Hélène Metzger: the history of science between the study of mentalities and total history

In this article, I examine the historiographical ideas of the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger (1886–1944) against the background of the ideas of the members of the groups and institutions in which she worked, including Alexandre Koyré, Gaston Bachelard, Abel Rey, Henri Berr and Lucien Febrve. This article is on two interdependent levels: that of particular institutions and groups in which she worked (the Centre de Synthèse, the International Committee for History of Science, the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et Techniques (Sorbonne) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études) and that of historiographical ideas. I individuate two particular theoretical aspirations pursued by the historians in Metzger's milieu: the ideal of total history and the study of the human mind. These two objectives were seen by Metzger and many others as implicating each other. Moreover, Metzger and other historians wanted to integrate the practice of commentary of texts in the realisations of those ideals. I argue, however, that these objectives proved very difficult to realise at the same time. One tradition which stemmed out of these discussions, exemplified by Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault, focused on the mind and knowledge, and renounced commentary of texts and total history as it was understood by the historians of the Centre de Synthèse. The latter, however, did not really pursue the study of the mind. Moreover, historians like Metzger and Koyré who practised an attentive analysis of texts could not realise total history.     

Epistemic benefits of the material theory of induction

C. D. Broad famously labelled the problem of providing our inductive practices with a proper justification “the scandal of philosophy” (Broad, 1952). Recently, John Norton has provided a dissolution of this problem (2014). According to Norton, inductive inference is grounded in particular facts obtaining within particular domains (J. Norton, 2003b, 2010, 2014). Because the material theory does not involve a universal schema of induction, Norton claims it dissolves the problem of induction (which implies that such universal schemas cannot be justified).In this paper, I critically evaluate Norton's dissolution. In particular, I argue that the problem of induction is an epistemological problem, that Norton's material theory entails an externalist epistemology, and that it is a common feature of such epistemologies that they dissolve the problem of induction. The upshot is that the material theory is not unique in its ability to reap the specifically epistemic benefits of dissolving the problem of induction, and thus that the epistemic advantages of the material theory over extant alternatives in this regard are fewer than it may appear at first sight.     

The National Science Foundation and philosophy of science's withdrawal from social concerns

At some point during the 1950s, mainstream American philosophy of science began increasingly to avoid questions about the role of non-cognitive values in science and, accordingly, increasingly to avoid active engagement with social, political and moral concerns. Such questions and engagement eventually ceased to be part of the mainstream. Here we show that the eventual dominance of ‘value-free’ philosophy of science can be attributed, at least in part, to the policies of the U.S. National Science Foundation's “History and Philosophy of Science” sub-program. In turn, the sub-program's policies were set by logical empiricists who espoused value-free philosophy of science; these philosophers' actions, we also point out, fit a broad pattern, one in which analytic philosophers used institutional control to marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. We go on to draw on existing knowledge of this pattern to suggest two further, similar, contributors to the withdrawal from value-laden philosophy of science, namely decisions by the editors of Philosophy of Science and by the editors of The Journal of Philosophy. Political climate was, we argue, at most an indirect contributor to the withdrawal and was neither a factor that decided whether it occurred nor one that was sufficient to bring it about. Moreover, we argue that the actions at the National Science Foundation went beyond what was required by its senior administrators and are better viewed as part of what drove, rather than as what was being driven by, the adoption of logical empiricism by the philosophy of science community.     

Quantification, Mandated Science and Judgment

In his Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Ted Porter asks how to account for the prestige and power of quantitative methods in the modern world. His answer involves two theses. One reverses a standard claim by asserting that quantification in basic sciences can often be driven by quantification in more applied areas such as government and business. The second thesis, which I call judgment replacement, asserts that quantification overcomes lack of trust in humans by replacing human judgment in scientific communities and public life. Some aspects of the latter thesis are insightful and convincing. However, as a general claim, the judgment replacement thesis says that quantification and objectivity imply shallowness, superficiality and lack of subtlety. I examine one of Porter's key examples and show that as a general proposition the judgment replacement thesis gives a warped account of governmental decisions that involve a great deal of scientific input, an activity that colleagues and I have called mandated science. I show that Porter obfuscates the very features of mandated science that need the most clarification. The quantitative mentality can be superficial but it can also be complex and profound, and quantification can actually increase human judgment. The virtues of quantitative methods help account for their prestige and power.     

Why did Kuhn’s Structure of scientific revolutions cause a fuss?

After the publication of The structure of scientific revolutions, Kuhn attempted to fend off accusations of extremism by explaining that his allegedly “relativist” theory is little more than the mundane analytical apparatus common to most historians. The appearance of radicalism is due to the novelty of applying this machinery to the history of science. This defence fails, but it provides an important clue. The claim of this paper is that Kuhn inadvertently allowed features of his procedure and experience as an historian to pass over into his general account of science. Kuhn’s familiar claims, that science is directed in part by extra-scientific influences; that the history of science is divided by revolutionary breaks into periods that cannot be easily compared; that there is no ahistorical standard of rationality by which past episodes may be judged; and that science cannot be shown to be heading towards the Truth—these now appear as methodological commitments rather than historico-philosophical theses.     

基于词频分析的我国2005年科学学发展动向探析

以北京大学出版社出版的《中文核心期刊要目总览》（2004年版）中科学学类的12种核心期刊2005年所载论文作为统计数据源,采用词频统计的内容分析法,分析我国2005年科学学研究的动向。统计结果表明：企业、技术、创新、管理、科技、发展、知识、战略、评价、产业、科学等领域是2005年我国科学学的主要研究热点,这些研究热点的出现,说明我国科学学研究的应用化走向。通过与国际科学学研究动向进行比较,认为我国应该加强科学学理论与方法的研究,使科学学理论研究、应用研究、方法研究相互交融、相互支撑。否则大量的科学学应用研究因为缺少了理论与方法的支撑犹如空中楼阁,从而限制了研究成果质量的提高。     

世界科学活动中心转移的历史初探

近代世界科学活动中心经历了从意大利→英国→法国→德国→美国的转移，为什么这些国家在一定时期可以成为世界科学中心?一般而言，这个国家或地区由于战争或革命得到特殊的条件，人们的思想得到前所未有的解放，如意大利的文艺复兴运动、法国的启蒙运动，然后，由于资产阶级的需要，大规模的引进科学技术和智力，充分利用先进地区和国家的科技成果推动这个地区科学技术和生产力的飞速发展，从而成为世界科学活动中心。     

How to make a university history of science museum: Lessons from Leeds

The historic scientific collections of well-established University Museums—the Whipple at Cambridge and the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford, for example—have long served in university teaching and as objects of research for historians. But what is involved in starting such a museum from scratch? This paper offers some reflections based on recent experiences at the University of Leeds. In a relatively short period, the Leeds project has grown from a small volunteer initiative, aimed at salvaging disparate scientific collections from all over the campus, to a centrally supported and long-term scheme to provide collections care, exhibitions, and public events, as well as material for teaching and research within history and philosophy of science. Recent work undertaken on a range of Leeds objects and collections, including a camera reportedly used to take the first X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA in the 1930s and the Mark 1 prototype of the MONIAC (Monetary National Income Automatic Computer), built and designed at Leeds in 1949 to model the flow of money through the economy, highlights the national and international significance of the University’s scientific heritage as well as the project’s ambition of providing students with on-going collections care responsibilities and object-research experience. Sketching possible futures for the Leeds project, the paper considers challenges confronting the heritage sector more broadly, and how those involved with historic scientific collections can make use of new opportunities for teaching, research, and public engagement.     

韩国科技管理体制发展与演变探析

自20世纪60年代以来,韩国的科技发展取得了巨大的成就,其科技管理体制发挥了重要的作用.针对韩国科技管理体制形成与发展演变过程中经历的科技管理体系初步形成,以科技部为宏观管理决策部门的集中协调型管理体制,以及李明博政府对科技管理体制的重大调整等三个重要阶段进行了系统的分析研究,并对韩国科技管理体制的特点进行了总结和讨论.     

Kepler’s theory of the soul: a study on epistemology

Kepler is mainly known among historians of science for his astronomical theories and his approaches to problems having to do with philosophy of science and ontology. This paper attempts to contribute to Kepler studies by providing a discussion of a topic not frequently considered, namely Kepler’s theory of the soul, a general theory of knowledge whose central problem is what makes knowledge possible, rather than what makes knowledge true, as happens in the case of Descartes’s and Bacon’s epistemologies. Kepler’s theory consists of four issues: the theory of the different sorts of soul—that is, the human soul, the animal soul, the vegetable soul, and the Earth soul—concerning their faculties, the differences and the resemblances emerging among them, the relation they maintain with their own bodies and the world, and the distinction soul–world. The paper discusses these issues from a historical perspective, that is, it reconstructs the way they appear in three periods of Kepler’s career: the period prior to the publication of the Mysterium cosmographicum, the period from 1596 to 1611, and the period of the Harmonices mundi libri V. Finally, Kepler’s epistemology is briefly contrasted with Descartes’s and Bacon’s in order to suggest that Kepler’s could be seen as a third way to understand the philosophical origins of Modernity.     

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.     

How to put a black box in a showcase: History of science museums and recent heritage

Coping with recent heritage is troublesome for history of science museums, since modern scientific artefacts often suffer from a lack of esthetic and artistic qualities and expressiveness. The traditional object-oriented approach, in which museums collect and present objects as individual showpieces is inadequate to bring recent heritage to life. This paper argues that recent artefacts should be regarded as “key pieces.” In this approach the object derives its meaning not from its intrinsic qualities but from its place in an important historical event or development. The “key pieces” approach involves a more organic way of collecting and displaying, focussing less on the individual object and more on the context in which it functioned and its place in the storyline. Finally, I argue that the “key pieces” approach should not be limited to recent heritage. Using this method as a general guiding principle could be a way for history of science museums to appeal to today’s audiences.     

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.     

日本学术振兴会(JSPS)科学基金资助机制与战略分析

简要概述了日本的科学基金情况,重点分析了日本学术振兴会（JSPS）及其管理的科学基金。日本学术振兴会（JSPS）相当于日本的国家科学基金会,其负责管理的科学研究费补助金是日本政府出资的科学研究基金中资助金额最大、资助范围最广、资助项目数量最多的竞争性科学基金。其对基础研究的资助政策、方向遴选、评审程序、经费分配、管理机制等对其它国家的基础研究政府资助机构具有借鉴和示范意义。介绍了科学研究费补助金资助的研究类型和申请程序,分析了近10年科学研究费补助金的预算及年增长率、近12年科学研究费补助金的项目资助率情况、近5年科学研究费补助金的领域分配与资助情况、2005年科学研究费补助金资助情况等。对科学研究费补助金的基金项目资助战略予以全面分析,对我国相关部门的管理工作有重要参考价值和借鉴意义。     

From centripetal forces to conic orbits: a path through the early sections of Newton’s Principia

In this study, we test the security of a crucial plank in the Principia’s mathematical foundation, namely Newton’s path leading to his solution of the famous Inverse Kepler Problem: a body attracted toward an immovable center by a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center must move on a conic having a focus in that center. This path begins with his definitions of centripetal and motive force, moves through the second law of motion, then traverses Propositions I, II, and VI, before coming to an end with Propositions XI, XII, XIII and this trio’s first corollary. To test the security of this path, we answer the following questions. How far is Newton’s path from being truly rigorous? What would it take to clarify his ambiguous definitions and laws, supply missing details, and close logical gaps? In short, what would it take to make Newton’s route to the Inverse Kepler Problem completely convincing? The answer is very surprising: it takes far less than one might have expected, given that Newton carved this path in 1687.     

The Passions of the soul and Descartes’s machine psychology

Descartes developed an elaborate theory of animal physiology that he used to explain functionally organized, situationally adapted behavior in both human and nonhuman animals. Although he restricted true mentality to the human soul, I argue that he developed a purely mechanistic (or material) ‘psychology’ of sensory, motor, and low-level cognitive functions. In effect, he sought to mechanize the offices of the Aristotelian sensitive soul. He described the basic mechanisms in the Treatise on man, which he summarized in the Discourse. However, the Passions of the soul contains his most ambitious claims for purely material brain processes. These claims arise in abstract discussions of the functions of the passions and in illustrations of those functions. Accordingly, after providing an intellectual context for Descartes’s theory of the passions, especially by comparison with that of Thomas Aquinas, I examine its ‘machine psychology’, including the role of habituation and association. I contend that Descartes put forth what may reasonably be called a ‘psychology’ of the unensouled animal body and, correspondingly, of the human body when the soul does not intervene. He thus conceptually distinguished a mechanistically explicable sensory and motor psychology, common to nonhuman and human animals, from true mentality involving higher cognition and volition and requiring (in his view) an immaterial mind.     

Do Newton’s rules of reasoning guarantee truth … must they?

Newton’s Principia introduces four rules of reasoning for natural philosophy. Although useful, there is a concern about whether Newton’s rules guarantee truth. After redirecting the discussion from truth to validity, I show that these rules are valid insofar as they fulfill Goodman’s criteria for inductive rules and Newton’s own methodological program of experimental philosophy; provided that cross-checks are used prior to applications of rule 4 and immediately after applications of rule 2 the following activities are pursued: (1) research addressing observations that systematically deviate from theoretical idealizations and (2) applications of theory that safeguard ongoing research from proceeding down a garden path.