19 found
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  1.  14
    Representing Space in the Scientific Revolution.David Marshall Miller - 2014 - Cambridge University Press.
    The novel understanding of the physical world that characterized the Scientific Revolution depended on a fundamental shift in the way its protagonists understood and described space. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, spatial phenomena were described in relation to a presupposed central point; by its end, space had become a centerless void in which phenomena could only be described by reference to arbitrary orientations. David Marshall Miller examines both the historical and philosophical aspects of this far-reaching development, including the (...)
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  2. Qualities, Properties, and Laws in Newton’s Induction.David Marshall Miller - 2009 - Philosophy of Science 76 (5):1052-1063.
    Newton’s argument for universal gravitation in the Principia eventually rested on the third “Rule of Philosophizing,” which warrants the generalization of “qualities of bodies.” An analysis of the rule and the history of its development indicate that the term ‘quality’ should be taken to include both inherent properties of bodies and relations among systems of bodies, generalized into `laws'. By incorporating law‐induction into the rule, Newton could legitimately rebuff objections to his theory by claiming that universal gravitation was justified by (...)
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  3.  75
    The Parallelogram Rule from Pseudo-Aristotle to Newton.David Marshall Miller - 2017 - Archive for History of Exact Sciences 71 (2):157-191.
    The history of the Parallelogram Rule for composing physical quantities, such as motions and forces, is marked by conceptual difficulties leading to false starts and halting progress. In particular, authors resisted the required assumption that the magnitude and the direction of a quantity can interact and are jointly necessary to represent the quantity. Consequently, the origins of the Rule cannot be traced to Pseudo-Aristotle or Stevin, as commonly held, but to Fermat, Hobbes, and subsequent developments in the latter part of (...)
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  4. Seeing and Believing: Galileo, Aristotelians, and the Mountains on the Moon.David Marshall Miller - 2013 - In Daniel De Simone & John Hessler (eds.), The Starry Messenger. Levenger Press. pp. 131-145.
    Galileo’s telescopic lunar observations, announced in Siderius Nuncius (1610), were a triumph of observational skill and ingenuity. Yet, unlike the Medicean stars, Galileo’s lunar “discoveries” were not especially novel. Indeed, Plutarch had noted the moon’s uneven surface in classical times, and many other renaissance observers had also turned their gaze moonward, even (in Harriot’s case) aided by telescopes of their own. Moreover, what Galileo and his contemporaries saw was colored by the assumptions they already had. Copernicans assumed the moon was (...)
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  5.  48
    Regressus and Empiricism in the Controversy about Galileo’s Lunar Observations.David Marshall Miller - 2018 - Perspectives on Science 26 (3):293-324.
    This paper defends a version of J. H. Randall’s thesis that modern empiricism is rooted in the Scholastic regressus method epitomized by Jacopo Zabarella in De Regressu (1578). Randall’s critics note that the empirical practice of Galileo and his contemporaries does not follow Zabarella. However, Zabarella’s account of the regressus is imprecise, which permitted an interpretation introducing empirical hypothesis testing into the framework. The discourse surrounding Galileo’s lunar observations in Sidereus Nuncius (1610) suggests that both Galileo and his interlocutors amended (...)
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  6. History and Philosophy of Science History.David Marshall Miller - 2011 - In Seymour Mauskopf & Tad Schmaltz (eds.), Integrating history and philosophy of science: problems and prospects. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 29-48.
    Science lies at the intersection of ideas and society, at the heart of the modern human experience. The study of past science should therefore be central to our humanistic attempt to know ourselves. Nevertheless, past science is not studied as an integral whole, but from two very different and divergent perspectives: the intellectual history of science, which focuses on the development of ideas and arguments, and the social history of science, which focuses on the development of science as a social (...)
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  7. O Male Factum: Rectilinearity and Kepler's Discovery of the Ellipse.David Marshall Miller - 2008 - Journal for the History of Astronomy 39.
    In 1596, in the Mysterium Cosmographicum, a twenty-five-year-old Johannes Kepler rashly banished lines from the universe. They “scarcely admit of order,” he wrote, and God himself could have no use for them in this “well-ordered universe.” Twenty-five years later, though, Kepler had come to repent the temerity of his youth. “O male factum!” he lamented in a 1621 second edition of the Mysterium – “O what a mistake” it was to dismiss lines, for linearity is revealed in those most perfect (...)
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  8.  41
    Friedman, Galileo, and Reciprocal Iteration.David Marshall Miller - 2011 - Philosophy of Science 78 (5):1293-1305.
    In Dynamics of Reason (2001), Michael Friedman uses the example of Galilean rectilinear inertia to support his defense of scientific rationality against post-positivist skepticism. However, Friedman’s treatment of the case is flawed, such that his model of scientific change fails to fit the historical evidence. I present the case of Galileo, showing how it supports Friedman’s view of scientific knowledge, but undermines his view of scientific change. I then suggest reciprocal iteration as an amendment of Friedman’s view that better accounts (...)
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  9.  49
    Galileo’s impractical science: Matteo Valleriani: Galileo engineer. Boston studies in the philosophy of science, Vol. 269. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010, xxii+320pp, €99.95 HB.David Marshall Miller - 2011 - Metascience 21 (1):223-225.
    Galileo’s impractical science Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9534-4 Authors David Marshall Miller, Department of Philosophy, Duke University, 201 West Duke, Durham, NC 27708, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
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  10. Galileo's Sidereus Nuncius and Its Reception.David Marshall Miller - 2021 - In David Marshall Miller & Dana Jalobeanu (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  11. Introduction: The Disciplinary Revolutions of Early Modern Philosophy.David Marshall Miller & Jalobeanu Dana - 2021 - In David Marshall Miller & Dana Jalobeanu (eds.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
  12.  28
    Models of Intelligibility in Galileo's Mechanical Science.David Marshall Miller - 2017 - In Marcus P. Adams, Zvi Biener, Uljana Feest & Jacqueline Anne Sullivan (eds.), Eppur Si Muove: Doing History and Philosophy of Science with Peter Machamer: A Collection of Essays in Honor of Peter Machamer. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 39-54.
    Based on an examination of Galileo’s mechanics, Peter Machamer and Andrea Woody (and Machamer alone in subsequent articles) proposed the scientific use of what they call models of intelligibility. As they define it, a model of intelligibility (MOI) is a concrete phenomenon that guides scientific understanding of problematic cases. This paper extends Machamer and Woody’s analysis by elaborating the semantic function of MOIs. MOIs are physical embodiments of theoretical representations. Therefore, they eliminate the interpretive distance between theory and phenomena, creating (...)
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  13.  32
    The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution.David Marshall Miller & Dana Jalobeanu (eds.) - 2021 - New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
    The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of (...)
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  14.  66
    The Thirty Years War and the Galileo Affair.David Marshall Miller - 2008 - History of Science 46 (1):49-74.
    All too often, historians of the ‘Galileo Affair’ fail to recognize the dynamic – indeed, tumultuous – nature of the political landscape surrounding Galileo’s condemnation and the events leading to it. This was a landscape rent by the Thirty Years War, which dominated the affairs of Europe’s rulers, including Galileo’s patrons. In fact, Galileo’s publication of the Dialogo in 1632 could not have come at a more ill-advised moment: in the aftermath of the battle of Breitenfeld, the nadir of Catholicism (...)
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  15.  44
    Using representations of space to study early modern physical science: An example of philosophy in the service of history.David Marshall Miller - manuscript
    Most historians of science eagerly acknowledge that the early modern period witnessed a shift from a prevailing Aristotelian, spherical, centered conception of space to a prevailing Cartesian, rectilinear, oriented spatial framework. Indeed, this shift underlay many of the important advances for which the period is celebrated. However, historians have failed to engage the general conceptual shift, focusing instead on the particular explanatory developments that resulted. This historical lacuna can be attributed to a historiographical problem: the lack of an adequate unit (...)
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  16.  98
    On Newton’s method: William L. Harper: Isaac Newton’s scientific method: Turning data into evidence about gravity and cosmology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 360pp, $75 HB. [REVIEW]Nick Huggett, George E. Smith, David Marshall Miller & William Harper - 2013 - Metascience 22 (2):215-246.
  17. Review of Michael J. Sauter: The Spatial Reformation: Euclid between Man, Cosmos, and God[REVIEW]David Marshall Miller - 2020 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science.
  18. Review of Eileen Reeves and Albert Van Helden, trans., On Sunspots. [REVIEW]David Marshall Miller - 2012 - Aestimatio 9:97-102.
     
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  19.  44
    Review of Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685[REVIEW]David Marshall Miller - 2008 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (3).
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