: Understanding Helmholtz's philosophy of science requires attention to his experimental practice. I sketch out such a project by showing how experiment shapes his theory of perception in three ways. One, the theory emerged out of empirical and experimental research. Two, the concept of experiment fills a critical conceptual gap in his theory of perception. Experiment functions not merely as a scientific technique, but also as a general epistemological strategy. Three, Helmholtz's experimental practice provides essential clues to the interpretation of (...) his theory of perception. A case study from experimental investigation of hearing shows how he designed such studies in accordance with the epistemological commitments of the theory of perception. Yet, while the theory was important to his experiments, the soundness of the experimental strategy was epistemically independent of those commitments. Secondly, the case study illustrates how Helmholtz consistently held that causal inferences underwrite reference to a real, but indirectly experienced external world. (shrink)

Franz Boas’ articulation of a new historicist and relativistic framework for anthropology stands as the founding moment of the discipline. Accordingly, scholars have sought to trace its source and inspirations, often concluding that Boas’ thought was shaped almost exclusively by his German background and characterized by a foundational methodological tension. Here, I instead show that Boas’ most creative early work benefitted from close interaction with debates in psychology and that his methodological reflections were part of the much wider series of (...) discussions in North America engendered by the importation of the German Geistes-/ Naturwissenschaft debate. Central to such debates, as well as to anthropological ones in these years, were the contested definitions of the human mind and of knowledge. Recovering this shared focus reveals the importance of such questions to Boas’ early writings, allowing us to better reconstruct his views on anthropology and to appreciate how he approached the question of how to justify the bounding of human knowledge into specific disciplines. (shrink)

Norbert Elias’s early work – specifically ‘Idea and Individual’ – offers a positive account of philosophy’s potential contribution towards historically oriented concrete sociological investigation. His later work, on the other hand, characterizes philosophical investigation as little more than a distraction from the myth-exposing vocation of the sociologist. This later ‘post-philosophical’ account of figurational sociology predominates today. Within this article, however, I suggest it has come to prominence through a series of dubious rhetorical strategies, most notably subtextual hearsay and disingenuous caricature. (...) By dispensing with the post-philosophical rhetoric, I argue, figurational sociologists might again, following the Elias of ‘Idea and Individual’, take the possibility of a philosophically grounded sociology seriously. If the article does not convince figurational sociologists to revisit philosophy as a potentially positive sociological resource, however, my effort will not have been wasted for as long as it demonstrates the presently dubious nature of their post-philosophical rhetoric. (shrink)