The two essays brought together in this volume are born from the conviction that recent discussions of the foundations of history and science of man cannot be fully understood without reference to their historical and philosophical background. A careful examination of the methodological assumptions of any given discipline is an essential part of its development. Yet the problem has been ignored, for the most part, by historians and social scientists alike until very recently. They have been inclined to confine (...) themselves to the refinement of research techniques and to leave the question of the methodological and theoretical foundations of history and the social sciences entirely to the philosopher. It is primarily with this question that this book is concerned. Thus it is a study of history as well as a study of philosophy of science. (shrink)

Scientific interest in drug-induced mystical experiences reemerged in the 1990s. This warrants reexamining the philosophical issues surrounding such studies: Do psychedelic drugs cause mystical experiences? Are drug-induced experiences the same in nature as other mystical experiences? Does the fact that mystical experiences can be induced by drugs invalidate or validate mystical cognitive claims? Those questions will be examined here. An overview of the scientific examination of drug-induced mystical experiences is included, as is a brief overview of the (...) class='Hi'>history of the use of psychedelic drugs in religion. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Chinese Social and Political Science Association and its impact on China’s inclination to Wilsonianism. The CSPSA was founded in Beijing in 1915. Two primary supporters were Lu Zhengxiang (China’s Foreign Minister) and Paul S. Reinsch (American Minister to China during the Wilson administration). It chose English as its official language in order to have dialogues with American scholars. The CSPSA had strong interests in constitutionalism, international relations and international law. As it pondered how to discipline China, (...) it demonstrated its inclination to the American scientific study of the state. Epistemologically, this led to the political converge between China and the US during the Great War. (shrink)

More powerful methods for studying and integrating the historical track record of scientific episodes and scientific judgment, or what Faust and Meehl describe as a program of meta‐science and meta‐scientific studies, can supplement and extend more commonly used case study methods. We describe the basic premises of meta‐science, overview methodological considerations, and provide examples of meta‐scientific studies. Meta‐science can help to clarify or resolve long‐standing questions in the history and philosophy of science and provide (...) practical help to the working scientist. (shrink)

This paper addresses an issue that has been studied from both scientific and art theoretical perspectives, namely the dichotomous nature of representational artworks. Representational artworks are dichotomous in that they present us with two distinct aspects at once. In one aspect we are aware of what is represented while in the other we are aware of the material from which the representation is composed. The dichotomy arises due the incompatibility, indeed contradiction, between these aspects of awareness, both of which (...) must be present if we are to fully appreciate the artwork. Examples from art history are given to show how artists have exploited this dichotomy in a way that conditions our response to their work. I hypothesize that the degree of manifest dichotomy in a work determines the strength of its aesthetic effect, and propose this could be experimentally tested. I conclude that scientific studies of aesthetic experience should take the dichotomous nature of artworks into account. (shrink)

We argue that Kant’s views about consciousness, the mind-body problem, and the status of psychology as a science all differ drastically from the way in which these topics are conjoined in present debates about the prominent idea of a science of consciousness. Kant did never use the concept of consciousness in the now dominant sense of phenomenal qualia; his discussions of the mind-body problem center not on the reducibility of mental properties but of substances; and his views about the possibility (...) of psychology as a science did not employ the requirement of a mechanistic explanation, but of quantification of phenomena. This shows strikingly how deeply philosophical problems and conceptions can change even if they look similar on the surface. (shrink)

We report the results of a study that investigated the views of researchers working in seven scientific disciplines and in history and philosophy of science in regard to four hypothesized dimensions of scientific realism. Among other things, we found that natural scientists tended to express more strongly realist views than social scientists, that history and philosophy of science scholars tended to express more antirealist views than natural scientists, that van Fraassen’s characterization of scientific realism (...) failed to cluster with more standard characterizations, and that those who endorsed the pessimistic induction were no more or less likely to endorse antirealism. (shrink)

The study contains the review, analysis, assessment of the current state and prospects for further scientific study of the materials of the Russian state archives, including the personal funds of philosophers and philosophical institutions of Russia in the 19th-20th centuries, which are of the greatest relevance to historians of Russian philosophy. In this regard, on the one hand, the study considers the largest research and scientific-publishing historical and philosophical projects, testifying to the already achieved results (...) of the scientific development of vast arrays of archival documents; on the other hand, a number of collections of Russian state archives (federal, regional, municipal, departmental) have been monitored in order to identify archival collections that were little or insufficiently studied from this point of view. The results of the collective research presented in the article can be considered as the beginning of a large systematic work on the analytical mapping of the content of Russian archival collections relevant to the problems of the history of Russian philosophy. The study shows the importance and productivity of conducting parallel research work both with the personal funds of Russian philosophers of the 19th-20th centuries, and with funds containing documentation of philosophical institutions (magazine editorial offices, faculties, departments, research institutes, publishing houses of philosophical literature, professional and thematic associations of philosophers). In this regard, the question was raised about the need to develop historical and philosophical archiving and source studies in Russia, to include this set of subjects into the system of training historians of philosophy, and also about the need to coordinate the joint efforts of historians of Russian philosophy towards the formation of an archive of Russian philosophy as a significant and publicly available mapped resource. The results obtained in the course of the study should contribute to the emergence of the history of Russian philosophy as a dynamically developing branch of Russian science to a qualitatively new source study and methodological level, necessary for solving the large-scale research tasks, related, in particular, to the scientific preparation of academic collections of works by Russian philosophers and the development of modern fundamental history of Russian philosophy. (shrink)

Despite all that has been written about Russian historiography and how it profoundly changed after the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, very little is known about the historical tradition immediately before the Soviet era. This article attempts to begin to address this issue by examining the major forces that shaped the historical and sociological thought of Nikolai Alesandrovich Rozhkov (1868–1927). It argues that as Kliuchevskii’s successor and as the first professional historian to eventually present a Marxist analysis of Russian (...) class='Hi'>history, Rozhkov was not only the most important historian at that time but one whose work best represented the most significant transition in Russia’s historical tradition. The article concludes that an examination of Rozhkov’s historical methodology offers a new interpretation of the origins of Soviet historiography. (shrink)

The volume before us is the fourth in the series of proceedings of what used to be the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. This Colloquium has in the meantime been renamed. It now bears the name of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975). Bar-Hillel was an eminent philosopher of science, language, and cognition, as well as a fearless fighter for enlightenment and a passionate teacher who had a durable influence on Israeli philosophical life. The essays collected in (...) this volume have of course this much in common, that they are all in, of, and pertaining to science. They also share the property of having all been delivered before live, and often lively, audiences in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, in the years 1984-1986. As is customary in the volumes of this series, the essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a rather special balance between the disciplines to which the Colloquium is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed in Kramnick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, in Vickers' and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult, and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up: rule following, by Smart and Margalit; analysis, by Ackerman; explanation, by Taylor; and the role of mathematics in physics, by Levy-Leblond and Pitowsky. (shrink)

This paper considers the legacy of Kuhn and his Structure with regard to the current history and philosophy of science. Kuhn can be seen as a myth breaker, whose contribution is the way he connected historical and philosophical studies of science, questioning the cumulativist image and demanding historical responsibility of the views of science. I build on Kuhn’s legacy and outline a suggestion for theoretical and philosophical study of history (of science), which can be subdivided into three (...) categories. The first is the philosophical analysis of historical interpretation and its relation to the historical record. The second is ‘theoretical history’ in which one tries to infer philosophically relevant interpretations on the nature of science on the basis of historical evidence. The third is the conceptual reflection of the assumptions and implications of the contemporary historiography of science. At the end I suggest that theoretical and philosophical study of history offers a fresh way to make history and philosophy relevant to each other. (shrink)

In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of (...) science, but what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn. (shrink)

The attempt to develop a systematic approach to the study of consciousness begins with René Descartes (1596–1650) and his ideas still have a major influence today. He is best known for the sharp distinction he made between the physical and the mental (Cartesian dualism). According to Descartes, the body is one sort of substance and the mind another because each can be conceived in terms of totally distinct attributes. The body (matter) is characterized by spatial extension and motion, while (...) the mind is characterized by thought. This characterization of the mind also renders it private, a precursor of the distinction between the first‐person and the third‐person perspectives. Today, most scientists do not accept dualism, instead believing that mind somehow emerges from the physical properties of the brain. However, the distinction between mind and matter is still perceived as being so clear‐cut that explaining how mind can emerge from matter, and reconciling the first‐person and third‐person perspectives, remain the hardest problems facing the student of consciousness. (shrink)

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences (...) and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man. (shrink)

A distinctive form of anticolonial analysis has been emerging from Latin America in recent decades. This decolonial theory argues that important new insights about modernity, its politics, and epistemology become visible if one starts off thinking about them from the experiences of those colonized by the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas. For the decolonial theorists, European colonialism in the Americas, on the one hand, and modernity and capitalism in Europe, on the other hand, coproduced and coconstituted each other. The (...) effects of that history persist today. Starting thought from these LA histories and current realities enables envisioning new resources for social transformations. These decolonial insights seem to receive only a passing recognition in the Latin American social studies of science and technology projects that have begun cosponsoring events and publications with northern equivalents. My focus will be primarily on the decolonial theory and on just two of its themes. One is the critical resources it offers for creating more accurate and progressive northern philosophies and histories of science as well as social studies of science. The second is insights from Latin American feminists that carry different impacts in the context of the decolonial accounts. (shrink)

Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science have grown interested in the daily practices of scientists. Recent studies have drawn linkages between scientific innovations and more ordinary procedures, craft skills, and sources of sponsorship. These studies dispute the idea that science is the application of a unified method or the outgrowth of a progressive history of ideas. This book critically reviews arguments and empirical studies in two areas of sociology that have played a significant role in the 'sociological turn' (...) in science studies: ethnomethodology and the sociology of scientific knowledge. In both fields, efforts to study scientific practices have led to intractable difficulties and debates, due in part to scientistic and foundationalist commitments that remain entrenched with social-scientific research policies and descriptive language. The central purpose of this book is to explore the possibility of an empirical approach to the epistemic contents of science that avoids the pitfalls of scientism and foundationalism. (shrink)

The case often made by scientists (and philosophers) against history and the history of science in particular is clear. Insofar as a field of study is historical as opposed to law-based, it is trivial. Insofar as a field attends to the past of science as opposed to current scientific issues, its efforts are derivative and, by diverting attention from acquiring new knowledge, deplorable. This case would be devastating if true, but it has almost everything almost exactly (...) wrong. The study of history and the study of laws are not mutually exclusive, but unavoidably linked. Neither can be pursued without the other. Much the same can be said of the history of science. The history of science is neither a distraction from "real" science nor even merely a help to science. Rather, the history of science is an essential part of each science. Seeing that this is so requires a broader understanding of both history and science. (shrink)

Problems of the history of philosophy, no matter what aspect of that science they deal with, are always very important. Today, when idealist philosophy seeks to give an exaggerated picture of the importance of the major spiritual values created by the peoples of the West, these problems are acquiring particular significance. In the postwar period, the number of works published abroad on the history of philosophy has increased sharply. The most popular of the older works are being revised (...) and reissued. A great number of writings on methodology have appeared. The influence of philosophy is spreading to other fields of knowledge and to their history. Specifically, historians of culture, science, technology and art are striving, influenced by the materialist concept of history, to shed the light of philosophy upon the problems that inevitably arise in these fields when their history is studied, but which cannot be resolved by the cognitive resources of the special sciences. This circumstance renders problems of the methodology of the history of philosophy particularly important and places greater responsibility upon researchers in this field. (shrink)

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

Darwin's theory of evolution brought to an end the static view of nature. It was no longer possible to think of species as immortal, with secure places in nature. Fluctuation of population could no longer be thought of as occurring within definite limits which had been set at the time of creation. Nor was it any longer possible to generalize from the differential reproductive potentials, or from a few cases of mutualism between species, that everything in nature was “fitted to (...) produce general ends, and reciprocal uses.” 134 The appeal to “design” could no longer be substituted for answers to questions concerning animal demography. Instead, the dynamics of a population had to be viewed as the outcome of species' struggle against animate and inanimate factors in the environment. Both the members of a species and the environmental factors tend to vary randomly, and therefore neither evolution nor population dynamics could be fully understood alone. For this reason Darwin's linking of the two subjects was inevitable and not merely an historical accident. Since Darwin had shown that no automatic equilibrium existed, he demonstrated the importance of closer study of the causes of population dynamics and extinction. He also indicated that an understanding of population depends upon the development of a broad knowledge in ecology.Viewed from another direction, Darwin's work ended the early modern era of population studies by clarifying three interrelated problems which were important for understanding population: extinction, distribution, and the nature of species. The components of his answer had been discussed in the eighteenth century, but there had not existed enough evidence for the completion of the revolution in thought which had then begun. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Playfair found the evidence for extinction conclusive, and, in spite of Lamarck, Curvier convinced the scientific world that there could no longer be any doubt about it. This was a step the importance of which, with his limited knowledge of biogeography and population, Cuvier could not have fully realized. Lamarck attempted, with his evolutionary theory, to circumvent the necessity for admitting extinction, but he overestimated the adaptability of organisms and in doing so he underestimated the importance of competition and the whole field of ecology. On the other hand, he was not willing to let questions such as the origin of species remain taboo to science. The origin of species was a biogeographical as well as a paleontological question. Humboldt correlated environment with the distribution of species and conveyed the impression that plant communities are subject to change. De Candolle, following the lead of Linnaeus and Humboldt, emphasized the ecological aspects of biogeography, not only the importance of habitat and range, clearly showing the ecological effects of competition. The entomologists Kirby and Spence took a faltering step toward understanding the relationship between population and ecological role, but they fell short of any significant new conclusions. Neither they nor Swainson could fully comprehend the new perspective of De Candolle.Lyell was able to bring together the evidence from these three lines of investigation and weave them into an important synthesis that almost accomplished that Darwin later did. Although opposing Lamarck's theory of evolution, Lyell had a dynamic view of ecology. He realized that population dynamics offered an important key to the understanding of biogeography. Since he knew that species become extinct, he investigated closely the factors which could either preserve or extinguish species. While explaining these factors, he described the interrelationships of species in greater detail than had ever been done before. Forbes continued to develop Lyell's ecological concepts, and his first-hand field experience enabled him to describe biotic communities more concretely than Lyell had.Having the advantages of Lyell's understanding and his own experience from a global voyage, Darwin could take the final step from the static to the dynamic concept of life. He had seen populations fluctuating and also fossil species in South America, and on the Galapagos Islands he had encountered a biogeographical problem that could not be credibly solved without the idea of evolution. However, the bare idea of evolution did not fully answer his questions. He sought physiological causes of extinction before he read Malthus and realized that De Candolle and Lyell had correctly emphasized the importance of competition. Darwin found that, in order to understand evolution, he needed to improve his understanding of ecology. He wanted to know when populations were most easily decimated, how extensive were competition and cooperation, what effects parasites have upon populations, and what changes occur in biotic communities when a species is either added or subtracted. He contributed to some extent to answering these questions. Though there remained much for others to do, there was now a new and more secure theoretical framework within which later studies could be interpreted. As Ernst Mayr has observed, Darwin's “consistent thinking in terms of population has had an impact on biological theory and practice which is second only to his sponsorship of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution.” 135. (shrink)

Three scientific societies devoted to the study of reproduction were established in Britain, France and USA in the middle of the twentieth century by clinical, veterinary and agricultural scientists. The principal motivation for their establishment had been the study of sterility and fertility of people and livestock. There was also a wider perspective embracing other biologists interested in reproduction more generally. Knowledge disseminated through the societies’ scientific meetings and publications would bear upon human and animal population (...) problems as well as basic reproductive physiology and its applications. New journals dealing with reproductive physiology, having worldwide appeal, were established in Britain and USA. The financial resources of at least one of the societies and its journal are directed towards charitable functions, including financial support for travel to scientific meetings, for visits to particular laboratories, and for research in the short term, including that of undergraduates. Perhaps the example of the British society has given rise to others having a more specialised focus, as well as to the formation of the European Society for the Study of Human Reproduction and Embryology. (shrink)

This collection is the first proceedings volume of the lectures delivered within the framework of the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, in its year of inauguration 1981-82. It thus marks the beginning of a new venture. Rather than attempting to express an ideology of the l}nity of science, this collection in fact aims at presenting a kaleidoscopic picture of the variety of views about science and within science. Three main disciplines come together in this (...) volume. The first of scientists, the second of historians and sociologists of science, the third of philosophers interested in science. The scientists try to present the scientific body of knowledge in areas where the scientific adventure kindles the imagination of the culture of our time. At the same of course, they register their own reflections on the nature of this body time, of knowledge and on its likely course of future development. For the historians and sociologists, in contrast, science is there to be studied diachronically, as a process, on the one hand, and synchronically, as a social institution, on the other. As for the phil9sophers, finally, their contribution to this series is not meant to remain within the confines of what is usually seen as the philosophy of science proper, or to be limited to the analysis of the scientific mode of reasoning and thinking: it is allowed, indeed encouraged, to encompass alter native, and on occasion even competing, modes of thought. (shrink)

The era in which Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī emerged as a canonical scientist significantly contributed to his education and shaped his scientific worldview. The formation of al-Farabi’s spiritual worldview and his ideas is directly associated with embracing the ancient philosophical tradition, more precisely, Aristotle’s philosophy and logic. The focus of the article is alFarabi’s analysis of Aristotle’s principles in the study of logic and their further development. Al-Farabi’s worldwide reputation as the Second Teacher after Aristotle, the First Teacher, in (...) the East is directly rooted in his mastery and advancement of the science of logic. In simple terms, the philosopher states that logic leads a person to a straight path to being capable of radically discerning between good and bad, truth and lies, and honesty and deceit. This, in turn, steers humanity away from succumbing to mistakes or getting into trouble. Al-Farabi constructs a comprehensive scientific analysis of the socio-cultural foundations of Aristotle’s doctrine of logic and the ability to adapt it in his unique way to society. The study of the theoretical basis of al-Farabi’s teachings on logic and its significance involves employing hermeneutic, comparative, and stylistic methods in the research of the texts. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn with his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential and widely read philosophers of the 20th century. Kuhn's claim that the meanings of scientific terms change is often taken to be refuted by recent advances in the philosophy of language. Meaning Changes challenges this interpretation showing that meaning change in Kuhn has multiple aspects: Semantic, mental and historical. The author describes the traditional view with clarity, but demonstrates that Kuhn's idea stems (...) from his studies of history. The book explains how Kuhn's philosophy is supported by cognitive science and why meaning change is relevant to the history of ideas. It argues that Kuhn's case against Hilary Putnam's causal theory of reference constitutes serious criticism of the account. The book concludes by analysing Kuhn's 'historical perspective' in the coherentist epistemological framework, which regards the question of scientific progress ultimately as empirical. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science. It also is valuable reading to anybody interested in philosophy or scientific change. (shrink)

This article, through a case study of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS), traces the reception, experimentation with, and uses of radium in early twentieth-century Ireland. Throughout the nineteenth century there was increasing state intervention in the provision of scientific and technical education in Ireland. This culminated in the loss of the RDS's traditional role in this area. The article demonstrates that the RDS was forced to re-envisage its role as a scientific institution by actively seeking to support (...) experimental research. Using radium as a case study, the article argues for the success of this tactic. It demonstrates that radium played a central role within the RDS as a nexus for the maintenance of an experimental and philanthropic culture that permeated much of the society's scientific output in this period. In doing this it highlights the importance of sociability in the promotion of science in Ireland in the early twentieth century. In addition, it explores the role of the RDS as an arbiter of scientific authority. (shrink)

This paper examines how scholars of Greek and Roman antiquity in the German-speaking territories in the first half of the nineteenth century define scientificity (Wissenschaftlichkeit). I will argue that antiquity studies in this period of its foundation as a discipline is an instructive case to examine with regard to questions as to how scientific knowledge is established as different from other forms of knowledge, how scientific fields establish relative autonomy from other fields and what forms scientific autonomy (...) can take. Widely recognised as important for the history of the modern research university, the case is not only interesting because it is influential. It is also interesting because the discussions in this period are so different to discussions in the later nineteenth century in the social sciences and the humanities, which have shaped debates about scientificity in sociology and cognate disciplines: We find here a notion of social and cultural research as a scientific endeavour, discussed not primarily with reference to or in defence against the natural sciences, but rather defined against imitative learning and the expectation that research provide moral support for the emerging Germany by idealizing the Greeks. The case highlights moralization as a source of heteronomy in cultural fields in addition to the more widely discussed forces of the market and the influence of the state. (shrink)

Structuralism provides useful resources for advancing our understanding of the intertheoretic reduction relation and its place in the history of science. This paper begins by surveying these resources and assessing their metascientific significance. Nevertheless, important challenges remain. I close by arguing that the reductionism implicit in current scientific practice in a paradigmatic reductionistic scientific field –“molecular and cellular cognition”– is better understood on an “intervene and track” model rather than as any kind of intertheoretic relation. I illustrate (...) my alternative model by describing briefly a recent reductionistic result from the field. It appears doubtful that any structuralist resources will illuminate this newly-recognized type of reduction-in-actual-scientific-practice. (shrink)

If any nature of science perspective is to be incorporated in science-related curricula, it is hard to imagine a satisfactory didactic toolkit that neglects the social studies of science, the academic field of study of the institutional structures and networks of science. Knowledge production takes place in a world populated by actors, instruments, and ideas, and various epistemic cultures are responsible for providing the concepts, abstractions, and techniques that slowly trickle down the information pathways to become stabilized in university (...) curricula or ossified in high-school science, losing much of the tacit knowledge along the way that enabled the production of knowledge in the first place. The discussion of the sociology of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge is followed by a short overview of recent approaches in science studies and the studies of expertise. (shrink)

This work is devoted to the terracotta army of Qin Shihuang and its reflection in the works of modern Chinese masters of watercolor. The article consists of three parts. The first part analyzes the genesis and history of Qin Shihuang's clay army. In the second, the terracotta army is regarded as a cultural and artistic symbol of China, which stimulated humanitarian contacts between Russia and China and contributed to mutual understanding between the two peoples. In the third part, through (...) the prism of the artistic experience and creative process of three watercolor artists, the current state of research of watercolor creativity on the theme of the terracotta army is analyzed. The author's special contribution to the development of the problem is to determine the connection between the ancient cultural heritage of China and the nature of its interpretation in the works of modern watercolor artists. The novelty of the study can be recognized as the introduction into the scientific circulation of Russian art history of the names of Chinese artists and their paintings dedicated to the terracotta army of Emperor Qin Shihuang. Within the framework of the work, an appeal is made to the issue of Chinese-Russian cultural cooperation, the development of which is realized through touching this most representative monument of antiquity. Through the art criticism analysis of watercolor paintings by Chinese masters — Huang Zhongyang, Lin Shaolin, Zuo Xinmin — approaches to the reflection of this historical monument in the works of modern masters are determined, the connection between ancient and modern, traditional and innovative in their paintings is established. (shrink)

This is a study of Master Ramchandra, a nineteenth-century Indian mathematician, social commentator and Urdu journalist. The contradictions manifest in his projects, it is contended, were actually the products of the contradictions manifest in the political and ideological thinking of the period. One encounters in his writings a dominant critique of the prevalent religious, social and educational systems and also a call for social transformation, wherein scientific rationality and realism came to play an important role. Ramchandra's understanding is (...) quite close to that of the Comtean positivists. An attempt is made here to locate this emerging scientism within the context of nineteenth-century colonial politics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 217 [Access article in PDF] Bogoljub Sijakovic. Bibliographica Praesocratica: A Bibliographical Guide to the Studies of Early Greek Philosophy in its Religious and Scientific Contexts with an Introductory Bibliography on the Historiography of Philosophy. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001. Pp. 700. Cloth, €18,00. Professor Sijakovic has given us an invaluable reference work for the Presocratics and for early Greek (...) thought generally: a bibliography of 17,664 entries covering the period 1450-2000. It has some advantages over its principal predecessor, Paquet et al., Les Présocratiques: Bibliographie Analytique (Montreal and Paris, 1988-95), which covers work up to 1980. Sijakovic includes more recent material and aims at complete coverage of works in the Slavic languages and Modern Greek. He does not cover the Sophists, but does include works on topics that extend more widely than the Presocratics. Unlike Paquet, Sijakovic does not provide summaries of articles nor does he list reviews of books, unless they have interest in their own right, or include translations of works into other modern languages. He provides indexes of subjects, Greek terms, proper names, and authors.The ambition of the work is revealed by the subject headings other than those on familiar Presocratic thinkers and the issues they treated. The bibliography begins with a long section on Historiography and Philosophy of the History of Philosophy (with 932 entries) and concludes with one on Presocratics in the Intellectual Tradition (590) from before Plato to the present, with subsections on figures such as Francis Bacon (5), Nietzsche (74), Heidegger (56), and Popper (6). Other sections are labelled Theories of Myth (550), Greek Mythmaking and Religion (667), Orpheus and Orphism (642), Homer (154), Hesiod (147), Theogonies, Greek and Oriental (159), From Myth to Philosophy (365), Mathematics (137), Medicine (86), and Hippocrates of Cos (199). It is here that ambition leads to weakness, since the section on Homer, for example, is obviously not a complete bibliography of Homeric studies, and yet it is not restricted to works on Homer that bear on "presocratic" topics. The absence of an explanatory preface to these sections leaves the principles of selection mysterious and decreases their usefulness.Another feature that limits the value of the book is the arrangement within sections. This is generally chronological, but not always. The irregularities are so pervasive that the cause must be due to some unannounced division into unlabelled subsections, and the result is that we must read through more entries than we should have to. Two other minor complaints: the language of the book is English (aside from the trilingual prefatory material), but there are mistakes of usage and grammar which a copyreader should have caught; and there are occasional unexplained words at the end of entries, frequently in a different type-face, that are not part of the bibliographical entry.I do not mean to detract from the great service Professor Sijakovic has done (seemingly laboring alone over many years) for all who work in the area of early Greek thought—and principally, he notes in a preface, written as NATO was bombing his country, scholars from Western Europe and the United States. We are deeply indebted to him. The book has replaced Paquet as my primary bibliographical resource on the Presocratics. Richard McKirahan Pomona College... (shrink)

We track and analyze the re-situation of scientific knowledge in the field of human population genomics ancestry studies. We understand re-situation as a process of accommodating the direct or indirect transfer of objects of knowledge from one site/situation to other sites/situations. Our take on the concept borrows from Mary S. Morgan’s work on facts traveling while expanding it to include other objects of knowledge such as models, data, software, findings, and visualizations. We structure a specific case study by (...) tracking the re-situation of these objects between three research projects studying human population diversity reported in three articles in Science, Genome Research and PLoS Genetics between 2002 and 2005. We characterize these three engagements as a unit of analysis, a “skirmish,” in order to compare: the divergence of interests in how life-scientists answer similar research questions and to track the challenging transformation of workflows in research laboratories as these scientific objects are re-situated individually or in bundles. Our analysis of the case study shows that an accurate understanding of re-situation requires tracking the whole bundle of objects in a project because they interact in particular key ways. The absence or dismissal of these interactions opens the door to unforeseen trade-offs, misunderstandings and misrepresentations about research design and workflow and what these say about the questions asked and the findings produced. (shrink)

"Partial realism" is a common position in the contemporary philosophy of science literature. It states that the "essential" elements of empirically successful scientific theories accurately represent corresponding features the world. This thesis makes several novel contributions related to this position. Firstly, it offers a new definition of the concept of “empirical success”, representing a principled merger between the use-novelty and unification accounts. Secondly, it provides a comparative critical analysis of various accounts of which elements are "essential" to the success (...) of a theory, including structural realism and the divide et impera strategy. A novel account of essentialness, entitled the “empirically successful sub-theory "account", is defended. Thirdly, it is argued that the realism/anti-realism debate should put to the side metaphysical questions and focus instead on partial realism's commitment to the continuity of science. Because this commitment lacks metaphysical implications, it is referred to as "deflationary realism". Anti-realists cannot reject deflationary realism as a matter of a priori principle; its overall viability can therefore only be assessed by a careful examination of the history of science. Finally, another consequence of partial realism, named "partial rationalism", is defended. Partial rationalism states that, in cases where several competing theories have been suggested, scientists are rational just in case they accept the essential elements of each of the scientific theories on offer. This novel position subverts the existing literature on scientific "revolutions", as it sometimes demands that scientists devise a synthesis between competing scientific theories, instead of "choosing" only one. The philosophical points defended in this thesis are illustrated and supported by case studies from the history of science, including Fresnel’s wave theory of light, the Copernican revolution, the "neo-Darwinian synthesis" in evolutionary biology, the "prion revolution" in molecular biology, the miasma theory of disease, and the chemical revolution. (shrink)

The cogency of a scientific study utilizing historical data tends to be, unfortunately, very largely a matter of the methodological presuppositions of the reader. Indeed, the barriers to a more general and thorough scientific use of history are, for the most part, methodological. There are two such barriers: the uncertainty as to the validity of an intensive scientific investigation of historical problems, and the lack of a clear delineation of the fields of research.Concerning the first, (...) two problems must be considered: on the one hand, the nature of historical knowledge and on the other, the nature of scientific knowledge. The predictive assumption of the present discussion is that to understand the essential identity of historical and scientific knowledge is to justify the scientific manipulation of data which are unquestionably historical. The thesis which is being argued here is that all data are historical, that all reality—whatever its level or type—is event-structured, that events have an existential dependence on one another, that therefore relationships of relevance and causation may be established, and that the determination of such relationships is the function of scientific research in any field. (shrink)

This book offers an integrated historical and philosophical examination of the origin of genetics. The author contends that an integrated HPS analysis helps us to have a better understanding of the history of genetics, and sheds light on some general issues in the philosophy of science. This book consists of three parts. It begins with historical problems, revisiting the significance of the work of Mendel, de Vries, and Weldon. Then it turns to integrated HPS problems, developing an exemplar-based analysis (...) of the development and the progress in early genetics. Finally, it discusses philosophical problems: conceptual change, evidence, and theory choice. Part I lays out a new historiography, serving as a basis for the discussions in part II and part III. Part II introduces a new integrated HPS method to analyse and interpret the historiography in Part I and to re-examine the philosophical issues in Part III. Part III develops new philosophical accounts which will in turn make a better sense of the history of scientific practice more generally. This book provides a practical defence of integrated HPS: the best way to defend integrated HPS is to do it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Towards a Realist Philosophy of History by Adam TimminsAviezer TuckerTIMMINS, Adam. Towards a Realist Philosophy of History. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2022. 192 pp. Cloth, $95.00The debate about scientific realism, whether science represents reality or just discovers measurements and correlations that are followed by theoretical stories about them, is at the center of the philosophy of science. One potent and frequently discussed antirealist argument has (...) been Larry Laudan’s “pessimistic induction”: Historically, all scientific theories, especially in physics, have been proven false. Hence, all contemporary scientific theories will be proven false and science cannot represent reality. This pessimistic induction relies on knowledge of the history of science, on historiographic realism. Luckily for the pessimistic induction, the history of historiography, the scientific representation of the human past, supports an optimistic induction: Since the revolutions associated with Ranke in historiography, Lyle in geological history, and Darwin in biological history, the historical sciences have made progress but have not [End Page 368] overhauled the founders’ representations of the past. We know more about the human past than Ranke did and much more about the biological past than Darwin did, but the modern historical sciences have not overturned their theories and conclusions. Though there are many new methodologies, historians still go to the archives to compare primary sources, and biologists still study fossils and assume natural selection.Though scientific antirealism assumes historiographic realism, it has received scant philosophic attention. Often it is perceived or presented as a naive “empiricist” concept of historiography that imagines historians “observe” history and then describe it in historiography. Radical antirealist theories of historiography that reduce it to fiction, myth, or manipulative ideology use this image of realism as naive empiricism to dialectically support its equally naive antirealist antithesis. Both ignore the evidential, mostly testimonial, justifications of historiography.Adam Timmins’s project is to articulate and justify a sophisticated historiographic realism that fits historiographic practices and premises. He argues that historiography is “successful in providing information and understanding about the historical past that is constrained by and reflects what actually happened in the past itself.”Timmins’s historiographic realism springs out of the philosophy of language rather than epistemology or philosophy of science. This distinguishes it from Murray Murphey’s historiographic realism, which argued that historiographic ontology is theoretical. Famously, Murphey compared George Washington to the electron as two well-corroborated but unobservable theoretical entities. Timmins retorts that Washington is a proper name and not a theoretical concept, and it is impossible to conduct experiments with Washingtons. Timmins inquires how the language historians use may be interpreted as referring to past events and how historiography can represent history. He does not devote much attention to how historians justify their statements about history to a degree that may warrant a realistic interpretation of historiography. Rather, Timmins assumes so. He proceeds through polemical dialogues with philosophers of historiography who took antirealist stances like Leon Goldstein, Frank Ankersmit, and Jouni Kuukkanen.Timmins’s realism is founded on the belief in a universally accepted core of historiographic facts. He does not inquire about the theoretical foundations of historiographic inferences that allow the emergence of such a consensus. Rather than consider historiographic epistemology, the critical methods of historiography, Timmins considers linguistic communities and entrenched uses of language. He confronts the problem of reference to the past in the absence of its perception by asserting that historiographic representations are of “mental files” that have names (for example, “the Renaissance,” “the Second World War”) and evolving core facts about those historical events (for example, Petrarch and Da Vinci in the Renaissance, the main battles in the war). Though the exact contents of these files may differ between historians, they still refer to the same events and have the same labels. Timmins suggests that experts gradually introduce fluid norms of reference on the basis of broadly accepted facts [End Page 369] whose references caused information chains that led to them. He suggests that complex or colligated concepts are in the mind but refer through mediation to some directly referenced events. For example, the First World War is a concept that through the mediation of facts like its main battles refers to real... (shrink)