In this book K. Brad Wray provides a comprehensive survey of the arguments against scientific realism. In addition to presenting logical considerations that undermine the realists' inferences to the likely truth or approximate truth of our theories, he provides a thorough assessment of the evidence from the history of science. He also examines grounds for a defence of anti-realism, including an anti-realist explanation for the success of our current theories, an account of why false theories can be empirically successful, (...) and an explanation for why we should expect radical changes of theory in the future. His arguments are supported and illustrated by cases from the history of science, including a sustained study of the Copernican Revolution, and a study of the revolution in early twentieth century chemistry, when chemists came to classify elements by their atomic number rather than by their atomic weight. (shrink)

K. Brad Wray’s new book is an excellent overview of the scientific realism debate, as well as a development of the state-of-the-art. Wray, whose views seem most strongly influenced by Bas van Fraassen and Thomas Kuhn, develops crucial aspects of the debate, such as the argument from underconsideration and the ability of anti-realism to explain the success of science. This book is clearly written, tightly argued, and well researched. I recommend it highly to all philosophers and students of philosophy (...) interested in scientific theory change or the scientific realism debate. (shrink)

"In preparing this remarkable book, Ernest Hook persuaded an eminent group of scientists, historians, sociologists and philosophers to focus on the problem: why are some discoveries rejected at a particular time but later seen to be valid? The interaction of these experts did not produce agreement on 'prematurity' in science but something more valuable: a collection of fascinating papers, many of them based on new research and analysis, which sometimes forced the author to revise a previously-held opinion. The book should (...) be enthusiastically welcomed by all readers who are interested in how science works."—Stephen G. Brush, co-author of Physics, The Human Adventure: From copernicus to Einstein and Beyond "Prematurity and Scientific Discovery contains interesting and insightful papers by numerous well-known scientists and scholars. It will be of wide interest, not only to science studies scholars but also to working scientists and to science-literate general readers."—Thomas Nickles, editor of Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality. (shrink)

Book Review K. Brad Wray: Resisting Scientific Realism. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2018, xii + 224 pp, £ 75.00 (Hardcover), ISBN: 9781108231633. By Ragnar van der Merwe. In The Journal for the General Philosophy of Science.

This article discusses the debate about vaccination as a case of public scientific technological controversy. In the vaccination controversy there is a scientific question, the effectiveness of vaccines in the elimination of diseases; a question of risk assessment, possible adverse effects and the possibility that immunization causes idiopathic diseases; an ethical question, the balance of rights between the two groups and the limits of the freedom of choice of treatment; and a political issue, who must take decisions about (...) immunization and whether immunization should be mandatory. The results of the analysis of the controversy suggest that the attitudes of the anti-vaccination groups towards vaccination are largely explained by their worldview which comes majorly from New Age beliefs. This worldview causes differences in the interpretation of evidence, law, risk and science. (shrink)

This article discusses the debate about vaccination as a case of public scientific technological controversy. In the vaccination controversy there is a scientific question, the effectiveness of vaccines in the elimination of diseases; a question of risk assessment, possible adverse effects and the possibility that immunization causes idiopathic diseases; an ethical question, the balance of rights between the two groups and the limits of the freedom of choice of treatment; and a political issue, who must take decisions about (...) immunization and whether immunization should be mandatory. The results of the analysis of the controversy suggest that the attitudes of the anti-vaccination groups towards vaccination are largely explained by their worldview which comes majorly from New Age beliefs. This worldview causes differences in the interpretation of evidence, law, risk and science. (shrink)

"Atom," "byte" and "gene" are metonymies for techno-scientific developments of the 20th century: nuclear power, computing and genetic engineering. Resistance continues to challenge these developments in public opinion. This book traces historical debates over atoms, bytes and genes which raised controversy with consequences, and argues that public opinion is a factor of the development of modern techno-science. The level and scope of public controversy is an index of resistance, examined here with a "pain analogy" which shows that (...) just as pain impacts movement, resistance impacts techno-scientific mobilization: it signals that something is wrong, and this requires attention, elaboration and a response to the challenge. This analysis shows how different fields of enquiry deal with the resistance of social-psychological mentalities in the face of industrial, scientific and political activities inspired by projected futures. (shrink)

This is a reply piece to a series of book symposium contributions to my book, Resisting Scientific Realism. The contributions were by Steven French, Peter Vickers, Stathis Psillos, and Kyle Stanford.

New discoveries and theories are crucial for the development of science, but they are often initially resisted by the scientific community. This paper analyses resistance to scientific discoveries that supplement previous research results or conclusions with new phenomena, such as long chains in macromolecules, Alfvén waves, parity nonconservation in weak interactions and quasicrystals. Construal-level theory is used to explain that the probability of new discoveries may be underestimated because of psychological distance. Thus, the insufficiently examined scope of (...) an accepted theory may lead to overstating the suitable scope and underestimating the probability of its undiscovered counter-examples. Therefore, psychological activity can result in people instinctively resisting new discoveries. Direct evidence can help people judge the validity of a hypothesis with rational thinking. The effects of authorities and textbooks on the resistance to discoveries are also discussed. From the results of our analysis, suggestions are provided to reduce resistance to real discoveries, which will benefit the development of science. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate the way in which French artillery engineers met the challenge of air drag in the nineteenth century. This problem was especially acute following the development of rifled barrels, when projectile initial velocities reached values much higher than the speed of sound in air. In these circumstances, the Newtonian approximation according to which the drag was a force proportional to the square of the velocity was not nearly good enough to account for experimental results. This prompted (...) a series of theoretical and experimental investigations aimed at determining the correct law of air resistance. Throughout the nineteenth century, contrary to what happened before or after, ballistician were—with very rare exceptions—alone in trying to tackle the problem of air resistance. This was a complex problem where theoretical considerations, experimental results, and computational algorithms intermingled with one another, as well as with the development of new materials and doctrine in artillery. By carefully studying the reasons why ballisticians finally opted for a complex empirical law at the end of the nineteenth century, we show that military procedures for evaluating materials became a yardstick for assessing the worth of mathematical theories as well. In conclusion, we try to assess why military specialists were not able to face the challenges posed by World War I and required the help of civilian scientists and mathematicians. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to connect the recent debate in the philosophy of quantum mechanics concerning the nature of the wave function to the historical debate in the philosophy of science regarding the tenability of scientific realism. Being realist about quantum mechanics is particularly challenging when focusing on the wave function. According to the wave function ontology approach, the wave function is a concrete physical entity. In contrast, according to an alternative viewpoint, namely the primitive ontology approach, the (...) wave function does not represent physical entities. In this paper, I argue that the primitive ontology approach can naturally be interpreted as an instance of the so-called ‘explanationism’ realism, which has been proposed as a response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism. If my arguments are sound, then one could conclude that: (1) contrarily to what is commonly though, if explanationism realism is a good response to the pessimistic-meta induction argument, it can be straightforwardly extended also to the quantum domain; (2) the primitive ontology approach is in better shape than the wave function ontology approach in resisting the pessimistic-meta induction argument against scientific realism. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler (Journal of Philosophy 97:55–81, 2000), (Gendler, in: Nichols (ed) The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), (Gendler (...) & Liao, in: Gibson, Carroll (eds) The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. (in: Cova, Réhault (eds) Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (shrink)

Natural kinds, real kinds, or, following J.S Mill simply, Kinds, are thought to be an important asset for scientific realists in the non-fundamental (or “special”) sciences. Essential natures are less in vogue. I show that the realist would do well to couple her Kinds with essential natures in order to strengthen their epistemic and ontological credentials. I argue that these essential natures need not however be intrinsic to the Kind’s members; they may be historical. I concentrate on assessing the (...) merits of historical essential natures in a paradigm case of Kinds in the non-fundamental sciences: species. I specify two basic jobs for essential natures: 1) offering individuation criteria, and 2) providing a causal explanation of the Kind’s multiple projectable properties. I argue that at least in the case of species historical essences are fit for both tasks. The principled resistance to Kinds with historical essences should also be cleared. (shrink)

This article explores predominant uses of theory in social science research in relation to the approach of phenomenological philosophy. While phenomenology is sometimes interpreted as one theoretical or methodological paradigm amongst others in the field of qualitative research, this article explores key thinkers within the philosophical tradition of phenomenology to argue that this tradition can raise challenges for predominant conceptions of research and theorizing in the social sciences and certain philosophical idea(l)s that can be connected to them. The distinctive nature (...) of phenomenological description is outlined, and new possibilities for qualitative research are sketched. Also considered is the question of whether qualitative research should seek to enshrine the intellectual virtues of the arts, and resist the inclination towards the scientific -- and scientistic -- drive to theorize. (shrink)

When in Africa we speak and dream of and work for, a rebirth of that continent as a full participant in the affairs of the world in the next century, we are deeply conscious of how dependent that is on the mobilisation and strengthening of the continent’s resources of learning. Nelson Mandela Address at Harvard University, September, 1998 quoted in East African, September 1–7, 2003A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that are (...) not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Thomas KuhnThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions p. 37Africa suffers from a pessimism of description as well as a pessimism of prescription it has suffered for over 500 years from a condescending and often violent gaze from diagnosis to destiny. The usual Eurocentric style in reflecting about Africa has always had an underlying tone of reproach and even moral condemnation. There is a need to protest and resist against this negative projection. We need to start to converse about Africa’s problems and challenges with the inclusion of hope as an ontological need for change. Withoug hope, there will be no possibility to struggle on. Hope is an important variable in the way we wish to think, talk, reason, debate and mount intellectual reflection about Africa Re‐thinking African development through innovation, social‐invention, systems mental images and the logocentric imagination of the productive Africa‐nation, and not through market exchange, Smithian or Ricardian comparative advantage can generate a hopeful departure from received approaches to theorising about Africa. The making of African productive power, building the capital of the mind, organising institutions within the progressive imagination of the Africa‐nation is a critical launching pad for a new intellectual and research orientation hihgly needed when Africans want to make their history with the revival of the Pan‐African ideal and the African renaissance. The article proposes that the national system of innovation provides the metaphor of hope, the heuristics of what is significant data to investigate, and the criticism of conventional and pessimistic theorising and finally the emancipatory knowledge resources for a post‐pessimist turn to bring about the cognitive praxis of a post‐colonial liberation of Africa as a whole. (shrink)

The concept of ‘resistance’ has turned into a critical tool in different areas of political, philosophical and sociological thought. At the same time, the notion seems to be as productive as it is diffuse. ‘Resistance’ is used in very specific contexts in scientific or technical disciplines, and with extreme flexibility in social and cultural studies. In the latter two areas, the concept is often used without prior reflection on its characteristics and limitations. In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze (...) provides a possible framework for conceiving cultural and political practices of resistance as positions of force, when he defines contraction as ‘a contemplation that preserves the preceding in the following’. The purpose of this article is to understand political ecologism in its activist and poetical dimensions, in light of a Deleuzian interpretation of resistance. (shrink)

Scientific socialism as developed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the world's largest workers' party, and the Second International, basically a creation of German socialists, viewed utopianism as empirically unverifiable. The publication, wide circulation, and enormous success in Germany of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward therefore posed a strong challenge to the leaders of the SPD, Karl Kautsky and August Bebel, and it attracted their criticism on several occasions. Such high-level condemnations of Bellamy call for an explanation. The SPD, (...) freshly out of illegality in 1890, scored a decisive victory over Bismarck, and the party's big electoral gains led to utopian hopes among the rank and file. In this expectant milieu, Looking Backward was interpreted as a model for immediate action. However, socialist leaders saw it differently. Kautsky and Bebel reasoned that the immediatism of the American utopia flagrantly violated the ineluctable tendencies of history, recklessly rushed historical destiny, and put the achievements of the socialists at risk. It was not without irony that Kautsky found the absence of utopianism one of the SPD's greatest accomplishments. It was into this utopian vacuum that right-wing futuristic blueprints increasingly moved, portraying Caesaristic leadership, interclass harmony, world power, and racial exclusivity to a rapidly expanding audience. By rejecting future gazing, as exemplified by their rebuff of Looking Backward, socialist leaders failed to wage an extended cultural campaign for hegemonic influence over sectors other than the working class. Their claim that they essentially had no ideals to realize and their adherence to the strategy of fatalistic waiting for the collapse of capitalism came at a high price, as their inaction in face of and even support of colonialism and World War I would reveal. (shrink)

Scientific socialism as developed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the world's largest workers' party, and the Second International, basically a creation of German socialists, viewed utopianism as empirically unverifiable. The publication, wide circulation, and enormous success in Germany of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward therefore posed a strong challenge to the leaders of the SPD, Karl Kautsky and August Bebel, and it attracted their criticism on several occasions. Such high-level condemnations of Bellamy call for an explanation. The SPD, (...) freshly out of illegality in 1890, scored a decisive victory over Bismarck, and the party's big electoral gains led to utopian hopes among the rank and file. In this expectant milieu, Looking Backward was interpreted as a model for immediate action. However, socialist leaders saw it differently. Kautsky and Bebel reasoned that the immediatism of the American utopia flagrantly violated the ineluctable tendencies of history, recklessly rushed historical destiny, and put the achievements of the socialists at risk. It was not without irony that Kautsky found the absence of utopianism one of the SPD's greatest accomplishments. It was into this utopian vacuum that right-wing futuristic blueprints increasingly moved, portraying Caesaristic leadership, interclass harmony, world power, and racial exclusivity to a rapidly expanding audience. By rejecting future gazing, as exemplified by their rebuff of Looking Backward, socialist leaders failed to wage an extended cultural campaign for hegemonic influence over sectors other than the working class. Their claim that they essentially had no ideals to realize and their adherence to the strategy of fatalistic waiting for the collapse of capitalism came at a high price, as their inaction in face of and even support of colonialism and World War I would reveal. (shrink)

In this paper we focus on two claims, put forward by Feyerabend in his later writings , which constitute the metaphysical core of his view of scientific inquiry. The first, that we call the pliability thesis, is the claim that the world can be described by indefinitely many conceptual systems, none of them enjoying a privileged status. The second, that we call the resistance thesis, is the claim that the pliability of the world is limited, i.e., not all (...) the different conceptual systems that can be used to describe the world will be equally successful: the world offers resistance to some attempts to describe it. We show that, in spite of the later Feyerabend’s notorious antirealist leanings, the pliability thesis is fully compatible with a robustly realist view of science, and we suggest that, surprisingly, Feyerabend’s insights concerning the limited pliability of the world turn out to be those of a potential ally of sophisticated versions of scientific realism. (shrink)

When in Africa we speak and dream of and work for, a rebirth of that continent as a full participant in the affairs of the world in the next century, we are deeply conscious of how dependent that is on the mobilisation and strengthening of the continent's resources of learning. Nelson Mandela Address at Harvard University, September, 1998 quoted in East African, September 1-7, 2003 A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that (...) are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Thomas Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions p. 37 Africa suffers from a pessimism of description as well as a pessimism of prescription it has suffered for over 500 years from a condescending and often violent gaze from diagnosis to destiny. The usual Eurocentric style in reflecting about Africa has always had an underlying tone of reproach and even moral condemnation. There is a need to protest and resist against this negative projection. We need to start to converse about Africa's problems and challenges with the inclusion of hope as an ontological need for change. Withoug hope, there will be no possibility to struggle on. Hope is an important variable in the way we wish to think, talk, reason, debate and mount intellectual reflection about Africa Re-thinking African development through innovation, social-invention, systems mental images and the logocentric imagination of the productive Africa-nation, and not through market exchange, Smithian or Ricardian comparative advantage can generate a hopeful departure from received approaches to theorising about Africa. The making of African productive power, building the capital of the mind, organising institutions within the progressive imagination of the Africa-nation is a critical launching pad for a new intellectual and research orientation hihgly needed when Africans want to make their history with the revival of the Pan-African ideal and the African renaissance. The article proposes that the national system of innovation provides the metaphor of hope, the heuristics of what is significant data to investigate, and the criticism of conventional and pessimistic theorising and finally the emancipatory knowledge resources for a post-pessimist turn to bring about the cognitive praxis of a post-colonial liberation of Africa as a whole. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the issue of scientific modelling in contemporary linguistics, focusing on the generative tradition. In so doing, I identify two common varieties of linguistic idealisation, which I call determination and isolation respectively. I argue that these distinct types of idealisation can both be described within the remit of Weisberg’s :639–659, 2007) minimalist idealisation strategy in the sciences. Following a line set by Blutner :27–35, 2011), I propose this minimalist idealisation analysis for a broad construal of (...) the generative linguistic programme and thus cite examples from a wide range of linguistic frameworks including early generative syntax, Minimalism, the parallel architecture and optimality theory. Lastly, I claim that from a modelling perspective, the dynamic turn in syntax can be explained as a continuation, as opposed to a marked shift, of the generative modelling paradigm. Seen in this light, my proposal is an even broader construal of the generative tradition, along scientific modelling lines. Thus, I offer a lens through which to appreciate the scientific contribution of generative grammar, amid an increased resistance to some of its core theoretical posits, in terms of a brand of structural realism in the philosophy of science and specifically scientific modelling. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health concern and is associated with the over- or inappropriate use of antimicrobials in both humans and agriculture. While there has been reco- gnition of this problem on the part of agricultural and public health authorities, there has none- theless been significant difficulty in translating policy recommendations into practical guidelines. In this paper, we examine the process of public health policy development in Quebec agriculture, with a focus on the case of pork production (...) and the role of food animal veterinarians in policy making. We argue that a tendency to employ strictly techno-scientific risk analyses of antimicro- bial use ignores the fundamental social, economic and political realities of key stakeholders and so limits the applicability of policy recommendations developed by government advisory groups. In particular, we suggest that veterinarians’ personal and professional interests, and their ethi- cal norms of practice, are key factors to both the problem of and the solution to the current over-reliance on antimicrobials in food production. (shrink)

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing public health concern and is associated with the over - or inappropriate use of antimicrobials in both humans and agriculture. While there has been recognition of this problem on the part of agricultural and public health authorities, there has nonetheless been significant difficulty in translating policy recommendations into practical guidelines. In this paper, we examine the process of public health policy development in Quebec agriculture, with a focus on the case of pork production and (...) the role of food animal veterinarians in policy making. We argue that a tendency to employ strictly techno- scientific risk analyses of antimicro- bial use ignores the fundamental social, economic and political realities of key stakeholders and so limits the applicability of policy recommendations developed by government advisory groups. In particular, we suggest that veterinarians’ personal and professional interests, and their ethical norms of practice, are key factors to both the problem of and the solution to the current over -reliance on antimicrobials in food production. (shrink)

There is a familiar opposition between a ‘Scientific Revolution’ ethos and practice of experimentation, including experimentation on life, and a ‘vitalist’ reaction to this outlook. The former is often allied with different forms of mechanism – if all of Nature obeys mechanical laws, including living bodies, ‘iatromechanism’ should encounter no obstructions in investigating the particularities of animal-machines – or with more chimiatric theories of life and matter, as in the ‘Oxford Physiologists’. The latter reaction also comes in different, perhaps (...) irreducibly heterogeneous forms, ranging from metaphysical and ethical objections to the destruction of life, as in Margaret Cavendish, to more epistemological objections against the usage of instruments, the ‘anatomical’ outlook and experimentation, e.g. in Locke and Sydenham. But I will mainly focus on a third anti-interventionist argument, which I call ‘vitalist’ since it is often articulated in the writings of the so-called Montpellier Vitalists, including their medical articles for the Encyclopédie. The vitalist argument against experimentation on life is subtly different from the metaphysical, ethical and epistemological arguments, although at times it may borrow from any of them. It expresses a Hippocratic sensibility – understood as an artifact of early modernity, not as some atemporal trait of medical thought – in which Life resists the experimenter, or conversely, for the experimenter to grasp something about Life, it will have to be without torturing or radically intervening in it. I suggest that this view does not have to imply that Nature is something mysterious or sacred; nor does the vitalist have to attack experimentation on life in the name of some ‘vital force’ – which makes it less surprising to find a vivisectionist like Claude Bernard sounding so close to the vitalists. (shrink)

Introducing non-Darwinian mind as a nonaptation I argue that Darwinian mind evolved from non-Darwinian mind through the evolution of desire and aversion. The subject position within Darwinian mind is Darwinian self and is inherently selfish. However the cathexis whereby the subject prioritises motivations of desire and aversion is not an inherent property of mind. Instead it is proposed to be an adaptation, a predisposition to respond to pleasant/unpleasant sensations with desire/aversion. This explains why self-sacrifice and disengagement from desire/aversion are the (...) sine qua non of serious commitment to the spiritual path, i.e. Darwinian self and desire/aversion are two sides of the same coin and erosion of one is erosion of the other. Thus, through self- renunciation and suspension of desire/aversion the seeker passes from adaptive selfish Darwinian mind towards nonaptive selfless non-Darwinian mind. But Darwinian mind automatically resists this transcendence by intensifying motivations of desire/aversion thereby explaining the extreme difficulties of the spiritual path. A theoretical distinction is made between evolved Darwinian 'morality' , 'Darwinian' morality and amoral non-Darwinian kenosis . These distinctions make it easy to disentangle scientific and religious jurisdictions on morality with important implications for both religious ethics and science's view of spirituality. All in all, the nonaptive theory of spiritual mind offers a unified solution to age-old problems which have been uncomfortably shifting this way and that in the interstices between biology, psychology, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

The use of subtherapeutic doses of antibiotics in food-producing animals has been linked to antibiotic resistant infections in humans. Although this practice has been banned in Europe, the U.S. regulatory authorities have been slow to act. This paper discusses the regulatory hurdles and ethical dilemmas of banning this practice within the context of the risk analysis model (risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication). Specific issues include unethical use of scientific uncertainty during the risk assessment phase, the rejection of (...) the precautionary principle leading to ineffective risk management, and the criticality of risk communication to build consensus and force action. The underlying root cause is a conflict of values (Type I ethical problem) among key stakeholders, which is examined in depth along with an ethical analysis using public health ethical values. (shrink)

José A. Díez examines the reasons for claiming that models involve fictions. He opposes the claim that, in order to account for some key features of the practice of modeling in science, such as the existence of unsuccessful representations and also of successful yet inaccurate or idealized ones, it is necessary to accept fictional entities. In resisting such a view, he sketches an account of scientific modeling and argue that according to such account there is no need for strong (...) factionalism, only a weak, unproblematic fictionalist component is needed. (shrink)

In an earlier article on this journal I argued that the problem of empirical underdetermination can for the largest part be solved by theoretical virtues, and for the remaining part it can be tolerated. Here I confront two further challenges to scientific realism based on underdetermination. First, there are four classes of theories which may seem to be underdetermined even by theoretical virtues. Concerning them I argue that (i) theories produced by trivial permutations and (ii) “equivalent descriptions” are compatible (...) with the truth of standard theories; instead (iii) “as if” versions of standard theories are much worse from the point of view of theoretical virtues; finally (iv) mathematically intertranslatable theories either may become empirically decidable in the future, or can be discriminated by theoretical virtues, or realists may simply plead ignorance about their claims. Secondly, I consider Stanford’s underdetermination with respect unconceived alternatives, arguing that it essentially relies on the pessimistic meta-induction from the falsity of all past theories. Therefore, it can be resisted by (a) considering the radical advancement of present with respect to past science, and (b) arguing with selective realism that past successful theories, even if false, always included some true components. (shrink)

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is to articulate a Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism as well as a Foucauldian critique of the nomothetic framework underlying the Placement Problem. My Foucauldian post-structuralist critique of scientific naturalism questions the relations between our society’s imbrication of economic-political power structures and knowledge in a way that also effects some constructive critical alignment between Foucault and Habermas, helping to undermine the traditional view of their respective social critiques as incompatible. First, I will (...) outline a brief genealogical backstory for the rise of scientific naturalism, and I will then reconstruct the Placement Problem. In the second part of the paper, I introduce Foucault’s notion of pouvoir-savoir, namely his account of the interconnection between power and knowledge. I then go on to articulate the Foucauldian critique of scientific naturalism by arguing that the levelling nature of nomothetic rationality and its conservative naturalistic vocabulary involves regulative discourse: anything that resists placeability/locatability is labelled “odd”. By being thus visibly marked, “odd” phenomena become “queer” phenomena, which then become “problematic” phenomena. They are, thereby, construed in need of discipline. Understood in this Foucauldian way, scientific naturalist disciplinarity produces subjected and practised minds, “docile” minds. (shrink)

The object of this paper is twofold: to show that resistance to scientific change on the part of scientists need signal neither irrationality nor the presence of extra-scientific influences; and to show how such resistance can be accommodated within a theory of rational choice. After considerations have been outlined suggesting that scientists cannot rationally resist new scientific theories unless theory choice is subjectivistic (section I), evidence is adduced favoring the contrary view (section II). In section (...) III, a non-subjectivistic, non-relativistic conception of rational choice is proposed which recognizes the possibility of scientists' rationally resisting new scientific developments. Finally, in section IV, some minor misunderstandings concerning resistance are discussed. (shrink)

Francis Bacon : a new interpretation of nature -- Thomas Hobbes' scientific approach to politics -- John Locke and the origins of political resistance -- The ethic and practice of modern natural science -- Critical theory and the critique of modernity -- Michel Foucault and the postmodern reaction.

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern economy, according to (...) Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

I discuss how the scientificity characterizing Adam Smith’s political economy has to exteriorize social conflict in order to sustain its objectivation of social interaction in terms of regulative laws. I claim that this exteriorization constitutes an internal point of subversion, not only because it resists economic objectivation, but first and foremost because it forces Smith to employ political strategies that both contradict and guarantee the scientificity of his theory. I show how the place of conflict in modern economy, according to (...) Smith, can actually be determined in three different ways: as a concrete place when it comes to the confrontations between workers and capitalists; as a theoretical place in the sense of being an arbitrary disturbance of the spontaneous organization of the market; and as a place that, as being the intersection between economic naturalization and social contingency, problematizes the scientificity of Smith’s political economy. In this sense, I develop three cases where Smith invokes an argumentative circularity that reveals the paradoxical politics of his economic scientificity, beyond its official laissez-faire politics: State coercion, monetary power and capitalist competition. (shrink)

This chapter brings some much-needed conceptual clarity to the debate about Locke’s scientific methodology. Instead of having to choose between the method of hypothesis and that of natural history (as most interpreters have thought), he would resist prescribing a single method for natural sciences in general. Following Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle, Locke separates medicine and natural philosophy (physics), so that they call for completely different methods. While a natural philosopher relies on “speculative” (causal-theoretical) hypotheses together with natural-history making (...) to explicate phenomena, a medical practitioner must prioritize collecting data about what remedies tend to cure what diseases over hypothesizing about the causes of the latter. (shrink)