Descartes’s changing mind

Descartes is always concerned about knowledge. However, the Galileo affair in 1633, the reactions to his Discourse on method, and later his need to reply to objections to his Meditations provoked crises in Descartes’s intellectual development the import of which has not been sufficiently recognized. These events are the major reasons why Descartes’s philosophical position concerning how we know and what we may know is radically different at the end of his life from what it was when he began. We call this later position Descartes’s epistemic stance and contrast it with his earlier methodological, metaphysical realism. Yet Descartes’s epistemic views cannot be separated from other aspects of his work, for example, his views concerning God, causality, metaphysics, and the nature of science. A further meta-implication is that serious errors await any scholar who cites early Cartesian texts in support of late Cartesian positions, or who uses later texts in conjunction with early ones to support a reading of Descartes’s philosophy.     

Written in the flesh: Isaac Newton on the mind–body relation

Isaac Newton’s views on the mind–body relation are of interest not only because of their somewhat unique departure from popular early modern conceptions of mind and its relation to body, but also because of their connections with other aspects of Newton’s thought. In this paper I argue that (1) Newton accepted an interesting sort of mind–body monism, one which defies neat categorization, but which clearly departs from Cartesian substance dualism, and (2) Newton took the power by which we move our bodies by thought alone to be a member of the family of forces that includes gravity and electricity. Time and again, Newton draws an analogy between the ultimate cause and nature of the volitional powers of mind and the ultimate cause and nature of these other forces.     

From centripetal forces to conic orbits: a path through the early sections of Newton’s Principia

In this study, we test the security of a crucial plank in the Principia’s mathematical foundation, namely Newton’s path leading to his solution of the famous Inverse Kepler Problem: a body attracted toward an immovable center by a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the center must move on a conic having a focus in that center. This path begins with his definitions of centripetal and motive force, moves through the second law of motion, then traverses Propositions I, II, and VI, before coming to an end with Propositions XI, XII, XIII and this trio’s first corollary. To test the security of this path, we answer the following questions. How far is Newton’s path from being truly rigorous? What would it take to clarify his ambiguous definitions and laws, supply missing details, and close logical gaps? In short, what would it take to make Newton’s route to the Inverse Kepler Problem completely convincing? The answer is very surprising: it takes far less than one might have expected, given that Newton carved this path in 1687.     

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.     

Hélène Metzger: the history of science between the study of mentalities and total history

In this article, I examine the historiographical ideas of the historian of chemistry Hélène Metzger (1886–1944) against the background of the ideas of the members of the groups and institutions in which she worked, including Alexandre Koyré, Gaston Bachelard, Abel Rey, Henri Berr and Lucien Febrve. This article is on two interdependent levels: that of particular institutions and groups in which she worked (the Centre de Synthèse, the International Committee for History of Science, the Institut d'Histoire des Sciences et Techniques (Sorbonne) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études) and that of historiographical ideas. I individuate two particular theoretical aspirations pursued by the historians in Metzger's milieu: the ideal of total history and the study of the human mind. These two objectives were seen by Metzger and many others as implicating each other. Moreover, Metzger and other historians wanted to integrate the practice of commentary of texts in the realisations of those ideals. I argue, however, that these objectives proved very difficult to realise at the same time. One tradition which stemmed out of these discussions, exemplified by Bachelard, Canguilhem and Foucault, focused on the mind and knowledge, and renounced commentary of texts and total history as it was understood by the historians of the Centre de Synthèse. The latter, however, did not really pursue the study of the mind. Moreover, historians like Metzger and Koyré who practised an attentive analysis of texts could not realise total history.     

Duhem’s theory of mixture in the light of the Stoic challenge to the Aristotelian conception

The bulk of Duhem’s writing which bears on the understanding of mixtures suggests he adopted an Aristotelian position which he opposed only to the atomic view. A third view from antiquity—that of the Stoics—seems not to be taken into account. But his lines of thought are not always as explicit as could be wished. The Stoic view is considered here from a perspective which Duhem might well have adopted. This provides a background against which his somewhat unorthodox Aristotelianism might be understood.     

Saving the Strong Programme: a critique of Stephen Kemp’s recent paper

In this paper I intend to discuss some of the views put forward by Stephen Kemp in his recent critique of the Strong Program (Kemp, 2005). In particular I will try to defend David Bloor’s SSK against the charge of weak idealism brought up by Stephen Kemp in his paper. The widely held accusation, namely, according to which the social constructionist approach to scientific knowledge is strongly idealist, is already rejected by Kemp himself. He argues, however that Bloor’s attempts to divert the charge of idealism from the Strong Programme were not successful with respect to the kind of idealism that Kemp calls ‘weak idealism’, that is, treating scientific discourse as free-floating and unrelated to the world of things. I intend to argue that Kemp’s charges are unfounded when levelled at Bloor’s views on meaning and reference. Kemp deals with two issues of the Bloorian program: with the social constructionist approach to concepts as self-referential social institutions, and with the actor/analyst distinction introduced by the Strong Programmers. I will focus only on the first issue in my paper.     

Rehabilitating theory: refusal of the ‘bottom-up’ construction of scientific phenomena

In this paper I inquire into Bogen and Woodward’s (1988) data/phenomena distinction, which in a similar way to Cartwright’s construal of the model of superconductivity (1995)—although in a different domain—argues for a ‘bottom-up’ construction of phenomena from data without the involvement of theory. I criticise Bogen and Woodward’s account by analysing their melting point of lead example in depth, which is usually cited in the literature to illustrate the data/phenomenon distinction. Yet, the main focus of this paper lies on Matthias Kaiser’s (1995) case study of the plate tectonic revolution, the most extensive case study that has been put forth to support the bottom-up construction of phenomena. On the basis of new historical evidence, which has been overlooked not only by Kaiser but also by the entire historical literature on the plate tectonic revolution, I demonstrate that phenomena are not constructed from the bottom-up but rather, admittedly counter-intuitively, from the top-down.     

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.     

Popper’s response to Dingle on special relativity and the problem of the observer

Dingle contended that Einstein’s special theory of relativity was physically impossible for the simple reason that it required clocks to be simultaneously faster and slower than each other. McCrea refuted Dingle using an operationalist argument. An operational response did not satisfy Popper, who wrote an unpublished essay to counter Dingle’s claim. Popper developed an analysis that avoided operationalism by using a system of coinciding clocks, contending that this system showed that special relativity withstood Dingle’s criticism that it was not a symmetrical and consistent physical theory. However, Popper mistakenly included an asymmetric calculation in his analysis. Once this is corrected, the amended result supports Dingle’s position. Popper went on to argue that to avoid determinism, special relativity had to be reconciled with absolute time; this too supports Dingle. Popper’s failure to refute Dingle calls into question his claim that ‘the observer’ is superfluous to special relativity.     

Bananas and petrol: further evidence on the forecasting accuracy of the ABS ‘headline’ and ‘underlying’ rates of inflation

In the light of the still topical nature of ‘bananas and petrol’ being blamed for driving much of the inflationary pressures in Australia in recent times, the ‘headline’ and ‘underlying’ rates of inflation are scrutinised in terms of forecasting accuracy. A general structural time‐series modelling strategy is applied to estimate models for alternative types of Consumer Price Index (CPI) measures. From this, out‐of‐sample forecasts are generated from the various models. The underlying forecasts are subsequently adjusted to facilitate comparison. The Ashley, Granger and Schmalensee (1980) test is then performed to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the root mean square errors of the models. The results lend weight to the recent findings of Song (2005) that forecasting models using underlying rates are not systematically inferior to those based on the headline rate. In fact, strong evidence is found that underlying measures produce superior forecasts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hermeneutical contributions to the history of science: Gadamer on ‘presentism’

This article examines how Hans G. Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics can contribute to contemporary debates on the concept of ‘presentism’. In the field of the history of science, this term is usually employed in two ways. First, ‘presentism’ refers to the kind of historiography which judges the past to legitimate the present. Second, this concept designates the inevitable influence of the present in the interpretation of the past. In this paper, I argue that both dimensions of the relationship between the present and the past are explored by Hans G. Gadamer in Truth and Method and other texts. In the first place, Gadamer’s critique of historicism calls into question the anti-presentist ideal of studying the past for ‘its own sake’. In the second place, Gadamer’s thesis that all understanding inevitably involves some prejudice poses the question of the inherent “present-centredness” of historical interpretations. By examining Gadamer’s hermeneutics, I seek to provide historians with new arguments and perspectives on the question of ‘presentism’.     

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’.     

On the historical origins of the contemporary notion of incommensurability: Paul Feyerabend’s assault on conceptual conservativism

This paper investigates the historical origins of the notion of incommensurability in contemporary philosophy of science. The aim is not to establish claims of priority, but to enhance our understanding of the notion by illuminating the various issues that contributed to its development. Kuhn developed his notion of incommensurability primarily under the influence of Fleck, Polanyi, and Köhler. Feyerabend, who had developed his notion more than a decade earlier, drew directly from Duhem, who had developed a notion of incommensurability in 1906. The idea is that in the course of scientific advance, when fundamental theories change, meanings change, which can result in a new conception of the nature of reality. Feyerabend repeatedly used this notion of incommensurability to attack various forms of conceptual conservativism. These include the logical positivists’ foundational use of protocol statements, Heisenberg’s methodological principle that established results must be presupposed by all further research, attempts to separate philosophical accounts of ontology from physics, Bohr’s principle of complementarity, and logical empiricist accounts of reduction and explanation. Focusing on the function of the notion of incommensurability common to Feyerabend’s various critiques explicates Feyerabend’s early philosophy as a series of challenges to forms of conceptual conservativism.     

The electrons of the dinosaurs and the center of the Earth: comments on D.D. Turner’s ‘The past vs. the tiny: historical science and the abductive arguments for realism’

Turner [The past vs. the tiny: Historical science and the abductive arguments for realism. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 35A (2004) 1] claims that the arguments in favor of realism do not support with the same force both classes of realism, since they supply stronger reasons for experimental realism than for historical realism. I would like to make two comments, which should be seen as amplifications inspired by his proposal, rather than as a criticism. First, it is important to highlight that Turner’s distinction between ‘tiny’ and ‘past unobservables’ is neither excluding nor exhaustive. Second, even if we agreed with everything that Turner says regarding the arguments for realism and their relative weight in order to justify the experimental or historical version, there is an aspect that Turner does not consider and that renders historical realism less problematic than experimental realism.     

Re-examining the impact of European astronomy in seventeenth-century China: a study of Xue Fengzuo’s system of thought and his integration of Chinese and Western knowledge

ABSTRACT

During the late Ming and early Qing period, Jesuit missionaries introduced European science into China, and thereby profoundly influenced the later development of Chinese astronomy. Not only did European astronomy become the official system of the Qing dynasty, but the traditional way to ‘attain up above’ by connecting the study of astronomy and Yi learning gradually fell into disuse. However, the astronomers in this period expressed different views on these two processes. As one of the most important early Qing astronomers, Xue Fengzuo’s case presents a distinctive and important example. Firstly, under the influences of both Chinese tradition and European science, Xue Fengzuo rebuilt the way to ‘attain up above’ based on his three-fold ‘calendrical learning’, i.e. calendrical astronomy, astrology and related pragmatic applications, through which he could realize the highest Confucian ideal. Secondly, he integrated Chinese and Western knowledge for all three aspects of his ‘calendrical learning’, instead of ceding the dominant position to Western methods. From Xue Fengzuo’s example, many of the complex effects of the encounter between different cultures and the process of knowledge transfer can be revealed.     

Forecasting the Effects of a Canada–US Currency Union on Output and Prices: A Counterfactual Analysis

This paper is a counterfactual analysis investigating the consequences of the formation of a currency union for Canada and the USA: whether outputs increase and prices decrease if these countries form a currency union. We use a two‐country cointegrated model to conduct the counterfactual analysis, where the conditional forecasts are generated based on the Gaussian assumption. To deal with structural breaks and model uncertainty, conditional forecasts are generated from different models/estimation windows and the model‐averaging technique is used to combine the forecasts. We also examine the robustness of our results to parameter uncertainty using the wild bootstrap method. The results show that forming the currency union would probably boost the Canadian economy, whereas it would not have significant effects on US output or Canadian and US price levels. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.