Studies in History and Philosophy of Science最新文献

In this paper, I provide an account of direct (vs. indirect) detection in gravitational-wave astrophysics. In doing so, I highlight the epistemic considerations that lurk behind existing debates over the application of the term "direct". According to my analysis, there is an epistemically significant distinction between direct and indirect detections in this context. Roughly, our justification for trusting a direct detection depends mainly on the reliability of instruments that are under our control, rather than on the reliability of our models of separate target systems. In contrast, indirect detections rely on confidence in such models. Overall, this paper solves a puzzle about what counts as a "direct" detection of gravitational waves in a way that is true to scientific usage, and (more importantly) both philosophically precise and epistemically perspicuous. Having done so, this paper provides a foundation for a broader project of analyzing the epistemic situation of (gravitational-wave) astrophysics.

This paper aims to analyze a specific way in which a scientific programme or area can, in Lakatosian terms, degenerate: namely, through a developmental process of intellectual inflation. Adopting a pluralist approach to the notion of scientific progress, we propose that the historical development of a particular scientific area can be analyzed as being intellectually inflationary during a bounded period of time if it has considerably increased its productive output (thus demonstrating productive progressive) while the overall semantic or epistemic value of those products have not improved in a significant fashion (thus lacking progress in a semantic or epistemic sense). Then, we apply this concept to thoroughly assess whether there have been some intellectually inflationary patterns in the development of (i) information-theoretical evolutionary biology in 1961-2023, and (ii) ensemblist non-equilibrium statistical mechanics in 1938-2023. And finally, we argue that tracking and analyzing intellectually inflationary patterns in the history of sciences might contribute to vindicate a non-productivist picture of current scientific research.

Philosophers of the historical sciences have focused to a significant extent on the problem of epistemic access facing these sciences: how do historical scientists overcome the relative scarcity of data about the past, compared to the present? Solving this problem usually requires solving another one, which I call the 'problem of ontic access:' how do historical scientists get access to entities and processes with properties that are potentially informative about the past? The case of geochronology illustrates one solution to this problem: historical scientists can get access to entities and processes with properties that are potentially informative about the past by exploiting the metaphysical structure of their domain. Geochronology experienced a spectacular explosion of its research boundaries in the 20th century. I explain this productivity by analyzing the ontology implicit in geochronological techniques. The productivity of isotope geochronology was based on (a) mereological decomposition in order to (b) exploit differences of properties obtaining between the parts and the whole, and (c) an exceptional complementarity between mass spectrometry and the lower-level properties, allowing application to a wide range of geological contexts. The technologically mediated ability of the scientists to exploit the metaphysical structure of their domain was crucial to their success.

In this paper, I defend a non-mechanistic interpretation of Kant's philosophy of nature. My interpretation contradicts the robust tradition of reading Kant as a mechanist about nature - or as someone who endorses the view that we can know the internally purposive causality characteristic of organisms has no place in nature. By attending closely to Kant's remarks about the possibility of internal purposiveness in nature and to key premises from Kant's arguments in the Antinomy of Teleological Judgment, we shall see that it is not only plausible, but preferable, to believe that internally purposive things (i.e., organisms) exist in nature. Making room for such a belief leaves Kant with a philosophy of nature that simultaneously aligns with and surpasses the philosophies of nature offered up by his Early Modern predecessors.

This paper is a critical analysis of the structure of the quantum revolution. I consider the factual question of how, historically and theoretically, the classical gave way to the quantum, and I argue for an answer that shows, contra Thomas Kuhn's influential philosophy of science, that it is the logic, and not the sociology and psychology, of research that correctly explains the classical-to-the-quantum paradigm shift. My approach is based not on archival studies but on a careful reading, in their original historical context, of Max Planck's and Albert Einstein's well-known papers; the burden of my argument, which at points will be outspoken, consists, then, in identifying and removing the impediments that prevent us from reading these papers in themselves. For this task I critically consider both the main, and mutually antagonistic, accounts of the origin of the quantum theory currently available in the literature-namely, the orthodox story, according to which Planck inaugurated the quantum theory in 1900, and that proposed by Thomas Kuhn in Black-Body Theory and Quantum Discontinuity-and I show that both of them are essentially incorrect. Both overlook the scientific status of the probabilistic kinetic theory of heat as of 1900, of which both Planck and Einstein were acutely aware. The orthodox story will be refuted by showing that Planck did not postulate energy discreteness to derive his black-body radiation law in 1900; and Kuhn, though he argued, as I do here, against the orthodoxy, did so on different grounds, and his own alternative is refuted by showing that Planck's black-body radiation formula did not trigger a Kuhnian "crisis" in classical physics. This conceptual housekeeping will serve its purpose by removing the obstacles that make it impossible to analyze Planck's and Einstein's papers in themselves; once this is done, my conclusions follow.

This paper combines mathematical, philosophical, and historical analyses in a comprehensive investigation of the dynamical foundations of the formalism of orthodox quantum mechanics. The results obtained include: (i) A deduction of the canonical commutation relations (CCR) from the tenets of Matrix Mechanics; (ii) A discussion of the meaning of Schrödinger's first derivation of the wave equation that not only improves on Joas and Lehner's 2009 investigation on the subject, but also demonstrates that the CCR follow of necessity from Schrödinger's first derivation of the wave equation, thus correcting the common misconception that the CCR were only posited by Schrödinger to pursue equivalence with Matrix Mechanics; (iii) A discussion of the mathematical facts and requirements involved in the equivalence of Matrix and Wave Mechanics that improves on F. A. Muller's classical treatment of the subject; (iv) A proof that the equivalence of Matrix and Wave Mechanics is necessitated by the formal requirements of a dual action functional from which both the dynamical postulates of orthodox quantum mechanics, von Neumann's process 1 and process 2, follow; (v) A critical assessment, based on (iii) and (iv), of von Neumann's construction of unified quantum mechanics over Hilbert space. Point (iv) is our main result. It brings to the open the important, but hitherto ignored, fact that orthodox quantum mechanics is no exception to the golden rule of physics that the dynamics of a physical theory must follow from the action functional. If orthodox quantum mechanics, based as it is on the assumption of the equivalence of Matrix and Wave Mechanics, has this "peculiar dual dynamics," as von Neumann called it, then this is so because by assuming the equivalence one has been assuming a peculiar dual action.

Descartes' systematic physics had little to do with his quantitative accounts of natural phenomena. The former was metaphysical and was concerned with uncovering the causes operating in nature, while the latter dealt with establishing mathematical relations between various natural quantities. I reconstruct a dominant interpretation in recent literature which argues that the two practices are autonomous, and that quantitative problem-solving is normatively subordinated to metaphysical physics. However, a substantial episode of Descartes' practice resists these claims in an interesting way. Descartes' 1643 explanation of the flow of water should be, on the above reading, autonomous from metaphysically grounded physics or matter theory. Yet the explanation had unifying intentions: It is explicitly based on Descartes' laws of motion and considers the material properties of water. Additionally, because quantitative problem-solving should be subordinated to systematic physics, we would expect that Descartes' explanation is coherent with his physics of liquids. However, if we search for such a coherence, the autonomy between the two practices resurfaces as a problem. Even on a charitable reading, the physical features assumed and modelled in the 1643 explanation cannot be accounted for by Descartes' systematic physics. They are simply underdetermined in his natural philosophy. The outcome is that Descartes' quantitative solution navigated its way around the physical constraints in a creative and opportunistic fashion.

Over the last two decades, the rise of the dynamicist view in the philosophy of spacetime theories has motivated a discussion about the way in which chronogeometric structure and dynamics are connected. Geometricists defend that chronogeometry determines and explains dynamics, whereas dynamicists state that it is the other way around. Both parties assume that the arrow of explanation at issue involves a claim of fundamentality and priority of one of the elements over the other. I challenge this assumption, and I propose a third way to understand the connection. Drawing a lesson from Herman von Helmholtz's and David Hilbert's views on the foundations of geometry, I argue that in spacetime theories chronogeometry and dynamics are inextricably interconnected counterparts, so claims of fundamental explanation and priority, regardless of the direction of the alleged arrow, are misconceptions. The link between chronogeometry and dynamics in spacetime theories is properly understood in terms of a bidirectional arrow, not in terms of a unidirectional arrow of fundamental explanation.

Recently, John McCaskey (2020) has proposed that the arrival of Daniel Fahrenheit's thermometers precipitated the eighteenth-century conceptual change of temperature. I examine the usage of the temperature term in the Philosophical Transactions for this period, leading from the creation of the Fahrenheit thermometer up to the first employment of numerical temperature within the journal, in which temperature is constituted by a numerical value. I identify four strands linking thermometry and meteorology to temperature's conceptual change: the weather data network of James Jurin; the dissemination and acclaim for Fahrenheit thermometers; a resurgence in the usage of temperature in meteorological writing; and both exploratory usage and a broadening of the term's extent as it realigned to thermometry. The realignment of temperature in this period cultivated a conception of temperature whereby it could be constituted by the numerical readings of a thermometer, a sense which had not existed previously. This historical survey demonstrates that a refinement of Joseph LaPorte's (2004) precisification account for conceptual change is required for it to accommodate temperature. I suggest two modifications: a greater potential flexibility in the term's extent, permitting the abandonment of previous senses, and the possibility for tacit conceptual changes that may proceed without stipulation.

In the eighteenth century, the requirements for participation in scientific life were progressively narrowed, leading to a gradual closure of the community of the learned. This shift was influenced by the dissemination of Newton's natural philosophy across Europe, which catalysed the rejection of previously dominant principles and methods, while heralding the adoption of a new approach, based on mathematics and experimentalism. This paper examines various forms of resistance to the emergence of a community of Newtonian savants in post-1750 France, focusing on institutions and authors located at its margins. First, I analyse the relationship between provincial and central academies through the case study of the Académie des Belles-Lettres de Caen. Here, the persistent opposition to Newton was partly due to cultural conservatism but was also a form of resistance to the centralisation and concentration of expertise, and the resulting homogenisation of practices, promoted by the Paris Academy. Secondly, I examine the opposition to Newton by some authors working outside the academic milieu, who contributed to the "provincialisation" of knowledge by addressing a provincial public in their writings. Their aim was not only to engage in a dialogue with the savants of the authoritative institutions, which was almost impossible at the time, but also to appear as polemicists on the public stage, attracting a readership thirsty for scientific perspectives alternative to those considered mainstream.