In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but (...) what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn. (shrink)

Originally published in 1991, Origins and Species seeks to understand the historical origins of Darwinism. The book analyses the explanatory problem to which Darwinian theory was a response, while contrasting the Darwinian with two other traditions in the interpretation of organic diversity. The book looks in detail at both Charles Darwin's theories and Alfred Russell Wallace's theories of about plant and animal species and raises the question of the context of Darwinism and that of Plato's and Aristotle's understanding of species.

The Dominican theologian Durand of Saint-Pourçain (ca. 1275–1334), breaking from the wide consensus, made a two-pronged attack on concurrentism (i.e., the theory according to which God does more than conserving creatures in existence and co-causes all their actions). On the one hand, he shows that the concurrentist position leads to the unacceptable consequence that God is the direct cause of man’s evil actions. On the other hand, he attacks the metaphysical foundations of concurrentism, first in the version offered by Thomas (...) Aquinas and Giles of Rome, and then in a more general way. Against Thomas and Giles, he challenges Neoplatonic assumptions about causality and being. More generally, he establishes that God’s action and a creature’s action can be neither identical nor different, and thus cannot both be direct causes of the same effect. Without claiming that Durand’s series of objections are definitely unanswerable, we may at least observe that they have generally been underestimated (which earned him the lowly role of the mere foil of the concurrentist view in the history of philosophy) and are able to do considerable damage to concurrentism. (shrink)

La solution de Thomas d’Aquin au problème de l’intensification des qualités souffre d’une certaine instabilité et, dans la génération suivante, a été disloquée par les différentes contraintes qu’elle tentait de concilier. Cet article explore les réponses apportées par Gilles de Rome, Godefroid de Fontaines, Pierre d’Auvergne et Thomas de Sutton. Introduite par Godefroid, mais développée par Sutton, la notion de mode va jouer un rôle très important. La solution de Sutton, particulièrement, invite à une comparaison avec la théorie des modes (...) intrinsèques chez Duns Scot. (shrink)

In recent decades many sociologists and philosophers of science, especially the so-called ‘new experimentalists’, have stressed the need for detailed studies of real, ongoing experimental practices, and have claimed that a new image of science results from such an approach. Among the new objects of interest that have emerged from laboratory studies, an important one is the tacit dimension of scientific practices. Harry Collins, in particular, has insisted that irreducibly tacit presuppositions and skills are inevitably involved in experimental practices, and (...) that these tacit resources play an essential role in the stabilization of successful scientific achievements. What I will call the ‘opacity of experimental practices’ has been analyzed in different ways, but on the whole, it has been claimed to have harmful epistemological consequences with respect to crucial issues such as the nature of experimental facts, scientific realism, scientific rationality, and the contingency of what acquires the status of an established scientific result in practitioners’ eyes. Such claims remain highly controversial. The aim of this paper is to discuss the epistemological implications of the involvement of tacit resources in experimental practices and to provide helpful conceptual tools with respect to the issue of tacit resources in science. Specifically, the paper provides an analytical clarification of the relation between the opacity of experimental practices and the principle of experimenters substitutability, the latter being a principle commonly viewed as a necessary feature of any good science. Serious doubts are finally raised about the validity of the experimenters substitutability principle, and the impact of these doubts with respect to the contingency of scientific facts and results is considered. (shrink)

This study investigates priming in an implicit word stem completion (WSC) task by analyzing the effect of linguistic stimuli characteristics on said task. A total of 305 participants performed a WSC task in two phases (study and test). The test phase included 63 unique-solution stems and 63 multiple-solution stems. Analysis revealed that priming (mean = 0.22) was stronger in the case of multiple-solution stems, indicating that they were not a homogeneous group of stimuli. Thus, further analyses were performed only for (...) the data of the unique-solution stems. Correlations between priming and familiarity, frequency of use, and baseline completion were significant. The less familiar words, which were less frequent, had higher priming values. At the same time, the stems with lower baseline completion generated more priming. A regression analysis showed that baseline completion was the only significant predictor of priming, suggesting that the previous processing of the stimuli had a greater impact on the stimuli with low baseline performance. At the same time, baseline completion showed significant positive correlations with familiarity and frequency of use, and a negative correlation with length. When baseline completion was the dependent variable in the regression analysis, the significant variables in the regression were familiarity and length. These results were compared with those obtained in a study using word fragment completion (WFC) by Soler et al. (2009), in which the same words and procedure were employed. Analysis showed that the variables that correlated with priming were the same as in the WSC task, and that completion baseline was the variable that showed the greatest predictive power of priming. This coincidence of results obtained with WFC and WSC tasks highlights the importance of controlling the characteristics of the stimuli used when exploring the nature of priming. (shrink)

La historia de la Cirugía Pediátrica cubana está pendiente de ser documentada científicamente. Se estableció como objetivo definir las etapas de desarrollo de la especialidad en Cuba, para lo cual se hizo un análisis histórico y se identificó cuatro períodos fundamentales. Este artículo tiene una significación práctica puesto que permite conocer en qué momento se encuentra la especialidad para modelar el futuro de la misma. The history of Cuban pediatric surgery is pending of being scientifically documented. It was established as (...) an objective to define the stages of the development of the specialty in Cuba. For this purpose a historical analysis was carried out and four main periods were identified. This study has a practical importance because it allows knowing the stage in which the specialty is to model its future. (shrink)

Nosso ensaio procura explorar as relações entre o cuidado de si e a experiência de uma ética originária no contexto da hermenêutica. Num primeiro momento apresentamos os desdobramentos do cuidado de si e os exercícios espirituais da filosofia antiga a partir das contribuições dos pensamentos de Foucault e Hadot. Esses dois intelectuais elaboram uma contextualização desse princípio como uma relação entre o cuidado de si e os exercícios espirituais compreendidos como um trabalho do sujeito sobre si mesmo no que se (...) refere à problemática a partir das correlações entre os processos de subjetivação e o acesso à verdade O segundo momento deste ensaio é dedicado a elaborar uma leitura sobre a hermenêutica compreendida como uma experiência de uma ética originária baseados nas contribuições de Gadamer, Heidegger e Schmidt. Nossas considerações finais são dedicadas a pensar um olhar sobre as relações entre o cuidado de si e a hermenêutica para explorarmos as nuances de uma retomada de uma ética originária a partir de uma analítica sobre o _ethos_ compreendido como a morado do Ser, desdobrada em novas formas ou processos de subjetivação. (shrink)

Featuring contributions from the world’s leading experts on the subject and based partly on several detailed case studies, this volume is the first comprehensive analysis of the scientific notion of robustness as well as of the general ...

Una aproximación a dos reflexiones filosóficas contemporáneas. En primer lugar, abordamos las últimas aportaciones de Michel Foucault sobre la ética, en el marco de la noción de “cuidado de sí”. En segundo lugar, nos ocupamos de la ética de Emmanuel Levinas, centrada en la idea del prójimo. El mismo marco de una ética del otro permite un enlace con algunas ideas de Simone Weil. Sin pretenderlas congruentes, estas dos filosofías conllevan una importante crítica de la noción de sujeto y de (...) una ética basada en el reconocimiento. Con ello, nos dan elementos para plantear posibles posicionamientos para la filosofía en la actualidad. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay is concerned with the relationship between femininity and divinity in feminist speculative fiction. It equates becoming divine with becoming plant, and studies the transformations that attend women in this process in modernity, postmodernity and transmodernity. Taking as its point of departure Mark Taylor’s evolution of the concept of God through immanence, transcendence and immanent transcendence, and Rosa María Rodríguez Magda’s definition of transmodernity, it examines “The Sleep of Plants” by Anne Richter, “The Neglected Garden” by Kathe Koja, (...) and “The Bad Graft” by Karen Russell. It argues that by becoming plants these women locate themselves in opposition to the norms of divinity created by men, and proposes to delineate the contours of a new feminist paradigm in the present transmodern age through the study of botany. (shrink)

A system is classified as multimodal if its language has more than one modal operator as primitive, and such operators are not interdefinable. We extend the anodic and cathodic modal systems, introduced in Bueno-Soler and Bueno-Soler , to a class of the so-called basilar multimodal systems generating, in this way, the classes of anodic and cathodic multimodal logics. The cathodic multimodal systems are defined as extensions of positive multimodal systems by adding degrees of negation plus consistency operators. In (...) this way, cathodic multimodal systems are logics of formal inconsistency [the paraconsistent LFIs, as treated in Carnielli et al. ] enriched with multimodal operators. We focus the attention on models for such classes of systems and discuss how modal possible-translation semantics, as well as possible-worlds , can be defined to interpret basilar cathodic multimodal systems. While anodic systems are modeled by Kripke models only, we introduce the modal possible-translation models for cathodic systems. Such models, given by combinations of three-valued modal logics, besides their own interest, explain the role of non-trivializing contradictions in multimodal environment. (shrink)

In this paper we extend the anodic systems introduced in Bueno-Soler (J Appl Non Class Logics 19(3):291–310, 2009) by adding certain paraconsistent axioms based on the so called logics of formal inconsistency , introduced in Carnielli et al. (Handbook of philosophical logic, Springer, Amsterdam, 2007), and define the classes of systems that we call cathodic . These classes consist of modal paraconsistent systems, an approach which permits us to treat with certain kinds of conflicting situations. Our interest in this (...) paper is to show that such systems can be semantically characterized in two different ways: by Kripke-style semantics and by modal possible-translations semantics . Such results are inspired in some universal constructions in logic, in the sense that cathodic systems can be seen as a kind of fusion (a particular case of fibring) between modal logics and non-modal logics, as discussed in Carnielli et al. (Analysis and synthesis of logics, Springer, Amsterdam, 2007). The outcome is inherently within the spirit of universal logic, as our systems semantically intermingles modal logics, paraconsistent logics and many-valued logics, defining new blends of logics whose relevance we intend to show. (shrink)

L'article propose une analyse comparative des positions de Popper et de Kuhn sur quatre points liés : la comparaison des « cadres théoriques » ou des « paradigmes scientifiques » ; le pouvoir contraignant que sont susceptibles d'avoir les arguments invoqués dans les discussions critiques ; les éléments qui, en fin de compte, pèsent ou doivent peser sur les praticiens lorsqu'il s'agit d'élire un cadre théorique au détriment d'un autre ; et enfin, la conception qu'ont chacun des deux auteurs de (...) ce que Kuhn a nommé la « science normale ». On commence par discuter en détails les comptes-rendus dans lesquels Popper explique pourquoi les choix scientifiques de Galilée et de Kepler sont conformes à la méthodologie falsificationniste. On montre de là, premièrement, qu'à suivre à la lettre ces comptes-rendus, il faut conclure que les données expérimentales non problématiques – les énoncés de base unanimement acceptés – ne suffisent pas à elles seules à imposer en droit la falsification empirique (puisque sur la base des mêmes mesures de Tycho Brahé, Kepler a eu raison d'admettre que l'hypothèse des orbites circulaires était empiriquement réfutée, tandis que Galilée a eu raison d'admettre le contraire). On montre alors, deuxièmement, qu'au-delà des différences importantes entre Popper et Kuhn au niveau des lexiques et de l'idéal de scientificité, la méthodologie poppérienne, bien qu'elle se revendique « logique », ne donne concrètement pas plus que la conception kuhnienne pourtant si souvent stigmatisée comme « sociologique », lorsqu'il s'agit d'indiquer ce qu'un bon scientifique devrait faire, que ce soit en période « révolutionnaire » ou en période de « science normale ». (shrink)

Introduction Harry Collins is internationally recognized as a distinguished sociologist of science who writes creatively on a substantial number of varied subjects. He is acknowledged as one of the prominent specialists on the topic of tacit knowledge and has played an important role in the introduction of this topic into science studies. He has investigated the topic extensively, most famously through several case studies of physics [Collins 1974, 1984, 1985, 1990, 2001a,b, 2004], [Collins &...

This paper introduces the logic of evidence and truth \ as an extension of the Belnap–Dunn four-valued logic \. \ is a slightly modified version of the logic \, presented in Carnielli and Rodrigues. While \ is equipped only with a classicality operator \, \ is equipped with a non-classicality operator \ as well, dual to \. Both \ and \ are logics of formal inconsistency and undeterminedness in which the operator \ recovers classical logic for propositions in its scope. (...) Evidence is a notion weaker than truth in the sense that there may be evidence for a proposition \ even if \ is not true. As well as \, \ is able to express preservation of evidence and preservation of truth. The primary aim of this paper is to propose a probabilistic semantics for \ where statements \\) and \\) express, respectively, the amount of evidence available for \ and the degree to which the evidence for \ is expected to behave classically—or non-classically for \ \). A probabilistic scenario is paracomplete when \ + P 1\), and in both cases, \ < 1\). If \ = 1\), or \ = 0\), classical probability is recovered for \. The proposition \, a theorem of \, partitions what we call the information space, and thus allows us to obtain some new versions of known results of standard probability theory. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings of “creativity”—tvorchestvo—as we encounter it in Georges Florovsky’s thought, first and foremost in his magnum opus Ways of Russian Theology (1937). Tvorchestvo had by this time become a key concept in Russian pre-revolutionary and later émigré thought. It is associated above all with Nikolai Berdyaev’s philosophy, but it also plays an important role in Sergei Bulgakov’s philosophy of economy. In both cases, it stands for the human response to divine creation. Moreover, and somewhat less famously, (...) it was also an epistemological concept in the religious idealism of Vladimir Solovyov as well as in Russian neo-Kantianism (Fyodor Stepun), where it stood for the active, synthetic faculty of our minds. Florovsky, meanwhile, used it as a description of how we should relate to the patristic heritage, but also to history more generally: Our attitude should be “creative,” active, as well as both backward- and forward-looking. This “return to the Fathers” was a central component of Florovsky’s neopatristic program, but, interestingly, in order to conceptualize this return, Florovsky took over a concept from traditions that his own approach otherwise firmly criticized. By analyzing Florovsky’s use of tvorchestvo, this article addresses the broader question as to the differences and parallels between the neopatristic movement and the legacy of the Russian Renaissance (Silver Age). (shrink)

In this volume, we have chosen to highlight the importance of education to human rights by reprinting two articles written by Paulo Freire in 1970 for the _Harvard Educational Review_. These articles contain many of Freire's original ideas on human rights and education—issues that are central to his work. Freire was a pioneer in promoting the universal right to education and literacy as part of a commitment to people's struggle against oppression. As Jerome Bruner recognized after Freire's death in May (...) 1997, Freire left as a legacy his commitment to basic human rights: "He was a brave man as well as a far-sighted one. He made us aware of our mindless cruelties, and now the challenge to all of us is to do something about those cruelties.". (shrink)

The paper introduces precise definitions of the inevitabilist and contingentist positions. On this basis, it reveals the analytical structure and some inherent difficulties of the contingentist/inevitabilist issue. It then discusses some of these difficulties, relying on the thought-experiment of a ‘divided physics’. Along the way, it investigates the kinds of differences that two alternative physics should present, if they are to give rise to non-benign forms of contingentism.Keywords: Contingency; Inevitabilism; Incommensurability; Theory-comparison; Scientific realism; Constructivism.

We propose a new approach to positive modal logics, hereby called anodic modal logics. Our treatment is completely positive since the language has neither negation nor any falsum or minimal particle. The elimination of the minimal particle of the language requires introducing the new concept of factual sets and factual deductions which permit us to talk about deductions in the actual world. We start from a positive fragment of the standard system K, denoted by K⊃, ∧, ◊, which is a (...) bimodal system with □ and ◊ as primitive. This system is then extended to a class of fragments of the Lemmon and Scott systems (cf. (Lemmon et al., 1977)), denoted by K⊃, ∧, ◊ + Gk;l;m;n + Gm;n;k;l. It is shown that such classes of systems are characterized with respect to the usual Kripke-style semantics. The proof is by way of a Henkin-style construction, with “possible worlds” being taken to be prime theories as introduced in the modal context by J. M. Dunn in (Dunn, 1995). We also obtain a surprising limiting result showing that the incompleteness phenomenon in modal logic is independent of negation. (shrink)

The problem of the limitations of or conditions for God's power was one of the most fruitful topics in medieval discussions. While debating it, medieval thinkers came to redefine the concept of the "possible." William of Auxerre's disputed questions offer an example of critical reexamination of Aristotle's conception of possibility. Parallel to the account of William's views on the topic, the article provides (from a formal point of view, so to speak) an analysis of the sequence and formulation of the (...) questions he raises, in an attempt to propose a method for reading these frequently disconcerting texts. (shrink)

This is one of the attractions of the volume.

In this paper, we discuss and extend the taxonomy of tacit knowledge proposed by Collins in his 2010 book, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. First, we question the definition and the name of one of Collins’s three categories of TK, namely Relational Tacit Knowledge (RTK). After having explained the true fundamental principle that individuates RTK as one category distinct from the two others (Somatic Tacit Knowledge STK and Collective Tacit Knowledge CTK), we suggest an alternative name for RTK, which fits this (...) principle better. Second, our analyses identify a possible ambiguity in the interpretation of RTK, STK and CTK, and indicate how to avoid the related possible confusions. For this purpose, we introduce several notations that specify Collins’s ones. The corresponding developments strengthen and specify a point implicitly suggested in Collins’s book, namely the existence of a serious asymmetry between RTK on the one hand, and STK/CTK on the other. Third, the paper attempts to elaborate and complete Collins’s framework. In this vein, we introduce the possibility of different sub-types of RTK. One of these sub-cases raises the issue of individual, intellectual tacit knowledge—a case that does not seem to have any place in Collins’s picture. We also look at Collins’s framework in a dynamical perspective, and discuss the possibility—not considered by Collins—of dynamic transformations between some of the three categories. Finally, we make two suggestions in order to avoid confusions or misunderstandings when using Collins’s distinctions. When the qualities “explicit”, “explicable” or “tacit” are attributed to some knowledge, these qualities should always be accompanied by the specification for whom and when. Moreover, the attributions “explicit” and “explicable” should always indicate which of Collins’s four senses is meant—elaboration, transformation, mechanization or scientific explanation. (shrink)

No es nuestro propósito relatar el trabajo de Hegel en sus Lecciones de la Historia universal, por el contrario, queremos aprehender el concepto de desarrollo de la historia a partir de la acción (tat) del espíritu, en tanto la historia -dice Hegel- es “la sustancia del espíritu”. Y esta temática la desarrolla tanto en la Enciclopedia, como en la Fenomenología del espíritu, así como en las Lecciones de filosofía de la religión (especialmente en 1828) y en su Filosofía del derecho. (...) Si no se concibe la historia sino por la acción del espíritu que deviene movimiento y deviene libertad y racionalidad. De tal modo, que puede decirse que la razón dirige la historia. Pero si califica la historia de divina es porque en ella la razón se historiza y pierde su condición abstracta. Pues en la historia, dice Hegel, el espíritu se encuentra en casa. Debe entenderse ese proceso de movimiento, como sustancia espiritual y el fin absoluto en el mundo, de ahí que no pueda hablarse de fin de la historia. El saber absoluto no implica un cierre al proceso infinito de un despliegue a través de las determinaciones finitas. Debe subrayarse la importancia de la eticidad y de la Filosofía del derecho, pues el Estado en cuanto sustancia ética no anula los derechos de los sujetos que devienen a través de la historia. Pudiendo considerarse a los mismos sujetos y los estados formas de objetivación del espíritu en su movimiento. No puede por ello entenderse el saber absoluto siquiera como un cierre de la historia ni como una superación de las figuras que en su movimiento produce. Más bien es lo que Hegel sostiene como Teodicea de la historia. Y en ella, la religión ya manifiesta la asunción de la negatividad y la superación de la muerte de Dios por el espíritu en la comunidad. Ahora bien, la comunidad alcanza su máxima expresión en el Estado, no es la pretensión de Hegel la exaltación del estado, sino que tiene muy en cuenta que los ciudadanos son sujetos de derecho dentro del Estado. (shrink)

The article discusses the notion of culture as it appears and is conceptualized in the works of G.P. Fedotov. The analysis focuses on two articles by Fedotov published in Russian migr journals, "The Holy Spirit in Nature and Culture" of 1932 and "Eschatology and culture" of 1938, and in his magnum opus in a Western context, The Russian Religious Mind of 1946. The author proposes to analyze Fedotov's ideas as a theology of culture due to the profoundly religious meaning the (...) Russian migr thinker attributed to cultural products and production, regardless of their religious intention. By implication, Fedotov understood culture in a religious framework as the human experience of and response to the divine, though not necessarily as dependent on firm belief. Viewing Fedotov as a theologian of culture enables us, furthermore, to compare him with other thinkers across the West-East cultural gradient, most notably Paul Tillich. This approach contextualizes Fedotov in a post-Schellingian pan-European idealist tradition, to which Russian thinkers' analyses of religious experience and imagination have made seminal contributions, in particular from Vladimir Solov'ev on. The article discusses these issues within the framework of the perspectives of global intellectual history, entangled history, and transnationalized Russian studies. (shrink)

Evert van der Zweerde’s book is the most recent result of the author’s long-time study of Russian philosophy and Russian philosophical culture. The latter concept has been one of Zweerde’s main con...