From personality to party: the creation and transmission of Hutchinsonianism, c. 1725-1750

This paper represents a provisional attempt to chart the intellectual construction of Hutchinsonianism over approximately a quarter of a century from the mid-1720s through to the early 1750s. It looks at how Hutchinson’s works were received and fashioned by his first followers, the means they used to communicate their conviction to others, and the extent to which their outlook can be characterised as anti-Newtonian. The paper argues for a slow take up of ‘Hutchinsonian’ views before Spearman and Bate published a collected edition of the master’s works in 1748. This single edition gave Hutchinson’s writings a coherence and a unity they were ill-designed to carry, but it created Hutchinsonianism as an appreciable force in Oxford and elsewhere. The paper concludes that the anti-Newtonian rhetoric of the movement’s founder was increasingly muted in the hands of his followers (with the exception of Bate), and by the 1750s the main bone of contention was less attitudes to Newton than approaches to Hebrew scholarship.     

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.     

Univariate Forecasting Comparisons: The Case of the Spanish Automobile Industry

This paper investigates the forecasting ability of unobserved component models, when compared with the standard ARIMA univariate approach. A forecasting exercise is carried out with each method, using monthly time series of automobile sales in Spain. The accuracy of the different methods is assessed by comparing several measures of forecasting performance based on the out-of-sample predictions for various horizons, as well as different assumptions on the models’ parameters. Overall there seems little to choose between the methods in forecasting performance terms but the recursive unobserved component models provide greater flexibility for adaptive applications. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Clinical outcome measurement: Models,theory, psychometrics and practice

In the last decade much has been made of the role that models play in the epistemology of measurement. Specifically, philosophers have been interested in the role of models in producing measurement outcomes. This discussion has proceeded largely within the context of the physical sciences, with notable exceptions considering measurement in economics. However, models also play a central role in the methods used to develop instruments that purport to quantify psychological phenomena. These methods fall under the umbrella term ‘psychometrics’. In this paper, we focus on Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) and discuss two measurement theories and their associated models: Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Rasch Measurement Theory. We argue that models have an important role to play in coordinating theoretical terms with empirical content, but to do so they must serve: 1) as a representation of the measurement interaction; and 2) in conjunction with a theory of the attribute in which we are interested. We conclude that Rasch Measurement Theory is a more promising approach than CTT in these regards despite the latter's popularity with health outcomes researchers.     

Lime in the Early Bleaching Industry of Britain 1633-1828: Its Prohibition and Repeal

This essay describes the background and possible reasons for legal intervention in the use of lime in the early bleaching industry and draws on the Statutes at Large and other Acts of Parliament as primary sources. The developing chemical knowledge that may have contributed to the later Acts of repeal is also considered in some detail. The earliest noted prohibition was in 1633 and the years 1823, 1825, and 1828 were important repeal dates. No related legislation later than 1828 has been found. During the period from 1633 to 1828 there were many renewals and modifications to existing laws concerning linen and hempen manufacture; several of these contained subsections regarding bleaching. The considerable number of such Acts may account for the apparent confusion shown by earlier authors on this subject. Furthermore, the various Acts passed by the Irish House of Commons over its lifetime from 1400 to 1800, with its many interruptions, were published in a limited number of editions and are consequently held by few libraries. Ireland instituted its own laws and it was only after the Act of Union in 1800 that matters were dealt with by Westminster. Indeed, earlier historians have not always appreciated that, at certain periods of the history of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scotland (as well as England) had their own separate parliaments.     

ICT产业竞争力与高级ICT人才培养:以日本为案例

本文拟以日本信息通信产业发展进程为背景,探讨日本在ICT人才尤其是高级人才培养方面所采取的做法、它所面临的问题以及日本政府所采取的针对性政策,揭示ICT产业发展与人才培养之间的重要关联,以期为我国ICT人才政策的制定提供参考依据。本文将着重说明的是：进入20世纪,日本ICT产业发展到一个新的高度,然而。也正是在这一时期,高级ICT人才匮乏的问题也得以彰显,并导致日本ICT产业竞争力的下滑。     

Models, scientific realism, the intelligibility of nature, and their cultural significance

In this article, I will view realist and non-realist accounts of scientific models within the larger context of the cultural significance of scientific knowledge. I begin by looking at the historical context and origins of the problem of scientific realism, and claim that it is originally of cultural and not only philosophical, significance. The cultural significance of debates on the epistemological status of scientific models is then related to the question of ‘intelligibility’ and how science, through models, can give us knowledge of the world by presenting us with an ‘intelligible account/picture of the world’, thus fulfilling its cultural-epistemic role. Realists typically assert that science can perform this role, while non-realists deny this. The various strategies adopted by realists and non-realists in making good their respective claims, is then traced to their cultural motivations. Finally I discuss the cultural implications of adopting realist or non-realist views of models through a discussion of the views of Rorty, Gellner, Van Fraassen and Clifford Hooker on the cultural significance of scientific knowledge.     

Just before Nature: The purposes of science and the purposes of popularization in some english popular science journals of the 1860s

Popular science journalism flourished in the 1860s in England, with many new journals being projected. The time was ripe, Victorian men of science believed, for an 'organ of science' to provide a means of communication between specialties, and between men of science and the public. New formats were tried as new purposes emerged. Popular science journalism became less recreational and educational. Editorial commentary and reviewing the progress of science became more important. The analysis here emphasizes those aspects of popular science which have been identified by Frank Turner as 'public science' and by Thomas Gieryn as 'boundary-work'. the religious, intellectual, and utilitarian values claimed for science by editors and contributors in their tasks of persuading the public to support science and of distinguishing science from what they often called 'applied science' are discussed. These values are shown to vary among editors and, for the editors examined here, Shirley Hibberd, Henry Slack, James Samuelson, William Crookes, and Henry Lawson, to differ significantly from those of T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Norman Lockyer, on whom much study of the popularization of science in the 1860s has focused.