History and Philosophy of Science

Albert Einstein: Rebellious Wunderkind

by Galina Weinstein

Albert Einstein at the Zürich Polytechnic: a rare mastery of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory

by Galina Weinstein

Towards A Non-Political Economy

by virgilio rivas

On the role of Newtonian analogies in eighteenth-century life science: Vitalism and provisionally inexplicable explicative devices

by Charles Wolfe

Final draft, May 2012. For a projected volume on 'Newton and Empiricism', eds. Z. Biener and E. Schliesser.

Newton’s impact on Enlightenment natural philosophy has been studied at great length, in its experimental,... more Newton’s impact on Enlightenment natural philosophy has been studied at great length, in its experimental, methodological and ideological ramifications. One aspect that has received fairly little attention is the role Newtonian “analogies” played in the formulation of new conceptual schemes in physiology, medicine, and the life science as a whole in the work of self-proclaimed Newtonians in natural history such as Buffon. The so-called ‘medical Newtonians’, people like Pitcairne and Keill, have been studied; but they were engaged in a more literal project of directly transposing, or seeking to transpose, Newtonian laws into quantitative models of the body. What I shall be interested in here is something different: neither the metaphysical reading of Newton, nor direct empirical transpositions, but rather, a more heuristic, empiricist construction of Newtonian analogies. Figures such as Haller, Barthez, and Blumenbach constructed analogies between the method of celestial mechanics and the method of physiology. In celestial mechanics, they held, an unknown entity (such as gravity) is posited and used to mathematically link sets of determinate physical phenomena (e.g., the phases of the moon and tides). This process allows one to remain agnostic about the ontological status of the unknown entity, as long as the two linked sets of phenomena are represented adequately. Haller, et. al., held that the Newtonian physician and physiologist can similarly posit an unknown called ‘life’ and use it to link various other phenomena, from digestion to sensation, to the functioning of the glands. These phenomena consequently appear as interconnected, goal-oriented processes which do not exist either in an inanimate mechanism or in a corpse. In keeping with the empiricist roots of the analogy, however, no ontological claims are made about the nature of this vital principle, and no attempts to directly causally connect such a principle and observable phenomena are made. The role of the “Newtonian analogy” thus brings together diverse schools of thought, and cuts across a surprising variety of programs, models and practices in natural philosophy.

Albert Einstein's close friends and colleagues from the Patent Office

by Galina Weinstein

George Eliot's Natural History of Common Life

by Rosalind De Sailly

Applied Evolutionary Epistemology: A new method to enhance interdisciplinary research between the life and human sciences.

by Nathalie Gontier

pdf download here: http://kairos.fc.ul.pt/nr%204/Applied%20Evolutionary%20Epistemology.pdf

Nineteenth-­‐Century Natural Theology, Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, Russell Re Manning (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

by Matthew Daniel Eddy

Natural theology came in different varieties during the nineteenth century. It functioned both as a way of seeing... more Natural theology came in different varieties during the nineteenth century. It functioned both as a way of seeing nature but also as a way of being in the world. This essay explores the intellectual and experiential facets of design arguments by focusing on who promoted them and, just as important, why they appealed to so many people on a daily basis. In short, we learn that natural theology was a way of knowing and doing. The essay is structured around three kinds of natural theologians: philosophers and theologians, savants and scientists, priests and pedagogues. Whilst I take care to address well-known names like William Paley and Charles Darwin and classical disciplines like physics and theology, my larger aim is to show the appeal of design to middle class readers and authors (especially women) and to the founders of the emerging human sciences like biomedicine and evolutionary anthropology.

Darwin in Literature and Science

by Martin Willis

This is the bibliography for my work on Darwin in Literature and Science for my forthcoming Readers Guide to... more This is the bibliography for my work on Darwin in Literature and Science for my forthcoming Readers Guide to Literature and Science. Any suggestions appreciated!

The Promise and Perils of Transformative Research

by J Britt Holbrook

Workshop conversations cluster under the four headings of the history and definitions, promotion, evaluation, and... more Workshop conversations cluster under the four headings of the history and definitions, promotion, evaluation, and integration of transformative research (TR): 1. History and Definitions: The National Science Board's 2007 report (NSB-07-32) on transformative research called for more effort directed at defining TR. The present report offers additional context and clarity regarding meanings of the term. But it also argues that there are virtues in leaving the term open to multiple interpretations. 2. Promotion: The report welcomes new mechanisms for promoting TR, such as NSF 'CREATIV' grants. It embraces additional means for promoting TR, such as increased emphasis on interdisciplinary research, and explores how different interpretations of how TR occurs imply different strategies for promoting TR. It also calls for increased attention to the broader societal impacts of TR at the levels of policy, of NSF programs, and of individual research projects. 3. Evaluation: The report emphasizes the need to develop means for evaluating attempts to promote TR. It also concludes that research should be directed toward evaluating transformative research at the project level. 4. Integration: The report suggests that consideration of the broader societal impacts of TR be fully integrated with transformative research itself. Attention to the broader impacts of TR should inform the development of policies and programs designed to promote TR, for instance through the creation of mechanisms such as an Advisory Committee for Transformative Research (ACTR).

Caso e fortuna in Aristotele, Ph. II, 4-6

by Simone Guidi

A short paper about teleology and chance in Aristotle's Physics.

ABSTRACT: Nei capitoli 4-6 di Physica II Aristotele si sofferma sulla possibilità di affiancare il caso alle quattro... more ABSTRACT: Nei capitoli 4-6 di Physica II Aristotele si sofferma sulla possibilità di affiancare il caso alle quattro cause rilevate in Ph. II, 3. Lo Stagirita fornisce dunque una definizione allargata di “processo finalistico”, capace di dar conto dei processi casuali sia in quanto processi apparentemente finalizzati al raggiungimento di un scopo, sia in quanto processi di natura accidentale. Gli eventi casuali sono così affiancati a quelli eminentemente teleologici come fenomeni che sarebbero potuti essere frutto di un processo finalizzato al loro raggiungimento se fossero stati innescati dalla natura o dal pensiero.

Recensione a Marin Cureau de La Chambre, "Quale sia la conoscenza degli animali e fin dove possa estendersi", a cura di Emanuela Scribano, Felici Editore 2010

by Simone Guidi

Published in LoSguardo.net, n. 6, 2011 (II)

Recensione a Ettore Lojacono, "Cartesio. Dalla magia alla scienza", Il Prato 2010

by Simone Guidi

Published in LoSguardo.net, n. 6, 2011 (II)

Re-examining the Gene In Personalized Genomics -- forthcoming

by Jordan Bartol

Late-draft of a paper to appear in a special issue of Science & Education

Personalized Genomics companies (PG; also called ‘Direct-to-Consumer Genetics’) are businesses marketing genetic... more Personalized Genomics companies (PG; also called ‘Direct-to-Consumer Genetics’) are businesses marketing genetic testing to consumers over the Internet. While much has been written about these new businesses, little attention has been given to their roles in science communication. This paper provides an analysis of the gene concept presented to customers and the relation between the information given and the science behind PG. Two quite different gene concepts are present in company rhetoric, but only one features in the science. To explain this, we must appreciate the delicate tension between PG, academic science, public expectation, and market forces.

Call for papers - The Inner Revolution (16th and 17th century) [English version]

by Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia

This tenth issue of Lo Sguardo will be dedicated to the “inner revolution” of he 16th and 17th century; in particular it will delve into the matter of the interiorization of the world” and the development of an “individual interiority” in the period included betweenthe end of the Renaissance and the early modern Age. With this purpose the issue will consider the “psychology of the soul” livering over the role of the “auxialiry faculties” –such as memory, imagination, fantasy – in relation to the notion of apprehensio, to the practice of spiritual exercises and to the concept of homo faber sui.

Accepted languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German
Deadline for the delivery: September, 10th 2012

Please feel free to contact us for any further informations: redazione@losguardo.net

http://www.losguardo.net/index.html
http://www.losguardo.net/public/collabora/collabora.html

The Material Soul: Strategies for Naturalising the Soul in an Early Modern Epicurean Context

by Charles Wolfe

Longer draft (April 2012) of a paper co-authored with Michaela Van Esfeld, forthcoming in shorter form in D. Kambaskovic-Sawers, ed., Conjunctions: Body and Mind, Sexuality and Spirit from Plato to Descartes. Dordrecht: Springer.

We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and... more We usually portray the early modern period as one characterised by the ‘birth of subjectivity’ with Luther and Descartes as two alternate representatives of this radical break with the past, each ushering in the new era in which ‘I’ am the locus of judgements about the world. A sub-narrative under the heading ‘the mind-body problem’ recounts how Cartesian dualism, responding to the new promise of a mechanistic science of nature, “split off” the world of the soul/mind/self from the world of extended, physical substance – a split which has preoccupied the philosophy of mind up until the present day. We would like to call attention to a different constellation of texts – neither a robust ‘tradition’ nor an isolated ‘episode’, somewhere in between – which have in common their indebtedness to, and promotion of an embodied, Epicurean approach to the soul. These texts follow the evocative hint given in Lucretius’ De rerum natura (III, 327-330) that ‘the soul is to the body as scent is to incense’ (in an anonymous early modern French version); in other words they neither assert the autonomy of the soul, nor the dualism of body and soul, nor again a sheer physicalism in which ‘psychic’ or ‘intentional’ properties are reduced to the basic properties of matter. Rather, to borrow the title of one of these treatises (L’âme matérielle), they seek to articulate the concept of a material soul. By reconstructing some elements of the tradition of a corporeal, mortal and ultimately material soul, at the intersection of medicine, natural philosophy and metaphysics, including sections devoted to Malebranche and Willis, but focusing primarily on texts including the 1675 Discours anatomiques by the Epicurean physician Guillaume Lamy; the anonymous manuscript from circa 1725 entitled L’âme matérielle, which is essentially a compendium of texts from the later seventeenth century such as Malebranche and Bayle, along with excerpts from Lucretius; and materialist writings such Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s L’Homme-Machine (1748), we seek to articulate this concept of a ‘material soul’ with its implications for notions of embodiment, the nature of mental states, and selfhood.

Teleomechanism redux? Functional physiology and hybrid models of Life in early modern natural philosophy (revised title)

by Charles Wolfe

longer draft (2011) of paper forthcoming in Gesnerus, special issue 'Entre mécanisme et téléologie : Anatomie, physiologie et philosophie des fonctions', eds. Roberto Lo Presti & Nunzio Allocca.

We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the... more We have been accustomed at least since Kant and mainstream history of philosophy to distinguish between the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘teleological’; between a fully mechanistic, quantitative science of Nature exemplified by Newton (or Galileo, or Descartes) and a teleological, qualitative approach to living beings ultimately expressed in the concept of ‘organism’ – a purposive entity, or at least an entity possessed of functions. The beauty of this distinction is that it seems to make intuitive sense and to map onto historical and conceptual constellations in medicine, physiology and the related natural-philosophical discussions on the status of the body versus that of the machine. In this paper I argue that the distinction between mechanism and teleology is imprecise and flawed, on the basis of a series of examples: the presence of ‘functional’ or ‘purposive’ features even in Cartesian physiology; work such as that of Richard Lower’s on animal respiration; the fact that the model of the ‘body-machine’ is not at all a mechanistic reduction of organismic properties to basic physical properties but on the contrary a way of emphasizing the uniqueness of organic life; and the concept of ‘animal economy’ in vitalist medical theory, which I present as a kind of ‘teleo-mechanistic’ concept of organism (borrowing a term of Timothy Lenoir’s which he used to discuss 19th-century embryology) – neither mechanical nor teleological.

Context and History in Literature and Science

by Martin Willis

This paper is a report on the final plenary session on Historicism in Literature and Science at the British Society... more This paper is a report on the final plenary session on Historicism in Literature and Science at the British Society for Literature and Science Annual Conference at Oxford in April 2012.

And it's only short - a page and a half!

On Erich Fromm: why he left the Frankfurt school

by Caroline Kamau

Kamau, C. (2012).

Chapter synopsis: 'On Erich Fromm: Why he left the Frankfurt School':

-Biography: Erich Fromm
-Erich... more Chapter synopsis: 'On Erich Fromm: Why he left the Frankfurt School':

-Biography: Erich Fromm
-Erich Fromm was very critical of Freudian psychoanalysis. The Frankfurt School disapproved of that.
-Tension arose between Fromm and Horkheimer/Adorno/Marcuse and other pro-Freudian contemporaries
-Erich Fromm had reservations about the Frankfurt School's desire to merge psychoanalysis with Marxist theory
-Controversy arose over the Frankfurt School's decision not to publish a manuscript that Fromm wrote, with Weiss. This was a report of their landmark authoritarian personality study of 1931. The topic and methodology shaped the Frankfurt School's later research into authoritarianism (e.g. Adorno et al.'s famous studies).

This chapter also discusses Erich Fromm's work post-Frankfurt School:
--Fromm on social neurosis
--Fromm on thoughts as a form of self-presentation or impression management
--Fromm's theoretical focus on self identity, rather than instincts
--Fromm's theory about personality traits
--Fromm on empiricism and psychology versus psychoanalysis

A Discussion of Special Relativity

by Galina Weinstein

Five topics: A rigid body does not exist in the special theory of relativity; distant simultaneity defined with... more Five topics: A rigid body does not exist in the special theory of relativity; distant simultaneity defined with respect to a given frame of reference without any reference to synchronized clocks; challenges on Einstein's connection of synchronization and contraction; a theory of relativity without light, composition of relative velocities and space of relative velocities.