Zygon®, Volume 57, Issue 2, Page 299-321, June 2022.

Pour pouvoir la résoudre, nous généralisons la question posée par Needham : Qu’est-ce qui a empêché la science gréco-romaine et médiévale de franchir la prochaine grande étape après Archimède, et qu’est-ce qui a empêché les savants orientaux de contribuer à la physique moderne des siècles encore après Galilée? Pour répondre à cette question, on propose comme distinction-clef entre physique moderne et science néo-galiléenne le droit d’inventer des concepts fondamentaux « illogiques », vérifiables par expérimentation. Ce droit se (...) fonde sur la croyance en un univers régi par des lois fondamentales cachées, mais accessibles à la connaissance humaine. Cette croyance prend sa source dans la vision biblique du monde, qui devint le socle des cultures européennes à l’époque de la révolution scientifique à l’occasion de l’invention de l’imprimerie et de la Réforme. (shrink)

The essays in this volume place the history of science in context, especially the genre of history of science informed by Joseph Needham's ecumenical vision of science. The book presents a number of questions that relate to contemporary concerns of the history of sciences and multiculturalism.

This article was first published as “Notation atomique et hypothèses atomistiques”, Revue des questions scientifiques, 31 (1892), 391– 457. It is the second of a series of articles Duhem was to publish in the Catholic journal Revue des questions scientifiques, in which he presents his understanding of what can justifiably be said about the structure of chemical substances as captured by chemical formulas. The argument unfolds following a broadly historical development of events throughout the course of the century which was (...) coming to a close as he wrote. He later reflected in his classic The Aim and Structure of Physical Theories – based in large part on articles which had appeared in the Revue – that “To give the history of a physical principle is at the same time to make a logical analysis of it” (p. 269). Logical analysis clearly dominates in the present article. The historical context was elaborated considerably in a later work, Le mixte et la combinaison chimique: Essai sur l’évolution d’une idée, which did not lead him to retract any aspect of his earlier position but provided a broader setting in which it could be elaborated. In particular, the Aristotelian influence, which is only hinted at here in some of the formulations (see especially the beginning of section VII) without mentioning Aristotle by name, is explicit in the later work, making Duhem’s own ontological conception a little clearer. A discussion of stereoisomerism, conspicuously absent in the present article, is also integrated into the later book. The same holds for Avogadro’s hypothesis. (shrink)

Late nineteenth‐century opponents of atomism questioned whether the evidence required any notion of an atom. In this spirit, Duhem developed an account of the import of chemical formulas that is clearly neutral on the atomic question rather than antiatomistic. The argument is supplemented with specific inadequacies of atomic theories of chemical combination and considerably strengthened by the theory of chemical combination provided by thermodynamics. Despite possible counterevidence available at the time, which should have tempered some of Duhem's concluding remarks, (...) there was no atomic theory of chemical combination, which is wholly a product of the twentieth century. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm, SE‐106 91 Stockholm, Sweden; e‐mail: paul.needham@philosophy.su.se. (shrink)

Developments in the application of quantum mechanics to the understanding of the chemical bond are traced with a view to examining the evolving conception of the covalent bond. Beginning with the first quantum mechanical resolution of the apparent paradox in Lewis’s conception of a shared electron pair bond by Heitler and London, the ensuing account takes up the challenge molecular orbital theory seemed to pose to the classical conception of the bond. We will see that the threat of delocalisation can (...) be overstated, although it is questionable whether this should be seen as reinstating the issue of the existence of the chemical bond. More salient are some recent developments in a longstanding discussion of how to understand the causal aspects of the bonding interaction—the nature of the force involved in the covalent link—which are taken up in the latter part of the paper. (shrink)

Review article of Hasok Chang, Is Water H2O?: Evidence, Realism and Pluralism, Springer, Dordrecht, 2012.

The status of the chemical bond has long been a controversial issue with the increasing distance between quantum chemists’ theoretical understanding of molecular stability and the ideas of experimental chemists. Some aspects of the development of the concept of a hydrogen bond are discussed with a view to assessing its import on the general question.

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel’s classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel’s claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A (...) further corollary to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel’s conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry. (shrink)

Chemistry is the study of the structure and transformation of matter. When Aristotle founded the field in the 4th century BCE, his conceptual grasp of the nature of matter was tailored to accommodate a relatively simple range of observable phenomena. In the 21st century, chemistry has become the largest scientific discipline, producing over half a million publications a year ranging from direct empirical investigations to substantial theoretical work. However, the specialized interest in the conceptual issues arising in chemistry, hereafter Philosophy (...) of Chemistry, is a relatively recent addition to philosophy of science. Philosophy of chemistry has two major parts. In the first, conceptual issues arising within chemistry are carefully articulated and analyzed. Such questions which are internal to chemistry include the nature of substance, atomism, the chemical bond, and synthesis. In the second, traditional topics in philosophy of science such as realism, reduction, explanation, confirmation, and modeling are taken up within the context of chemistry. (shrink)

During the 19th century atomism was a controversial issue in chemistry. It is an oversimplification to dismiss the critics' arguments as all falling under the general positivist view that what can't be seen can't be. The more interesting lines of argument either questioned whether any coherent notion of an atom had ever been formulated or questioned whether atoms were ever really given any explanatory role. At what point, and for what reasons, did atomistic hypotheses begin to explain anything in chemistry? (...) It is argued that 19th-century atomic accounts of constant proportions and isomerism had little to offer, whereas a non-atomic explanation of chemical combination was developed. Not until the turn of the century did atomism begin to do serious explanatory work in chemistry. (shrink)

‘Water is H 2 O’ is naturally construed as an equivalence. What are the things to which the two predicates ‘is water’ and ‘is H 2 O’ apply? The equivalence presupposes that substance properties are distinguished from phase properties. A substance like water (H 2 O) exhibits various phases (solid, liquid, gas) under appropriate conditions, and a given (say liquid) phase may comprise several substances. What general features distinguish substance from phase properties? I tackle these questions on the basis of (...) an interpretation of a theorem of thermodynamics known as Gibbs' phase rule which systematically relates these two kinds of feature of matter. The interpretation develops the idea that the things substance and phase predicates apply to are quantities of matter which sustain mereological relations and operations and exploits these mereological features in distinguishing the two kinds of property. Gibbs' phase rule is a macroscopic principle applicable for macroscopic intervals of time. Bringing intervals of time into the picture calls for a more detailed consideration of the relation between macroscopic equilibria and the corresponding dynamic equilibria at the microlevel and throws into question the simple idea that quantities can always be regarded as collections of molecules. The account provides some insight into how the continuous, macroscopic conception of matter (‘gunk’) is reconciled with the discrete microscopic conception and illuminates the interpretation of substances present in mixtures. (shrink)

The history of the hydrogen bond provides a good example of the of an important chemical concept. It illustrates the interplay between empirical and theoretical approaches to the problem of delimiting what has proved to be quite an elusive notion, with chemists whittling away at the particular sorts of case with a view to obtaining a precise, unitary concept. Even though there is a return to a more theoretically inspired notion in more recent research, empirical characterisations remain a feature of (...) the report of a Task Group recently set up by the IUPAC to reconsider the definition of the hydrogen bond, and this situation—by no means unusual for chemical concepts and principles—is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. These developments are reviewed in this paper, which includes an extended discussion of the enormous significance hydrogen bonding has for the philosopher’s standard example of a “natural kind”, water. There is little to suggest a reduction to what philosophers of physics are pleased to call fundamental principles, and the details raise further questions about what essentialists could possibly have in mind when talking about the microscopic essence of water. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The idea that the extension of a chemical substance is fixed by determining what stands in the relation of being the same substance to a paradigm sample plays a substantial role in chemistry, and procedures of identification that don’t make direct use of the method can be traced back to ones that do. But paradigm samples are not typically selected by ostension, as in Putnam’s version of this procedure. The relevance of ostension is questioned after a discussion of the (...) establishment of paradigm specimens in the analysis of some contents of crude oil and an examination of the general features of the same-substance relation that takes into account the temporal dependency and the consequent role of characteristic features of substances. 1Introduction 2Some Formal Properties of the Same-Substance Relation 3Characteristic Properties and Paradigm Samples 4Naming Substances Old and New 5Some Points of Comparison with Temperature 6Summary and Conclusion. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal (Foundations of Chemistry, 7 (2005), 125–148) Lombardi and Labarca call into question a thesis of ontological reduction to which several writers on reduction subscribe despite rejecting a thesis of epistemological reduction. Lombardi and Labarca advocate instead a pluralistic ontology inspired by Putnam’s internal realism. I suggest that it is not necessary to go so far, and that a more critical view of the ontological reduction espoused by the authors they criticise circumvents the (...) need to resort to their radical alternative. (shrink)

Examining the costs and motivations of warfare is key to conundrums concerning the relevance of this troubling phenomenon to the evolution of social attachment and cooperation, particularly during adolescence and young adulthood—the developmental time period during which many participants are first recruited for warfare. The study focuses on Samburu, a pastoralist society of approximately 200,000 people occupying northern Kenya’s semi-arid and arid lands, asking what role the emotionally sensitized, peer-driven adolescent life stage may have played in the cultural and genetic (...) coevolution of coalitional lethal aggression. Research in small-scale societies provides unparalleled opportunities for sharply defined variables, particularly in age generation societies in which all young men are initiated into “warriorhood.” Proposing an epigenetic and component behavior approach, we examine whether raiding activities such as number of raids, killing, and sparing enemy lives associate with DNA methylation in two candidate genes: MAOA, linked to mood and arousal, and NR3C1, linked to stress and immune response. We report statistically significant associations between the epigenetic variables and the combat variables of overall raiding activity and reportedly showing mercy to enemies. In contrast, epigenetic variables did not associate with post-traumatic stress disorder symptom scores, and the only combat variable associated with PTSD was losing one’s own livestock in a raid. These findings raise important questions concerning the mechanisms driving warfare’s paradoxical mix of violent and altruistic behaviors. (shrink)

Some points are made about substance properties in their role of introducing mass terms. In particular, two conditions of distributivity and cumulativity of mass predicates expressing these properties are not the independent pair they first appear to be. A classification of macroscopic substance concepts is developed. This needs to be complemented in some way by the introduction of a modal qualification reminiscent of Aristotle's distinction between actual and potential presence of substances in a mixture. Consideration of the latter feature has (...) prompted Joe Earley to raise the question of whether there is any salt in the sea. I try to argue that there is. (shrink)

In discussions about the Scientific Revolution, a key expression is “modern science”. Its traditional understanding – mathematization and experimentation – is too weak: Euclid’s geometry and Archimedes’ physics were both perfectly mathematical and were based on objective experience. And it is too strong: in natural sciences beyond physics, math is quite limited. Joseph Needham in his Grand Question actually focused on modern physics originating with Galileo. To make this question really historical, it is narrowed down to physics (...) and expanded in cultural time and space: Which feature of modern physics, absent in Greco-Roman and Medieval sciences, prevented the next major advance after Archimedes, and prevented non-Europeans to join modern science for centuries after Galileo and up to the 20th century? In modern physics, besides the tools of mathematics and experiment, no less important is the third tool, described by Einstein as "the boldest speculation [to] bridge the gaps between the empirical data." This tool implies belief in the hidden fundamental laws of the universe and the right to invent fundamental concepts that are not directly observable, but can be tested experimentally along with the theory based on them. Such a belief, or the postulate of modern science, is the key distinction of modern physics. Among the great modern physicists there were eight theorists who successfully invented new fundamental concepts. And each of these inventions led to breakthrough advances of modern physics. (shrink)

In a recent critique of the doctrine of emergentism championed by its classic advocates up to C. D. Broad, Jaegwon Kim (Philosophical Studies 63:31–47, 1999) challenges their view about its applicability to the sciences and proposes a new account of how the opposing notion of reduction should be understood. Kim is critical of the classic conception advanced by Nagel and uses his new account in his criticism of emergentism. I question his claims about the successful reduction achieved in the (...) sciences and argue that his new account has not improved on Nagel’s and that the critique of emergentism he bases on it is question-begging in important respects. (shrink)

Prior left us with a problem which he stated in the following way: ‘Very roughly, it would seem that countable “things” are made or grow from bits of stuff, or from other countable “things”, that are already there. The precise logic of this process hasn’t been worked out yet, and until it has been, it seems likely that any tensed predicate logic can only be provisional in character.’ Although I disagree with much of the philosophy of time underlying Priorean tense (...) logic, the problem of presenting a coherent view of ‘countable things’ and ‘bits of stuff’ within a framework accommodating temporal reference and modal expressions along broadly the lines Prior proposed remains an interesting one. The present paper sketches a general framework within which more specific questions raised by this general issue can be addressed, and makes a number of tentative suggestions without, however, proceeding so far as to settle on and develop a definite logical theory. (shrink)

Salmon farming is a rapidly expanding industry. In order for it to develop in an ethical manner, many ethical issues must be confronted. Among these are questions regarding the quality of life of salmon on farms. To develop reasonable answers to these questions considerable thought must be devoted to developing appropriate standards of care for salmon. If these questions are not addressed the results could be bad both for salmon and for salmon farmers.

How does perceptual learning take place early in life? Traditionally, researchers have focused on how infants make use of information within displays to organize it, but recently, increasing attention has been paid to the question of how infants perceive objects differently depending upon their recent interactions with the objects. This experiment investigates 10-month-old infants' use of brief prior experiences with objects to visually organize a display consisting of multiple geometrically shaped three-dimensional blocks created for this study. After a brief (...) exposure to a multipart portion of the display, each infant was shown two test events, one of which preserved the unit the infant had seen and the other of which broke that unit. Overall, infants looked longer at the event that broke the unit they had seen prior to testing than the event that preserved that unit, suggesting that infants made use of the brief prior experience to (a) form a cohesive unit of the multipart portion of the display they saw prior to test and (b) segregate this unit from the rest of the test display. This suggests that infants made inferences about novel parts of the test display based on limited exposure to a subset of the test display. Like adults, infants learn features of the three-dimensional world through their experiences in it. (shrink)

Robert Deltete and Anastasios Brenner have provided a thorough examination of my translation of Duhem’s Le mixte et la combinaison chimique (1902) and associated essays. I am very grateful for their efforts and gratified that such competent reviewers should be generally positive. They provide an overview of relevant aspects of Duhem’s life and work, which may serve to introduce him to readers of this journal and promote interest in Duhem studies. They also raise and answer some questions about the interpretation (...) and evaluation of Duhem’s work, make some points of criticism of my choice of material and question certain points of translation. The editor has suggested that I make a response, and I shall take up some issues in these three areas. Since Duhem’s views play a central role in the development of the concept of chemical substance which I have worked on in recent years, I will make several references to my own publications. (shrink)

In this rejoinder to Eric Scerri's response to my first comment on his paper on the reduction of chemistry to physics, the main point concerns laws in chemistry. But other themes touched upon include the assumptions involved in ab initio calculations, the question of what is reduced to what on Scerri's view, and the significance he attaches to the term "naturalism".

Chemistry, the science of substances and their transformations with roots in antiquity, provides as rich a source as any of the claims about what is not directly observable in the light of ideas reflecting both constancy and change. An important distinction in chemistry is that between macroscopic and microscopic realms, mistaken by positivists as a distinction between observable and theoretical and later by certain realists as a distinction between the merely superficial and the deeply theoretical. Recent realist themes about the (...) preservation of the extension of substance predicates typified by “water” and the view that 20th century scientific atomism vindicates earlier philosophical speculations about the corpuscular constitution of matter are unjustified. The relation between quantum and general chemistry is vexed. Despite questioning particular realist theses, however, none of this raises doubts about the basic realist stance that science seeks and sometimes achieves knowledge of a world independent of our thoughts. (shrink)

Duhem is perhaps the last active scientist to have produced a philosophi- cal text, and TheAim and Structure of Physical Theory retains its status as one that every textbook writer in the philosophy of science has to take into consideration. Several of Duhem’s other books have since appeared in English translation, but the Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science is the first collection of Duhem’s papers to appear in English. Commentators have oRen pointed out that the roots of (...) Duhem’s main philosophical work are to be found in a series of articles he wrote in the Catholic journal, Revue des Questions Scientijiques, during the first part of the 1890s, and it is not before time that these should be made available in English. In fact, the editors of the Essays have done us the greater ser- vice of including some of these seminal papers in a broader selection from Duhem’s shorter pieces, ranging over the years from 1892 to 1915 and covering his interests in the history of science and the relation between science and religion, as well as the philosophy of science. In the latter cat- egory, there is a nice little essay, “The Nature of Mathematical Reason- ing” from 1912, in which he takes issue with Poincark’s views on math- ematical induction, a review of Mach’s The Science of Mechanics (1903) and “Logical Examination of Physical Theory” - the section dealing with his philosophy of science from the submission he wrote in 1913 in sup- port of his membership of the Academie des Sciences. Like the latter, the last two chapters of To Save the Phenomena (1908) and “Some Reflec- tions on German Science” (1915) have already appeared in English. Of the remaining nine essays, eight appear, as far as I’m aware, for the first time here in English, while the “lightly edited” “History of Physics” origi- nally appeared in English. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Luc Faucher and others have argued for the existence of deep cultural differences between ‘Chinese’ and ‘East Asian’ ways of understanding the world and those of ‘ancient Greeks’ and ‘Americans’. Rejecting Alison Gopnik’s speculation that the development of modern science was driven by the increasing availability of leisure and information in the late Renaissance, they claim instead—following Richard Nisbett—that the birth of mathematical science was aided by ‘Greek’, or ‘Western’, cultural norms that encouraged analytic, abstract and (...) rational theorizing. They argue that ‘Chinese’ and ‘East Asian’ cultural norms favoured, by contrast, holistic, concrete and dialectical modes of thinking. After clarifying some of the things that can be meant by ‘culture’ and ‘mentality’, the present paper shows that Faucher and his colleagues make a number of appeals—to the authority of comparative studies and history of science, to the psychological studies of Nisbett and his colleagues, and to a hidden assumption of strong cultural continuity in the West. It is argued that every one of these appeals is misguided, and, further, that the psychological findings of Nisbett and others have little bearing on questions concerning the origins of modern science. Finally, it is suggested that the ‘Needham question’ about why the birth of modern science occurred in Europe rather than anywhere else is itself multiply confused to the extent that it may express no significant query.Author Keywords: Nisbett; Needham; Gopnik; Modern science; Chinese science. (shrink)

Introduction to vol 5, no. 2 This edition begins with a tribute to Brian Goodwin. Brian was not only an original member of the editorial board of Cosmos & History, but was the patron of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Processes Research from within which this journal was conceived. His work and life symbolizes all that the journal stands for. The central question that Brian was concerned with throughout his life was: What is life? It seems appropriate (...) therefore to retrospectively dedicate last year’s two volume special edition on this question to him. However, I believe that this edition of Cosmos & History would also meet with his approval. If there is a theme uniting the papers in this edition it is the problematic state of existing disciplines and the fruitfulness of transcending disciplinary boundaries, something that was of increasing concern to Brian. (shrink)

The discovery by Hans Spemann of the “organizer” tissue and its ability to induce the formation of the amphibian embryo's neural tube inspired leading embryologists to attempt to elucidate embryonic inductions’ underlying mechanism. Joseph Needham, who during the 1930s conducted research in biochemical embryology, proposed that embryonic induction is mediated by a specific chemical entity embedded in the inducing tissue, surmising that chemical to be a hormone of sterol-like structure. Along with embryologist Conrad H. Waddington, they conducted research aimed (...) at the isolation and functional characterization of the underlying agent. As historians clearly pointed out, embryologists came to question Needham's biochemical approach; he failed to locate the hormone he sought and eventually abandoned his quest. Yet, this study finds that the difficulties he ran into resulted primarily from the limited conditions for conducting his experiments at his institute. In addition, Needham's research reflected the interests of leading biochemists in hormone and cancer research, because it offered novel theoretical models and experimental methods for engaging with the function of the hormones and carcinogens they isolated. Needham and Waddington were deterred neither by the mounting challenges nor by the limited experimental infrastructure. Like their colleagues in hormone and cancer research, they anticipated difficulties in attempting to establish causal links between complex biological phenomena and simple chemical triggering. (shrink)

Laws of nature are often considered to have played a crucial role in the development of modern science and continue to attract discussions in contemporary philosophy. Is there a similar idea developed in Chinese traditions? Despite its evident significance, there has not been much discussion on this question since Needham (1951) and Bodde (1979). Needham’s answer is no, and one of his main reasons is that China lacks the idea of a divine celestial lawgiver imposing order on (...) natural phenomena; Bodde largely agrees with him. In this paper, I explain why Needham’s arguments are problematic, and by examining Chinese classical texts, I argue that there is an idea of laws of nature, embodied by two notions, dao 道 and li 理. (shrink)

The discovery by Hans Spemann of the “organizer” tissue and its ability to induce the formation of the amphibian embryo’s neural tube inspired leading embryologists to attempt to elucidate embryonic inductions’ underlying mechanism. Joseph Needham, who during the 1930s conducted research in biochemical embryology, proposed that embryonic induction is mediated by a specific chemical entity embedded in the inducing tissue, surmising that chemical to be a hormone of sterol-like structure. Along with embryologist Conrad H. Waddington, they conducted research aimed (...) at the isolation and functional characterization of the underlying agent. As historians clearly pointed out, embryologists came to question Needham’s biochemical approach; he failed to locate the hormone he sought and eventually abandoned his quest. Yet, this study finds that the difficulties he ran into resulted primarily from the limited conditions for conducting his experiments at his institute. In addition, Needham’s research reflected the interests of leading biochemists in hormone and cancer research, because it offered novel theoretical models and experimental methods for engaging with the function of the hormones and carcinogens they isolated. Needham and Waddington were deterred neither by the mounting challenges nor by the limited experimental infrastructure. Like their colleagues in hormone and cancer research, they anticipated difficulties in attempting to establish causal links between complex biological phenomena and simple chemical triggering. (shrink)

During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. (...) Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur. (shrink)

During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. (...) Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur. (shrink)

Weber's 'science as a vocation' has often been viewed as a therapeutic concept with no functional significance in the fully bureaucratized and professionalized modern science. However, development in the philosophy of science in the last century, especially the Kuhn thesis of the discontinuity of scientific progress and the Duhem-Quine thesis of underdetermination, shows that Weber's distinction between science as a vocation and science as a profession (career) can potentially answer one of the oldest questions in science studies: What makes scientific (...) breakthroughs possible? (shrink)

Right after Philo’s about-face in Part 12 of the Dialogues, he gives an argument that the dispute between the theist and the atheist is merely verbal. Since everything is at least a little like everything else, the atheist must concede that the source of order is at least remotely like a human intellect, even if this source is something like a rotting turnip. This passage provides a major argument for dismissing Hume’s apparent avowals of theism in the Dialogues and elsewhere, (...) since Philo’s assertions are so loose as to let in a rotting turnip. The right reading of the passage is more interesting. The paragraph was written in 1776, right before Hume’s death. It’s thus one of the few philosophical texts written late enough to reflect his encounter with the French philosophes in the 1760s. We have good biographical evidence that Hume was criticized for being too much of a theist in France. The turnip is rotting not in order to make fun of the argument from design, but in order to make fun of d’Holbach's and Diderot's account of the origin of life, accounts that generalized dramatically from John Needham’s observations of nematodes in rotting wheat. In the rotting turnip paragraph, Hume is attempting to establish that the dispute between the theist and the atheist isn’t empirically tractable, that atheists will never outflank the apophatic theologian on the question of whether human minds are unlike God, and that if atheists are consistent with their analogical methods, they ought to be more open to the argument from design. (shrink)

What are the criteria determining the individuation of chemical kinds? Recent philosophical discussion, which puts too much emphasis on microstructure, seems to presuppose a reductionist conception not motivated by the scientific facts. The present article traces the development of the traditional notion of a substance with the rise of modern chemistry from the end of the 18th century with a view to correcting this speculative distortion.

According to microessentialism, it is necessary to resort to microstructure in order to adequately characterise chemical substances such as water. But the thesis has never been properly supported by argument. Kripke and Putnam, who originally proposed the thesis, suggest that a so-called stereotypical characterisation is not possible, whereas one in terms of microstructure is. However, the sketchy outlines given of stereotypical descriptions hardly support the impossibility claim. On the other hand, what naturally stands in contrast to microscopic description is description (...) in macroscopic terms, and macroscopic characterisations of water are certainly possible. This suffices to counter the claim that microdescriptions are necessary. Whether it counters the impossibility claim depends on whether all macroscopic descriptions are stereotypical (stereotypical descriptions presumably being macroscopic). In so far as systematic import of “stereotypical” can be determined, it would seem not. But some macroscopic characterisations have definite affinity with everyday knowledge, which presumably stands in conflict with the spirit of the impossibility claim. Since what is characterised are properties expressed by predicates like “is water”, the necessity of identity has no bearing here, and matters of interpretation pose problems for claims to the effect that science fixes the extension of “water” as ordinarily understood. (shrink)

A collection of essays in various fields of philosophy written in celebration of Paul Needham's fiftieth birthday.

Contribution to a symposium on Alan Chalmer's The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009).

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

Two inter-linked theses are defended in this paper. One is the Duhemian theme that a rigid distinction between physical and chemical properties cannot be upheld. Duhem maintained this view not because the latter are reducible to the former, but because if physics is to remain consistent with chemistry it must prove possible to expand it to accommodate new features, and a rigid distinction would be a barrier to this process. The second theme is that naturally occurring isotopic variants of water (...) are in fact distinct substances, and naturally occurring samples of water are mixtures of these substances. For most practical purposes it is convenient to treat protium oxide, deuterium oxide, and so on, as the same chemical substance, but to insist on this as a matter of principle would stand in conflict with the first thesis. (shrink)

This undergraduate textbook introduces some fundamental issues in philosophy of science for students of philosophy and science students. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 deals with knowledge and values. Chap. 1 presents the classical conception of knowledge as initiated by the ancient Greeks and elaborated during the development of science, introducing the central concepts of truth, belief and justification. Aspects of the quest for objectivity are taken up in the following two chapters. Moral issues are broached in (...) Chap. 4, which discusses some aspects of the use and abuse of science, taking up the responsibilities of scientists in properly conducting their business and decision-makers in their concerns with the import of science for society. Part 2 contrasts the view of scientific progress as the rejecting of old hypotheses and theories and replacing them with new ones, represented by Karl Popper, with the conception of progress as accumulating knowledge, saving as much as possible from older theories, represented by Pierre Duhem. A concluding chapter defends the natural attitude of taking the theories of modern science to be literally true, i.e. realism, in the face of arguments drawn partly from the history of scientific progress in criticism of this stance. (shrink)