Objections to the use of historical case studies for philosophical ends fall into two categories. Methodological objections claim that historical accounts and their uses by philosophers are subject to various biases. We argue that these challenges are not special; they also apply to other epistemic practices. Metaphysical objections, on the other hand, claim that historical case studies are intrinsically unsuited to serve as evidence for philosophical claims, even when carefully constructed and used, and so constitute a distinct class of challenge. (...) We show that attention to what makes for a canonical case can address these problems. A case study is canonical with respect to a particular philosophical aim when the features relevant to that aim provide a reasonably complete causal account of the results of the historical process under investigation. We show how to establish canonicity by evaluating relevant contingencies using two prominent examples from the history of science: Eddington’s confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity using his data from the 1919 eclipse and Watson and Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA. (shrink)

Solid state physics, the study of the physical properties of solid matter, was the most populous subfield of Cold War American physics. Despite prolific contributions to consumer and medical technology, such as the transistor and magnetic resonance imaging, it garnered less professional prestige and public attention than nuclear and particle physics. Solid State Insurrection argues that solid state physics was essential to securing the vast social, political, and financial capital Cold War physics enjoyed in the twentieth century. Solid state’s technological (...) bent, and its challenge to the “pure science” ideal many physicists cherished, helped physics as a whole respond more readily to Cold War social, political, and economic pressures. Its research kept physics economically and technologically relevant, sustaining its cultural standing and policy influence long after the sheen of the Manhattan Project had faded. (shrink)

The contingentist/inevitabilist debate contests whether the results of successful science are contingent or inevitable. This article addresses lingering ambiguity in the way contingency is defined in this debate. I argue that contingency in science can be understood as a collection of distinct concepts, distinguished by how they hold science contingent, by what elements of science they hold contingent, and by what those elements are contingent upon. I present a preliminary taxonomy designed to characterize the full-range positions available and illustrate that (...) these constitute a diverse array rather than a spectrum. (shrink)

We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of the (...) historical canon of philosophy of science is therefore path dependent, and cases often become stock examples for reasons tangential to their appropriateness for the purposes at hand. We show how the lack of rigor around the canonization of case studies has muddied the waters in selected philosophical debates. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for proposing ways in which they can be improved. (shrink)

Why do similar scientific enterprises garner unequal public approbation? High energy physics attracted considerable attention in the late-twentieth-century United States, whereas condensed matter physics – which occupied the greater proportion of US physicists – remained little known to the public, despite its relevance to ubiquitous consumer technologies. This paper supplements existing accounts of this much remarked-upon prestige asymmetry by showing that popular emphasis on the mundane technological offshoots of condensed matter physics and its focus on human-scale phenomena have rendered it (...) more recondite than its better-known sibling field. News reports about high energy physics emphasize intellectual achievement; reporting on condensed matter physics focuses on technology. And whereas frontier-oriented rhetoric of high energy physics communicates ideals of human potential, discoveries that smack of the mundane highlight human limitations and fail to resonate with the widespread aspirational vision of science – a consequence I call “the purloined letter effect.”. (shrink)

This paper explores the process by which new technologies supplant or constrain cultural scaffolding processes and the consequences thereof. As elaborated by William Wimsatt and James Griesemer, cultural scaffolds support the acquisition of new capabilities by individuals or organizations. When technologies displace scaffolds, those who previously acquired capabilities from them come to rely upon the new technologies to complete tasks they could once accomplish on their own. Therefore, the would-be beneficiaries of those scaffolds are deprived of the agency to exercise (...) the capabilities the scaffolds supported. Evaluating how technologies displace cultural scaffolds can ground philosophical assessments of the cultural value of technologies. (shrink)

The University of Chicago was the site of a remarkable ideological alignment after World War II. Its chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, was one of mid-century America’s fiercest critics of science and of the moral stature of scientists. His administration nevertheless forged a détente with Chicago’s physical scientists in the process of establishing the Institutes for Basic Research, which consolidated the personnel and resources the Manhattan Project had brought to campus. Chicago’s left-leaning group of scientists and administrators then made common cause (...) with a series of conservative industrial interests in order to fund the new institutes, on the basis that industry had an obligation to support basic research. This intersection of otherwise divergent ideological strands exposes the institutional malleability of patronage relationships in the years after World War II.†durha. (shrink)

The contingency/inevitability (C/I) problem consists in questions about the extent to which science is contingent or inevitable, what parts of it are contingent or inevitable, and whether alternative scientific trajectories might be just as successful as the one we have. It is relatively new as a well-delineated object of philosophical inquiry, dating to Ian Hacking’s observation in The Social Construction of What? (1999) that the social construction movement raises questions about contingency and inevitability that can be understood as distinct from, (...) and perhaps more promising than, longstanding debates about scientific realism and anti-realism. In the years since Hacking defined the key terms of the C/I problem, a group of scholars has coalesced around the questions he posed. Those questions motivated, for example, a 2009 workshop at the Fondation Des Treilles in Tourtour, France, and this book synthesizes its results. (shrink)

Relativity is one of the most overfished streams in the history of science. Albert Einstein has doubtless graced the covers of more monographs than any other scientist—possibly save Charles Darwin—in the decade since the 2005 centenary of his annus mirabilis. I was skeptical that Jimena Canales would be able land new catch from such thoroughly exploited waters. The Physicist and the Philosopher proved that skepticism misplaced. By exploring a decades-long feud that pitted Albert Einstein against the French savant Henri Bergson, (...) Canales shows how relativity intertwined with an intellectual context that has been roundly ignored by historians and philosophers of science and presents one of history’s most iconic scientists in new light. (shrink)

The twentieth century enjoys a firm grip on our profession. Well over half the research articles published in this journal since 2000 devote significant attention to the period between the 1890s and the 1990s. Similar trends prevail in other leading publications. But this outpouring of scholarship alone does not create a collective sense of how historians of science should confront the twentieth century as an epoch. The synthetic reflection that established the scientific revolution as a historiographical category and lent the (...) nineteenth century a sense of cohesion remains to be undertaken for the twentieth. A panoramic outlook on more recent historical eras is a pressing necessity. Publishing trends suggest that we will confront future methodological questions and navigate our evolving professional identity largely on twentieth-century turf. What, then, defines twentieth-century science? In some ways, this question is naive, even trivial: it surprises no one that the currents of history disdain our thin calendrical embankments. But centuries, decades, and other conventional durations often prove useful for collating practices that shared a family resemblance and naming periods about which we might claim that continuity prevailed over discontinuity. Can the twentieth century offer such utility? The books under review can each be read as an attempt to use the twentieth century in that way and, in so doing, to claim it for a particular vision of how the history of science should be done. (shrink)