This paper first appeared in Modern Theology, Vol. 6, No. 3, July 1989. Copyright (c) Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd., Oxford. Reprinted by permission.

Contrary to what might be expected given a religious or other motivation, Pierre Duhem's interest in mediaeval science was the result of his surprise encounter with Jordanus de Nemore while working on Les origines de la statique in the late autumn of 1903. Historical assumptions common among physicists at that time may explain this surprise, which occasioned a frantic search for more mediaeval precursors for Renaissance mechanics. It also raised serious historiographical problems that threatened even his methodological views, until they (...) were resolved in his To save the phenomena of 1908. (shrink)

Much speculation on the sources of Duhem's historical interests fails to account for the major shifts in these interests: neither his belief in the continuous development of physics nor his Catholicism, when his Church was encouraging the study of generally Aristotelian scholastic thought, led to any interest in mediaeval science before 1904. Equally, his own claim that he was merely testing his views on the nature of physical theory is easily squared only with earlier work with no trace of mediaeval (...) science. Behind this discontinuity lies a major crisis. Though not a positivist, Duhem had based all his work on assumptions acceptable to positivists. One of these, the sterility of the Middle Ages, was refuted by his chance discovery of evidence of genuine mediaeval science in the autumn of 1903, but that left the doctrine of scholastic sterility intact. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

I would like to develop a few critical observations on some substantive moral ideas propounded in Professor R. M. Hare's Freedom and Reason a work where formal and substantive moral arguments are blended in an attractive and plausible, though at times somewhat exasperating, mixture. Hare's formal doctrines, the celebrated theses of prescriptivity and universalizability, will not as such interest me here, though I shall have to take notice of at least one of them, viz. universalizability, in so far as it (...) has a bearing on what I take to be Hare's substantive position. The arguments in Freedom and Reason are compounded of Kantian and utilitarian elements, and culminate in Hare's conceptualization of two antithetical types of person, whom he calls respectively the ‘liberal’ and the ‘fanatic’. This distinction itself is based on a rigid and uncompromising dichotomy of ‘interest’ and ‘ideal’, and it is on this dichotomy that Hare's substantive moral doctrine hinges. Hare's argument is that the morally good person is one who subordinates his ideal to a moral principle that takes interests into account, in contradistinction to the fanatic who allows interests to be overridden by his ideal. There is much to recommend in this doctrine, and distinctions of this nature can and ought to be drawn. But the way in which it is done in Hare's work opens up fresh doubts and fails to solve some fundamental problems. As I do not think that his distinction between ‘interest’ and ‘ideal’ is tenable, I cannot agree wholly to the predominantly formal manner in which Hare deals with the important question of distinguishing between liberalism and fanaticism. The upshot of my arguments is that this distinction can only be made intelligible in substantive terms. Although I cannot here offer a positive alternative to Hare beyond some oblique hints at the end, my critical remarks on Hare's doctrine ought at least to go some way in establishing the need for such an alternative. (shrink)