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.     

Rehabilitating the regulative use of reason: Kant on empirical and chemical laws

In his Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant asserts that laws of nature “carry with them an expression of necessity” (A159/B198). There is, however, widespread interpretive disagreement regarding the nature and source of the necessity of empirical laws of natural sciences in Kant's system. It is especially unclear how chemistry—a science without a clear, straightforward connection to the a priori principles of the understanding—could contain such genuine, empirical laws. Existing accounts of the necessity of causal laws unfortunately fail to illuminate the possibility of non-physical laws. In this paper, I develop an alternative, ‘ideational’ account of natural laws, according to which ideas of reason necessitate the laws of some non-physical sciences. Chemical laws, for instance, are grounded on ideas of the elements, and the chemist aims to reduce her phenomena to these elements via experimentation. Although such ideas are beyond the possibility of experience, their postulation is necessary for the achievement of reason's theoretical ends: the unification and explanation of the cognitions of science.     

The cognition-knowledge distinction in Kant and Dilthey and the implications for psychology and self-understanding

Both Kant and Dilthey distinguish between cognition and knowledge, but they do so differently in accordance with their respective theoretical interests. Kant’s primary cognitive interest is in the natural sciences, and from this perspective the status of psychology is questioned because its phenomena are not mathematically measurable. Dilthey, by contrast, reconceives psychology as a human science.For Kant, knowledge is conceptual cognition that has attained certainty by being part of a rational system. Dilthey also links knowledge with certainty; however, he derives the latter from life-experience rather than from reason. Dilthey’s psychology begins with the self-certainty of lived experience and life-knowledge, but this turns out to fall short of cognitive understanding. In the final analysis, both Kant and Dilthey move beyond psychology to arrive at self-understanding. Because of his doubts about introspection, Kant replaces psychology with a pragmatic anthropology to provide a communal framework for self-understanding. Dilthey supplements psychology with other human sciences as part of a project of anthropological reflection.     

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.     

Natural selection and the ‘antiquity of man’: Intellectual impacts in the Australian colonies

Two months before the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), Scottish geologist Charles Lyell announced a consensus on ‘the antiquity of man.’ Although stemming from separate intellectual traditions, human antiquity and natural selection had such a powerful influence on nineteenth century science that the former is often thought to be an inevitable conceptual and chronological consequence of the latter. Various scholars have argued it was in fact the acceptance of human antiquity that provided a foundation for the intelligibility and eventual acceptance of evolution by natural selection. This article investigates how these two interwoven theories affected understandings of human antiquity in Australia; itself an under-examined topic in Australian scholarship. Indeed, most historians maintain Australia's human antiquity was not ‘discovered’ or broadly understood until the advent of radiocarbon dating and professional archaeology in the 1960s. This over-simplified narrative has only recently begun to be reassessed. To contribute to this reassessment, and to the broader reclamation of human antiquity as a historical subject, this article focuses on the early decades of human antiquity's dissemination in Australia, examines its complex relationship with natural selection, and ultimately challenges narratives of its ‘recent’ discovery.     

2007年SSCI收录香港特区论文的统计分析

在关注自然科学的同时也应该关注社会科学，本文通过对香港特区1289篇论文，运用计量学的方法，从学科、机构、发表期刊、被引用次数等多个角度，详细分析香港特区社会科学论文的现状，本文还对所涉及的3793名作者，结合TDA分析软件对其论文合著情况做进一步分析。     

Maxwell's color statistics: From reduction of visible errors to reduction to invisible molecules

This paper presents a cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary account of Maxwell's introduction of statistical models of molecules for the composition of gases. The account focuses on Maxwell's deployment of statistical models of data in his contemporaneous color researches as established in Cambridge mathematical physics, especially by Maxwell's seniors and mentors. The paper also argues that the cross-disciplinary, or cross-domain, transfer of resources from the natural and social sciences took place in both directions and relied on the complex intra-disciplinary, or intra-domain, dynamics of Maxwell's researches in natural sciences, in color theory, physical astronomy, electromagnetism and dynamical theory of gases, as well as involving a variety of types of communicating and mediating media, from material objects to concepts, techniques and institutions.     

What is technological science?

The technological sciences have at least six defining characteristics that distinguish them from the other sciences. They (1) have human-made rather than natural objects as their (ultimate) study objects, (2) include the practice of engineering design, (3) define their study objects in functional terms, (4) evaluate these study objects with category-specified value statements, (5) employ less far-reaching idealizations than the natural sciences, and (6) do not need an exact mathematical solution when a sufficiently close approximation is available. In combination, the six characteristics are sufficient to show that the technological sciences are neither branches nor applications of the natural sciences, but form a different group of sciences with specific characteristics of their own.     

Hobbes on natural philosophy as “True Physics” and mixed mathematics

In this paper, I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal principles from geometry, acknowledging that bodies in the world may not actually behave this way. First, I consider Hobbes's relation to Aristotelian mixed mathematics and to Isaac Barrow's broadening of mixed mathematics in Mathematical Lectures (1683). I show that for Hobbes maker's knowledge from geometry provides the ‘why’ in mixed-mathematical explanations. Next, I examine two explanations from De corpore Part IV: (1) the explanation of sense in De corpore 25.1-2; and (2) the explanation of the swelling of parts of the body when they become warm in De corpore 27.3. In both explanations, I show Hobbes borrowing and citing geometrical principles and mixing these principles with appeals to experience.     

‘The Great Fiasco’ of the 1948 presidential election polls: status recognition and norms conflict in social science

All three ‘scientific’ pollsters (Crossley, Gallup and Roper) wrongly predicted incumbent President Harry Truman’s defeat in the 1948 presidential election, and thus faced a potentially serious legitimacy crisis. This ‘fiasco’ occurred at a most inopportune time. Social science was embroiled in a policy debate taking place in the halls of Congress. It was fighting a losing battle to be included, along with the natural sciences, in the National Science Foundation, for which legislation was being drafted. Faced with the failure of the polls, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) intervened quickly to prevent social science’s adversaries from using this event to degrade further its status. After all, many social scientists considered the sample survey as the paramount tool of social research, and sampling as one of social science’s greatest innovation. Concurrently, there was an ongoing conflict among polling practitioners themselves—between advocates of probability sampling and users of quotas, like the pollsters. The SSRC committee appointed to evaluate the polling debacle managed to keep this contentious issue of sampling from becoming the centre of attention. Given the inauspicious environment in which this event happened, the SSRC did not wish to advertise the fact that the house of social science was in turmoil.     

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.     

The epistemological virtues of assumptions: towards a coming of age of Boltzmann and Meinong’s objections to ‘the prejudice in favour of the actual’?

Two complementary debates of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century are examined here: the debate on the legitimacy of hypotheses in the natural sciences and the debate on intentionality and ‘representations without object’ in philosophy. Both are shown to rest on two core issues: the attitude of the subject and the mode of presentation chosen to display a domain of phenomena. An orientation other than the one which contributed to shape twentieth-century philosophy of science is explored through the analysis of the role given to assumptions in Boltzmann’s research strategy, where assumptions are contrasted to hypotheses, axioms, and principles, and in Meinong’s criticism of the privileged status attributed to representations in mental activities. Boltzmann’s computational style in mathematics and Meinong’s criticism of the confusion between representation and judgment give prominence to an indirect mode of presentation, adopted in a state of suspended belief which is characteristic of assumptions and which enables one to grasp objects that cannot be reached through direct representation or even analogies. The discussion shows how assumptions and the movement to fiction can be essential steps in the quest for objectivity. The conclusion restates the issues of the two debates in a contemporary perspective and shows how recent developments in philosophy of science and philosophy of language and mind can be brought together by arguing for a twofold conception of reference.     

The union of arts and sciences in the eighteenth century: Lorenz Spengler (1720–1807), artistic turner and natural scientist

The life and career of Lorenz Spengler (1720–1807) provides evidence to support the view that the eighteenth century was a period when there was a fruitful interrelationship between the arts, crafts, and sciences in the courts and capitals of Europe. Spengler was trained as a turner, and was appointed teacher of ornamental turning to the Danish royal family and turner of the court in 1745. Even in the early years of his artistic career Spengler was interested in electricity and its role in healing, and he became an avid collector of shells and naturalia. Over the years, Spengler's interests turned more to the natural sciences, and in 1771 he was appointed director of the King's Kunstkammer. Only by considering both aspects of Spengler's career can his scientific activities be placed in their proper historical context.     

Testimony in seventeenth-century English natural philosophy: legal origins and early development

This essay argues that techniques for assessing testimonial credibility were well established in English legal contexts before they appeared in English natural philosophy. 'Matters of fact' supported by testimony referred to human actions and events before the concept was applied to natural phenomena. The article surveys English legal views about testimony and argues that the criteria for credible testimony in both legal and scientific venues were not limited to those of gentle status. Natural philosophers became concerned with testimony when they shifted their attention from universal statements about nature to particular natural and experimental histories constructed by English naturalists. The shift to a more Baconian approach to natural investigation, itself shaped in part by legal concepts and practice, made it possible for members of the Royal Society to adopt an already familiar and societally approved approach to testimony. However, the essay also suggests how the use of scientific instruments and the desire to avoid the adversarial processes of the law modified legal conditions for fact determination, and made it possible for later generations to associate the concept of fact, supported by credible testimony, with the natural rather than the human sciences.     

Constructing dystopian experience: A Neurath-Cartwrightian approach to the philosophy of social technology

Social situations, the object of the social sciences, are complex and unique: they contain so many variable aspects that they cannot be reproduced, and it is even difficult to experience two situations that are alike in many respects. The social scientists' past experiences that serve as their background knowledge to intervene in an existent situation is poor compared to what a traditional epistemologist would consider ideal. A way of dealing with the variable and insufficient background of social scientists is by means of models. But, then, how should we characterize social scientific models? This paper examines Otto Neurath's scientific utopianism as an attempt to deal with this problem. Neurath proposes that social scientists work with utopias: broad imaginative plans that coordinate a multitude of features of a social situation. This notion can be used in current debates in philosophy of science because we notice that utopias, in Neurath's sense, are comparable to models and nomological machines in Nancy Cartwright's conception. A model-based view of science lays emphasis on the fact that scientists learn from the repeated operation of such abstract entities, just as they learn from the repetition of experiments in a laboratory. Hence this approach suggests an approximation between the natural and the social sciences, as well as between science and utopian literature. This is exemplified by analyzing the literary dystopia We, written by Yevgeny Zamyatin, to show that reasoning from and debating about utopian writings, even if fictional and pessimistic, creates phenomena of valuation, which are fundamental for constituting a background of experiences in the social sciences.     

The Price of Success: Sociologist Harry Alpert,the NSF's First Social Science Policy Architect

Harry Alpert (1912–1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods.