The constitutive a priori and the distinction between mathematical and physical possibility

This paper is concerned with Friedman׳s recent revival of the notion of the relativized a priori. It is particularly concerned with addressing the question as to how Friedman׳s understanding of the constitutive function of the a priori has changed since his defence of the idea in his Dynamics of Reason. Friedman׳s understanding of the a priori remains influenced by Reichenbach׳s initial defence of the idea; I argue that this notion of the a priori does not naturally lend itself to describing the historical development of space-time physics. Friedman׳s analysis of the role of the rotating frame thought experiment in the development of general relativity – which he suggests made the mathematical possibility of four-dimensional space-time a genuine physical possibility – has a central role in his argument. I analyse this thought experiment and argue that it is better understood by following Cassirer and placing emphasis on regulative principles. Furthermore, I argue that Cassirer׳s Kantian framework enables us to capture Friedman׳s key insights into the nature of the constitutive a priori.     

Forms of presentism in the history of science. Rethinking the project of historical epistemology

Since the late 1980s, presentism has seen a resurgence among some historians of science. Most of them draw a line between a good form of presentism and typical anachronism, but where the line should be drawn remains an open question. The present article aims at resolving this problem. In the first part I define the four main distinct forms of presentism at work in the history of science and the different purposes they serve. Based on this typology, the second part reconsiders what counts as anachronism, Whiggism and positivist history. This clarification is used as a basis to rethink the research program of historical epistemology in the third section. Throughout this article, I examine the conceptual core of historical epistemology more than its actual history, from Bachelard to Foucault or others. Its project should be defined – as Canguilhem suggested – as an attempt to account for both the contingency and the rationality of science. As such, historical epistemology is based on a complex fifth form of presentism, which I call critical presentism. The critical relation at stake not only works from the present to the past, because of the acknowledged rationality of science, but also from the past to the present because of the contingency and historicity of scientific knowledge.     

Émilie Du Châtelet's interpretation of the laws of motion in the light of 18th century mechanics

Émilie Du Châtelet is well known for her French translation of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. It is the first and only French translation of Newton's magnum opus. The complete work appeared in 1759 under the title Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle, par feue Madame la Marquise Du Chastellet. Before translating Newton's Principia, Du Châtelet worked on her Institutions de physique. In this book she defended the Leibnizian concept of living forces – vis viva. This paper argues that both of these works were part of a critical transformation and consolidation of post-Newtonian mechanics in the early 18th century, beyond Newton and Leibniz. This will be shown by comparing Du Châtelet's translation of Newton's axioms with her own formulations of the laws of motion in light of Thomas Le Seur's and François Jacquier's Geneva edition which holds a special place among the several editions of the Principia that appeared in the early 18th century.     

Knowing what would happen: The epistemic strategies in Galileo's thought experiments

While philosophers have subjected Galileo's classic thought experiments to critical analysis, they have tended to largely ignored the historical and intellectual context in which they were deployed, and the specific role they played in Galileo's overall vision of science. In this paper I investigate Galileo's use of thought experiments, by focusing on the epistemic and rhetorical strategies that he employed in attempting to answer the question of how one can know what would happen in an imaginary scenario. Here I argue we can find three different answers to this question in Galileo later dialogues, which reflect the changing meanings of ‘experience’ and ‘knowledge’ (scientia) in the early modern period. Once we recognise that Galileo's thought experiments sometimes drew on the power of memory and the explicit appeal to ‘common experience’, while at other times, they took the form of demonstrative arguments intended to have the status of necessary truths; and on still other occasions, they were extrapolations, or probable guesses, drawn from a carefully planned series of controlled experiments, it becomes evident that no single account of the epistemological relationship between thought experiment, experience and experiment can adequately capture the epistemic variety we find Galileo's use of imaginary scenarios. To this extent, we cannot neatly classify Galileo's use of thought experiments as either ‘medieval’ or ‘early modern’, but we should see them as indicative of the complex epistemological transformations of the early seventeenth century.     

Negotiating history: Contingency,canonicity, and case studies

Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA.     

Henry More and the development of absolute time

This paper explores the nature, development and influence of the first English account of absolute time, put forward in the mid-seventeenth century by the ‘Cambridge Platonist’ Henry More. Against claims in the literature that More does not have an account of time, this paper sets out More's evolving account and shows that it reveals the lasting influence of Plotinus. Further, this paper argues that More developed his views on time in response to his adoption of Descartes' vortex cosmology and cosmogony, providing new evidence of More's wider project to absorb Cartesian natural philosophy into his Platonic metaphysics. Finally, this paper argues that More should be added to the list of sources that later English thinkers – including Newton and Samuel Clarke – drew on in constructing their absolute accounts of time.     

Spacetime Visualisation and the Intelligibility of Physical Theories

This paper argues that spacetime visualisability is not a necessary condition for the intelligibility of theories in physics. Visualisation can be an important tool for rendering a theory intelligible, but it is by no means a sine qua non. The paper examines the historical transition from classical to quantum physics, and analyses the role of visualisability (Anschaulichkeit) and its relation to intelligibility. On the basis of this historical analysis, an alternative conception of the intelligibility of scientific theories is proposed, based on Heisenberg's reinterpretation of the notion of Anschaulichkeit.     

Can animals predict earthquakes?: Bio-sentinels as seismic sensors in communist China and beyond

This paper examines the international research on abnormal animal behavior prior to earthquakes, with a focus on Chinese seismology during the Cultural Revolution. China experienced a series of powerful earthquakes in the 1960s and 1970s; in response, its scientists developed approaches to earthquake prediction, including the use of bio-sentinels. The paper demonstrates that Chinese seismology did not treat an earthquake simply as a geophysical event, but rather as an amalgam of environmental phenomena, including sensory experiences. Hence, distributive experience and sensory networks of humans and bio-sentinels constituted an important component of studying the environment. This historical case suggests insights into bio-monitoring of the global environment.     

Maligned for mathematics: Sir Thomas Urquhart and his Trissotetras

Thomas Urquhart (1611–1660), celebrated for his English translation of Rabelais’ Gargantua et Pantagruel, has earned some notoriety for his eccentric, putatively incomprehensible early book on trigonometry The Trissotetras (1645). The Trissotetras was too impractical to succeed in its own day as a textbook, since it lacked both trigonometric tables and sample calculations. But its current bad reputation is based on literary authors’ amplifications of the verdict prefaced to its 19th century reprinting by one mathematician, William Wallace, who lacked the background to appreciate the book’s historical context. Considering that context (including seventeenth century ‘copious’ prose, and medieval logic and ‘art of memory’), the bad reputation is undeserved: the book is mathematically clear, clever (e.g. in superimposing 16 problems into one diagram), and complete. The Trissotetras may thus be viewed as simply one more of Urquhart’s polymathic projects and involvements – which included education, rise of the middle class, religious and class conflicts, development of science and mathematics, search for patronage, universal language construction, and development of English prose – which serve to make him a lively and instructive intellectual Everyman for his time.     

Edward Gresham’s Astrostereon,or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603), the Copernican paradox,and the construction of early modern proto-scientific discourse

This paper investigates the functioning of the ‘Copernican paradox’ (stating that the Sun stands still and the Earth revolves around the Sun) in the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England, with particular attention to Edward Gresham's (1565–1613) little-known and hitherto understudied astronomical treatise – Astrostereon, or A Discourse of the Falling of the Planet (1603). The text, which is fully appreciative of the heliocentric system, is analysed within a broader context of the ongoing struggles with the Copernican theory at the turn of the seventeenth century. The article finds that apart from having a purely rhetorical function, the ‘Copernican paradox’ featured in the epistemological debates on how early modern scientific knowledge should be constructed and popularised. The introduction of new scientific claims to sceptical audiences had to be done both through mathematical demonstrations and by referring to the familiar concepts and tools drawn from the inventory of humanist education. As this article shows, Gresham's rhetorical techniques used for the rejection of paradoxicality of heliocentrism are similar to some of the practices which Thomas Digges and William Gilbert employed in order to defend their own findings and assertions.     

Public scientific testimony in the scientific image

In this paper, I draw on philosophy of science to address a challenge for science communication. Empirical research indicates that some people who trust a meteorologist's report that they are in the path of a storm do not trust a climate scientist's report that we are on a path to global warming. Such selective skepticism about climate science exemplifies a more general challenge:

The Challenge of Selective UptakeLaypersons who generally accept public scientific testimony nevertheless fail to accept public scientific testimony concerning select, equally well warranted, scientific hypotheses.

A prominent response arising from the novel interdisciplinary science of science communication is a principle called Consensus Reporting. According to this principle, science reporters should, whenever feasible, report the scientific consensus or lack thereof for a reported scientific view.However, philosophy of science may offer a different perspective on the issue. This perspective is critical insofar as it indicates some inadequacies of Consensus Reporting. But it is also constructive insofar as it guides the development of an alternative principle, Justification Reporting, according to which science reporters should, whenever feasible, report aspects of the nature and strength of scientific justification or lack thereof for a reported scientific view. A central difference between these proposals is that Consensus Reporting appeals to the authority of the scientists whereas Justification Reporting appeals to the authority of scientific justification. As such, Justification Reporting reflects the image of science.The paper considers the philosophical and empirical motivation for Justification Reporting and its limitations. This includes prospects and problems for implementing it in a way that addresses The Challenge of Selective Uptake. From a methodological point of view, the paper illustrates how empirically informed philosophy of science may help address challenges for science communication.     

Inter-theory relations in quantum gravity: Correspondence,reduction, and emergence

Relationships between current theories, and relationships between current theories and the sought theory of quantum gravity (QG), play an essential role in motivating the need for QG, aiding the search for QG, and defining what would count as QG. Correspondence is the broad class of inter-theory relationships intended to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of two theories whose domains of validity overlap, in the overlap regions. The variety of roles that correspondence plays in the search for QG are illustrated, using examples from specific QG approaches. Reduction is argued to be a special case of correspondence, and to form part of the definition of QG. Finally, the appropriate account of emergence in the context of QG is presented, and compared to conceptions of emergence in the broader philosophy literature. It is argued that, while emergence is likely to hold between QG and general relativity, emergence is not part of the definition of QG, and nor can it serve usefully in the development and justification of the new theory.     

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.     

The concept of intelligibility in modern physics (1948)

This is an English translation of Paul Feyerabend's earliest extant essay “Der Begriff der Verständlichkeit in der modernen Physik” (1948). In it, Feyerabend defends positivism as a progressive framework for scientific research in certain stages of scientific development. He argues that in physics visualizability (Anschaulichkeit) and intelligibility (Verständlichkeit) are time-conditioned concepts: what is deemed visualizable in the development of physical theories is relative to a specific historical context and changes over time. He concludes that from time to time the abandonment of visualizability is crucial for progress in physics, as it is conducive to major theory change, illustrating the point on the basis of advances in atomic theory.     

A close examination of the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems: The homology between mechanics and poetry as technē

The pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanical Problems is the earliest known ancient Greek text on mechanics, principally concerned with the explanation of a variety of mechanical phenomena using a particular construal of the principle of the lever. In the introduction, the author—thought to be an early Peripatetic—quotes the tragic poet Antiphon to summarise a discussion of the technē-physis (art-nature) relationship and the status of mechanics as a technē. I argue that this citation of a poet is an Aristotelian cultural signature, intended to guide its readers towards a better understanding of the nature of mechanics as expounded in the Mechanical Problems. By analysing several instances where Aristotle cites Antiphon (as well as other tragic poets) in the Aristotelian corpus, I propose that both the author of the Mechanical Problems and Aristotle use poets for the purpose of persuasion. This is in turn explained by understanding the homologous relationship between mechanics-as-technē (according to the author of the Mechanical Problems) and poetics-as-technē (according to Aristotle) in terms of their shared status as poiētikē technē (productive art) and claims to universal knowledge. A final facet of the proposed relationship between mechanics and poetry is hypothesised on the grounds of their mimetic nature.