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.     

Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) as a Christian Historian of Science

Why is Butterfield's best-seller The Origins of Modern Science (1949) such a powerful big picture, nearly impossible to move away from? Considered in the context of his life, the contrast between his attacks on Whig history and the contents of his best-seller reveals that his big picture of science continues at the centre because of his spiritual beliefs and practices. Butterfield did not make explicit his Christian (Methodist) world view to his history of science readers, although one could infer this from his point that Christianity and the Scientific Revolution were the most significant events in universal history, transcending cultural boundaries. As long as Christian beliefs and practices continue to be at the centre of Western Society, so will Butterfield's big picture be at the centre. Western society is a Christian civilization. For Butterfield, the meaning of history is Christianity and The Origins of Modern Science is very much a Christian statement of the evolution of knowledge acquisition in Western society. To de-centre The Origins would require first a de-centred view of Christianity.     

Renouvier and the method of hypothesis

Renouvier was among the first philosophers in France to break with the nineteenth-century inductivist tradition and defend the use of hypotheses in science. Earlier in the century, the humanistically-educated eclectic spiritualist philosophers who dominated French academic life had followed Reid in proscribing the use of hypotheses. Renouvier, who was educated in the sciences, took up the Comtean positivist alternative and developed it further. He began by defending hypotheses that anticipate laws governing the phenomena, but then eventually adopted a more liberal attitude towards hypotheses that postulate unobservable entities and processes as well. He also came to the realization that, from an epistemological point of view, all of empirical science is hypothetical. Renouvier used the tentative character of scientific knowledge as a premise from which to critique those who would claim scientific status for their social philosophies, and maintained a distinction between normative philosophical and empirical scientific inquiries.     

Physically locating the present: A case of reading physics as a contribution to philosophy

By means of an example, special relativity and presentism, I argue for the importance of reading history of physics as a contribution to philosophy, and for the fruitfulness of this approach to doing integrated history and philosophy of science. Within philosophy of physics, presentism is widely regarded as untenable in the light of special relativity. I argue that reading Newton's Principia as a contribution to philosophy reveals a law-constitutive approach to the unity of what there is, from which an alternative approach to presentism within physics emerges. This view respects the methodological and epistemological commitments of philosophy of physics in “taking special relativity seriously”, but proposes an alternative approach to the status of spacetime (as epistemic) and to the ground of what is real (law-constitution). While this approach to presentism does not preserve all of the contemporary presentist desiderata, it offers the possibility that the spatiotemporal extent of an existing thing is less than its entire history as represented in the block universe. I argue that the approach warrants further philosophical investigation.     

Another parting of the ways: Intersubjectivity and the objectivity of science

Michael Friedman defines the scientific enterprise as an ongoing project with a dynamics of reason that persists through scientific revolutions: The coherence and continuity of science owes to a communicative rationality that is operative at all times. It assures us of our shared objective world by transforming subjective points of view into intersubjectively binding agreements. Though it takes a very broad approach epistemologically, this conception of science may yet be too narrow in respect to notions of objectivity. It excludes a prominent mode of knowledge production that might be called technoscientific. This exclusion becomes particularly evident in Friedman’s discussion of Heidegger as a critic of Cassirer and Carnap and as a critic of objectivity as “universal validity” of scientific propositions. If one tends to Heidegger’s own account of objectivity, one encounters a non-propositional notion of truth. Science is seen as a technology that brings forth phenomena and processes. Accordingly, even where modern physics appears to be concerned primarily with the formulation of theories and the testing of hypotheses, it uses mathematical and representational techniques to conceive and create the modern world. And more powerfully than intersubjective agreement, technologies assure us of the unity and objectivity of our simultaneously social as well as natural world. There may be good reasons to hold fast to the close affiliation of communicative rationality, science, and enlightenment. However, to the extent that it turns a blind eye to technoscientific knowledge production and the technological character of science, a philosophy of technoscience needs to develop an alternative perspective on questions of objectivity, explanation, inference, or validation.     

Chemistry,microscopy and smell: bloodstains and nineteenth-century legal medicine

This paper analyses the development of three methods for detecting bloodstains during the first half of the nineteenth-century in France. After dealing with the main problems in detecting bloodstains, the paper describes the chemical tests introduced in the mid-1820s. Then the first uses of the microscope in the detection of bloodstains around 1827 are discussed. The most controversial method is then examined, the smell test introduced by Jean-Pierre Barruel in 1829, and the debates which took place in French academies and learned societies during ensuing years are surveyed. Moving to the courtrooms a review is conducted of how the different methods were employed in criminal trials. By reviewing these cases, the main arguments against Barruel's test during the 1830s are explored as well as the changes making possible the return of the microscope to legal medicine around 1840. By reconstructing the history of these three methods, the paper reveals how the senses of smell and vision (colours and microscopic images) were employed in order to produce convincing evidence in both academies and courts. The paper questions two linear master narratives that are organized in terms of progress and decline: the development of forensic science as a result of continued technological progress; and the supposed decline of smell in the history of the senses, particularly in the realm of chemistry and medicine.     

Scientific Instruments for Education in Early Twentieth-Century Spain

1898 marked a crucial point in the end of the nineteenth-century Spanish crisis. The military defeat ending the Spanish-American War was seen as proof that the country was in terminal decline. With the ideals of regeneration spreading throughout Spanish society, the State became more interested in supporting and sponsoring science and technology, as well as in creating a modern educational system. The resulting reforms reflected this strong interest in scientific education, and consequently, the first decades of the twentieth century saw a turning point in the development of science and technology in Spain. Some recent papers have discussed various initiatives taken by Spanish governments, particularly in the creation of new official institutions. Such institutions played an important role in the development of science and technology, but their activity in the promotion of scientific education was very limited. However, other governmental initiatives were taken in order to develop this area, particularly focusing on the acquisition of scientific instruments. Scientific instruments were needed not only to improve Spanish scientific research but also to improve the teaching of experimental sciences. These instruments were specifically adapted for use by students. This paper aims to present some of the lesser-known individuals and firms who, in the new social and cultural context, provided scientific instruments for educational centres in order to meet the increasing demand for this material in Spanish educational institutions during these years.     

The abundant world: Paul Feyerabend's metaphysics of science

The goal of this paper is to provide an interpretation of Feyerabend's metaphysics of science as found in late works like Conquest of Abundance and Tyranny of Science. Feyerabend's late metaphysics consists of an attempt to criticize and provide a systematic alternative to traditional scientific realism, a package of views he sometimes referred to as “scientific materialism.” Scientific materialism is objectionable not only on metaphysical grounds, nor because it provides a poor ground for understanding science, but because it implies problematic claims about the epistemic and cultural authority of science, claims incompatible with situating science properly in democratic societies. I show how Feyerabend's metaphysical view, which I call “the abundant world” or “abundant realism,” constitute a sophisticated and challenging form of ontological pluralism that makes interesting connections with contemporary philosophy of science and issues of the political and policy role of science in a democratic society.     

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.     

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.     

Phenomenotechnique: Bachelard's critical inheritance of conventionalism

The concept of phenomenotechnique has been regarded as Bachelard's most original contribution to the philosophy of science. Innovative as this neologism may seem, it benefited from a generation of debates on the nature and status of scientific facts, among conventionalist thinkers and their opponents. Granting that Bachelard stood among the opponents to conventionalism, this article nonetheless reveals deep similarities between his work and that of two conventionalist thinkers who insisted on what we call today the theory-ladenness of scientific experiment: Pierre Duhem and Édouard Le Roy. This article, therefore, compares Bachelard's notion of phenomenotechnique with Duhem's developments on the double character of scientific instruments, and with Le Roy's claim that scientific facts are fabricated to meet the requirements of theory. It shows how Bachelard retained Duhem and Le Roy's views on the interplay between theory and experiment but rejected their sceptical conclusions on the limitations of experimental control. It claims that this critical inheritance of conventionalism was made possible by a reflection on technology, which led Bachelard to re-evaluate the artificiality of scientific facts: instead of regarding this artificiality as a limitation of science, as Le Roy did, he presented it as a condition for objective knowledge.     

The rise of western rationalism: Paul Feyerabend's story

I summarize certain aspects of Paul Feyerabend's account of the development of Western rationalism, show the ways in which that account is supposed to run up against an alternative, that of Karl Popper, and then try to give a preliminary comparison of the two. My interest is primarily in whether what Feyerabend called his ‘story’ constitutes a possible history of our epistemic concepts and their trajectory. I express some grave reservations about that story, and about Feyerabend's framework, finding Popper's views less problematic here. However, I also suggest that one important aspect of Feyerabend's material, his treatment of religious belief, can be given an interpretation which makes it tenable, and perhaps preferable to a Popperian approach.     

Silent performances: Are “repertoires” really post-Kuhnian?

Ankeny and Leonelli (2016) propose “repertoires” as a new way to understand the stability of certain research programs as well as scientific change in general. By bringing a more complete range of social, material, and epistemic elements into one framework, they position their work as a correction to the Kuhnian impulse in philosophy of science and other areas of science studies. I argue that this “post-Kuhnian” move is not complete, and that repertoires maintain an internalist perspective. Comparison with an alternative framework, the “sociotechnical imaginaries” of Jasanoff and Kim (2015), illustrates precisely which elements of practice are externalized by Ankeny and Leonelli. Specifically, repertoires discount the role of audience, without whom the repertoires of science are unintelligible, and lack an explicit place for ethical and political imagination, which provide meaning for otherwise mechanical promotion of particular research programs. This comparison reveals, I suggest, two distinct modes of scholarship, one internalist and the other critical. While repertoires can be modified to meet the needs of critical STS scholars and to completely reject Kuhn's internalism, whether or not we do so depends on what we want our scholarship to achieve.     

Metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae: a key cell factory platform for future biorefineries

Metabolic engineering is the enabling science of development of efficient cell factories for the production of fuels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and food ingredients through microbial fermentations. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a key cell factory already used for the production of a wide range of industrial products, and here we review ongoing work, particularly in industry, on using this organism for the production of butanol, which can be used as biofuel, and isoprenoids, which can find a wide range of applications including as pharmaceuticals and as biodiesel. We also look into how engineering of yeast can lead to improved uptake of sugars that are present in biomass hydrolyzates, and hereby allow for utilization of biomass as feedstock in the production of fuels and chemicals employing S. cerevisiae. Finally, we discuss the perspectives of how technologies from systems biology and synthetic biology can be used to advance metabolic engineering of yeast.     

印度科技政策与科技发展--兼对中印国家创新能力比较

印度科技政策对推动印度科技进步起着重要的促进作用,1958年“科学政策决议”奠定了基本原则,“2003年科学技术政策”明确了印度科技政策目标,还制订了科技战略行动计划。印度科技发展具有科技体制较为完善、科技投入不断增加、科研经费重国防轻民用、科技著作多、专利获得少、科技人才素质高、高科技异军突起等特点。与中国相比,印度国家创新能力评价更高。本文阐述了印度科技政策演变过程,分析了印度科技发展特征,论述了印度十五计划科技发展战略重点,并比较了中印国家创新能力。     

Repertoires: A post-Kuhnian perspective on scientific change and collaborative research

We propose a framework to describe, analyze, and explain the conditions under which scientific communities organize themselves to do research, particularly within large-scale, multidisciplinary projects. The framework centers on the notion of a research repertoire, which encompasses well-aligned assemblages of the skills, behaviors, and material, social, and epistemic components that a group may use to practice certain kinds of science, and whose enactment affects the methods and results of research. This account provides an alternative to the idea of Kuhnian paradigms for understanding scientific change in the following ways: (1) it does not frame change as primarily generated and shaped by theoretical developments, but rather takes account of administrative, material, technological, and institutional innovations that contribute to change and explicitly questions whether and how such innovations accompany, underpin, and/or undercut theoretical shifts; (2) it thus allows for tracking of the organization, continuity, and coherence in research practices which Kuhn characterized as ‘normal science’ without relying on the occurrence of paradigmatic shifts and revolutions to be able to identify relevant components; and (3) it requires particular attention be paid to the performative aspects of science, whose study Kuhn pioneered but which he did not extensively conceptualize. We provide a detailed characterization of repertoires and discuss their relationship with communities, disciplines, and other forms of collaborative activities within science, building on an analysis of historical episodes and contemporary developments in the life sciences, as well as cases drawn from social and historical studies of physics, psychology, and medicine.     

An overlooked autograph letter of Galileo on the thermometer

Scientism applies the ideas and methods of the natural sciences to the humanities and social sciences. Herbert Spencer applied the law of the conservation of energy to social questions and arrived at formula answers to the issues of the day. The kind of certitude that Spencer aimed for was possible only by ignoring a system of values. Much as he may have believed that he was above personal beliefs, there are values implicit in Spencer's theories and they are the values of the nineteenth-century British middle class. Reasoning by analogy is as valid in social theory as it is in the natural sciences. Spencer's error was in universally applying the idea of the conservation of energy to social systems by means of identity rather than by analogy. Scientists in Britain, where there was a self-assured scientific community, dismissed Spencer's theories as being unscientific, but he enjoyed a vogue in the United States.     

Achieving continuity: a story of stellar magnitude

Scientists tell a story of 2,000 years of stellar magnitude research that traces back to Hipparchus. This story of continuity in practices serves an important role in scientific education and outreach. STS scholars point out many ways that stories of continuity, like many narratives about science, are disconnected from practices. Yet the story of continuity in stellar magnitude is a powerful scientific achievement precisely because of its connection to practice. The historical development of star catalogues shows how specific recording practices connected past and present in a useful way. The narrative of continuity in stellar magnitude, however else it might be subject to STS critique of narrative, maintains its power because of its connection to practice. I suggest that more attention be paid to connections between practice and narrative in STS, and in particular to the ways that historical practices sustain narratives by connecting past and present.     

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.