Abstraction and generalization are two processes of reasoning that have a special role in the construction of scientific theories and models. They have been important parts of the scientific method ever since the nineteenth century. A philosophical and historical analysis of scientific practices shows how abstraction and generalization found their way into the theory of the logic of science of the nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce. Our case studies include the scientific practices of Francis Galton and John Herschel, who introduced composite photographs and graphical methods, respectively, as technologies of generalization and thereby influenced Peirce’s logic of abstraction. Herschel’s account of generalization is further supported by William Whewell, who was very influential on Peirce. By connecting Herschel’s scientific technology of abstraction to Peirce’s logical technology of abstraction—namely, diagrams—we highlight the role of judgments in scientific observation by hypostatic abstractions. We also relate Herschel’s discovery-driven logic of science and Peirce’s open-ended diagrammatic logic to the use of models in science. Ultimately, Peirce’s theory of abstraction is a case of showing how logic applies to reality.
{"title":"Abstraction and Generalization in the Logic of Science: Cases from Nineteenth-Century Scientific Practice","authors":"Claudia Cristalli, A. Pietarinen","doi":"10.1086/713087","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/713087","url":null,"abstract":"Abstraction and generalization are two processes of reasoning that have a special role in the construction of scientific theories and models. They have been important parts of the scientific method ever since the nineteenth century. A philosophical and historical analysis of scientific practices shows how abstraction and generalization found their way into the theory of the logic of science of the nineteenth-century philosopher Charles S. Peirce. Our case studies include the scientific practices of Francis Galton and John Herschel, who introduced composite photographs and graphical methods, respectively, as technologies of generalization and thereby influenced Peirce’s logic of abstraction. Herschel’s account of generalization is further supported by William Whewell, who was very influential on Peirce. By connecting Herschel’s scientific technology of abstraction to Peirce’s logical technology of abstraction—namely, diagrams—we highlight the role of judgments in scientific observation by hypostatic abstractions. We also relate Herschel’s discovery-driven logic of science and Peirce’s open-ended diagrammatic logic to the use of models in science. Ultimately, Peirce’s theory of abstraction is a case of showing how logic applies to reality.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"93 - 121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82148271","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 is about the remarkable explosion in the literature on thought experiments since the 1980s. It enters uncharted territory. The year 1986 is of particular interest: James R. Brown presents his Platonism about thought experiments for the first time in Dubrovnik, and in Pittsburgh, John D. Norton shares his empiricist approach with participants in what was probably the twentieth century’s very first major conference on thought experiments. It was the time when philosophy of science had taken a pluralistic turn, and the article develops the notion that this is a key factor in the outburst of discussions about thought experiments in the 1980s.
{"title":"The Annus Mirabilis of 1986: Thought Experiments and Scientific Pluralism","authors":"Yiftach Fehige","doi":"10.1086/712941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712941","url":null,"abstract":"This article is about the remarkable explosion in the literature on thought experiments since the 1980s. It enters uncharted territory. The year 1986 is of particular interest: James R. Brown presents his Platonism about thought experiments for the first time in Dubrovnik, and in Pittsburgh, John D. Norton shares his empiricist approach with participants in what was probably the twentieth century’s very first major conference on thought experiments. It was the time when philosophy of science had taken a pluralistic turn, and the article develops the notion that this is a key factor in the outburst of discussions about thought experiments in the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"21 1","pages":"222 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87134791","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 literature on thought experiments has been steadily expanding since 1986. And yet, it appears that several aspects of the philosophical conversation have recently stalled. We claim that the current philosophical literature has much to gain by a reappraisal of its origins: by identifying the historical contingencies that caused the contemporary discussion to take the shape it has, we will be in a better position to entertain other directions the current debate could go, identify and eliminate mistaken dogma, and revive forgotten insights. This special issue of HOPOS is an attempt to start such a conversation, and we hope it might inspire similar pursuits in the history of the philosophy of other scientific methods like modeling, experiment, and computer simulation.
{"title":"Motivating the History of the Philosophy of Thought Experiments","authors":"M. Stuart, Yiftach Fehige","doi":"10.1086/712940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712940","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on thought experiments has been steadily expanding since 1986. And yet, it appears that several aspects of the philosophical conversation have recently stalled. We claim that the current philosophical literature has much to gain by a reappraisal of its origins: by identifying the historical contingencies that caused the contemporary discussion to take the shape it has, we will be in a better position to entertain other directions the current debate could go, identify and eliminate mistaken dogma, and revive forgotten insights. This special issue of HOPOS is an attempt to start such a conversation, and we hope it might inspire similar pursuits in the history of the philosophy of other scientific methods like modeling, experiment, and computer simulation.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"272 1","pages":"212 - 221"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77817267","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 father of neutral monism, Ernst Mach, argued that the fundamental constituents of the world are neither mental nor physical and that the distinction between the mental and physical ought to be erased. This article offers a reconstruction of Mach’s view. There is a “pure drive for knowledge” (reiner Erkenntnistrieb), and satisfying it, Mach argues, requires abandoning the mental/physical distinction. The reconstruction given will help to articulate and assess the differences between Mach’s position and Russell’s neutral monism, in which the distinction between the mental and physical is preserved even in the unified science of the future.
{"title":"Mach’s Neutral Monism","authors":"M. Textor","doi":"10.1086/712943","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712943","url":null,"abstract":"The father of neutral monism, Ernst Mach, argued that the fundamental constituents of the world are neither mental nor physical and that the distinction between the mental and physical ought to be erased. This article offers a reconstruction of Mach’s view. There is a “pure drive for knowledge” (reiner Erkenntnistrieb), and satisfying it, Mach argues, requires abandoning the mental/physical distinction. The reconstruction given will help to articulate and assess the differences between Mach’s position and Russell’s neutral monism, in which the distinction between the mental and physical is preserved even in the unified science of the future.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"6 1","pages":"143 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79537474","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 is concerned with one of the notable but forgotten research strands that developed out of French nineteenth-century positivism, a strand that turned attention to the study of scientific discovery and was actively pursued by French epistemologists around the turn of the nineteenth century. I first sketch the context in which this research program emerged. I show that the program was a natural offshoot of French neopositivism; the latter was a current of twentieth-century thought that, even if implicitly, challenged the positivism of first-generation positivists such as Comte. I then survey what French epistemologists—including Ernest Naville, Élie Rabier, Pierre Duhem, Édouard Le Roy, Abel Rey, André Lalande, Théodule-Armand Ribot, Edmond Goblot, and Jacques Picard, among others—had to say about the logic, psychology, and sociology of discovery. My story demonstrates the inaccuracy of existing historical accounts of the philosophical study of scientific discovery.
{"title":"French Neopositivism and the Logic, Psychology, and Sociology of Scientific Discovery","authors":"K. Vaesen","doi":"10.1086/712934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712934","url":null,"abstract":"This article is concerned with one of the notable but forgotten research strands that developed out of French nineteenth-century positivism, a strand that turned attention to the study of scientific discovery and was actively pursued by French epistemologists around the turn of the nineteenth century. I first sketch the context in which this research program emerged. I show that the program was a natural offshoot of French neopositivism; the latter was a current of twentieth-century thought that, even if implicitly, challenged the positivism of first-generation positivists such as Comte. I then survey what French epistemologists—including Ernest Naville, Élie Rabier, Pierre Duhem, Édouard Le Roy, Abel Rey, André Lalande, Théodule-Armand Ribot, Edmond Goblot, and Jacques Picard, among others—had to say about the logic, psychology, and sociology of discovery. My story demonstrates the inaccuracy of existing historical accounts of the philosophical study of scientific discovery.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"35 1","pages":"183 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85727863","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}
Grete (Henry-)Hermann (1901–84) was a German mathematician and philosopher who made impressive contributions to the philosophy of quantum mechanics in the 1930s that have received too little attention. The two volumes reviewed here make her long-neglected work accessible to a wider audience. They not only focus on Hermann’s contributions to the philosophy of quantum mechanics but also embed her work in her unusually broad horizon of interests and expertise, which ranged from mathematics to physics, psychology, ethics, education, and political philosophy.
{"title":"Grete Hermann’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: A Late Appraisal","authors":"B. Falkenburg","doi":"10.1086/712935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712935","url":null,"abstract":"Grete (Henry-)Hermann (1901–84) was a German mathematician and philosopher who made impressive contributions to the philosophy of quantum mechanics in the 1930s that have received too little attention. The two volumes reviewed here make her long-neglected work accessible to a wider audience. They not only focus on Hermann’s contributions to the philosophy of quantum mechanics but also embed her work in her unusually broad horizon of interests and expertise, which ranged from mathematics to physics, psychology, ethics, education, and political philosophy.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"136 1","pages":"201 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78184213","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":"Matt LaVine. Race, Gender and the History of Early Analytic Philosophy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. Pp. 270. $105.00 (cloth); $99.50 (e-book). ISBN 978-1-4985-9555-1.","authors":"T. Uebel","doi":"10.1086/712944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712944","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89689860","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}
Since the beginning of the twentieth century, prominent authors including Jean Piaget have drawn attention to Edmond Goblot’s account of mathematical thought experiments. But his contribution to today’s debate has been neglected so far. The main goal of this article is to reconstruct and discuss Goblot’s account of logical operations (the term he used for thought experiments in mathematics) and its interpretation by Piaget against the theoretical background of two open questions in today’s debate: (1) the relationship between empirical and mathematical thought experiments and (2) the question of whether mathematical thought experiments can play a justificatory function in proofs. The main corollary of this analysis is that Piaget’s interpretation is seriously flawed and insufficiently appreciative of important theses of Goblot’s account. First, Goblot can be easily defended against Piaget’s main criticism, and second, Goblot developed ideas about mathematical thought experiments that still deserve attention.
{"title":"A Neglected Chapter in the History of Philosophy of Mathematical Thought Experiments: Insights from Jean Piaget’s Reception of Edmond Goblot","authors":"M. Buzzoni","doi":"10.1086/712938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712938","url":null,"abstract":"Since the beginning of the twentieth century, prominent authors including Jean Piaget have drawn attention to Edmond Goblot’s account of mathematical thought experiments. But his contribution to today’s debate has been neglected so far. The main goal of this article is to reconstruct and discuss Goblot’s account of logical operations (the term he used for thought experiments in mathematics) and its interpretation by Piaget against the theoretical background of two open questions in today’s debate: (1) the relationship between empirical and mathematical thought experiments and (2) the question of whether mathematical thought experiments can play a justificatory function in proofs. The main corollary of this analysis is that Piaget’s interpretation is seriously flawed and insufficiently appreciative of important theses of Goblot’s account. First, Goblot can be easily defended against Piaget’s main criticism, and second, Goblot developed ideas about mathematical thought experiments that still deserve attention.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"31 1","pages":"282 - 304"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77414333","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 investigates how the doctrine of the epistemological given—long associated with empiricism and positivism and also informing Carnap’s first major work in 1928—was challenged and overcome by Neurath and Carnap in subsequent years. Particular attention is paid to the controversial issue of how precisely the dialectic between Neurath and Carnap played out: whether Neurath’s argumentation correctly engaged with Carnap’s actual positions, whether Carnap’s change of positions in turn fully engaged with Neurath’s challenge, and what all this may tell us about the compatibility of their philosophical projects.
{"title":"Rejecting the Given: Neurath and Carnap on Methodological Solipsism","authors":"T. Uebel","doi":"10.1086/712939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712939","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates how the doctrine of the epistemological given—long associated with empiricism and positivism and also informing Carnap’s first major work in 1928—was challenged and overcome by Neurath and Carnap in subsequent years. Particular attention is paid to the controversial issue of how precisely the dialectic between Neurath and Carnap played out: whether Neurath’s argumentation correctly engaged with Carnap’s actual positions, whether Carnap’s change of positions in turn fully engaged with Neurath’s challenge, and what all this may tell us about the compatibility of their philosophical projects.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"1 1","pages":"1 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88062955","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}
Thomas Kuhn was never a key player in the contemporary realism/antirealism debates, the debates that gained momentum around 1980 or so, with the publication of Bas van Fraassen’s The Scientific Image and Larry Laudan’s “A Confutation of Convergent Realism.” But I argue that Kuhn had a significant influence on these debates. Kuhn played a significant role in focusing philosophers’ attention on a different issue than the realism/antirealism debates of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of focusing on the meaning of theoretical terms, philosophers of science turned their attention to the problems raised by changes of theory. The particular shape of the contemporary debates thus owes something to the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
{"title":"Kuhn and the Contemporary Realism/Antirealism Debates","authors":"K. B. Wray","doi":"10.1086/712945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/712945","url":null,"abstract":"Thomas Kuhn was never a key player in the contemporary realism/antirealism debates, the debates that gained momentum around 1980 or so, with the publication of Bas van Fraassen’s The Scientific Image and Larry Laudan’s “A Confutation of Convergent Realism.” But I argue that Kuhn had a significant influence on these debates. Kuhn played a significant role in focusing philosophers’ attention on a different issue than the realism/antirealism debates of the 1950s and 1960s. Instead of focusing on the meaning of theoretical terms, philosophers of science turned their attention to the problems raised by changes of theory. The particular shape of the contemporary debates thus owes something to the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.","PeriodicalId":42878,"journal":{"name":"HOPOS-The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science","volume":"91 1","pages":"72 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2020-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86624601","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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