In separate reviews of The Copernican Question published in the Summer 2012 issue of this journal, Noel Swerdlow and John Heilbron find little that meets their approval while failing to provide readers with a full and accurate summary of the book’s major claims and arguments.* The reviewers engage in an exercise in deconstructive surgery, essentially breaking down and reconstituting the work into separate studies. Swerdlow, who devotes most of his twenty-five page treatment to chapter 3 (with brief side-glances at the (...) introduction, chapters 1, 8, and 11), leaves the impression that my book is almost entirely about Copernicus. Heilbron, who confines himself mostly to what I have to say about Galileo, identifies a .. (shrink)

List of contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg; 1. Conceptions of the scientific revolution from Bacon to Butterfield: a preliminary sketch David C. Lindberg; 2. Conceptions of science in the scientific revolution Ernan McMullin; 3. Metaphysics and the new science Gary Hatfield; 4. Proof, portics, and patronage: Copernicus’s preface to De revolutionibus Robert S. Westman; 5. A reappraisal of the role of the universities in the scientific revolution John Gascoigne; 6. Natural magic, (...) hermetism, and occultism in early modern science Brian P. Copenhaver; 7. Natural history and the emblematic world view William B. Ashworth, Jr.; 8. From the secrets of nature to public knowledge William Eamon; 9. Chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication Jan V. Golinski; 10. The new philosophy and medicine in seventeenth-century England Harold J. Cook; 11. Science and heterodoxy: an early modern problem reconsidered Michael Hunter; 12. Infinitesimals and transcendent relations: the mathematics of motion in the late seventeenth century Michael S. Mahoney; 13. The case of mechanics: one revolution or many? Alan Gabbey; Index. (shrink)

In setting forth a new theory of the growth of scientific knowledge, Larry Laudan shows that any account of scientific change has consequences for the relationship between the history, philosophy and sociology of science. It is a laudable feature of his work that he does not treat any of these disciplines as undifferentiated monoliths. In fact, one of his main goals is to show that his account of progress requires specific ways of doing and relating these three disciplines. As an (...) historian invited to speak at the Philosophy of Science Association, it seemed appropriate for me to appraise the function of history of science in Laudan’s program. Without going into unnecessary detail, let me begin by examining some of his main claims.The focus of Laudan’s argument is on science construed as a form of problem-solving activity and on progress and rationality as appraisals of problem-solving capabilities. (shrink)

Considerable historiographical controversy surrounds the question of why and how Copernicus decided to overturn the prevailing Earth-centered representation of the heavens. This essay summarizes some key elements of an explanation first laid out in The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (2011) and subsequently expanded with further evidence in Copernicus and the Astrologers (2016). Copernicus’s defining problem situation is to be found in his involvement in a culture of astrological prognostication during his student days in Bologna (1496–1500). Just before (...) Copernicus’s arrival in the fall of 1496, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s attack on the foundations of astrology appeared from a prominent Bologna publisher. This publisher also produced several of the prognostications authored by Domenico Maria di Novara, in whose house Copernicus lodged. Among Pico’s many charges was a claim that astrologers do not agree on the order of the planets. Although the word “astrology” appears only once in Copernicus’s extant writings, it is certain that he was aware of Pico’s account of the astrologers’ disagreements on the matter of planetary order. The Copernican Question sets forth an inference about how and why Copernicus turned to heliocentrism that claims to be not only plausible but also the likeliest to correspond to what actually happened. (shrink)

Duhem regarded the history of physical science as carrying a twofold lesson for the practicing physicist. First, history revealed the slow, groping, yet continuous development of physical theory toward a true description of the relations among natural entities. Second, history also unmasked false explanations and metaphysical beliefs that might seduce the unwary scientist into following an unfruitful line of research. This paper brings forth the central images underlying Duhem's historiographical project and uses the papers by S. Menn and W. A. (...) Wallace to ask what Duhem's enterprise actually meant in practice. I argue that the main question is the following: What is to count as the proper space of historical meaning and explanation? Strong Duhemians, such as S. Menn, purchase the longue durée at the cost of making historical agents into completely passive transmitters of conceptual homologies; weak Duhemians, such as W. A. Wallace, shorten the temporal distance between agents and permit thereby a modicum of conflict and negotiation within physical theory while still seeking to preserve long-term conceptual genealogies. Both positions, it is argued, allow insufficient room for actors' categories to determine the space of cultural analysis. (shrink)

Three Imperial Mathematicians: Kepler Trapped between Tycho Brahe and Ursus. By Edward Rosen.

Thomas Kuhn's, book The Copernican Revolution deserves to be regarded as the best of that small group of longue duree histories that mark postwar historiography of science. In many respects, it is probably the single most influential one. Tightly written and brilliantly argued, it is responsible, together with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, for the continued popularity of the metaphor of revolution in science among scholars and students alike. Yet, surprisingly, while aspects of the story conceived in Kuhn's original account (...) have been debated, researched, and considerably revised, his overall understanding of a scientific revolution initiated by Copernicus has received no detailed scrutiny. The same may be said of the deployment of Copernican episode in Structure. Finally, a critical appreciation is in order not least because Kuhn's story is so compact and his language at times metaphorical. (shrink)

Introduction -- Prelude: from gesture to virtual agency -- Foundations for a theory of agency -- Virtual environmental forces and gestural energies: actants as agential -- Virtual embodiment: from actants to virtual human agents -- Virtual identity and actorial continuity -- Interlude I: from embodiment to subjectivity -- Staging virtual subjectivity -- Virtual subjectivity and aesthetically warranted emotions -- Staging virtual narrative agency -- Performing agency -- An integrative agential interpretation of Chopin's Ballade in F minor, op. 52 -- Interlude (...) II: hearing agency: a complex cognitive task -- Other perspectives on virtual agency -- Postlude. (shrink)

Wit, it can be said, is the compact expression of wisdom. Robert S. Hartman wrote with both wit and wisdom. Many times, though, his wit gets buried in demanding and lengthy prose. In this book, we have extracted the wit from the wisdom of a selection of Hartman's writing so that more of the world can learn from this man's genius. It's a quote book. It consists entirely of Hartman's own words. But, in small doses. We have pulled vital (...) ideas, thoughtful considerations, and clever remarks from six of Hartman's published pieces plus two heretofore unpublished manuscripts that are soon to be published by the Hartman Institute. We present these quotes in an order that, we believe, best tells the story of formal axiology. (shrink)

The theory I present and defend in this paper—what I term the art type theory— holds that something is a work of art iff it belongs to an established art type. Something is an established art type, in turn, either because its paradigmatic instances standardly satisfy eight art-making conditions, or because the art world has seen fit to enfranchise it as such. It follows that the art status of certain objects is independent of what any individual or culture might say (...) about it, while the art status of others fundamentally depends on the judgment of the art world. Because of the theory's quasi-institutional component, I conclude by defending it against four objections that have been raised against institutional definitions. (shrink)

In light of the environmental pressure humans are currently placing on the biosphere, there is overwhelming evidence to think that we have entered the early stages of a major extinction event. Inde...

Rawls offers three arguments for the priority of liberty in Theory, two of which share a common error: the belief that once we have shown the instrumental value of the basic liberties for some essential purpose (e.g., securing self-respect), we have automatically shown the reason for their lexical priority. The third argument, however, does not share this error and can be reconstructed along Kantian lines: beginning with the Kantian conception of autonomy endorsed by Rawls in section 40 of Theory, we (...) can explain our highest-order interest in rationality, justify the lexical priority of all basic liberties, and reinterpret Rawls’ threshold condition for the application of the priority of liberty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this Kantian reconstruction will not work within the radically different framework of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

We are living under an ever-present threat of nuclear destruction; The Revolution Against War is the first step towards a new worldview. These selected writings by Robert S. Hartman, and edited by axiologist Clifford G. Hurst, outline cultural, political, and moral discussions on war and peace. Robert S. Hartman at the age of 23, escaped from Germany shortly after Hitler was elected to power in 1933. He spent his life learning and teaching in a variety of fields as (...) a philosopher, business consultant, writer, activist, economist, ethicist, and mathematician. (shrink)

Commercial republicanism is the idea that a properly-structured commercial society can serve the republican end of minimizing the domination of citizens by states (imperium) and of citizens by other citizens (dominium). Much has been written about this idea in the last half-century, including analyses of individual commercial republicans (e.g., Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant) as well as discussions of national traditions of the same (e.g., in America, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy). In this chapter, I review five kinds of (...) arguments that have been historically offered for how commercial society so understood advances the republican ideal of non-domination: first, by simply realizing non-dominating relationships in the marketplace itself (Instantiation); second, by encouraging the growth of a wide middle class that can offer a counterweight to other, dominating classes (Internal Check-and-Balance); third, by increasing the wealth and power of republics vis-à-vis other, dominating states in the international arena (External Check-and-Balance); fourth, by helpfully nurturing bourgeois-civic virtues in republican citizens (Cultivating Virtue); and finally, by transforming dangerous passions into more readily regulable, even socially beneficial material interests (Sublimating Vice). I end the chapter by briefly considering commercial republicanism’s prospects as a continuing research program. (shrink)

Rawls offers three arguments for the priority of liberty in Theory, two of which share a common error: the belief that once we have shown the instrumental value of the basic liberties for some essential purpose (e.g., securing self-respect), we have automatically shown the reason for their lexical priority. The third argument, however, does not share this error and can be reconstructed along Kantian lines: beginning with the Kantian conception of autonomy endorsed by Rawls in section 40 of Theory, we (...) can explain our highest-order interest in rationality, justify the lexical priority of all basic liberties, and reinterpret Rawls’ threshold condition for the application of the priority of liberty. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this Kantian reconstruction will not work within the radically different framework of Political Liberalism. (shrink)

Contemporary republicanism is characterized by three main ideas: free persons, who are not subject to the arbitrary power of others; free states, which try to protect their citizens from such power without exercising it themselves; and vigilant citizenship, as a means to limit states to their protective role. This book advances an economic model of such republicanism that is ideologically centre-left. It demands an exit-oriented state interventionism, one that would require an activist government to enhance competition and resource exit from (...) dominating relationships within markets of all types, be they marital, labour, or residential. The substantial intervention and redistribution necessitated by such an approach make it leftist, while its tendency to work with rather than against the grain of markets makes it centrist. It is, in short, a contribution to progressive republican political thought, but one that is less social-democratic than market-democratic in character. (shrink)