The history of the philosophy of thought experiments (TEs) has touched on the work of Kuhn, Popper, Duhem, Mach, Lakatos, and other big names of the twentieth-century. But so far, almost nothing has been written about Paul Feyerabend. His most influential work was Against Method, eight chapters of which concern Galileo, with a significant focus on Galileo’s TEs. The later Feyerabend was interested in what might be called the epistemology of drama, including stories and myths. This article brings these aspects of Feyerabend’s work together in an attempt to present what might have been his considered views on scientific TEs. According to Feyerabend, TEs are a special kind of story that can help to demolish a dominant myth and instigate a new one through the use of propaganda to change our habits, by appealing to our sense of what is interesting, appealing, revealing, comprehensible, coherent, and surprising. I conclude by contrasting Feyerabend’s ideas with two currents in the modern debate on TEs: (1) the claim that the epistemology of TEs is just the epistemology of deductive or inductive arguments and (2) the claim that a complete epistemology of TEs must take into account the fact that TEs are a kind of narrative.
{"title":"Telling Stories in Science: Feyerabend and Thought Experiments","authors":"M. Stuart","doi":"10.1086/712946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712946","url":null,"abstract":"The history of the philosophy of thought experiments (TEs) has touched on the work of Kuhn, Popper, Duhem, Mach, Lakatos, and other big names of the twentieth-century. But so far, almost nothing has been written about Paul Feyerabend. His most influential work was Against Method, eight chapters of which concern Galileo, with a significant focus on Galileo’s TEs. The later Feyerabend was interested in what might be called the epistemology of drama, including stories and myths. This article brings these aspects of Feyerabend’s work together in an attempt to present what might have been his considered views on scientific TEs. According to Feyerabend, TEs are a special kind of story that can help to demolish a dominant myth and instigate a new one through the use of propaganda to change our habits, by appealing to our sense of what is interesting, appealing, revealing, comprehensible, coherent, and surprising. I conclude by contrasting Feyerabend’s ideas with two currents in the modern debate on TEs: (1) the claim that the epistemology of TEs is just the epistemology of deductive or inductive arguments and (2) the claim that a complete epistemology of TEs must take into account the fact that TEs are a kind of narrative.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"3 1","pages":"262 - 281"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86662957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The history of how philosophers have dealt with thought experiments in science is the main focus of this special issue. Counterfactual analysis is an interesting feature of thought experiments, because it requires the imagination of alternative states of the world (see also publications by Fearon, Lebow and Stein, Reiss, and Tetlock and Belkin, who suggest the same). In historical analysis, the use of imagination is often the focus of criticisms of such counterfactual analysis. In this article, I consider three strategies for constraining imagination: making limited counterfactual changes, limiting counterfactual changes to decisions of important figures, and using evidence to restrict the scope for imagination. Given the focus of this special issue, I will relate this discussion to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses of counterfactuals in the philosophy of science. I show that counterfactual analysis in historical cases has some resemblance to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses, but that what Lewis calls “transition periods” cannot be left entirely vague, as Lewis suggests, nor can counterfactual changes be seen simply as interventions, as Woodward suggests. I propose that efforts to limit imagination in historical counterfactuals are ultimately problematic, but that imagination can nevertheless play a useful role in counterfactual analysis.
{"title":"Historical Counterfactuals, Transition Periods, and the Constraints on Imagination","authors":"Catherine Greene","doi":"10.1086/712937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712937","url":null,"abstract":"The history of how philosophers have dealt with thought experiments in science is the main focus of this special issue. Counterfactual analysis is an interesting feature of thought experiments, because it requires the imagination of alternative states of the world (see also publications by Fearon, Lebow and Stein, Reiss, and Tetlock and Belkin, who suggest the same). In historical analysis, the use of imagination is often the focus of criticisms of such counterfactual analysis. In this article, I consider three strategies for constraining imagination: making limited counterfactual changes, limiting counterfactual changes to decisions of important figures, and using evidence to restrict the scope for imagination. Given the focus of this special issue, I will relate this discussion to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses of counterfactuals in the philosophy of science. I show that counterfactual analysis in historical cases has some resemblance to Lewis’s and Woodward’s analyses, but that what Lewis calls “transition periods” cannot be left entirely vague, as Lewis suggests, nor can counterfactual changes be seen simply as interventions, as Woodward suggests. I propose that efforts to limit imagination in historical counterfactuals are ultimately problematic, but that imagination can nevertheless play a useful role in counterfactual analysis.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"27 1","pages":"305 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80855030","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cristina Chimisso. Hélène Metzger, Historian and Historiographer of the Sciences. New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 217+index. $160.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-138-21039-4.","authors":"Óscar Moro Abadia","doi":"10.1086/713016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713016","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90441838","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science.
{"title":"The Role of Imagination in Ernst Mach’s Philosophy of Science: A Biologico-economical View","authors":"Char Brecevic","doi":"10.1086/712974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712974","url":null,"abstract":"Some popular views of Ernst Mach cast him as a philosopher-scientist averse to imaginative practices in science. The aim of this analysis is to address the question of whether or not imagination is compatible with Machian philosophy of science. I conclude that imagination is not only compatible but essential to realizing the aim of science in Mach’s biologico-economical view. I raise the possible objection that my conclusion is undermined by Mach’s criticism of Isaac Newton’s famous “bucket experiment.” I conclude that Mach’s issue lies not with thought experimentation, tout court, but with the improper use of thought experimentation as it relates to the aim of the biologico-economical development of science.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"23 1","pages":"241 - 261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76954371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Physicalism is often characterized as an empirical hypothesis. But according to an alternative conceptualization, it is instead a stance or an attitude. I analyze Roy Wood Sellars’s materialist philosophy in order to show that it is a counterexample to a specific physicalist empirical hypothesis: the minimal completeness of the physical. However, it is arguably not reducible to a stance: it is a meaningful metaphysical thesis with substantive cognitive content.
{"title":"The Materialism of Roy Wood Sellars","authors":"B. Gimes","doi":"10.1086/712933","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712933","url":null,"abstract":"Physicalism is often characterized as an empirical hypothesis. But according to an alternative conceptualization, it is instead a stance or an attitude. I analyze Roy Wood Sellars’s materialist philosophy in order to show that it is a counterexample to a specific physicalist empirical hypothesis: the minimal completeness of the physical. However, it is arguably not reducible to a stance: it is a meaningful metaphysical thesis with substantive cognitive content.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"16 1","pages":"166 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84160328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The article attempts to clarify Weyl’s metaphorical description of Emmy Noether’s algebra as the Eldorado of axiomatics. It discusses Weyl’s early view on axiomatics, which is part of his criticism of Dedekind and Hilbert, as motivated by Weyl’s acquiescence to a phenomenological epistemology of correctness. The article then describes Noether’s work in algebra, emphasizing in particular its ancestral relation to Dedekind’s and Hilbert’s works, as well as her mathematical methods, characterized by nonelementary reasoning—that is, reasoning detached from mathematical objects. The article then turns to Weyl’s remarks on Noether’s work and argues against assimilating her use of the axiomatic method in algebra to his late view on axiomatics, on the ground of the latter’s resistance to Noether’s principle of detachment.
{"title":"Why Did Weyl Think That Emmy Noether Made Algebra the Eldorado of Axiomatics?","authors":"Iulian D. Toader","doi":"10.1086/712942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712942","url":null,"abstract":"The article attempts to clarify Weyl’s metaphorical description of Emmy Noether’s algebra as the Eldorado of axiomatics. It discusses Weyl’s early view on axiomatics, which is part of his criticism of Dedekind and Hilbert, as motivated by Weyl’s acquiescence to a phenomenological epistemology of correctness. The article then describes Noether’s work in algebra, emphasizing in particular its ancestral relation to Dedekind’s and Hilbert’s works, as well as her mathematical methods, characterized by nonelementary reasoning—that is, reasoning detached from mathematical objects. The article then turns to Weyl’s remarks on Noether’s work and argues against assimilating her use of the axiomatic method in algebra to his late view on axiomatics, on the ground of the latter’s resistance to Noether’s principle of detachment.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"11 1","pages":"122 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90654780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Most accounts of “logical empiricism in America” take logical empiricism to be a monolithic, or at least a one-dimensional, philosophical group. This picture of logical empiricism has come under well-reasoned attack during the past two decades, but some of the relevant conclusions for the reception-history of the movement were not drawn, or were not drawn as thoroughly as they could have been. Thus, if we want to understand the reception of logical empiricism, we should not talk about the reception of logical empiricism as such; rather, we should provide a more stratified and differently balanced account. This article aims to draw the contours of one more stratified account by pointing out differences in the reception-history of logical empiricism with respect to pragmatism in particular. Namely, I will examine and defend an account according to which the more pragmatist-naturalist wing of logical empiricism was welcomed by the majority of American pragmatists while the more technical wing came immediately under pragmatist attack from various sides.
{"title":"To the Icy Slopes in the Melting Pot: Forging Logical Empiricisms in the Context of American Pragmatisms","authors":"A. Tuboly","doi":"10.1086/712936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712936","url":null,"abstract":"Most accounts of “logical empiricism in America” take logical empiricism to be a monolithic, or at least a one-dimensional, philosophical group. This picture of logical empiricism has come under well-reasoned attack during the past two decades, but some of the relevant conclusions for the reception-history of the movement were not drawn, or were not drawn as thoroughly as they could have been. Thus, if we want to understand the reception of logical empiricism, we should not talk about the reception of logical empiricism as such; rather, we should provide a more stratified and differently balanced account. This article aims to draw the contours of one more stratified account by pointing out differences in the reception-history of logical empiricism with respect to pragmatism in particular. Namely, I will examine and defend an account according to which the more pragmatist-naturalist wing of logical empiricism was welcomed by the majority of American pragmatists while the more technical wing came immediately under pragmatist attack from various sides.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"22 1","pages":"27 - 71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78540896","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Michael J. Sauter. The Spatial Reformation: Euclid between Man, Cosmos, and God. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Pp. 327. $89.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-812-25066-4.","authors":"D. M. Miller","doi":"10.1086/710187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710187","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"20 1","pages":"601-605"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75341241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Bertrand Russell’s 1903 The Principles of Mathematics, he offers an apparently devastating criticism of The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and Its History (PIM) by the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen. Russell’s criticism is motivated by a concern that Cohen’s account of the foundations of calculus saddles mathematics with the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum and thus threatens the idea of mathematical truth. This article defends Cohen against Russell’s objection and argues that, properly understood, Cohen’s views of limits and infinitesimals do not entail the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. Essential to that defense is an interpretation, developed in the article, of Cohen’s positions in the PIM as deeply rationalist. The interest in developing this interpretation is not just that it reveals how Cohen’s views in the PIM avoid the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. It also reveals elements of what is at stake, both historically and philosophically, in Russell’s criticism of Cohen.
{"title":"Hermann Cohen’s Principle of the Infinitesimal Method: A Defense","authors":"Scott Edgar","doi":"10.1086/710180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710180","url":null,"abstract":"In Bertrand Russell’s 1903 The Principles of Mathematics, he offers an apparently devastating criticism of The Principle of the Infinitesimal Method and Its History (PIM) by the neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen. Russell’s criticism is motivated by a concern that Cohen’s account of the foundations of calculus saddles mathematics with the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum and thus threatens the idea of mathematical truth. This article defends Cohen against Russell’s objection and argues that, properly understood, Cohen’s views of limits and infinitesimals do not entail the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. Essential to that defense is an interpretation, developed in the article, of Cohen’s positions in the PIM as deeply rationalist. The interest in developing this interpretation is not just that it reveals how Cohen’s views in the PIM avoid the paradoxes of the infinitesimal and continuum. It also reveals elements of what is at stake, both historically and philosophically, in Russell’s criticism of Cohen.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"74 1","pages":"440 - 470"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86040773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the mutual influence between Ernst Cassirer and his cousin, the neurologist Kurt Goldstein. For both Cassirer and Goldstein, views on the nature of human cognition were fundamental to their understanding of scientific knowledge, and these were informed by both philosophical theorizing and empirical research on pathologies of the nervous system. Following Cassirer, and in agreement with the physicalism of the Vienna Circle, Goldstein held that the physical sciences had progressed by arriving at abstract, mathematical representations to take the place of qualitative characterizations of observable reality. In tension with physicalism, Goldstein was not sanguine about the fruitfulness of the abstractive approach in biology. He proposed that biology must adhere to its own sui generis methods of observation and experimentation in order to obtain knowledge of the “natures” of living organisms. I argue that there is a parallel with Cassirer’s assertion of the differences between physical and cultural sciences, underwritten by the deployment of varying symbolic functions. I also propose that the neurological writings of Goldstein are an important backdrop to Cassirer’s positive evaluation of abstract thought, in contrast to the pessimism regarding a worldview dominated by scientific abstractions expressed by philosophers such as Bergson, Whitehead, and Husserl.
{"title":"Cassirer and Goldstein on Abstraction and the Autonomy of Biology","authors":"M. Chirimuuta","doi":"10.1086/710181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710181","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the mutual influence between Ernst Cassirer and his cousin, the neurologist Kurt Goldstein. For both Cassirer and Goldstein, views on the nature of human cognition were fundamental to their understanding of scientific knowledge, and these were informed by both philosophical theorizing and empirical research on pathologies of the nervous system. Following Cassirer, and in agreement with the physicalism of the Vienna Circle, Goldstein held that the physical sciences had progressed by arriving at abstract, mathematical representations to take the place of qualitative characterizations of observable reality. In tension with physicalism, Goldstein was not sanguine about the fruitfulness of the abstractive approach in biology. He proposed that biology must adhere to its own sui generis methods of observation and experimentation in order to obtain knowledge of the “natures” of living organisms. I argue that there is a parallel with Cassirer’s assertion of the differences between physical and cultural sciences, underwritten by the deployment of varying symbolic functions. I also propose that the neurological writings of Goldstein are an important backdrop to Cassirer’s positive evaluation of abstract thought, in contrast to the pessimism regarding a worldview dominated by scientific abstractions expressed by philosophers such as Bergson, Whitehead, and Husserl.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"3 1","pages":"471 - 503"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88707414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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