm is a hazard-driven approach, based on a monocausal toxicological perspective. Questions have been raised about the applicability of the general chemical risk assessment approach in the specific case of nanomaterials. Most scientists and stakeholders assume that the current standard (...) methods are in principle suitable, but point out that experimental aspects and practical guidelines need specific adaptations. Beyond this laboratory level, risk assessment of nanomaterials also faces a number of substantive and procedural limitations, which are intrinsically attributed to the general orthodoxy of the risk assessment concept. Moreover, the developed formalism used to organize scientific knowledge is closely interlinked with the underlying governance design and the mode of interaction between the two spheres of ‘science’ and ‘decisions’. This contribution will provide a closer look at the evolution of different institutional settings for risk assessment in the context of decision-making. Improved risk governance frameworks with different narratives, process designs and procedural elements will be compared. The question of a general principle of enhanced organization of risk assessment will be discussed taking account of the barriers of substantive and procedural limitations in the special case of nanomaterials. (shrink)

This paper discusses two methodological notions, the concepts Gegenprobe (countercheck) and Gegenversuch (counter-trial), which were widely applied, discussed, relied upon, and defended in German-language writings about empirical inquiry. In the decades around 1800, they were common in physiology; medicine; agriculture; chemistry; various technologies, such as printing, metallurgy, and mining; accounting; and legal and political argumentation. The ubiquity of those concepts signals a broad concern with securing empirical findings and empirical knowledge. Gegenproben and Gegenversuche – the terms as well as the (...) practices – are evidence for the close connection among explicitly knowledge-seeking endeavors and crafts and technologies. Physiological experiments, chemical analyses, agricultural or vaccination trials were indebted to applied and practical procedures of making and assaying. What united these different fields was the fact that the problems that had to be solved were very complex yet at the same time of immediate relevance to everyday lives (like diseases or crops) or highly controversial (like vital forces or spontaneous generation). We know that late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century practices of inquiry were firmly embedded in applied, technical contexts; this essay shows that methodological notions were anchored in applied, technical contexts as well. (shrink)

This book discusses the concept of immanent critique, i. e. whether there is a form of critique which neither just applies empirically accepted standards nor independently justified norms but rather reconstructs norms which are immanent to social practices. -/- It surveys both political theories of criticism (Walzer, Taylor, MacIntyre) and contemporary critical theories (Habermas, Honneth) for how they describe such forms of critique and develops a new model of immanent critique. For this purpose, it takes up both contemporary social ontology (...) theories and the discussion about rule-following. The book argues that we can speak of immanent rules as far as persons can practically recognize each other as members of rule-governed practices if they attribute each other defeasible normative authority. -/- Finally, it describes the consequences of the adoption of such a model for our description of a practice of critique and analyzes both first-order immanent critique and the second-order critique of reification. (shrink)

The ability to process center‐embedded structures has been claimed to represent a core function of the language faculty. Recently, several studies have investigated the learning of center‐embedded dependencies in artificial grammar settings. Yet some of the results seem to question the learnability of these structures in artificial grammar tasks. Here, we tested under which exposure conditions learning of center‐embedded structures in an artificial grammar is possible. We used naturally spoken syllable sequences and varied the presence of prosodic cues. The results (...) suggest that mere distributional information does not suffice for successful learning. Prosodic cues marking the boundaries of the major relevant units, however, can lead to learning success. Thus, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that center‐embedded syntactic structures can be learned in artificial grammar tasks if language‐like acoustic cues are provided. (shrink)

The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative and International Law, 1600-1926, brings together foreign, comparative, and international titles in a single resource. Its International Law component features works of some of the great legal theorists, including Gentili, Grotius, Selden, Zouche, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Wolff, Vattel, Martens, Mackintosh, Wheaton, among others. The materials in this archive are drawn from three world-class American law libraries: the Yale Law Library, the George Washington University Law Library, and the Columbia Law Library.Now for the first time, (...) these high-quality digital scans of original works are available via print-on-demand, making them readily accessible to libraries, students, independent scholars, and readers of all ages.+++++++++++++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: +++++++++++++++Yale Law LibraryLP3Y044500019260101The Making of Modern Law: Foreign, Comparative, and International Law, 1600-1926At head of title: Friedrich Julius Stahl.Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1926xxxvi, 222 p. 21 cmGermany. (shrink)

This article compares investigations of the process of vision that were made in early nineteenth-century Britain and the German lands. It is argued that vision studies differed significantly east and west of the North Sea. Most of the German investigators had a medical background and many of them had a firm grasp of contemporary philosophy. In contrast, the British studies on vision emerged from the context of optics. This difference manifested itself in the conceptual tools for the analysis of vision, (...) deception and illusion and shaped the experiments on visual phenomena that were carried out. Nevertheless, both in Britain and in the German lands vision studies were driven by the same impetus, by epistemological concerns with the nature and reliability of knowledge acquisition in experience. The general epistemological conclusions drawn from researches on vision and deception were optimistic. Precisely because mechanisms of deception and illusion could be uncovered, the possibility of acquiring empirical knowledge could be secured. (shrink)