This paper aims to map out the links between style and science. Two moments mark the migration of style from the discursive field of the arts to that of the history and philosophy of science: the first occurred in the German-speaking world during the first decades of the twentieth century; the second appeared in an Anglo-American context between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, when the category of style became involved in the so-called “pluralist turn” in the history and (...) philosophy of science. Taking this framework as its point of departure, the paper uncovers neglected contributions to the epistemology of style in order to foreground the concept of style as both a vector of inclusion (highlighting the plurality, historicity, and locality of scientific ways of knowing) and of exclusion (by generalizing the most correct ways of doing science and side-lining alternative ways of knowing). (shrink)

Essay review of Stephanie Ruphy, Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the (Dis)Unity of Science.

The question as to whether Ian Hacking’s project of scientific styles of thinking entails epistemic relativism has received considerable attention. However, scholars have never discussed it vis-à-vis Wittgenstein. This is unfortunate: not only is Wittgenstein the philosopher who, together with Foucault, has influenced Hacking the most, but he has also faced the same accusation of ‘relativism’. I shall explore the conceptual similarities and differences between Hacking’s notion of style of thinking and Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. It is a (...) fact that whether or not the latter entails epistemic relativism is still a controversial question. From my comparative analysis, it will emerge that there are stronger reasons to conclude that Hacking’s notion of style leads to epistemic relativism than there are to reach the same conclusion in the case of Wittgenstein’s conception of form of life. This point will be at odds with the anti-relativistic stance that Hacking has taken in his more recent writings. (shrink)

The analytical notions of ‘thought style’, ‘paradigm’, ‘episteme’ and ‘style of reasoning’ are some of the most popular frameworks in the history and philosophy of science. Although their proponents, Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Ian Hacking, are all part of the same philosophical tradition that closely connects history and philosophy, the extent to which they share similar assumptions and objectives is still under debate. In the first part of the paper, I shall argue that, despite the fact that (...) these four thinkers disagree on certain assumptions, their frameworks have the same explanatory goal – to understand how objectivity is possible. I shall present this goal as a necessary element of a common project -- that of historicising Kant's a priori. In the second part of the paper, I shall make an instrumental use of the insights of these four thinkers to form a new model for studying objectivity. I shall also propose a layered diagram that allows the differences between the frameworks to be mapped, while acknowledging their similarities. This diagram will show that the frameworks of style of reasoning and episteme illuminate conditions of possibility that lie at a deeper level than those considered by thought styles and paradigm. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, the literature on abduction and the literature on styles of thinking have existed almost totally in parallel. Here, for the first time, we bring them together and explore their mutual relevance. What is the consequence of the existence of several styles of scientific thinking for abduction? Can abduction, as a general creative mode of inference, have distinct characteristic forms within each style? To investigate this, firstly, we present the concept of abduction; secondly we analyze what is (...) understood by styles of thinking; thirdly, we give some comments on abduction and styles of thinking by analyzing examples of scientific discovery or innovation within each style. We develop a case-based comparative investigation of creative aspects of abductive reasoning with examples drawn from different styles of scientific thinking and doing as understood by the Crombie/hacking tradition. We argue that abduction, as a general mode of reasoning, can have a variety of specific expressions enabled and constrained by the styles of scientific thinking. Finally, we draw some conclusions on the relationship between abduction and styles of thinking suggesting that scientific discovery is a dynamical goal-directed activity within the scientific community that benefits from distinct styles of thinking and doing research. (shrink)

In his mature works, Kuhn abandons the concept of a paradigm and becomes more interested in the analysis of the conceptual structure of scientific theories. These changes are interpreted as resulting from a ‘linguistic turn’ that Kuhn underwent sometimes around the 1980s. Much of the philosophical discussions about Kuhn’s post-‘linguistic turn’ philosophy revolves around his views on taxonomic concepts. Apart from taxonomy, however, the mature Kuhn introduces other concepts, such as conceptual networks and lexicons. This article distinguishes these three concepts (...) and shows that adopting each one of them has different impacts on Kuhn’s model of science. After distinguishing and assessing the concepts of taxonomy, network, and lexicon, it will be argued that the latter not only fits the Kuhnian model of science better, but it also helps capture the wide sense of Kuhn’s early concept of a paradigm. (shrink)

Are we entering a major new phase of modern science, one in which our standard, human modes of reasoning and understanding, including heuristics, have decreasing value? The new methods challenge human intelligibility. The digital revolution inspires such claims, but they are not new. During several historical periods, scientific progress has challenged traditional concepts of reasoning and rationality, intelligence and intelligibility, explanation and knowledge. The increasing intelligence of machine learning and networking is a deliberately sought, somewhat alien intelligence. As such, it (...) challenges the traditional, heuristic foresight of expert researchers. Nonetheless, science remains human-centered in important ways—and yet many of our ordinary human epistemic activities are alien to ourselves. This fact has always been the source of “the discovery problem”. It generalizes to the problem of understanding expert scientific practice. Ironically, scientific progress plunges us ever deeper into complexities beyond our grasp. But how is progress possible without traditional realism and the intelligibility realism requires? Pragmatic flexibility offers an answer. (shrink)

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the connections between the statistical style of reasoning and the research practices of statistical mechanics in the early period of the long quantum revolution. It suggests that before 1925 the instantiations of the statistical style in physics went through two phases. The first phase consisted of the formulation of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics on the basis of the population‐gas analogy. The second phase was characterized by the generalization of the Maxwell‐Boltzmann statistics through analogies between (...) ideal gas molecules and other microphysical entities, analogies that shaped and were shaped by the rise of quantum theory. Einstein's invention of the Bose‐Einstein statistics started a third phase and created the conditions of possibility for a new classification of microphysical entities according to their different statistics. (shrink)

RESUMO Neste artigo pretendo identificar um "estilo de raciocínio" próprio à química e apontar a disseminação de seus produtos e conceitos. O objetivo é o de explicitar alguns elementos que caracterizam o estilo de pensar e de fazer da química na segunda metade do século XVIII, sua capilarização técnico-cultural. O delineamento de um estilo químico de raciocinar origina-se da constância dos espaços técnico-epistêmicos em que o saber químico é construído. A química é uma ciência de laboratório, eminentemente técnica e operatória, (...) quer dizer, trata-se de um conhecimento técnico-científico stricto sensu. Produtora de artefatos, a ciência química é inseparável da técnica, da tecnologia e da indústria, de maneira que sua identidade epistêmica é indissociável de sua história. Seu estilo caracteriza um valor profundo na cultura técnica do homo faber, do poder de agir sobre a natureza e de transformá-la através de manipulações e de rearranjos. ABSTRACT In this paper I will identify a "style of reasoning" that is proper to to Chemistry and to point to the dissemination of its products and concepts. My aim is to explain some elements that characterize the style of thinking and engaging in Chemistry in the second half of the 18th century, its techno-cultural capillary action. The shaping of a chemical style of reasoning originated from the constancy of the techno-epistemic sites in which chemical knowledge is formed. Chemistry is a laboratory science, eminently technical and operative, i.e., it deals with a techno-scientific knowledge stricto sensu. A producer of artifacts, chemical science is inseparable from technique, technology and industry, in such a way that its epistemic identity is inseparable from its history. Its style marks a profound value in the technical culture of the homo faber, the power of acting upon nature and transforming it through manipulations and rearrangements. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch a programme for AI-driven social theory. We begin by defining what we mean by artificial intelligence (AI) in this context. We then lay out our specification for how AI-based models can draw on the growing availability of digital data to help test the validity of different social theories based on their predictive power. In doing so, we use the work of Randall Collins and his state breakdown model to exemplify that, already today, AI-based models can (...) help synthesise knowledge from a variety of sources, reason about the world, and apply what is known across a wide range of problems in a systematic way. However, we also find that AI-driven social theory remains subject to a range of practical, technical, and epistemological limitations. Most critically, existing AI-systems lack three essential capabilities needed to advance social theory in ways that are cumulative, holistic, open-ended, and purposeful. These are (1) semanticisation, i.e., the ability to develop and operationalize verbal concepts to represent machine-manipulable knowledge; (2) transferability, i.e., the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to another; and (3) generativity, i.e., the ability to independently create and improve on concepts and models. We argue that if the gaps identified here are addressed by further research, there is no reason why, in the future, the most advanced programme in social theory should not be led by AI-driven cumulative advances. (shrink)

A strong case has been made for the role and value of mechanistic reasoning in process-oriented sciences, such as molecular biology and neuroscience. This paper shifts focus to assess the role of mechanistic reasoning in an area where it is neither obvious nor expected: population genetics. Population geneticists abstract away from the causal-mechanical details of individual organisms and, instead, use mathematics to describe population-level, statistical phenomena. This paper, first, develops a framework for the identification of mechanistic reasoning where it is (...) not obvious: mathematical and mechanistic styles of scientific reasoning. Second, it applies this framework to demonstrate that both styles are integrated in modern investigations of evolutionary biology. Characteristic of the former, applied population genetic techniques provide statistical evidence for associations between genotype, phenotype, and fitness. Characteristic of the latter, experimental interventions provide causal-mechanical evidence for associations between the very same relationships, often in the same model organisms. The upshot is a richer perspective of how evolutionary biologists build evidence for hypotheses regarding adaptive evolution and a general framework for assessing the scope of mechanistic reasoning across the sciences. (shrink)

En este artículo presento una reconstrucción de la controversia sobre el determinismo en la física a principios del siglo xx. Usaré el modelo de espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler, pues permite analizar controversias haciendo énfasis en el cambio conceptual. Esto servirá para respaldar la hipótesis de partida: la aceptación del indeterminismo en la física estuvo estrechamente ligado al uso de los métodos estadísticos. La conclusión es que la probabilidad pasó por tres estadios de asimilación: primero, fue una herramienta de cálculo; (...) luego, se convirtió en un elemento indispensable para la interpretación de algunos fenómenos y, finalmente, pasó a concebirse como un elemento constitutivo de la naturaleza. (shrink)

En el artículo planteamos una categoría para el estudio de controversias científicas, controversias sobre estilos, y proponemos una herramienta de análisis para dar cuenta de ellas. Para ello, hacemos uso de la noción de estilo de razonamiento de Ian Hacking y la metáfora de una historia por estratos. Mostraremos que las controversias sobre estilos tienen la particularidad de persistir en el tiempo, evolucionar e involucrar discusiones y debates en múltiples niveles. Para ilustrar nuestra propuesta, presentamos la controversia cuántica como un (...) ejemplo de una controversia sobre estilos y hacemos uso de la herramienta que aquí sugerimos. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article, which summarises some of the main arguments of Analogical Investigations [Lloyd 2015], undertakes a comparative cross-cultural critique of the dominant Western view that downgrades analogy especially when that is contrasted unfavourably with a notion of axiomatic-deductive demonstration aiming to secure incontrovertible conclusions. It draws on materials from ancient Greece, ancient China and modern social anthropology and philosophy of science to explore the problems of translation and mutual intelligibility. It develops the idea of semantic stretch to qualify the literal/metaphorical (...) dichotomy and the notion of the multidimensionality of reality to clarify aspects of the controversy between realism and relativism. (shrink)

Ian Hacking defines a “style of scientific thinking” loosely as a “way to find things out about the world” characterised by five hallmark features of a number of scientific template styles. Most prominently, these are autonomy and “self-authentication”: a scientific style of thinking, according to Hacking, is not good because it helps us find out the truth in some domain, it itself defines the criteria for truth-telling in its domain. I argue that Renaissance medicine, Mediaeval “demonology”, and magical thinking pass (...) muster as scientific according to Hacking's criteria. However, application of these thought styles to the entities they introduce generates statements that logically imply a set of “ordinary” statements—or what Bernard Williams calls “plain truths”—which, contra the claims of autonomy and self-authentication, allows styles to be assessed from a style- independent perspective. Using Williams’ notion of plain truth, I show that Renaissance medicine, demonology, and magical thinking, in reality issue in many plain falsehoods. This confronts us with what I call Hacking's dilemma: either define stricter necessary conditions on being a style of scientific thinking, or concede that some styles albeit scientific are not as good at finding things out about the world as others. I make three suggestions to deal with the dilemma. (shrink)

ArgumentThe article retraces the shifting conceptualizations of psychological trauma in experimental psychopathological research in the middle decades of the twentieth century in the United States. Among researchers studying so-called experimental neuroses in animal laboratories, trauma was an often-invoked category used to denote the clash of conflicting forces believed to lead to neurotic suffering. Experimental psychologists, however, soon grew skeptical of the traumatogenic model and ultimately came to reject neurosis as a disease entity. Both theoretical differences and practical circumstances, such as (...) the technical challenge of stabilizing neurotic symptoms in rats, led to this demise. Yet, despite their reservations, experimental psychologists continued to employ traumatic stimuli to produce psychopathological syndromes. In the 1960s, a new understanding of trauma evolved, which emphasized the loss of control experienced by traumatized animal subjects. These shifting ideas about trauma, I argue, reflect both varying experimental cultures, epistemic norms as well as changing societal concerns. (shrink)

Scholars in science and technology studies, as well as economics and innovation studies, utilize the trajectory metaphor in describing a technology’s maturation. Impetus and purpose may differ, but the trajectory serves as a shared tool for assessing social change either in society at large or within a market sector, a firm, or a discipline. In reverse, the lens of a technology trajectory can be a basis for assessing technology, estimating economic growth, and selecting among plausible product development pathways. Emerging technologies (...) pose a challenge in that the promissory claims that attracted investment may also challenge social safeguards, leading to necessary, but unforeseen hurdles to later technology acceptance. The experiences with biotechnology and nanotechnology demonstrate that knowledge gained in the intervening years was to have tempered exaggerations and addressed the criteria and the responsibilities of those who would later be deciding on product acceptability. In particular, the promissory claim for nanotechnology, unique phenomena, challenged regulatory practice, while claims for biotechnology products were often the fruition of themes found in the educational experience common to both the biotechnology researcher and the regulator. The social science and humanities literature mirrored these points as did the responses of civil society organizations. A prospective trajectory for artificial intelligence is developed using the example of driverless cars and then qualitatively compared to the retrospective trajectories for nanotechnology and biotechnology. Experience with automation, algorithm transparency, and computational modeling of biological mechanisms are identified as pertinent to responsible AI development. (shrink)

Social studies of science have often treated natural field sites as extensions of the laboratory. But this overlooks the unique specificities of field sites. While lab sites are usually private spaces with carefully controlled borders, field sites are more typically public spaces with fluid boundaries and diverse inhabitants. Field scientists must therefore often adapt their work to the demands and interests of local agents. I propose to address the difference between lab and field in sociological terms, as a difference in (...) style. A field style treats epistemic alterity as a resource rather than an obstacle for objective knowledge production. A sociological stylistics of the field should thus explain how objective science can co-exist with radical conceptual difference. I discuss examples from the Canadian North, focussing on collaborations between state wildlife biologists and managers, on the one hand, and local Aboriginal Elders and hunters, on the other. I argue that a sociological stylistics of the field can help us to better understand how radically diverse agents may collaborate across cultures in the successful production of reliable natural knowledge. (shrink)

Many philosophers attribute extraordinary importance to the idea of natural kinds seemingly intimating that the very possibility of certain kinds of activity are ontologically beholden to the existence of kinds. Specifically, regarding chemistry, Brian Ellis intimated that the success of any plausible metaphysical essentialism depends upon its “reliance on examples from chemistry.” Ellis’s view is representative of a tradition in analytic philosophy that has utilized chemical examples as paradigmatic natural kinds. In this regard, Kripke and Putnam emerge as the architects (...) of an entrenched research program dedicated to the chemical tradition of natural kinds in analytic philosophy. The emergence of a critical body of literature by philosophers of chemistry and others has shattered the complacent reliance upon chemical examples as exemplary kinds. On the basis of this emerging critical literature, I will critically explore the way in which chemical practice and inquiry affects the natural kind debate. So, instead of the pretense that we simply carve nature at its joints, we need to become better grounded in the practice of science, and especially with regard to the debate about natural kinds in chemical practice. Consistent with this orientation, we need to make the practice turn, that is, eradicate the fantasy of logical reconstruction and become involved with the interpretative and historical challenges of understanding the nuances of practice. The point here is quite clear, metaphysical questions regarding natural kind should be imminent to scientific practice. Indeed, any legitimate metaphysics of natural kinds should be appropriately informed and grounded in practice and not operate on the basis of a priori sovereignty. I will insert this critical discussion within the analytical context of the notion of interpretive communities and make the case that philosophers should not assume that appeals to the purity of philosophy can substitute for the complexity and practical orientation of chemical practice. (shrink)

In recent decades, investigation of brain injuries associated with amnesia allowed progress in the philosophy and science of memory, but it also paved the way for the hubris of assuming that memory is an exclusively neural phenomenon. Nonetheless, there are methodological and conceptual reasons preventing a reduction of the ecological and contextual phenomenon of memory to a neural phenomenon, since memory is the observed action of an individual before being the simple output of a brain (or, at least, so we (...) will argue), and there is no good reason to suppose that it is necessary to postulate a more basic reality to memory lying behind the mere individual actions. (shrink)

What today divides analytical from Continental philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. Using ‘the boundary problem’, or ‘the democratic paradox’, as an example, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most analytical and most Continental philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems (...) that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which not understanding the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems and those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems. It is among these subgroups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical–Continental divide is more a matter of style than of substance; but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance. (shrink)

Styles of reasoning are important devices to understand scientific practice. As I use the concept, a style of reasoning is a pattern of inferential relations that are used to select, interpret, and support evidence for scientific results. In this paper, I defend the view that there is a plurality of styles of reasoning: different domains of science often invoke different styles. I argue that this plurality is an important source of disunity in scientific practice, and it provides additional arguments in (...) support of the disunity claim. I also contrast Ian Hacking’s broad characterization of styles of reasoning with a narrow understanding that I favor. Drawing on examples from molecular biology, chemistry and mathematics, I argue that differences in style of reasoning lead to differences in the way the relevant results are obtained and interpreted. The result is a pluralist view about styles of reasoning that is sensitive to nuances of inferential relations in scientific activity. (shrink)

ABSTRACT BEER, P. A. C. The matter of truth in knowledge production about psychic suffering: considerations from Ian Hacking and Jacques Lacan. 2020. 250p. Thesis (PhD) – Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2020. The thesis aims to reaffirm the importance of the debate around the matter of truth in relation to the production of knowledge concerning psychic suffering. Its point of departure is the understanding that the matter of truth contains two main appearances: as employed to (...) legitimize produced knowledge while establishing normative patterns, and as presenting itself in a critical form as a disruptive element to established knowledge. As such, it is a discussion that embraces both an affirmation of knowledge’s necessary character and of its variability. It will be argued in the above sense that the term “truth” must be taken as an inclusive and reciprocal gathering of epistemological, ontological, ethical and political elements. Ian Hacking’s historicized understanding of science enables such a consideration of contingent bases to scientific practice, while still producing necessary knowledge. It thus becomes is possible to establish a field in which normative understandings about scientific praxis might be criticized without it resulting in any kind of refusal or disqualification of the relevant, produced knowledge. Hacking’s proposition of a “historical ontology” and of a “dynamic nominalism” also represents an important contribution to the accumulation of knowledge production about psychic suffering debate, by affirming the ontological effects of knowledge. The way as truth is mobilized within Lacanian psychoanalysis flows from that standpoint, seen as focused on three main elements: truth’s autonomy towards the subject, (truth speaks), the opposing and temporary character of a positivized truth facing established knowledge ,(truth as critique), and the negative dimension of truth which relates to the inexhaustibility of this dialectical process of negations, (truth as radical difference). It is argued that it is possible to sustain a particular reasoning style, (in Hacking’s terms), for psychoanalysis, which is based on radical negativity. It is further argued, that the above rationalities in question work with a historicized understanding of knowledge that does not have any external (nor internal) criteria to warrant its truth. However, psychoanalysis takes negativity — arguably the base of knowledge’s variability and of truth’s disruptive character — beyond Hacking’s philosophy of science, and can thus offer even wider possibilities of thinking about the causality of psychic suffering. Even if with different intensities, both approaches signal the necessity of ethical and political implication in knowledge’s production and employment. Once there is no epistemological warranty to knowledge, its production value reverts to social agreements and ethical positioning. There is, therefore, the necessity of considering power relations. Finally, it is argued that the radical negativity sustained from psychoanalysis locates the political as an actually necessary field, inescapable by the very fact that it is not possible to crystalize any form of truth which is not the affirmation of radical difference. It is maintained then that introducing the matter of truth has as horizon the production of a kind of knowledge about psychic suffering which puts into question, at all time, its epistemological, ontological, ethical and political assumptions. (shrink)

Biomedical ontologies are considered a serious innovation for biomedical research and clinical practice. They promise to integrate information coming from different biological databases thus creating a common ground for the representation of knowledge in all the life sciences. Such a tool has potentially many implications for both basic biomedical research and clinical practice. Here I discuss how this tool has been generated and thought. Due to the analysis of some empirical cases I try to elaborate how biomedical ontologies constitute a (...) novelty also from an epistemological point of view. (shrink)