Pierre Duhem’s epistemic aims and the intellectual virtue of humility: a reply to Ivanova

David Stump (2007) has recently argued that Pierre Duhem can be interpreted as a virtue epistemologist. Stump’s claims have been challenged by Milena Ivanova (2010) on the grounds that Duhem’s ‘epistemic aims’ are more modest than those of virtue epistemologists. I challenge Ivanova’s criticism of Stump by arguing that she not distinguish between ‘reliabilist’ and ‘responsibilist’ virtue epistemologies. Once this distinction is drawn, Duhem clearly emerges as a ‘virtue-responsibilist’ in a way that complements Ivanova’s positive proposal that Duhem’s ‘good sense’ reflects a conception of the ‘ideal scientist’. I support my proposal that Duhem is a ‘virtue-responsibilist’ by arguing that his rejection of the possibility of our producing a ‘perfect theory’ reflects the key responsibilist virtue of ‘intellectual humility’.     

Newton’s notion and practice of unification

In this paper I deal with a neglected topic with respect to unification in Newton’s Principia. I will clarify Newton’s notion (as can be found in Newton’s utterances on unification) and practice of unification (its actual occurrence in his scientific work). In order to do so, I will use the recent theories on unification as tools of analysis (Kitcher, Salmon and Schurz). I will argue, after showing that neither Kitcher’s nor Schurz’s account aptly capture Newton’s notion and practice of unification, that Salmon’s later work is a good starting point for analysing this notion and its practice in the Principia. Finally, I will supplement Salmon’s account in order to answer the question at stake.     

History and scientific practice in the construction of an adequate philosophy of science: revisiting a Whewell/Mill debate

William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.     

Quantitative realizations of philosophy of science: William Whewell and statistical methods

In this paper, I examine William Whewell’s (1794–1866) ‘Discoverer’s Induction’, and argue that it supplies a strikingly accurate characterization of the logic behind many statistical methods, exploratory data analysis (EDA) in particular. Such methods are additionally well-suited as a point of evaluation of Whewell’s philosophy since the central techniques of EDA were not invented until after Whewell’s death, and so couldn’t have influenced his views. The fact that the quantitative details of some very general methods designed to suggest hypotheses would so closely resemble Whewell’s views of how theories are formed is, I suggest, a strongly positive comment on his views.     

‘Good Sense’ in context: A response to Kidd

In his response to my (2010), Ian Kidd claims that my argument against Stump’s interpretation of Duhem’s concept of ‘good sense’ is unsound because it ignores an important distinction within virtue epistemology. In light of the distinction between reliabilist and responsibilist virtue epistemology, Kidd argues that Duhem can be seen as supporting the latter, which he further illustrates with a discussion of Duhem’s argument against ‘perfect theory’. I argue that no substantive argument is offered to show that the distinction is relevant and can establish that Duhem’s ‘good sense’ can be understood within responsibilist virtue epistemology. I furthermore demonstrate that Kidd’s attempt to support his contention relies on a crucial misreading of Duhem’s general philosophy of science, and in doing so highlight the importance of understanding ‘good sense’ in its original context, that of theory choice.     

Hegel and Naturphilosophie

Against current non-metaphysical interpretations, I argue that Naturphilosophie is central to Hegel’s philosophy. This is so for three reasons. First, it was crucial to Hegel’s program to create a holistic culture. Second, Naturphilosophie is pivotal to absolute idealism, Hegel’s characteristic philosophical doctrine. Third, the idea of organic development, so central to Naturphilosophie, is pervasive throughout Hegel’s system. This idea is essential to Hegel’s concepts of spirit, dialectic, and identity-in-difference. Finally, I take issue with the neo-Kantian critique of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie on the grounds that it fails to appreciate the underlying motive behind Hegel’s system: the attempt to resolve the aporia of Kant’s epistemology.     

The influence of Spinoza’s concept of infinity on Cantor’s set theory

Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory, cared much about a philosophical foundation for his theory of infinite numbers. To that end, he studied intensively the works of Baruch de Spinoza. In the paper, we survey the influence of Spinozean thoughts onto Cantor’s; we discuss Spinoza’s philosophy of infinity, as it is contained in his Ethics; and we attempt to draw a parallel between Spinoza’s and Cantor’s ontologies. Our conclusion is that the study of Spinoza provides deepening insights into Cantor’s philosophical theory, whilst Cantor can not be called a ‘Spinozist’ in any stricter sense of that word.     

William Whiston, Isaac Newton and the crisis of publicity

William Whiston was one of the first British converts to Newtonian physics and his 1696 New theory of the earth is the first full-length popularization of the natural philosophy of the Principia. Impressed with his young protégé, Newton paved the way for Whiston to succeed him as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1702. Already a leading Newtonian natural philosopher, Whiston also came to espouse Newton’s heretical antitrinitarianism in the middle of the first decade of the eighteenth century. In all, Whiston enjoyed twenty years of contact with Newton dating from 1694. Although they shared so much ideologically, the two men fell out when Whiston began to proclaim openly the heresy that Newton strove to conceal from the prying eyes of the public. This paper provides a full account of this crisis of publicity by outlining Whiston’s efforts to make both Newton’s natural philosophy and heterodox theology public through popular texts, broadsheets and coffee house lectures. Whiston’s attempts to draw Newton out through published hints and innuendos, combined with his very public religious crusade, rendered the erstwhile disciple a dangerous liability to the great man and helps explain Newton’s eventual break with him, along with his refusal to support Whiston’s nomination to the Royal Society. This study not only traces Whiston’s successes in preaching the gospel of Newton’s physics and theology, but demonstrates the ways in which Whiston, who resolutely refused to accept Newton’s epistemic distinction between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms of knowledge, transformed Newton’s grand programme into a singularly exoteric system and drove it into the public sphere.     

Kant’s third law of mechanics: The long shadow of Leibniz

This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter.     

Hacking’s historical epistemology: a critique of styles of reasoning

The paper begins with a detailed reconstruction of the development of Ian Hacking’s theory of scientific ‘styles of reasoning’, paying particular attention to Alistair Crombie’s influence, and suggesting that Hacking’s theory deserves to come under the title ‘historical epistemology’. Subsequently, the paper seeks to establish three critical theses. First, Hacking’s reliance on Crombie leads him to adopt an outdated historiographical position; second, Hacking is unsuccessful in his attempt to distance historical epistemology from epistemic relativism; and third, Hacking has not (yet) offered convincing criteria for individuating styles of reasoning.     

‘This inscrutable principle of an original organization’: epigenesis and ‘looseness of fit’ in Kant’s philosophy of science

Kant’s philosophy of science takes on sharp contour in terms of his interaction with the practicing life scientists of his day, particularly Johann Blumenbach and the latter’s student, Christoph Girtanner, who in 1796 attempted to synthesize the ideas of Kant and Blumenbach. Indeed, Kant’s engagement with the life sciences played a far more substantial role in his transcendental philosophy than has been recognized hitherto. The theory of epigenesis, especially in light of Kant’s famous analogy in the first Critique (B167), posed crucial questions regarding the ‘looseness of fit’ between the constitutive and the regulative in Kant’s theory of empirical law. A detailed examination of Kant’s struggle with epigenesis between 1784 and 1790 demonstrates his grave reservations about its hylozoist implications, leading to his even stronger insistence on the discrimination of constitutive from regulative uses of reason. The continuing relevance of these issues for Kant’s philosophy of science is clear from the work of Buchdahl and its contemporary reception.     

Kant’s dynamical theory of matter in 1755, and its debt to speculative Newtonian experimentalism

This paper explores the scientific sources behind Kant’s early dynamical theory of matter in 1755, with a focus on two main Kant’s writings: Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens and On Fire. The year 1755 has often been portrayed by Kantian scholars as a turning point in the intellectual career of the young Kant, with his much debated conversion to Newton. Via a careful analysis of some salient themes in the two aforementioned works, and a reconstruction of the scientific sources behind them, this paper shows Kant’s debt to an often overlooked scientific tradition, i.e. speculative Newtonian experimentalism. The paper argues that more than the Principia, it was the speculative experimentalism that goes from Newton’s Opticks to Herman Boerhaave’s Elementa chemiae via Stephen Hales’ Vegetable Staticks that played a central role in the elaboration of Kant’s early dynamical theory of matter in 1755.     

Poincaréan intuition revisited: what can we learn from Kant and Parsons?

This paper provides a comprehensive critique of Poincaré’s usage of the term intuition in his defence of the foundations of pure mathematics and science. Kant’s notions of sensibility and a priori form and Parsons’s theory of quasi-concrete objects are used to impute rigour into Poincaré’s interpretation of intuition. In turn, Poincaré’s portrayal of sensible intuition as a special kind of intuition that tolerates the senses and imagination is rejected. In its place, a more harmonized account of how we perceive concrete objects is offered whereby intuitive knowledge is consistently a priori whatever the domain of application.     

Bird, Kuhn, and positivism

I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philosophy of science is a matter of Kuhn having taken a wrong turn. Bird is right to remind us of Kuhn’s naturalistic tendencies, but these are not clearly an asset, rather than a liability. Kuhn was right to steer clear of extreme referential conceptions of meaning, since these court an unacceptable semantic scepticism. Although he eschewed the concepts of truth and knowledge as philosophers of science have tended to understand them, this doesn’t mean that, as Bird claims, Kuhn was a sceptic about scientific knowledge. Bird’s claim that recent philosophical naturalism represents a rejection of positivism far more thorough than Kuhn’s is problematic since, from a different perspective, this kind of naturalism can be seen to have inherited some equally important positivistic themes. Finally, it’s not clear that Kuhn should have endorsed a computational approach to the philosophy of science, such as connectionism, since such approaches may be more behaviouristic, and thus unacceptably positivistic, than the original cognitive revolution promised.     

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.     

Kuhn and coherentist epistemology

The paper challenges a recent attempt by Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen to show that since Thomas Kuhn’s philosophical standpoint can be incorporated into coherentist epistemology, it does not necessarily lead to: (Thesis 1) an abandonment of rationality and rational interparadigm theory comparison, nor to (Thesis 2) an abandonment of convergent realism. Leaving aside the interpretation of Kuhn as a coherentist, we will show that Kuukkanen’s first thesis is not sufficiently explicated, while the second one entirely fails. With regard to Thesis 1, we argue that Kuhn’s view on inter-paradigm theory comparison allows only for (what we shall dub as) ‘the weak notion of rationality’, and that Kuukkanen’s argument is thus acceptable only in view of such a notion. With regard to Thesis 2, we show that even if we interpret Kuhn as a coherentist, his philosophical standpoint cannot be seen as compatible with convergent realism since Kuhn’s argument against it is not ‘ultimately empirical’, as Kuukkanen takes it to be.     

How to tell causes from effects: Kant’s causal theory of time and modern approaches

I attempt a reconstruction of Kant’s version of the causal theory of time that makes it appear coherent. Two problems are at issue. The first concerns Kant’s reference to reciprocal causal influence for characterizing simultaneity. This approach is criticized by pointing out that Kant’s procedure involves simultaneous counterdirected processes—which seems to run into circularity. The problem can be defused by drawing on instantaneous processes such as the propagation of gravitation in Newtonian mechanics. Another charge of circularity against Kant’s causal theory was leveled by Schopenhauer. His objection was that Kant’s approach is invalidated by the failure to deliver non-temporal criteria for distinguishing between causes and effects. I try to show that the modern causal account has made important progress toward a successful resolution of this difficulty. The fork asymmetry, as based on Reichenbach’s principle of the common cause, provides a means for the distinction between cause and effect that is not based on temporal order (if some preconditions are realized).     

Neurath’s protocol statements revisited: sketch of a theory of scientific testimony

This paper puts forward a significant revision of the interpretation of Neurath’s proposal for the form and content of so-called protocol sentences that was given by the author some years ago. Importantly, it eschews the ambition to give necessary and sufficient conditions for Neurath’s explicandum and instead aims merely to provide a characterisation of central cases. Even more importantly, it refocusses the explicandum from observation statements generally to observation reports and casts Neurath’s proposal in the form of an incipient theory of scientific testimony, in particular, testimony about observational evidence. In light of this analysis the paper then links Neurath’s proposal to current debates about the viability of Sellars’s anti-foundationalism and explores the nature of testimony and the justification of perceptual knowledge in science and everyday life.     

From personality to party: the creation and transmission of Hutchinsonianism, c. 1725-1750

This paper represents a provisional attempt to chart the intellectual construction of Hutchinsonianism over approximately a quarter of a century from the mid-1720s through to the early 1750s. It looks at how Hutchinson’s works were received and fashioned by his first followers, the means they used to communicate their conviction to others, and the extent to which their outlook can be characterised as anti-Newtonian. The paper argues for a slow take up of ‘Hutchinsonian’ views before Spearman and Bate published a collected edition of the master’s works in 1748. This single edition gave Hutchinson’s writings a coherence and a unity they were ill-designed to carry, but it created Hutchinsonianism as an appreciable force in Oxford and elsewhere. The paper concludes that the anti-Newtonian rhetoric of the movement’s founder was increasingly muted in the hands of his followers (with the exception of Bate), and by the 1750s the main bone of contention was less attitudes to Newton than approaches to Hebrew scholarship.