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.     

On the borderline between Science and Philosophy: A debate on determinism in France around 1880

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a new interest in explosive chemical reactions, sudden release of energy in living beings, physical instabilities, and bifurcations in the solutions of differential equations drew the attention of some scholars. New concepts like triggering actions and guiding principles also emerged. Mathematicians, physicists, physiologists, and philosophers were attracted by this kind of phenomena since they raised a question about the actual existence of a strict determinism in science. In 1878 the mathematical physicist Joseph Boussinesq pointed out a structural analogy among physical instabilities, some essential features of living beings, and singular solutions of differential equations. These developments revived long-lasting philosophical debates on the problematic link between deterministic physical laws and free will. We find in Boussinesq an original and almost isolated attempt to merge mathematical, physical, biological, and philosophical issues into a complex intellectual framework. In the last decades, some philosophers of science rediscovered the connection between physical instabilities and determinism, both in the context of chaos theory, and in the debates on the Norton dome. I put forward a consistent historical reconstruction of the main issues and characters involved.     

Idealisation,genetic explanations and political behaviours: Notes on the anti-reductionist critique of genopolitics

The rapid development of genetic research, determined, among others, by the requirements of The Human Genome Project, and a gradual reorientation in the perception of the role of nature and culture in the process of shaping complex networks of human relations by some political scientists, result in the increasing application of genetic data and methods in research regarding political behaviours. One of the key philosophical objections against the studies of the genetic foundations of political behaviours is that of excessive reductionism. This is supposed to manifest itself in the inadequate selection of the level of analysis for the explained phenomenon, the incompleteness of explanations and their low utility. My findings show that this objection is not sufficiently supported by contemporary science. Both studies using classical behavioural genetic methodologies and studies using DNA-based methods show that genes most likely play a role in political behaviours. Emphasising the significance of genetic influences in the midst of multiple extra-genetic interactions generates highly idealised explanations. Using the conceptual apparatus of the deformational concept of culture, I have demonstrated that the omission of a number of important extra-genetic influences by researchers is a consequence of focusing on specific causal patterns. This omission, however, does not entail negating the influence of non-genetic factors and, importantly, it may not have to be permanent. Following this approach, if correct, the reductionism of research into the genetic foundations of political behaviours is a standard cognitive procedure applied in science.     

Steroid hormones and the cardiovascular system: Direct actions of estradiol,progesterone, testosterone,gluco- and mineralcorticoids,and soltriol [vitamin D] on central nervous regulatory and peripheral tissues

Summary Knowledge of steroid hormone sites of action and related effects in cardiovascular and neural regulatory tissues is reviewed. Evidence for nuclear receptor sites is derived mainly from autoradiographic studies with relatively intact tissues and some biochemical studies with tissue homogenates.In the heart and in the walls of blood vessels, estradiol, dihydrotestosterone, corticosterone, aldosterone, dexamethasone, and soltriol (vitamin D) show nuclear binding. In the brain and spinal cord, neuronal regions associated with cardiovascular regulation contain nuclear receptors in specific patterns for each steroid hormones, including progesterone and soltriol. These data indicate that all steroid hormones exert direct actions on the cardiovascular system at its different levels of organization, thus enabling adjustment to the changing demands during reproduction (gonadal steroids), stress (adrenal steroids), and solar seasons (vitamin D-soltriol).