The scales of experience: Introduction to the special issue Experiencing the global environment

The Scales of Experience introduces the special issue Experiencing the Global Environment by focusing on three dimensions of the theme that are reflected to various degrees in the constitutive essays. First, the introduction highlights the links between the epistemological and political contexts of the historical constitution and development of the global environment (or global environments) in the earth and environmental sciences from the late nineteenth century to today. Second, it argues for a historical approach to the complex concept of scientific experience, whose mutable and contingent qualities are demonstrated by the contributions to the special volume. Lastly, the introduction presents one of the central issues to be tackled by the essays to follow: the development – and, at times, the failure – of strategies and technologies to bridge the seemingly incommensurate gulf between individual, localized experience and the all-encompassing scale of the global environment.     

Re-situating fieldwork and re-narrating disciplinary history in global mega-geomorphology

In 1985, more than thirty geomorphologists, planetary scientists, and remote sensing specialists gathered at a conference center in Oracle, Arizona, to discuss an emerging area of research that they called “mega-geomorphology.” Building on a conference of the same name held in London in 1981, they argued that new techniques of remote sensing and insights emerging from the study of extraterrestrial planets had created opportunities for geomorphology to broaden its spatial and temporal scope. This new approach was, however, neither unproblematic nor uncontested. In the discussions around mega-geomorphology that took place in the mid-1980s, the perceived conflict between the use of remote-sensing techniques to observe phenomena on vast spatial scales, on one hand, and the disciplinary centrality of fieldwork and field experience to geomorphology, on the other, was a recurrent theme. In response, mega-geomorphologists attempted to re-situate fieldwork and re-narrate disciplinary histories in such a way as to make remote sensing and planetary science not only compatible with geomorphological traditions but also means of revitalizing them. Only partially successful, these attempts reveal that the process of adopting a planetary perspective in geomorphology, as in other earth sciences, was neither straightforward nor inevitable. They also show how the field and fieldwork could remain central to geomorphology while also being extensively revised in light of new technical possibilities and theoretical frameworks.     

State of the field: Are the results of science contingent or inevitable?

This paper presents a survey of the literature on the problem of contingency in science. The survey is structured around three challenges faced by current attempts at understanding the conflict between “contingentist” and “inevitabilist” interpretations of scientific knowledge and practice. First, the challenge of definition: it proves hard to define the positions that are at stake in a way that is both conceptually rigorous and does justice to the plethora of views on the issue. Second, the challenge of distinction: some features of the debate suggest that the contingency issue may not be sufficiently distinct from other philosophical debates to constitute a genuine, independent philosophical problem. And third, the challenge of decidability: it remains unclear whether and how the conflict could be settled on the basis of empirical evidence from the actual history of science. The paper argues that in order to make progress in the present debate, we need to distinguish more systematically between different expressions that claims about contingency and inevitability in science can take. To this end, it introduces a taxonomy of different contingency and inevitability claims. The taxonomy has the structure of an ordered quadruple. Each contingency and each inevitability claim contains an answer to the following four questions: (how) are alternatives to current science possible, what types of alternatives are we talking about, how should the alternatives be assessed, and how different are they from actual science?     

Whewell on the classification of the sciences

Despite deserving a place amongst the historic milestones of the philosophy of disciplines, the system of the sciences put forward by Whewell has so far received little interest. Yet his ideas had a significant impact on the researches subsequently carried out on the topic, exerting in particular a decisive influence on Peirce and Spencer. The present paper aims to display the innovatory nature of the philosophical foundations of the Whewellian classification of the sciences. In this respect, we will argue that the most striking feature of his disciplinary system lies in a heuristic categorization of the sciences according to their “methods of discovery”. This represents a double departure from both the Aristotelian and the Baconian disciplinary paradigms, which are instead underpinned by ontological and epistemological criteria, respectively. Next, we will explore the pivotal role of Whewell's classification of the sciences for his overall project of a philosophy of scientific discovery.     

What is technological science?

The technological sciences have at least six defining characteristics that distinguish them from the other sciences. They (1) have human-made rather than natural objects as their (ultimate) study objects, (2) include the practice of engineering design, (3) define their study objects in functional terms, (4) evaluate these study objects with category-specified value statements, (5) employ less far-reaching idealizations than the natural sciences, and (6) do not need an exact mathematical solution when a sufficiently close approximation is available. In combination, the six characteristics are sufficient to show that the technological sciences are neither branches nor applications of the natural sciences, but form a different group of sciences with specific characteristics of their own.     

The appeal to robustness in measurement practice

This paper distinguishes between two arguments based on measurement robustness and defends the epistemic value of robustness for the assessment of measurement reliability. I argue that the appeal to measurement robustness in the assessment of measurement is based on a different inferential pattern and is not exposed to the same objections as the no-coincidence argument which is commonly associated with the use of robustness to corroborate individual results. This investigation sheds light on the precise meaning of reliability that emerges from measurement assessment practice. In addition, by arguing that the measurement assessment robustness argument has similar characteristics across the physical, social and behavioural sciences, I defend the idea that there is continuity in the notion of measurement reliability across sciences.     

Case study research in the social sciences

In this paper, we offer an introduction to case study research in the social sciences. We begin with a discussion of the definition of case study research. Next, we point to various purposes that case study research may serve in the social sciences and then turn to outline the main philosophical issues raised by case study research. Finally, we briefly present the papers in this special issue.     

The stage on which our ingenious play is performed: Kant's epistemology of Weltkenntnis

This paper focuses on Kant's account of physical geography and his theory of the Earth. In spelling out the epistemological foundations of Kant's physical geography, the paper examines 1) their connection to the mode of holding-to-be-true, mathematical construction and empirical certainty and 2) their implications for Kant's view of cosmopolitan right. Moreover, by showing the role played by the mathematical model of the Earth for the foundations of Kant's Doctrine of Right, the exact relationship between the latter and physical geography is highlighted. Finally, this paper shows how, in Kant's view, the progress of physical geography can be assured if and only if the free circulation of human beings is established and regulated by law. Therefore, examining the mutual relationship between the theory of Earth and the foundations of right opens new perspectives on the relationship between epistemology and practical philosophy within Kant's system.     

Varieties of noise: Analogical reasoning in synthetic biology

The picture of synthetic biology as a kind of engineering science has largely created the public understanding of this novel field, covering both its promises and risks. In this paper, we will argue that the actual situation is more nuanced and complex. Synthetic biology is a highly interdisciplinary field of research located at the interface of physics, chemistry, biology, and computational science. All of these fields provide concepts, metaphors, mathematical tools, and models, which are typically utilized by synthetic biologists by drawing analogies between the different fields of inquiry. We will study analogical reasoning in synthetic biology through the emergence of the functional meaning of noise, which marks an important shift in how engineering concepts are employed in this field. The notion of noise serves also to highlight the differences between the two branches of synthetic biology: the basic science-oriented branch and the engineering-oriented branch, which differ from each other in the way they draw analogies to various other fields of study. Moreover, we show that fixing the mapping between a source domain and the target domain seems not to be the goal of analogical reasoning in actual scientific practice.     

Objective styles in northern field science

Social studies of science have often treated natural field sites as extensions of the laboratory. But this overlooks the unique specificities of field sites. While lab sites are usually private spaces with carefully controlled borders, field sites are more typically public spaces with fluid boundaries and diverse inhabitants. Field scientists must therefore often adapt their work to the demands and interests of local agents. I propose to address the difference between lab and field in sociological terms, as a difference in style. A field style treats epistemic alterity as a resource rather than an obstacle for objective knowledge production. A sociological stylistics of the field should thus explain how objective science can co-exist with radical conceptual difference. I discuss examples from the Canadian North, focussing on collaborations between state wildlife biologists and managers, on the one hand, and local Aboriginal Elders and hunters, on the other. I argue that a sociological stylistics of the field can help us to better understand how radically diverse agents may collaborate across cultures in the successful production of reliable natural knowledge.     

日本学术振兴会(JSPS)人才培养机制及其学科发展的平衡性

简要介绍了日本学术振兴会（JSPS）在国家科技政策中的重要作用.介绍了JSPS特别研究人员、海外研究人员和JSPS奖三种人才培养机制的人才的选拔方法及其学科分布特点.并基于经费投入比与论文产出比分析了基础研究中的学科发展平衡问题.日本已经认识到了学科发展的不平衡性,并采取措施促进学科的平衡发展.     

The atmospheric environment—an introduction

The atmosphere is part of the environment with which the human organism is permanently confronted. Epidemiological research investigates the occurrence of effects on morbidity and mortality due to heat, cold, air pollution and changes in the weather. Concentrating on aspects of the environment relevant for medical questions, three major complexes of effects can be discriminated: the complex conditions of heat exchange, the direct biological effects of solar radiation, and air pollution. Biometeorological knowledge can serve to assess the atmospheric environment, and can also be of help in the field of preventive planning, to conserve and develop the climate as a natural resource with regard to man's health, well-being and performance.     

On the epistemological foundations of the law of the lever

In this paper I challenge Paolo Palmieri’s reading of the Mach—Vailati debate on Archimedes’ proof of the law of the lever. I argue that the actual import of the debate concerns the possible epistemic (as opposed to merely pragmatic) role of mathematical arguments in empirical physics, and that construed in this light Vailati carries the upper hand. This claim is defended by showing that Archimedes’ proof of the law of the lever is not a way of appealing to a non-empirical source of information, but a way of explicating the mathematical structure that can represent the empirical information at our disposal in the most general way.     

Melatonin decreases the amplitude of the b-wave of the human electroretinogram

In a double-blind placebo crossover study of 13 healthy volunteers, the pineal hormone melatonin (10 mg) was given at 4 pm, and the electroretinogram measured under conditions of dark and light adaptation. A significant diminution of b-wave amplitude was found under both photopic (=5.4 V, p<0.05) and scotopic conditions (=7.4 V, p<0.01). These data indicate that melatonin may transduce the dark signal at the level of the retina as well as the pineal. Acute administration of melatonin decreases sensitivity to light.     

Statistical analysis of the relation between the length of the genoma and the diploid number of the chromosomes inCercopithecus

Riassunto Utilizzando metodiche statistiche è stato analizzato l'incremento della lunghezza totale del genoma rispetto al numero dei cromosomi in piastre a diversa ploidia nel genereCercopithecus. È stato riscontrato che la relazione numero dei cromosomi e lunghezza del genoma è significativamente lineare. È supposto un meccanismo adittivo per interpretare l'incremento del numero dei cromosomi.