The aim of this work is to elucidate John F. W. Herschel’s distinctive contribution to nineteenth-century British inductivism by exploring his understanding of experimental methods. Drawing on both his explicit discussion of experiment in his Preliminary Discourse on Natural Philosophy and his published account of experiments he conducted in the domain of electromagnetism, I argue that the most basic principle underlying Herschel’s epistemology of experiment is that experiment enables a particular kind of lower-level experimental understanding of phenomena. Experimental practices provide (...) knowledge of a particular phenomenon as a genuine effect produced under precise material conditions whose connections with other phenomena can be traced by variations in experimental parameters. The orienting concern of experimental inquiry seems to be the production of a secure understanding of phenomena even if it has no direct theoretical significance. Insofar as one can generate this lower-level understanding, it can function both as a fertile source for explanatory principles about phenomena and as a body of evidence against which one can test the adequacy of an explanatory hypothesis. This project provides evidence of Herschel’s inductivism not merely as a philosophical approach to understanding the sciences but as a methodological commitment in scientific practice. (shrink)

The nineteenth-century appraisal of Whewell's philosophy as confused, eclectic, and metaphysical is still dominant today. Yet he keeps reappearing on the agenda of the historians and philosophers of science. Why? Whewell continues to be a puzzle. Historians evade the puzzle by deeming him to have had no serious philosophy but some interesting ideas and/or to have been socially important. Menachim Fisch's recent study offers promise of a new appraisal. But Fisch's account leads back to the puzzle. Fisch poses the question (...) well, promises a new answer, but does not provide one. The puzzle will remain until the strength of Whewell's turn away from empiricist problems to Kantian ones has been appreciated. (shrink)

This article examines the nineteenth-century debate about scientific method between John Stuart Mill and William Whewell. Contrary to standard interpretations (given, for example, by Achinstein, Buchdahl, Butts, and Laudan), I argue that their debate was not over whether to endorse an inductive methodology but rather over the nature of inductive reasoning in science and the types of conclusions yielded by it. Whewell endorses, while Mill rejects, a type of inductive reasoning in which inference is employed to find a property or (...) cause shared by the observed members of a class, which is generalized to all its members, including the unobserved ones. Because of this, Whewell’s inductivism, unlike Mill’s, is able to yield theoretical hypotheses referring to unob-servables such as molecules and light waves. This is contrary to the claims of some critics of inductivism who argue that inductivism is unable to yield such hypotheses. Moreover, I suggest that Whewell’s view of induction conforms more closely than Mill’s view to the practice of scientists such as Kepler, Newton, and Fresnel, who do attempt to discover laws involving unobservables. (shrink)

I am honoured and pleased to address you this evening on the life and work of an extraordinary American thinker, Charles Sanders Peirce. Although Peirce is perhaps most often remembered as the father of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, I would like to impress upon you that he was also, and perhaps, especially, a logician, a working scientist and a mathematician. During his life time Peirce most often referred to himself, and was referred to by his colleagues, as a (...) logician. Furthermore, Peirce spent thirty years actively engaged in scientific research for the US Coast Survey. The National Archives in Washington, DC, holds some five thousand pages of Peirce's reports on this work. Finally, the four volumes of Peirce's mathematical papers edited by Professor Carolyn Eisele eloquently testify to his contributions to that field as well. (shrink)

For some time, there has been reason for imagining that we live in neo-Victorian times. We are awash in restless evangelicals, profligate of stern and apocalyptic advice. We have had praying leaders who imagine that foreigners, usually with beards, require reform and invasion. Celts threaten secession and the Union is extolled. There is much talk of families, education, and the anxieties of class. Our novels grow long and vexed, and even have plots. Historians seek the common reader and write meandering (...) narratives, full of metaphor, which may be purchased at railway stations. (shrink)

This article presents a little-studied issue of critical analysis of the main provisions of the inductive philosophy of the English thinker William Whewell (1794–1866) within the framework of university philosophy, in particular in the publications of the famous Kharkiv professor Pavlo Emilievych Leuckfeld (1859–1930). In this context, the main stages of Pavlo (Paul) Leuckfeld's creative and scientific path are indicated at the beginning, in particular his studies at the 2nd Kharkiv Gymnasium (1871–1878) and at the Faculty of History and Philology (...) of Kharkiv University (1878–1883). Further, attention is focused on his teaching activities at Kharkiv University (1884–1918), in particular on his fellowship since 1884, teaching the history of philosophy and logic as a private docent (since 1886), extraordinary professor (since 1893) and ordinary professor of philosophy (since 1899). His participation in international philosophical and psychological congresses, in particular in Munich (1896), Geneva (1904), Heidelberg (1908), and the peculiarities of his scientific fellowship at the University of Graz (Austria) with the authoritative professor Alexius Meinong are also indicated. In addition, attention is paid to the main features of Pavlo Leuckfeld's teaching and publications during his “Simferopol (Crimean) period”, when he was a professor of philosophy and psychology there. Pavlo Leuckfeld's publications were devoted to three main areas: 1) logic and the history of logic, 2) psychology and pedagogy, and 3) the history of philosophy. Among the publications of the first direction, two of his monographs were of great importance: “Various Trends in Logic and the Main Tasks of this Science” (1890) and “Logical Doctrine of Induction in the Main Historical Moments of Its Development” (1896). In these works, he analyzed the relevant positions of famous ancient and English philosophers (Aristotle, Francis Bacon, John Herschel, and John Stuart Mill). An important place in his analysis is occupied by the critical interpretation of the inductive philosophy of William Whewell, presented in particular in the third edition of the three-volume work “History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time” (1857). In this sense, the features of this work of the English philosopher were first pointed out, and then the main theses of Paul Leuckfeld in presenting his understanding of the position of William Whewell. (shrink)

The same year as the opening of the Woodstock music festival, a small medical school in Hamilton, Ontario, launched a daring new medical education programme in which lectures were replaced by small-group, interdisciplinary problem-based tutorials. Problem-based learning, as it became known, took the world of higher education by storm, such that today over 500 institutions in the World claim to use this method in almost every field of study, from engineering to liberal arts. Through the in-depth historical analysis of archive (...) materials, oral history interviews and contemporary publications, this thesis proposes a rigorous account of the intellectual history of PBL from its birth place at McMaster University, to its evolution in Maastricht University, closing on a comparison with the Danish problem-oriented, project-based model of higher education. The author delivers a narrative that stands at the cross-roads between history, philosophy of education and cognitive psychology. “Revolutions and Re-iterations” retraces not only the key historical events that shaped PBL but also the sources of inspiration for many of PBL’s key features and the central theoretical debates that defined the practice of PBL since the 1970s. (shrink)