_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 98 - 115 What has come to be known as the ‘linguistic turn’ in historical theory over the past forty years or so has finished what the two World Wars began in demolishing the confidence that the historical discipline possessed at the turn of the twentieth century. This confidence was most memorably expressed by Lord Acton that one day we would possess ‘ultimate history’. Today most historians are probably more inclined to subscribe (...) to Pieter Geyl’s view that history is ‘an argument without end’. Yet the jettisoning of a teleological goal for historical accounts does not mean that we have to also part with the idea of progress; we just need a new definition of it. In this article I argue that we should adopt an evolutionary epistemology of history which sees progress as something pushed from behind, rather than aiming at an undefined point in the future; but this is not the only advantage an evolutionary epistemology can offer us. I go on to outline two further aspects of evolutionary epistemology which may benefit historical theorists. (shrink)

In "Truth and Method" Hans Georg Gadamer revealed hermeneutics as one of the foundational epistemological elements of history, in contrast to scientific method, which, with empiricism, constitutes natural sciences’ epistemology. This important step solved a number of long-standing arguments over the ontology of history, which had become increasingly bitter in the twentieth century. But perhaps Gadamer’s most important contribution was that he annulled history’s supposed inferiority to the natural sciences by showing that the knowledge it offers, (...) though different in nature from science, is of equal import. By showing history’s arrant independence from the natural sciences, the former was furnished with a new-found importance, and thrust on an equal footing with the latter—even in a distinctly scientific age such as ours. This essay intends to show that the idea of history’s discrete ontology from science was prefigured almost a century earlier by Benedetto Croce. Croce and Gadamer show compelling points of contact in their philosophies, notwithstanding that they did not confer equal consequence to what may be identified as Gadamer’s principal substantiation of history’s epistemology—hermeneutics. Of course this essay does not aspire to be exhaustive: the thought of both philosophers is far too dense. Nevertheless, the main points of contact shall be outlined, and, though concise, this essay seeks to point out the striking similarities of these two cardinal philosophers of history. (shrink)

Ludwik Fleck, Edmund Husserl : on the historicity of scientific knowledge -- Gaston Bachelard : the concept of "phenomenotechnique" -- Georges Canguilhem : epistemological history -- Pisum : Carl Correns's experiments on Xenia, 1896-99 -- Eudorina : Max Hartmann's experiments on biological regulation in protozoa, 1914-21 -- Ephestia : Alfred Kähn's experimental design for a developmental physiological -- Genetics, 1924-45 -- Tobacco mosaic virus : virus research at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes for Biochemistry and Biology, 1937-45 -- The concept (...) of the gene : molecular biological perspectives -- The liquid scintillation counter : traces of radioactivity -- The concept of information : the writings of François Jacob -- Intersections -- Preparations -- The economy of the scribble. (shrink)

Social epistemology has paid little attention to oral historiography as a source of expert insight into the credibility of testimony. One extant suggestion, however, is that oral historians treat testimony with a default trust reflecting a standing warrant for accepting testimony. The view that there is such a standing warrant is sometimes known as the Acceptance Principle for Testimony. I argue that the practices of oral historians do not count in support of APT, all in all. Experts have commonly (...) described oral traditions as oriented towards political, cultural and entertainment ends, and not only—or not even—towards an accurate depiction of past events. Even when accuracy is the emphasis, many historians of oral tradition do not trust such testimony as APT would suggest; the importance of gathering supporting evidence is a consistent emphasis. Yet oral historiography, both of traditions and more generally, does hold out lessons for the epistemology of testimony, implicating a wider range of social.. (shrink)

This essay aims to sharpen debates on the pros and cons of historical epistemology, which is now understood as a novel approach to the study of knowledge, by comparing it with the history of epistemology as traditionally pursued by philosophers. The many versions of both approaches are not always easily discernable. Yet, a reasoned comparison of certain versions can and should be made. In the first section of this article, I argue that the most interesting difference involves (...) neither the subject matter nor goal, but the methods used by the two approaches. In the second section, I ask which of the two approaches or methods is more promising given that both historical epistemologists and historians of epistemology claim to contribute to epistemology simpliciter . Using traditional problems concerning the epistemic role of perception, I argue that the historical epistemologies of Wartofsky and Daston and Galison fail to show that studying practices of perception is philosophically significant. Standard methods from the history of epistemology are more promising, as I show by means of reconstructing arguments in a debate about the relation between perception and judgment in psychological research on the famous moon illusion. (shrink)

Some biologists now argue in favour of a pluralistic approach to plant activities, understandable both from the classical perspective of physiological mechanisms and that of the biology of behaviour involving choices and decisions in relation to the environment. However, some do not hesitate to go further, such as plant “neurobiologists” or philosophers who today defend an intelligence, a mind or even a plant consciousness in a renewed perspective of these terms. To what extent can we then adhere to pluralism in (...) the study of plant behaviour? How does this pluralism in the study and explanation of plant behaviour fit into, or even build itself up, in a broader history of science? Is it a revolutionary way of rethinking plant behaviour in the twenty-first century or is it an epistemological extension of an older attitude? By proposing a synthesis of the question of plant behaviour by selected elements of the history of botany, the objective is to show that the current plant biology is not unified on the question of behaviour, but that its different tendencies are in fact part of a long botanical tradition with contrasting postures. Two axes that are in fact historically linked will serve as a common thread. 1. Are there several ways of understanding or conceiving plant behaviour within plant sciences and their epistemology? 2. Can the behaviour of a plant be considered in the same way as that of an animal? The working hypothesis defended in this article consists in showing that the current opposition between growth, development and reductionist physiology on the one hand and the biology of behaviour involving sensitivity and choices in plant activity on the other hand has been built up through the history of botany. (shrink)

A brief discussion of the ways in which awareness of and sensitivity to the history of philosophy can contribute to epistemology even if epistemology is understood as a distinctively philosophical and not primarily historical enterprise.

This essay aims to sharpen debates on the pros and cons of historical epistemology, which is now understood as a novel approach to the study of knowledge, by comparing it with the history of epistemology as traditionally pursued by philosophers. The many versions of both approaches are not always easily discernable. Yet, a reasoned comparison of certain versions can and should be made. In the first section of this article, I argue that the most interesting difference involves (...) neither the subject matter nor goal, but the methods used by the two approaches. In the second section, I ask which of the two approaches or methods is more promising given that both historical epistemologists and historians of epistemology claim to contribute to epistemology simpliciter. Using traditional problems concerning the epistemic role of perception, I argue that the historical epistemologies of Wartofsky and Daston and Galison fail to show that studying practices of perception is philosophically significant. Standard methods from the history of epistemology are more promising, as I show by means of reconstructing arguments in a debate about the relation between perception and judgment in psychological research on the famous moon illusion. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: La pragmatique et la sémantique de l’historiographie révèlent une fragmentation croissante qui s’étend par-delà les écoles jusqu’aux historiens individuels. Alors que les scientifiques normalisent les données pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux théories, les historiens interprètent leurs théories, de manières incompatibles entre elles, pour qu’elles s’ajustent aux différents cas historiques. Les difficultés qui en découlent dans la communication historiographique remettent en cause les philosophies herméneutiques de l’historiographie et redonnent un nouvel intérêt à la question d’une historiographie scientifique. Mais les réponses existantes (...) sont philosophiquement obsolètes. Une façon de reformuler le problème est de partir de la complexité du chaos et de l’unicité de l’histoire. Seule la science peut évaluer si les propriétés d’un domaine donné en interdisent une approche scientifique. Or la science s’étend par réductions méthodologiques explicatives, en ramenant des propriétés d’événements complexes, chaotiques et uniques, qui sont familières, mais d’un niveau plus élevé, à des propriétés ou interrelations non familières et d’un niveau moins élevé. La culture disciplinaire de l’historiographie, cependant, empêche le développement par essais et erreurs de telles tentatives de réductions scientifiques, qui seules permettraient d’évaluer les possibilités d’une historiographie scientifique, laquelle, dans la situation présente, relève de la science-fiction. (shrink)

International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 4, Page 420-422, December 2011.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 397-414, September 2022.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 397-414, September 2022.

An early example is von Neumann's and Charney's Princeton Meteorological Project in the period 1946–53 which ended with daily numerical prediction in less than 2 hours. After this stage, the questions of long-range forecasting and general circulation of the atmosphere became of greater importance. The late 1950s saw the emergence of an alternative: were atmospheric models used mainly for prediction or understanding? This controversial debate in particular occurred during an important colloquium in Tokyo in 1960 which gathered together J. Charney, (...) E. Lorenz, A. Eliassen, and B. Saltzman, among others, and witnessed discussions on statistical methods for predictions and/or maximum simplification of dynamic equations. This phase ended in 1963 with Lorenzs seminal paper on “Deterministic non periodic flows.”. (shrink)

While the contemporary philosophy of history is under severe attack from many quarters (from linguistic historicism to deconstructionism), Lonergan offers a reconstruction of the philosophy of history by grounding it in his "foundational anti-foundationalism," which breaks with the pervasive assumption of a radical bifurcation of subjectivity and objectivity. Shorn of any Cartesian subjectivism, conceptualist system building, or positivist objectivism, his viewpoint is comprehensive. It embraces an ontological philosophy of history that explores the complex and dynamic structures of (...) interaction in historical life that constitute human being (and historicity) as the dialectic of relative horizons and basic horizon. It establishes an epistemological philosophy of history that affirms perspectivism and real historical knowledge, objectivity and evaluation. It clarifies the complex, complementary relations of historical disciplines, the fields in the history of thought, and the prospects of a speculative philosophy of history that focuses on watershed, differentiations of consciousness without succumbing to any priori universal history. /// Ao mesmo tempo que a Filosofia contemporânea da História se encontrava sob ataques severos vindos de vários quadrantes (desde o historicismo linguístico à desconstrução), Lonergan trabalhava no sentido de uma reconstrução da Filosofia da História fundamentando-a no seu "anti-fundacionalismo fundacional", o qual rompe com a pervasiva assumpção acerca da existência de uma bifurcação entre subjectividade e objectividade. Resistindo ao subjectivismo cartesiano, à construção sistemática conceptualista, ou ao objectivismo positivista, o ponto de vista de Lonergan é claramente compreensivo. Ele abraça uma filosofia ontológica da história devotada a uma exploração das estruturas complexas e dinâmicas de interacção na vida histórica constitutivas do ser humano (e da historicidade), tais como as que se dão mediante a dialéctica dos horizontes relativos e do horizonte básico. Mostra-se, assim, de quemodo honergan estabelece uma filosofia da história de cariz epistemológico capaz de afirmar em simultâneo o carácter perspectivista e real do conhecimento histórico, a objectividade e a avaliação. Desse modo, Lonergan clarifica as relações complexas e de complementaridade existentes entre as diversas disciplinas históricas, os diversos campos na história do pensamento, bem como as possibilidades de uma filosofia especulativa da história centrada em precisas diferenciações da consciência sem cair no carácter a priori de uma qualquer história universal. (shrink)

In the spirit of James and Dewey, I ask what one might want from a theory of knowledge. Much Anglophone epistemology is centered on questions that were once highly pertinent, but are no longer central to broader human and scientific concerns. The first sense in which epistemology without history is blind lies in the tendency of philosophers to ignore the history of philosophical problems. A second sense consists in the perennial attraction of approaches to knowledge that (...) divorce knowing subjects from their societies and from the tradition of socially assembling a body of transmitted knowledge. When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, there is a third way in which it becomes blind. Finally, lack of attention to the growth of knowledge in various domains leaves us with puzzles about the character of the knowledge we have. I illustrate this last theme by showing how reflections on the history of mathematics can expand our options for understanding mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

The progressive thinker of the late Ming, early Qing dynasties, the famous materialist philosopher Yan Yuan , made an important contribution to the history of Chinese philosophy with his practical studies of public affairs in which he fiercely attacked Song and Ming neo-Confucianism and promoted "real writing, real action, real substance, and real functions.".

ISBN 9042000635 NLG 90.00 The papers in this volume are arranged under the following headings: Humanistic knowledge.- On explanation and humanistic interpretation.- The historical dimension of culture and its studies.- Problems of artistic practice and its interpretation. through genealogy and psychoanalysis.

The aim of the paper is to examine the changes, which occurred in the epistemological structure of classical mechanics during its development from Newton to Poincaré. The analysis is based on the reconstruction of the language form. Attention is paid to such aspects of the language of classical mechanics as the notion of pace or the description of action . Even though these notions do not have direct denotation, they, nevertheless, constitute the general framework, on which the relation between the (...) denotative descriptions of the language of classical mechanics and the reality is based. (shrink)

The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for (...) the Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This 1998 book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

The article presents the main trends in the analytical epistemology of religious belief. Their interrelations and mutual influences are shown. The author argues that epistemology of religious belief has risen as one of the possible answers to the Gettier- problems. Therefore different trends in religious epistemology are bounded not only with each other, but also with trends in general epistemology. As a result of the analysis of all major trends in epistemology of religious belief (reformed (...) epistemology, social epistemology, virtue epistemology, problem of the epistemic authority) the author concludes that the core of each trend is an attempt of defining the phenomenon of religion itself. Hence it is possible to consider epistemology of religious belief as the next step in the history of such attempts. Since finding appropriate definition of the phenomenon of religion is a special task of philosophy of religion (both in analytic and continental traditions), the author argues that epistemology of religious belief is the essential part of philosophy of religion as a scholar discipline. (shrink)

If history is to be taken seriously as a cognitive - not merely literary - discipline to which considerations of truth or falsity are relevant, it is because of the progress made over the course of centuries in the sharpening of the methodology of the infrastructure of history. By not attending to the way in which the historical past actually emerged in the course of work at the level of the infrastructure, philosophical writers, such as Mandelbaum, Pompa, McCullagh, (...) and Gorman, have tended to perpetuate a myth of historians' selection. This has been the basic impediment to epistemology in philosophy of history. There is no selection from an antecedently established stock of fact-containing statements. The facts and the account are constructed in the course of the same intellectual endeavor, within the framework of an historians' tradition that is shaped by their work. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the concept of matter and the material in Edgar Zilsel’s considerations about historiographical methods in the context of the Marxist debates on the materialist conception of history in the 1920s and 1930s (György Lukács, Max Adler). It sheds light on Zilsel’s understanding of matter as fluctuating, interfering processes in the lapse of time and the related concept of irreversible laws and relates it to Ernst Mach’s philosophy and to Richard Semon’s theory of mneme . Finally, (...) it shows the practical consequences of the concept of materialism in Edgar Zilsel’s epistemology. (shrink)

‘역사철학’은 역사 또는 역사학에 대한 반성적 탐구로서 역사 및 역사학에 철학적 기초를 마련하는 것을 목표로 하는 철학의 한 분야라고 정의할 수 있다. 그러나 ‘역사철학’이라 통칭하여 부르는 철학의 분과는 본성상 단일한 종류의 것이 아니다. 이것은 역사철학의 탐구가 다양한 차원과 다양한 수준에서 이루어지는 복합적 구성체임을 의미한다. 그렇기 때문에, 중층적 구조연관을 이루고 있는 역사철학의 각 영역이 해명하고자 하는 사태의 본성 및 그것이 전체 체계에 대해서 지니는 위상과 의의를 충분히 염두에 두지 않는 한, 역사학에 대한 역사철학의 정초관계는 온전히 해명될 수 없는 것이다. 나는 이 (...) 글에서 후설 현상학의 방법인 ‘현상학적 태도변경’과 ‘현상학적 환원’에 입각하여 역사철학 여러 분과 간의 경계를 구획하고 그들의 구조연관을 해명함으로써, 역사학의 토대로서의 역사철학의 체계를 개괄하고자 한다. 특히 사실과 본질, 그리고 존재와 인식이라는 두 가지 기준에 따라 나는 인식론적 역사철학과 존재론적 역사철학을 구분하고, 각각이 제기하고 있는 물음의 본성이 어떻게 다르며 그럼에도 또 양자가 어떻게 통일적인 구조연관을 이루는지 보일 것이다. (shrink)

Several major breakthroughs in the history of physics have been prompted not by new empirical data but by thought experiments. James Robert Brown and John Norton have developed accounts of how thought experiments can yield such advances. Brown argues that knowledge gained via thought experiments demands a Platonic explanation; thought experiments for Brown are a window into the Platonic realm of the laws of nature. Norton argues that thought experiments are just cleverly disguised inductive or deductive arguments, so no (...) new account of their epistemology is needed. In this paper, I argue that although we do not need to invoke any Platonic insight to explain thought experimentation, Norton’s eliminativist account fails to capture the unique epistemological importance of thought experiments qua thought experiments. I then present my own account, according to which thought experiments are a particular type of inductive inference that is uniquely suited to generate new breakthroughs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRheinberger's brief history brings into sharp profile the importance of history of science for a philosophical understanding of historical practice. Rheinberger presents thought about the nature of science by leading scientists and their interpreters over the course of the twentieth century as emphasizing increasingly the local and developmental character of their learning practices, thus making the conception of knowledge dependent upon historical experience, “historicizing epistemology.” Linking his account of thought about science to his own work on “experimental (...) systems,” I draw extensive parallels with other work in the local history of science and consider the epistemological implications both for the relation between history and philosophy of science and between history and theory more broadly. In doing so, I suggest that the long‐standing gap between the natural sciences and history as a “human science” has been significantly bridged by the insistence upon the local, mediated, indeed “historicized epistemology” of actual science. (shrink)

In this article, we put forward a new strategy for teaching the concept of energy. In the first section, we discuss how the concept is currently treated in educational programmes at primary and secondary level (taking the case of France), the learning difficulties that arise as well as the main teaching strategies presented in science education literature. In the second section, we argue that due to the complexity of the concept of energy, rethinking how it is taught should involve teacher (...) training specifically developed for the concept. In our view, Epistemology and the History of Science and Technology (EHST) is the best method for a full understanding of the concept of energy and should thus be included in the teacher training programme. In the third section, we provide a general framework for a teacher training programme on energy, based on the history and epistemology of the concept and structured on the following three questions: ‘What is the origin of the concept of energy?’, ‘What is energy?’ and ‘What purpose does the concept of energy serve?’. (shrink)

Beginning with the second decade of the last century, after a fierce critique of W. Dilthey and the Historical School’s epistemological approach, philosophical hermeneutics has assumed the position of “official” philosophy of history of our times. However, in our previous work we have shown that philosophical hermeneutics is not actually able to give a better answer to “What is history?” than that already offered by the Historical School. Now we would like to show that its answer to the (...) other fundamental question of the philosophy of history - “How is history to be known?” - is even more problematic, making historical science impossible. For if the being of history really is tradition as philosophical hermeneutics argues, and if the essence of tradition is language then, on the one hand, the very stability of historical meaning presupposed by any epistemological process will always be displaced by the play of what Derrida calls “différance,” the ceaseless differentiation of the signifiers and signifieds. And, on the other hand, even if historical meaning were stable enough so as to be known, it could not be grasped because, we will try to argue, the process of understanding as philosophical hermeneutics describes it is always permeated by misunderstanding. (shrink)

The intellectual act of imposing borders to contain and delimit objects has been a constituent factor in physics since its origins, and is also fundamental for philosophical reflection. However, the characteristics of the conceptual universe thus constructed (tendency towards the ideal limit, invariance in variation, a conception of matter as residue, etc.) seem inadequate in biology. The essential characteristic of the living thing is, in fact, that of having a history: that is, of being the concrete trace of a (...) memory. Making an epistemology of the living thing (and not of the inert) means identifying new categories which, being radically antithetical to disembodied notions like that of program and information, take account of the unpredictability and creativity which time introduces. This essay aims to bring some of these fundamental categories into focus. (shrink)

The paper introduces what is deemed as the general epistemological problem of measurement: what characterizes measurement with respect to generic evaluation? It also analyzes the fundamental positions that have been maintained about this issue, thus presenting some sketches for a conceptual history of measurement. This characterization, in which three distinct standpoints are recognized, corresponding to a metaphysical, an anti-metaphysical, and relativistic period, allows us to introduce and briefly discuss some general issues on the current epistemological status of measurement science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses a (...) rich variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

ArgumentIn calling psychoanalysis a “school of suspicion”, Ricoeur marks at once its use in a disposition characteristic of modernity: the disposition of suspicion. Modernity gives rise to various forms of suspicion, to modern forms of ressentiment and practices of disciplining oneself as well as to an epistemology of suspicion. In this essay, I shall analyze the epistemological function of suspicion – which as the “paradigm of clues” becomes the leading paradigm of the human sciences in the last third of (...) the nineteenth century – and its close interrelationship with the techniques of power. As I shall demonstrate through a comparative reading of psychoanalytical, literary, and criminological texts, the modern production of knowledge in the human sciences cannot be separated from the modern “micro-physics of power,” which for Foucault was established in the eighteenth century, and the technologies of the self. I shall situate the paradigm of clues within the framework of the modern disposition of suspicion in order to combine the epistemological reflections with an analysis of cultural history. Thus I will first examine the paradigm of clues from the perspectives of cultural theory and semiotics, in order to illuminate the structural unreliability of the episteme as well as the way it is closely linked to the techniques of power. In what follows, I will apply this view to Bertillon's photographic identification system, the psychoanalytical concept of the trace, and Kafka's short story The Burrow. (shrink)

I bring out the limitations of four important views of what the target of useful climate model assessment is. Three of these views are drawn from philosophy. They include the views of Elisabeth Lloyd and Wendy Parker, and an application of Bayesian confirmation theory. The fourth view I criticise is based on the actual practice of climate model assessment. In bringing out the limitations of these four views, I argue that an approach to climate model assessment that neither demands too (...) much of such assessment nor threatens to be unreliable will, in typical cases, have to aim at something other than the confirmation of claims about how the climate system actually is. This means, I suggest, that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ’s focus on establishing confidence in climate model explanations and predictions is misguided. So too, it means that standard epistemologies of science with pretensions to generality, e.g., Bayesian epistemologies, fail to illuminate the assessment of climate models. I go on to outline a view that neither demands too much nor threatens to be unreliable, a view according to which useful climate model assessment typically aims to show that certain climatic scenarios are real possibilities and, when the scenarios are determined to be real possibilities, partially to determine how remote they are. (shrink)

The philosophy of nature operates as one complete and systematic aspect of Schelling’s philosophy in the years 1797-1801 and as complement to Schelling’s transcendental philosophy at this time. The philosophy of nature comes with its own, naturalistic epistemology, according to which human natural productivity provides the basis for human access to nature’s own productive laws. On the basis of one’s natural productivity, one can consciously formulate principles which match nature’s own lawful principles. One refines these principles through a process (...) of experimentation, which relies on the human being’s naturalness in productivity. By making natural activity central to knowledge, Schelling takes seriously the naturalness of humans, without denying the dramatic shift that occurs when consciousness and rationality factor into experience. This epistemology can thus be fruitfully put in conversation with current philosophical discussions of mind and nature, in that it offers a naturalized account of mind which does not suffer from the typical weaknesses of a contemporary Kantian or Hegelian account. The paper thus concludes with a discussion of John McDowell’s Mind and World, and shows how Schelling’s philosophy can resolve some tensions in that work. (shrink)

Raymond Aron was a student of Léon Brunschvicg, a representative of French historical epistemology. This article explores Aron’s relation to this tradition through three claims. First of all, it contests that Raymond Aron’s philosophy of history constituted a complete break with this tradition. Secondly, resituating Aron in this tradition is valuable, because it highlights how Aron’s own philosophy of history is to be understood as a normative project, seen as an alternative to that of Brunschvicg. Finally, Aron’s (...) philosophy can still hold valuable lessons for present-day historical epistemology and history and philosophy of science in general. (shrink)

Although Bernard Lonergan is known primarily for his cognitional theory and theological methodology, he long sought to formulate a modern philosophy of history free of progressive and Marxist biases. Yet he never addressed this in any single work, and his reflections on the subject are scattered in various writings. In this pioneering work, Thomas McPartland shows how Lonergan’s overall philosophical position offers a fresh and comprehensive basis for considering historiography. Taking Lonergan’s philosophy of historical existence into the realm of (...) an epistemological philosophy of history, he demonstrates how the philosopher’s approach builds on the actual performance of historians and, as a result, integrates the insights of historical specialists into a framework of functional complementarity. McPartland draws on all of Lonergan’s philosophical writing—as well as on the vast literature of historiography—to detail Lonergan’s notions of historical method, historical objectivity, and historical knowledge. Along the way, he explains what Lonergan means by hermeneutics; by historical description, explanation, ideal-types, and narrative; by evaluative and dialectical analyses; and how these elements are all functionally related to each other. He also delineates the defining features of psychohistory, cultural history, intellectual history, history of ideas, and history of philosophy, indicating how these disciplines play complementary roles in the critical encounter with the past. Ultimately, McPartland argues that Lonergan has established the principles of a historical discipline—the history of consciousness—that weaves together a philosophy of consciousness with rigorous historical research to grasp long-term trends resulting from “differentiations of consciousness.” His work offers a distinct perspective on historical method that takes historical objectivity seriously while providing new insight into the thought of this important philosopher. (shrink)

In “The Epistemology of Metaphor,” Paul De Man analyzes the problem of figural language in Locke, Condillac, and Kant, and suggests that the proliferation of figuration in language is a central difficulty for eighteenth-century philosophy. De Man, curiously enough, provides examples from philosophy while (aside from an oblique reference to the gothic novel) largely ignoring the "depository of the problem": Literature. And yet, readers of Sterne will find De Man's subject—the fear of metaphoric proliferation in eighteenth-century philosophy in general, (...) and Locke in particular, very familiar. In a sense, this "counterintuitive" reading of Locke and Condillac provides an apt description of the explicit epistemology of Sterne and Diderot. The figurative power of language itself becomes a figure for narrative and identity, and the instability of genres. The central crisis that metaphor causes for language—as far as Locke is concerned—is the mixed mode, the philosophical equivalent of catachresis. This abuse of language is a problem for Locke because of its tendency to be non-referential. De Man points out that Locke's examples are, inevitably, physical "mixed modes" as well: centaurs, monsters, changelings, fetuses that are half-man, half-beast. I would like to suggest that a narrative exploring the non-referentiality of metaphoric language, and its consequent proliferation of abstractions, is liable to be a "mixed-mode" itself. De Man hints at this point when he talks about literature and philosophy's shared "lack of specificity," and very generally about the consequences of his argument for writing a history of either discipline. This is not true for purely philosophical reasons: once the anxiety regarding the referentiality of language spills over into fictional narrative, the issues regarding a narrative's own referentiality inevitably move to center stage. Its own fuzziness becomes apparent, self-conscious, the elephant in the room. That is why the narrator of Marivaux's "Pharsamon" claims that he is writing about nothing, and why Diderot claims that he is not writing a romance, but the truth. Far from being a chimera, this kind of claim spins out a narrative of figurative difficulty. The anxiety about "mixed modes" in eighteenth-century philosophy that occurs in Locke and Condillac is self-consciously extended to genre travesty—a recognition on the part of eighteenth-century writers that the didactic anxiety regarding language and the same didacticism regarding genre were explicitly connected. (shrink)

The Cyrenaic school was a fourth-century BC philosophical movement, related both to the Socratic tradition and to Greek Scepticism. In ethics, Cyrenaic hedonism can be seen as one of many attempts made by the associates of Socrates and their followers to endorse his ethical outlook and to explore the implications of his method. In epistemology, there are close philosophical links between the Cyrenaics and the Sceptics, both Pyrrhonists and Academics. There are further links with modern philosophy as well, for (...) the Cyrenaics introduced a form of subjectivism which in some ways preannounces Cartesian views, endorsed by Malebranche and Hume and developed by Kant. This book reconstructs Cyrenaic epistemology, explains how it depends on Cyrenaic hedonism, locates it in the context of ancient debates, and discusses its connections with modern and contemporary epistemological positions. (shrink)

This article traces the historical co-evolution of microbiology, bacteriology, and virology, framed within industrial and agricultural contexts, as well as their role in colonial and national history between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. The epistemology of germ theory, coupled with the economic interests of European colonies, has shaped the understanding of human-microbial relationships in a reductionist way. We explore a brief history of the medical and biological sciences, focusing (...) on microbes and the difficulty of implementing germ theory outside of biology laboratories. Furthermore, we highlight the work of Lynn Margulis, who conceptualized microbes within their ecological contexts. Such research shows the active role microbes play in handling life-sustaining biological and biochemical processes. We outline how the industrial and technological advancements of the last two centuries not only impacted almost all human societies, but also changed the world on microbial, biological, and geological levels. The narration of these histories is a complex task, and depends on how national, international, and intergovernmental institutions (such as the World Health Organization) conceive of the selective environmental pressures exerted by industry and biotechnological companies. (shrink)

Classical, selectionist (adaptationist) evolutionary epistemology of science draws an analogy between development of science and natural selection. But natural selection immediately increases only the relative fitness of organisms with regard to specific and changing environment. Therefore evolutionary epistemology of science is exploited (by van Fraassen in particular) against scientific realism which presumes existence of absolute scientific progress as an approach to truth. In modern biology in order to explain absolute evolutionary progress nonadaptationist, nonselectionist models based on a passive (...) trend mechanism (a random walk limited by walls) were worked out, the ratchet model in particular. This paper suggests nonadaptationist extension of evolutionary epistemology of science, namely the ratchet model of scientific progress and illustrates it by history of thermodynamics. This model enables to combine realistic concept of scientific progress as an approach to truth with antirealistic concept of scientific development as an improvement of problem-solving ability: the former is ascribed to scientific dynamics on a global scale and the latter on a local. (shrink)

Among the many causes of an event, how do we distinguish the important ones? Are there ways to distinguish among causes on principled grounds that integrate both practical aims and objective knowledge? Psychologist Tania Lombrozo has suggested that causal explanations “identify factors that are ‘exportable’ in the sense that they are likely to subserve future prediction and intervention” (Lombrozo 2010, 327). Hence portable causes are more important precisely because they provide objective information to prediction and intervention as practical aims. However, (...) I argue that this is only part of the epistemology of causal selection. Recent work on portable causes has implicitly assumed them to be portable within the same causal system at a later time. As a result, it has appeared that the objective content of causal selection includes only facts about the causal structure of that single system. In contrast, I present a case study from systems biology in which scientists are searching for causal factors that are portable across rather than within causal systems. By paying careful attention to how these biologists find portable causes, I show that the objective content of causal selection can extend beyond the immediate systems of interest. In particular, knowledge of the evolutionary history of gene networks is necessary for correctly identifying causal patterns in these networks that explain cellular behavior in a portable way. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of the epistemology of testimony are often framed in terms of the disagreement on this topic between Hume and Reid. However, it is widely assumed that, prior to Hume, philosophers in the grip of Enlightenment individualism neglected philosophical questions about testimony, simply treating testimony as ordinary empirical evidence. In fact, although the evidential model of testimony was popular in early modern philosophy, it was also the subject of vigorous debate. This chapter examines Locke's defence of the evidential (...) model of testimony along with the opposing views of three early critics of Locke: G. W. Leibniz, Mary Astell, and Peter Browne. (shrink)