Politics and Modernity provides a critical review of the key interface of contemporary political theory and social theory about the questions of modernity and postmodernity. Review essays offer a broad-ranging assessment of the issues at stake in current debates. Among the works reviewed are those of William Connolly, Anthony Giddens, J[um]urgen Habermas, Alasdair MacIntyre, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor and Roy Bhaskar. As well as reviewing the contemporary literature, the contributors assess the historical roots of current problems in the works of (...) Nietzsche and Max Weber. (shrink)

The general post-communist perspective of historiography on the Cold War era is that the world was divided into two blocs, so different and isolated from one another that there was no interaction between them whatsoever. As revisionist literature is expanding, the uncovered data indicates a far more complex reality, with a dynamic East-West exchange of goods, money, information, human resources, and technology, be it formal or informal, official or underground, institutional or personal. The current volume History of Communism in (...) Europe: Breaking the Wall: National and Transnational Perspectives on East-European Science tries to confer more detail to this perspec­tive, by bringing together research papers that focus on the history of science during the Cold War. The articles cover a wide range of subjects, from biology to philosophy and from espionage to medical practices, all sharing an ideological context that continuously impacted and molded the professional relations among scholars from both sides of the Iron Curtain. (shrink)

We describe here an interdisciplinary lab science course for non-majors using the history of science as a curricular guide. Our experience with diverse instructors underscores the importance of the teachers and classroom dynamics, beyond the curriculum. Moreover, the institutional political context is central: are courses for non-majors valued and is support given to instructors to innovate? Two sample projects are profiled.

Science lessons using inquiry only or history of science with inquiry were used for explicit reflective nature of science instruction for second-, third-, and fourth-grade students randomly assigned to receive one of the treatments. Students in both groups improved in their understanding of creative NOS, tentative NOS, empirical NOS, and subjective NOS as measured using VNOS-D as pre- and post-test surveys. Social and cultural context of science was not accessible for the students. Students in second, (...) third, and fourth grades were able to attain adequate views of empirical NOS, the role of observation and inference, creative and imaginative NOS, and subjective NOS. Students were not able to express adequate views of socially and culturally embedded NOS. Most gains in NOS eroded by the next school year, except for tentative NOS for both groups and creative NOS for the inquiry group. (shrink)

The article introduces a special section about history of science in Central and Eastern Europe before and after the fall of Communism, and sketches a conceptual framework within which the three papers in the section can be understood together. This introduction provides information about the workshop from which the papers were recruited, and continues with more general considerations on the nationalization of scientific knowledge in the territories of the Habsburg empire and its successor states. In the second half (...) of the introduction, themes addressed by all three papers in the special section are named and discussed briefly. (shrink)

This famous book, first published in 1929 was considerably revised and enlarged in its fourth edition, which is being reprinted now.

The article examines Thomas Kuhn's work in the history of science with special attention to its relevance to subsequent developments in social epistemology. The article begins with a discussion of Kuhn's historical work, and the so-called historical turn in philosophy of science. It then examines Kuhn's views on textbook science, followed by an analysis of Kuhn's views on the relationship between the history of science and the philosophy of science. Then it discusses Kuhn's (...) contributions to our understanding of the social dimensions of scientific inquiry. Finally, it discusses his influence on the social epistemology of science and the sociology of science. (shrink)

Objective Apeiron was founded in 1966 and has developed into one of the oldest and most distinguished journals dedicated to the study of ancient philosophy, ancient science, and, in particular, of problems that concern both fields. Apeiron is committed to publishing high-quality research papers in these areas of ancient Greco-Roman intellectual history; it also welcomes submission of articles dealing with the reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition. The journal appears quarterly. Articles are (...) peer-reviewed on a double-blind basis. Topics ancient philosophy ancient science reception of ancient philosophical and scientific ideas in the later western tradition Article formats Original Articles. (shrink)

According to the antirealist argument known as the pessimistic induction, the history of science is a graveyard of dead scientific theories and abandoned theoretical posits. Support for this pessimistic picture of the history of science usually comes from a few case histories, such as the demise of the phlogiston theory and the abandonment of caloric as the substance of heat. In this article, I wish to take a new approach to examining the ‘history of (...) class='Hi'>science as a graveyard of theories’ picture. Using JSTOR Data for Research and Springer Exemplar, I present new lines of evidence that are at odds with this pessimistic picture of the history of science. When rigorously tested against the historical record of science, I submit, the pessimistic picture of the history of science as a graveyard of dead theories and abandoned posits may turn out to be no more than a philosophers’ myth. (shrink)

The increased popularity of the label "cultural" within science studies, especially in relation to "cultural studies, " invites consideration of how it is and can be used in historical work. A lot more seems now to be invested in the notion of "cultural history. " This article examines some recent historiography of science as a means of considering what counts as cultural history in that domain and attempts to coordinate it with the sociologically informed studies of (...) the past ten orfifteen years. The label "sociocultural" seems a more useful term by which to capture recent developments. (shrink)

To understand the qualities of Western civilization and its modernity, to think about the future of humanity, and to understand how modern science was gestated in Western civilization: in the author’s view, these are the most important reasons to do history of science research in China. Study of the history of Western science in China is in its infancy, and there are great deficiencies leading to its lagging behind the international world of scholarship. In this (...) situation, the most urgent task is to translate as soon as possible a batch of high quality and classic books in the field, to establish a basic academic platform for research in the history of science, and, once that foundation has been laid, to deepen our researches further. Given these considerations, this essay discusses why the author translates works on the history of science, how he chooses books for translation, and his experiences as a translator. (shrink)

Philosophy of science and history of science both have a significant relation to science itself; but what is their relation to each other? That question has been a focal point of philosophical and historical work throughout the second half of this century. An analysis and review of the progress made in dealing with this question, and especially that made in philosophy, is the focus of this thesis. Chapter one concerns logical positivist and empiricist approaches to philosophy (...) of science, and the significance of the criticisms levelled at them by analytic epistemologists such as Willard Quine and 'historicist' philosophers, especially Thomas Kuhn. Chapter two details the attempts by Kuhn and Lakatos to integrate these historicist criticisms with historically oriented philosophy of science, in their separate attempts at providing rational explanations of historical developments. Kuhn's latest work seeks to mend fences with philosophy, but his efforts remain too closely tied to the epistemological approaches strongly criticized in his earlier work. Lakatos' treatment of history is much more subtle than most have understood it to be, but the conception of scientific rationality that arises out of it is transformed into an abstract cultural product, more reminiscent of Hegel's geist than of individual human rationality. Chapters three and four discuss the recommendations of Lakatos and Laudan to historians with regard to historiography, and the actual historiographies and philosophy of history of practicing historians and historians of science. The philosophers' contributions indicate little concern for the historians' own methods, materials, and purposes; and the historians' writings present methodologies for history of science that are independent of the normative demarcations of philosophy of science, pace Lakatos and Laudan. Chapter five develops a philosophical position that fosters a more productive engagement between philosophy and history of science, a 'methodological historicism' that embraces the possibility of an important role for social and political factors in a philosophical study of scientific development. The epistemological relativism that might accompany such a historicist position need not be the radical epistemological anarchism of Feyerabend, though it will allow for a significant underdetermination of scientific development by reason nonetheless. (shrink)

This book challenges the common assumption that the predominant focus of the history of science should be the achievements of Western scientists since the so-called Scientific Revolution. The conceptual frameworks within which the members of earlier societies and of modern indigenous groups worked admittedly pose severe problems for our understanding. But rather than dismiss them on the grounds that they are incommensurable with our own and to that extent unintelligible, we should see them as offering opportunities for us (...) to revise many of our own preconceptions. We should accept that the realities to be accounted for are multi-dimensional and that all such accounts are to some extent value-laden. In the process insights from current anthropology and the study of ancient Greece and China especially are brought to bear to suggest how the remit of the history of science can be expanded to achieve a cross-cultural perspective on the problems. (shrink)

These three books illustrate some key themes in the history of science and the history of microscopy. First is a new enthusiasm among some historians and philosophers of science to embrace the history of microscopy as an area worthy of study, a recognized area of investigation for the historian and philosopher of science. In so doing these historians have redefined the subject area from the more traditional and much researched history of microscopes, with (...) its emphasis on the technical, to a consideration of the community of practitioners of microscopy and the theoretical contexts in which they carried out their studies. They have attempted to view the practice of microscopy and its practitioners within a conceptual, philosophical, and social context. They have by no means excluded technical considerations, but have argued that those alone can explain neither the rise, flourishing, and apparent decline of microscopy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, nor its resurgence in the nineteenth century. Rather, they have argued that an analysis of microscopy must include social and conceptual considerations in addition to the technical. With these three books we have moved at last from the history of microscopes to the history of microscopy, within the context of the history and philosophy of science. The history of microscopy can now take its place within the larger inter-disciplines of HPS and STS. (shrink)

In "Criticism and the History of Science" Karl Popper's falsificationist conception of science is developed and defended against criticisms raised by Thomas ...

The history of science can be approached in several different ways. It may be studied, as in the classification once favoured in the long-established Department of History and Philosophy of Science at University College London, by considering separately the history of individual sciences: physics, chemistry, biology, etc.—Partington's monumental History of chemistry is a good example of the cross-section of history of science obtained by considering a single discipline. This approach is understandable when (...) history of science is the work of retired specialists in a particular science. On the other hand, many of those who have approached the history of science from a training in general history have tended to favour a study of a particular period as an alternative to an orientation by subject. This is particularly valuable before the nineteenth century, when subject boundaries were not so tightly drawn as some of the old science historians tended to assume. A third possibility is area studies, usually the history of science within a particular country. Sometimes this is done unconsciously, as when historians claim that they are dealing with a general theme, such as science and religion or scientific institutions, but do so with special reference to their own country. French historians of ‘the Enlightenment’ often study French authors exclusively. Language as much as country is a limiting factor here. (shrink)

ABSTRACT History of science and history of medicine are today largely organized as distinct disciplines, though ones widely recognized as interrelated. Attempts to evaluate the extent and nature of their relation have reached varying conclusions, depending in part on the historical period under consideration. This essay examines some characteristics of European medicine from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century and considers their relevance for the history of science. Attention is given to the range of (...) interests and activities of individuals trained in or practicing medicine, to the impact of changes in natural philosophy, to the role of observation, description, and accumulation of information, and to the exchange of knowledge among the medical community. (shrink)

Before 1950, history of science did not exist as an independent academic branch, but was instead pursued by practitioners across various humanities and scientific disciplines. After professionalization, traces of its prehistory as a cross-disciplinary area of interest bound to an interdisciplinary, educational philosophy have remained. This essay outlines the development of history of science as an interdisciplinary academic field, and argues that it constitutes an obvious choice for inclusion in an interdisciplinary academic program, provided faculty and (...) administrators learn how best to manage its advantages and pitfalls. (shrink)

The history of science can be better understood against the background of a history of knowledge comprising not only theoretical but also intuitive and practical knowledge. This widening of scope necessitates a more concise definition of the concept of knowledge, relating its cognitive to its material and social dimensions. The history of knowledge comprises the history of institutions in which knowledge is produced and transmitted. This is an essential but hitherto neglected aspect of cultural evolution. (...) Taking this aspect into account one is led to the concept of extended evolution, which integrates the perspectives of niche construction and complex regulative networks. The paper illustrates this concept using four examples: the emergence of language, the Neolithic revolution, the invention of writing and the origin of mechanics. (shrink)

Within the debate on the inevitability versus contingency of science for which Hacking’s writings have provided the basic terminology, the devising of counterfactual histories of science is widely assumed by champions of the contingency thesis to be an effective way to challenge the inevitability thesis. However, relatively little attention has been devoted to the problem of how to defend counterfactual history of science against the criticism that it is too speculative an endeavor to be worth bothering (...) with—the same critique traditionally levelled against the use of counterfactuals in general history. In this paper, we review the defense of counterfactuals put forward by their advocates within general history. According to such defense—which emphasizes the essential role of counterfactuals within explanations—good counterfactual scenarios need to exhibit the right kind of plausibility, characterized as continuity between said scenarios and what historians know about the world. As our discussion shows, the same requirement needs to be satisfied by good counterfactual histories of science. However, as we mention in the concluding part of the paper, there is at least one concern raised by counterfactual history of science as used to support the contingency thesis for which the defense based on the plausibility of the counterfactual scenarios does not seem to offer easy solutions. (shrink)

Many researchers insist that computational methods will transform the historical profession, while an equally large number reject these claims as unwarranted hype. This study attempts to place the debate in historical and social context. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part offers a brief review of computational history. It asks whether the “computational turn” bears any resemblance to quantitative history and how it fits within the digital humanities. The second part describes the authors’ recent attempts (...) to apply computational methods to an existing project in the history of science using a standardized workflow. It demonstrates that each step of the workflow adds another layer of subjectivity. The third part reflects on what computational methods mean for the historical profession. It systematically reviews the positive aspects of computational history (open access, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new perspectives) as well as the negative aspects (inequality, fragility, and the threat of automation) and offers prescriptions based on the authors’ experiences. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to respond to Thomas Uebel’s criticisms of my comments regarding the current revisionism of Carnap’s work and its relations to Kuhn. I begin by pointing out some misunderstandings in the interpretation of my article. I then discuss some aspects related to Carnap’s view of the history of science. First, I emphasize that it was not due to a supposed affinity between Kuhn’s conceptions and those of logical positivists that Kuhn was invited to (...) write the monograph on the history of science for the Encyclopedia. Three other authors had been invited first, including George Sarton whose conception was entirely different from Kuhn’s. In addition, I try to show that Carnap attributes little importance to the history of science. He seldom refers to it and, when he does, he clearly defends a Whig or an ‘old’ historiography of science, to which Kuhn opposes his “new historiography of science”. It is argued that this raises serious difficulties for those, like Uebel, who hold the view that Carnap includes the historical or the social within the rational. (shrink)