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.     

Kant on anatomy and the status of the life sciences

This paper contributes to recent interest in Kant's engagement with the life sciences by focusing on one corner of those sciences that has received comparatively little attention: physical and comparative anatomy. By attending to remarks spread across Kant's writings, we gain some insight into Kant's understanding of the disciplinary limitations but also the methodological sophistication of the study of anatomy and physiology. Insofar as Kant highlights anatomy as a paradigmatic science guided by the principle of teleology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, a more careful study of Kant's discussions of anatomy promises to illuminate some of the obscurities of that text and of his understanding of the life sciences more generally. In the end, it is argued, Kant's ambivalence with regard to anatomy gives way to a pessimistic conclusion about the possibility that anatomy, natural history, and, by extension, the life sciences more generally might one day become true natural sciences.     

中国现代地震学的回顾与展望

在国际地震学与地球内部物理学协会（IASPEI）成立100周年之际，我们对20世纪中国现代地震学的发展历史进行了简要回顾，并讨论了作为一门观测科学的地震学的未来发展趋势，20世纪的中国地震学史，可以分成三个时期；20世纪上半叶；1950年代至1970年代；1970年代末至20世纪末，地震学的发展，除取决于科学发展本身的逻辑和观测技术的进步之外，也在很大程度上与地震的发生有着密切的关系。作为一门公益性的应用科学，地震学的发展在相当程度上取决于整个社会的努力。     

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.     

What does interdisciplinarity look like in practice: Mapping interdisciplinarity and its limits in the environmental sciences

In this paper we take a close look at current interdisciplinary modeling practices in the environmental sciences, and suggest that closer attention needs to be paid to the nature of scientific practices when investigating and planning interdisciplinarity. While interdisciplinarity is often portrayed as a medium of novel and transformative methodological work, current modeling strategies in the environmental sciences are conservative, avoiding methodological conflict, while confining interdisciplinary interactions to a relatively small set of pre-existing modeling frameworks and strategies (a process we call crystallization). We argue that such practices can be rationalized as responses in part to cognitive constraints which restrict interdisciplinary work. We identify four salient integrative modeling strategies in environmental sciences, and argue that this crystallization, while contradicting somewhat the novel goals many have for interdisciplinarity, makes sense when considered in the light of common disciplinary practices and cognitive constraints. These results provide cause to rethink in more concrete methodological terms what interdisciplinarity amounts to, and what kinds of interdisciplinarity are obtainable in the environmental sciences and elsewhere.     

Crossing the Olentangy River: The Figure of the Earth and the Military-Industrial-Academic-Complex, 1947–1972

This paper explores the history of a unique assemblage of researchers in the geodetic and allied sciences organised at Ohio State University (OSU) in 1947 at the beginning of the Cold War. From about 1950 to 1970, the OSU geodetic sciences group was the most significant group of geodetic researchers in the world. Funded almost entirely by military and intelligence agencies, they pioneered the technologies, organised the research initiatives, ordered the data sets, and trained the generation of geodesists who eventually created the Cold War Figure of the Earth to both prosecute and prevent global nuclear war. They devised elaborate mechanisms to pursue in secrecy and isolation research that had hitherto been performed collaboratively and globally. They invented methods to maintain professional associations and protocols, both to distribute—and disguise—the fruits of their geodetic research. In accomplishing this, their work also undermined the basic hypothesis of isostasy that had been foundational to geodesy for the previous century.Fundamental progress in the geosciences and military and intelligence directives were inextricably linked during the Cold War, although the extent of their convergence has been masked by the security protocols organised to disguise it. With the declassification of key programmes underway, it is now both possible and necessary to substantially revise the history of Cold War-era geosciences and their associated technologies.     

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.     

The naturalism of the sciences

The sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism,” which disregards talk of divine agency. In response to those who argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism, a number of philosophers have offered a pragmatic defense. The naturalism of the sciences, they argue, is provisional and defeasible: it is justified by the fact that unsuccessful theistic explanations have been superseded by successful natural ones. But this defense is inconsistent with the history of the sciences. The sciences have always exhibited what we call a domain naturalism. They have never invoked divine agency, but have always focused on the causal structure of the natural world. It is not the case, therefore, that the sciences once employed theistic explanations and then abandoned them. The naturalism of the sciences is as old as science itself.     

Science,Politics and Networks: Shibukawa Harumi and the Birth of the New Almanac in Seventeenth-century Japan

In 1684, during the Edo period (1603–1868), the imperial court of Japan passed a reform act that resulted in a new almanac called the Jôkyô almanac. This was the first reform in more than eight hundred years, and marked a departure from the past practice of adopting almanacs from China. Yet, the reform was complicated, and it was achieved after decades through the efforts of Shibukawa Harumi (1639–1715). How was the reform accomplished, and why was it significant? In this study, I will focus on Harumi's role in the reform. I propose to examine the reform as the culmination of a process deeply linked to Harumi's political connections and his intellectual growth especially in the field of calendrical sciences. I will show that this approach of looking at the reform by analyzing different aspects of Harumi's life has implications for understanding trends in society in seventeenth-century Japan. First, despite the ban on Christianity, intellectuals like Harumi assimilated European sciences in unique ways. Second, Harumi's activities exemplified how intellectual ties were increasingly embedded within political networks. Overall, I will argue that the reform of the almanac, viewed as a process surrounding the core figure of Harumi, was driven by scientific goals and personal ambitions.     

‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland

The recovery of the Camp Century deep ice core in 1966 – the first ice core to reach all the way through a polar ice sheet to bedrock – marked a shift from an era of United States military dominated glaciological research in Greenland to an era of climate oriented research on the island. This paper aims to provide an understanding of this shift. I show that the Camp Century ice core was at the heart of a complex blend of environmental, military and scientific interests. By deconstructing these interests, I ultimately show that the island of Greenland underwent two reimaginings during the early Cold War. First, the island was reimagined as part of the US Cold War military sphere: driven by the need to secure the North American continent, the US established a hegemonic military colonization of Greenland. In the second reimagining of the island, environmental geography led the way: the scientific results of the Camp Century ice core and political concern about climatic change converged in the early 1970s to build Greenland into a unique location for pursuing research on climate questions. This paper adds to the literature by contextualizing the Camp Century ice core at the interface between the history of science, environmental history and Cold War history, and thereby illuminating Greenland as a dual geopolitical entity and environmental space. By highlighting the interaction of climatic change, geophysical sciences and national security narratives, it responds to recent historiographic calls to unite a set of narratives which, too often, talk past one another.     

Thomas Clifford Allbutt and Comparative Pathology

This paper reconceptualizes Thomas Clifford Allbutt's contributions to the making of scientific medicine in late nineteenth-century England. Existing literature on Allbutt usually describes his achievements, such as his design of the pocket thermometer and his advocacy of the use of the ophthalmoscope in general medicine, as independent events; and his work on the development of comparative pathology is largely overlooked. In this paper I focus on this latter aspect. I examine Allbutt's books and addresses and claim that Allbutt argued for the centrality of comparative pathology in the advancement of medical knowledge. He held that diseases should be studied as biological phenomena and that medicine should be made a biological science. He also argued that comparative pathology should be based upon the idea of evolution, and its study should embrace other nineteenth-century sciences including neurology, embryology and bacteriology. Allbutt's writings reveal that his endorsement of comparative pathology (1880s to 1920s), his promotion of the use of the ophthalmoscope and the thermometer in clinical medicine (early 1870s), and his support of the hospital unit system (1910s to 1920s) were part of a single programme. All were grounded in his scientific vision of medicine which emphasized a research culture, a stringent nosological attitude and an integration of laboratory sciences and clinical medicine.     

Kant and the nature of matter: Mechanics,chemistry, and the life sciences

Kant believed that the ultimate processes that regulate the behavior of material bodies can be characterized exclusively in terms of mechanics. In 1790, turning his attention to the life sciences, he raised a potential problem for his mechanically-based account, namely that many of the operations described in the life sciences seemed to operate teleologically. He argued that the life sciences do indeed require us to think in teleological terms, but that this is a fact about us, not about the processes themselves. Nevertheless, even were we to concede his account of the life sciences, this would not secure the credentials of mechanics as a general theory of matter. Hardly any material properties studied in the second half of the eighteenth century were, or could have been, conceived in mechanical terms. Kant's concern with teleology is tangential to the problems facing a general matter theory grounded in mechanics, for the most pressing issues have nothing to do with teleology. They derive rather from a lack of any connection between mechanical forces and material properties. This is evident in chemistry, which Kant dismisses as being unscientific on the grounds that it cannot be formulated in mechanical terms.     

Spanish Jesuits in the Philippines: Geophysical Research and Synergies between Science,Education and Trade, 1865–1898

In 1865, Spanish Jesuits founded the Manila Observatory, the earliest of the Far East centres devoted to typhoon and earthquake studies. Also on Philippine soil and under the direction of the Jesuits, in 1884 the Madrid government inaugurated the first Meteorological Service in the Spanish Kingdom, and most probably in the Far East. Nevertheless, these achievements not only went practically unnoticed in the historiography of science, but neither does the process of geophysical dissemination that unfolded fit in with the two types of transmitter of knowledge identified by historians in the missionary diffusion of the exact sciences in colonial contexts. Rather than regarding science as merely a stimulus to their functionary and missionary tasks, Spanish Jesuits used their overseas posting to produce and publish original research –– a feature that would place them within the typology of the ‘seeker’ rather than the ‘functionary’ (in stark contrast to what the standard typology sustains). This paper also analyses examples of synergies between science, education and trade, which denotes, inter alia, the existence of a broad and solid educational structure in the Manila Mission that sustained the strength of research enterprise.     

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.     

The Assembly of Geophysics: Scientific Disciplines as Frameworks of Consensus

What makes any investigative field a scientific discipline? This article argues that disciplines are ever-changing frameworks within which scientific activity is organised. Moreover, disciplinarity is not a yes or no proposition: scientific activities may achieve degrees of identity development. Degree of consensus is the key, and consensus on many questions (conceptual, methodological, institutional, and social) varies among sciences. Lastly, disciplinary development is non-teleological. Disciplines pass through no regular stages on their way from immature to mature status, designations articulated within the rhetoric of discipline formation. Scientists assemble disciplines using many elements: phenomena, methods, instruments, theories, analytical techniques, and institutional tools such as journals, government bureaus, and university positions. Scientists created geophysics during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through such a combination. Whether geophysics became a discipline depends on how discipline is defined.     

Closing the door on Hugo de Vries' Mendelism

In the first part of the 19th century, geologists explained volcanoes, earthquakes and mountain-formation on the assumption that the earth has a large molten core underneath a very thin (25–50 mile) solid crust. This assumption was attacked on astronomical grounds by William Hopkins, who argued that the crust must be at least 800 miles thick, and on physical grounds by William Thomson, who showed that the earth as a whole behaves like a solid with high rigidity. Other participants in the debate insisted that there is evidence for a fluid or plastic layer not far below the crust. It was also suggested that the interior of the earth is a supercritical fluid. By the end of the century many geologists had incorporated the doctrine of a completely solid earth into their theories. Acceptance of a relatively small liquid core, indicated by seismological research, was delayed for another two decades.     

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.