The Left Vienna Circle, Part 2. The Left Vienna Circle, disciplinary history, and feminist philosophy of science

This paper analyzes the claim that the Left Vienna Circle (LVC) offers a theoretical and historical precedent for a politically engaged philosophy of science today. I describe the model for a political philosophy of science advanced by LVC historians. They offer this model as a moderate, properly philosophical approach to political philosophy of science that is rooted in the analytic tradition. This disciplinary-historical framing leads to weaknesses in LVC scholars’ conception of the history of the LVC and its contemporary relevance. In this light, I examine the claim that there are productive enrichments to be gained from the engagement of feminist philosophy of science with the LVC, finding this claim ill-formulated. The case of LVC historiography and feminist philosophy of science presents a revealing study in the uses and ethics of disciplinary history, showing how feminist and other perspectives are misconceived and marginalized by forms of disciplinary self-narrativizing.     

Ordinary language philosophy,explanation, and the historical turn in philosophy of science

Taking a cue from remarks Thomas Kuhn makes in 1990 about the historical turn in philosophy of science, I examine the history of history and philosophy of science within parts of the British philosophical context in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, ordinary language philosophy's influence was at its peak. I argue that the ordinary language philosophers' methodological recommendation to analyze actual linguistic practice influences several prominent criticisms of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and that these criticisms relate to the historical turn in philosophy of science. To show these connections, I primarily examine the work of Stephen Toulmin, who taught at Oxford from 1949 to 1954, and Michael Scriven, who completed a dissertation on explanation under Gilbert Ryle and R.B. Braithwaite in 1956. I also consider Mary Hesse's appeal to an ordinary language-influenced account of meaning in her account of the role of models and analogies in scientific reasoning, and W.H. Watson's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, an early influence on Toulmin. I think there are two upshots to my historical sketch. First, it fills out details of the move away from logical positivism to more historical- and practice-focused philosophies of science. Second, questions about linguistic meaning and the proper targets and aims of philosophical analysis are part and parcel of the historical turn, as well as its reception. Looking at the philosophical background during which so-called linguistic philosophers also had a hand in bringing these questions to prominence helps us understand why.     

Philosophy in the trenches: from naturalized to experimental philosophy (of science)

Recent years have seen the development of an approach both to general philosophy and philosophy of science often referred to as ‘experimental philosophy’ or just ‘X-Phi’. Philosophers often make or presuppose empirical claims about how people would react to hypothetical cases, but their evidence for claims about what ‘we’ would say is usually very limited indeed. Philosophers of science have largely relied on their more or less intimate knowledge of their field of study to draw hypothetical conclusions about the state of scientific concepts and the nature of conceptual change in science. What they are lacking is some more objective quantitative data supporting their hypotheses. A growing number of philosophers (of science), along with a few psychologists and anthropologists, have tried to remedy this situation by designing experiments aimed at systematically exploring people’s reactions to philosophically important thought experiments or scientists’ use of their scientific concepts. Many of the results have been surprising and some of the conclusions drawn from them have been more than a bit provocative. This symposium attempts to provide a window into this new field of philosophical inquiry and to show how experimental philosophy provides crucial tools for the philosopher and encourages two-way interactions between scientists and philosophers.     

The tragedy of the canon; or,path dependence in the history and philosophy of science

We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of the historical canon of philosophy of science is therefore path dependent, and cases often become stock examples for reasons tangential to their appropriateness for the purposes at hand. We show how the lack of rigor around the canonization of case studies has muddied the waters in selected philosophical debates. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for proposing ways in which they can be improved.     

Philosophy,history and sociology of science: Interdisciplinary relations and complex social identities

Sociology and philosophy of science have an uneasy relationship, while the marriage of history and philosophy of science has—on the surface at least—been more successful. I will take a sociological look at the history of the relationships between philosophy and history as well as philosophy and sociology of science. Interdisciplinary relations between these disciplines will be analysed through social identity complexity theory in order to draw out some conclusions on how the disciplines interact and how they might develop. I will use the relationships between the disciplines as a pointer for a more general social theory of interdisciplinarity which will then be used to sound a caution on how interdisciplinary relations between the three disciplines might be managed.     

Inductive reasoning in the context of discovery: Analogy as an experimental stratagem in the history and philosophy of science

Building on Norton's “material theory of induction,” this paper shows through careful historical analysis that analogy can act as a methodological principle or stratagem, providing experimentalists with a useful framework to assess data and devise novel experiments. Although this particular case study focuses on late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century experiments on the properties and composition of acids, the results of this investigation may be extended and applied to other research programs. A stage in-between what Steinle calls “exploratory experimentation” and robust theory, I argue that analogy encouraged research to substantiate why the likenesses should outweigh the differences (or vice versa) when evaluating results and designing experiments.     

The geometry of knowledge: Lewis, Becker, Carnap and the formalization of philosophy in the 1920s

On an ordinary view of the relation of philosophy of science to science, science serves only as a topic for philosophical reflection, reflection that proceeds by its own methods and according to its own standards. This ordinary view suggests a way of writing a global history of philosophy of science that finds substantially the same philosophical projects being pursued across widely divergent scientific eras. While not denying that this view is of some use regarding certain themes of and particular time periods, this essay argues that much of the epistemology and philosophy of science in the early twentieth century in a variety of projects (neo-Kantianism, logical empiricism, pragmatism, phenomenology) looked to the then current context of the exact sciences, especially geometry and physics, not merely for its topics but also for its conceptual resources and technical tools. This suggests a more variable project of philosophy of science, a deeper connection between early twentieth-century philosophy of science and its contemporary science, and a more interesting and richer history of philosophy of science than is ordinarily offered.     

The scientific dimensions of social knowledge and their distant echoes in 20th-century American philosophy of science

The widespread impression that recent philosophy of science has pioneered exploration of the “social dimensions of scientific knowledge” is shown to be in error, partly due to a lack of appreciation of historical precedent, and partly due to a misunderstanding of how the social sciences and philosophy have been intertwined over the last century. This paper argues that the referents of “democracy” are an important key in the American context, and that orthodoxies in the philosophy of science tend to be molded by the actual regimes of science organization within which they are embedded. These theses are illustrated by consideration of three representative philosophers of science: John Dewey, Hans Reichenbach, and Philip Kitcher.     

How not to integrate the history and philosophy of science: a reply to Chalmers

Alan Chalmers uses Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy as an example of the irrelevance of ‘philosophy’ to ‘science’ and criticizes my 2006 book Atoms and alchemy for overemphasizing Boyle’s successes. The present paper responds as follows: first, it argues that Chalmers employs an overly simplistic methodology insensitive to the distinction between historical and philosophical claims; second, it shows that the central theses of Atoms and alchemy are untouched by Chalmers’s criticisms; and third, it uses Boyle’s analysis of subordinate causes and his debate with Henry More in the 1670s to demonstrate the inadequacy of Chalmers’s construal of the mechanical philosophy.     

History and scientific practice in the construction of an adequate philosophy of science: revisiting a Whewell/Mill debate

William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.     

Experiment versus mechanical philosophy in the work of Robert Boyle: a reply to Anstey and Pyle

We can distinguish ‘mechanical’ in the strict sense of the mechanical philosophers from ‘mechanical’ in the common sense. My claim is that Boyle's experimental science owed nothing to, and offered no support for, the mechanical philosophy in the strict sense. The attempts by my critics to undermine my case involve their interpreting ‘mechanical’ in something like the common sense. I certainly accept that Boyle's experimental science was productively informed by mechanical analogies, where ‘mechanical’ is interpreted in a common sense. But this leaves my original claim untouched and, in the main, unchallenged.     

Introduction to values and pluralism in the environmental sciences: From inferences to institutions

Philosophers of science continue to elaborate our understanding of the roles that values play in scientific reasoning, practice, and institutions. This special issue focuses on the environmental sciences, a mosaic of fields ranging from restoration ecology to forestry to climatology, unified by its attention to the relationships between humans and their habitats. It is a field that revolves around ameliorating environmental problems, aiming to support the provision of social goods and provide guidance to policymakers about how to regulate individuals and industries. Values abound in such judgments as setting the boundaries of an ecosystem, integrating the human dimensions of social-ecological systems, and collaborating with stakeholders. Since few in the field are likely to insist that these judgments can be made without reference to social values, environmental science can serve as fertile ground for exploring the ethical, social, and political terrain at the frontier of the science and values discourse.     

I am knowledge. Get me out of here! On localism and the universality of science

It has become increasingly common in historiography of science to understand science and its products as inherently local. However, this orientation is faced with three problems. First, how can one explain the seeming universality of contemporary science? Second, if science is so reflective of its local conditions of production, how can it travel so effortlessly to other localities and even globally? And third, how can scientific knowledge attain validity outside its context of origin? I will argue that the notion of standardization and theories of delocalization manage to explain the ‘globality’ of science, but that localism denies ‘universality’ if it is understood non-spatially. Further, localism limits the validity of scientific knowledge unacceptably inside the laboratory walls or other boundaries of knowledge creation. This is not consistent with scientific practice. I will consider on what grounds extra-local knowledge inferences that transcend the boundaries of locality could be seen as justified.     

French historical epistemology: Discourse,concepts, and the norms of rationality

In recent years, analytic philosophers have begun to recognize the value of the French school of historical epistemology (as embodied by figures such as Jean Cavaillès, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, and Michel Foucault) for contemporary debates in the history and philosophy of science. This tradition, which some characterize as a ‘French’ approach to the philosophy of science, however, remains largely un-read by mainstream philosophers of science. This article offers an interpretation of this tradition, highlighting what the author takes to be its two central features: (i) its claim that scientific discourse is the object of epistemology and (ii) its claim that scientific concepts are the building blocks of scientific discourse.     

Standards of evidence and causality in regulatory science: Risk and benefit assessment

In this paper we analyze the Russo-Williamson Thesis (RWT) as a standard of evidence in regulatory science, in risk as well as benefit assessment. In our analysis we take account of the recent controversies that have taken place in regulation with respect to the evidentiary requirements necessary for regulatory decision making. RWT's main point is that not only probabilistic but also mechanistic evidence is necessary for being able to infer the existence of causal links. We ask in which way RWT could have an impact upon current decision making about subjecting to regulation (or, to the contrary, leaving them unregulated) certain chemical substances, food stuffs, health claims, and other typical objects of regulation. We show that the application of RWT resolves some of the problems posed by current standards of evidence. RWT makes it possible to determine with higher accuracy if a particular substance should be subjected to regulation or not, even though under certain circumstances RWT itself may turn into a source of regulatory error. The adequacy of RWT as a standard of evidence depends on the precise manner of its application to regulation (particularly the consideration of mechanistic evidence as a complementary or necessary requirement), as well as the assessment of its non-epistemic consequences.     

Newtonianism in early Enlightenment Germany, c. 1720 to 1750: metaphysics and the critique of dogmatic philosophy

The acceptance of Newton’s ideas and Newtonianism in the early German Enlightenment is usually described as hesitant and slow. Two reasons help to explain this phenomenon. One is that those who might have adopted Newtonian arguments were critics of Wolffianism. These critics, however, drew on indigenous currents of thought, pre-dating the reception of Newton in Germany and independent of Newtonian science. The other reason is that the controversies between Wolffians and their critics focused on metaphysics. Newton’s reputation, however, was that of a mathematician, and one point, on which Wolffians and their opponents agreed, was that mathematics was of no use in the solution of metaphysical questions. The appeal to Newton as an authority in metaphysics, it was argued, was the fault of Newton’s over-zealous disciples in Britain, who tried to transform him from a mathematician into the author of a general philosophical system. It is often argued that the Berlin Academy after 1743 included a Newtonian group, but even there the reception of Newtonianism was selective. Philosophers such as Leonhard Euler were also reluctant to be labelled ‘Newtonians’, because this implied a dogmatic belief in Newton’s ideas. Only after the mid-eighteenth century is ‘Newtonianism’ increasingly accepted in the sense of a philosophical system.     

Chemistry in the French tradition of philosophy of science: Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard

At first glance twentieth-century philosophy of science seems virtually to ignore chemistry. However this paper argues that a focus on chemistry helped shape the French philosophical reflections about the aims and foundations of scientific methods. Despite patent philosophical disagreements between Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard it is possible to identify the continuity of a tradition that is rooted in their common interest for chemistry. Two distinctive features of the French tradition originated in the attention to what was going on in chemistry.French philosophers of science, in stark contrast with analytic philosophers, considered history of science as the necessary basis for understanding how the human intellect or the scientific spirit tries to grasp the world. This constant reference to historical data was prompted by a fierce controversy about the chemical revolution, which brought the issue of the nature of scientific changes centre stage.A second striking—albeit largely unnoticed—feature of the French tradition is that matter theories are a favourite subject with which to characterize the ways of science. Duhem, Meyerson, Metzger and Bachelard developed most of their views about the methods and aims of science through a discussion of matter theories. Just as the concern with history was prompted by a controversy between chemists, the focus on matter was triggered by a scientific controversy about atomism in the late nineteenth-century.     

Nuclear science and technology in the Malaysian context: Three phases of technoscientific knowledge transfer (ETTLG)

This essay considers the development of the nuclear science programme in Malaysia from a transnational perspective by examining the interactions between state agents and other external nuclear-knowledge/technology related actors and agents. Going beyond the model of knowledge diffusion that brings together concerns articulated in Harris’s (2011) geographies of long distance knowledge and Reinhardt's (2011) role of the expert in knowledge transfer, the proposed three-phase model of knowledge transfer theorises the pathways undertaken by a late-blooming participant of modern science and technology as the latter moves from epistemic dependency to increasing independence despite the hurdles encountered, and the underdevelopment of many areas of its technoscientific economy. The model considers tensions stemming from the pressures of expediency for meeting national developmental goals on the one side, and the call to support the objectives of basic science on the other. The three phases of the model are epistemic transition, epistemic transplantation and localisation, and epistemic generation (ETTLG). As additional support for the proposed model, three arguments are proffered as deeper explanations of the epistemic goal by using Malaysia as a case study: knowledge transfer for political legitimization, knowledge transfer for countering agnotology, and knowledge transfer for social engineering and science diplomacy.     

A tale of three theories: Feyerabend and Popper on progress and the aim of science

In this paper, three theories of progress and the aim of science are discussed: (i) the theory of progress as increasing explanatory power, advocated by Popper in The logic of scientific discovery (1935/1959); (ii) the theory of progress as approximation to the truth, introduced by Popper in Conjectures and refutations (1963); (iii) the theory of progress as a steady increase of competing alternatives, which Feyerabend put forward in the essay “Reply to criticism. Comments on Smart, Sellars and Putnam” (1965) and defended as late as the last edition of Against method (1993). It is argued that, contrary to what Feyerabend scholars have predominantly assumed, Feyerabend's changing attitude towards falsificationism—which he often advocated at the beginning of his career, and vociferously attacked in the 1970s and 1980s—must be explained by taking into account not only Feyerabend's very peculiar view of the aim of science, but also Popper's changing account of progress.     

Putting pragmatism to work in the Cold War: Science, technology, and politics in the writings of James B. Conant

This paper examines James Conant’s pragmatic theory of science—a theory that has been neglected by most commentators on the history of 20^th-century philosophy of science—and it argues that this theory occupied an important place in Conant’s strategic thinking about the Cold War. Conant drew upon his wartime science policy work, the history of science, and Quine’s epistemological holism to argue that there is no strict distinction between science and technology, that there is no such thing as “the scientific method,” and that theories are better interpreted as policies rather than creeds. An important consequence that he drew from these arguments is that science is both a thoroughly value-laden, and an intrinsically social, enterprise. These results led him to develop novel proposals for reorganizing scientific and technological research—proposals that he believed could help to win the Cold War. Interestingly, the Cold War had a different impact upon Conant’s thinking than it did upon many other theorists of science in postwar America. Instead of leading him to “the icy slopes of logic,” it led him to develop a socially- and politically-engaged theory that was explicitly in the service of the American Cold War effort.