Social science, history, and philosophy have often been neglect in thinking through their fundamentally intertwined relationship. The result is often an inattention to philosophy where social science and history is concerned, or a neglect of historicity and social analysis where philosophy is concerned. Meanwhile, the place of values in research is often uneasily passed over in silence. The inattention to, and loss of, the intersection between these different disciplines and their subject matters, leaves our investigations (...) all the more impoverished as a result. In resolving these problems, it is not enough to strive for cooperation or integration, but to rethink of the nature of the disciplines themselves; their interests, purposes, and presuppositions. In this volume, contributors explore different facets of these relationships, and move beyond the problematics erected by positivism often cast in terms of value-free or value-neutral science, that is, a science obsessed with empirical data, schematic classifications, and the pursuit of law-like forms. While positivism has been subject to critique, the influence and legacy of positivism remains. It remains in the way in which we often think about science; the line drawn between the sciences and the humanities; the norms researchers should follow; what a successful explanation looks like; and the ethical, normative, and political implications of scientific research. Aimed at students and researchers of philosophy, history and the social sciences, this book is driven by a desire to revindicate questions concerning ontology and social ontology, to rethink the nature of explanation, and to resituate normativity and values within scientific, social scientific, and historical pursuits. (shrink)

In climate science, climate models are one of the main tools for understanding phenomena. Here, we develop a framework to assess the fitness of a climate model for providing understanding. The framework is based on three dimensions: representational accuracy, representational depth, and graspability. We show that this framework does justice to the intuition that classical process-based climate models give understanding of phenomena. While simple climate models are characterized by a larger graspability, state-of-the-art models have a higher representational accuracy and representational (...) depth. We then compare the fitness-for-providing understanding of process-based to data-driven models that are built with machine learning. We show that at first glance, data-driven models seem either unnecessary or inadequate for understanding. However, a case study from atmospheric research demonstrates that this is a false dilemma. Data-driven models can be useful tools for understanding , specifically for phenomena for which scientists can argue from the coherence of the models with background knowledge to their representational accuracy and for which the model complexity can be reduced such that they are graspable to a satisfactory extent. When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

“Ancient DNA Research” is the practice of extracting, sequencing, and analyzing degraded DNA from dead organisms that are hundreds to thousands of years old. Today, many researchers are interested in adapting state-of-the-art molecular biological techniques and high-throughput sequencing technologies to optimize the recovery of DNA from fossils, then use it for studying evolutionary history. However, the recovery of DNA from fossils has also fueled the idea of resurrecting extinct species, especially as its emergence corresponded with the book and movie (...) Jurassic Park in the 1990s. In this paper, I use historical material, interviews with scientists, and philosophical literature to argue that the search for DNA from fossils can be characterized as a data-driven and celebrity-driven practice. Philosophers have recently argued the need to seriously consider the role of data-driven inquiry in the sciences, and likewise, this history highlights the need to seriously consider the role of celebrity in shaping the kind of research that gets pursued, funded, and ultimately completed. On this point, this history highlights that the traditional philosophical and scientific distinctions between data-driven and hypothesis-driven research are not always useful for understanding the process and practice of science. Consequently, I argue that the celebrity status of a particular research practice can be considered as a “serious epistemic strategy” that researchers, as well as editors and funders, employ when making choices about their research and publication processes. This interplay between celebrity and methodology matters for the epistemology of science. (shrink)

An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died today Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of (...) radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology. Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature. Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades. (shrink)

Alan J. Holland. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Philosophy, its history and historiography. (Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference; v. 1983) ...

This article chronicles the process used to transform a content-driven chemistry lab course into a course focused on developing critical-thinking skills. In general, the process described includes the following: 1) determining the needs of the students, 2) understanding the history of the course, 3) identifying some specific critical thinking skills that could be developed in the course, 4) considering how the skills can be taught developmentally, 5) defining criteria for the skills at different levels; 6) revising the lab (...) manual to include explicit critical-thinking definitions, directions and criteria for students, and 7) designing assessments of the students’ critical thinking abilities as defined and practiced in the lab. Six critical thinking skills (testing hypotheses, distinguishing between observationsand inferences, identifying assumptions, drawing conclusions supported by data, evaluating conclusions, and considering alternative explanations of data) were incorporated into the course. The lab manual displaying the results of this transformation is available by request from either the author or the journal editor. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that trust plays an important role for the acceptability of data sharing practices in research and healthcare, and for the adoption of new health technologies such as AI. Yet there is reported distrust in this domain. Although in the UK, the NHS is one of the most trusted public institutions, public trust does not appear to accompany its data sharing practices for research and innovation, specifically with the private sector, that have been introduced in (...) recent years. In this paper, we examine the question of, what is it about sharing NHS data for research and innovation with for-profit companies that challenges public trust? To address this question, we draw from political theory to provide an account of public trust that helps better understand the relationship between the public and the NHS within a democratic context, as well as, the kind of obligations and expectations that govern this relationship. Then we examine whether the way in which the NHS is managing patient data and its collaboration with the private sector fit under this trust-based relationship. We argue that the datafication of healthcare and the broader ‘health and wealth’ agenda adopted by consecutive UK governments represent a major shift in the institutional character of the NHS, which brings into question the meaning of public good the NHS is expected to provide, challenging public trust. We conclude by suggesting that to address the problem of public trust, a theoretical and empirical examination of the benefits but also the costs associated with this shift needs to take place, as well as an open conversation at public level to determine what values should be promoted by a public institution like the NHS. (shrink)

Two concepts of utmost importance for the analytic philosophy of the twentieth century, “sense-data” and “knowledge by acquaintance”, were introduced by Bertrand Russell under the influence of two idealist philosophers: F. H. Bradley and Alexius Meinong. This paper traces the exact history of their introduction. We shall see that between 1896 and 1898, Russell had a fully-elaborated theory of “sense-data”, which he abandoned after his analytic turn of the summer of 1898. Furthermore, following a subsequent turn (...) of August 1900—-after he became acquainted with the works of Peano and later of Frege—-Russell gradually developed another theory of sense-data. With the collaboration of G. E. Moore, Russell reintroduced the term “sense-data” in 1911. Concomitantly with this move, Russell introduced the epistemological term “knowledge by acquaintance”, which came to designate the grasping of sense-data and universals. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the epistemological tensions embedded within big data and data-driven technologies to advance a socio-political reconsideration of the public dimension in the assessment of their implementation.,This paper builds upon (and revisits) the European Union’s (EU) normative understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies, blending reflections rooted in philosophy of technology with issues of democratic participation in tech-related matters.,This paper proposes the conceptual design of sectorial and/or local-level (...) e-participation platforms to ignite an ongoing discussion – involving experts, private actors, as well as cognizant citizens – over the implementation of data-driven technologies, to avoid siloed, tech-solutionist decisions.,This paper inscribes the EU’s normative approach to AI and data-driven technologies, as well as critical work on the governance of these technologies, into a broader political dimension, suggesting a way to democratically and epistocratically opening up the decisional processes over the development and implementation of these technologies and turn such processes into a systemic civic involvement. (shrink)

This article seeks to address current debates comparing polls and opinion mining as empirically based figuration models of public opinion in the light of in-depth intellectual debates on the role and nature of public opinion that began after the French Revolution and the controversy over public opinion spurred by the invention of polls. Issues of historical quantification and re-conceptualisation of public opinion are addressed in four parts. The first summarises the history of the rise and fall of the concept (...) of public opinion. The second re-examines the key controversies in the debates on the theoretical, empirical and social implications and consequences of the invention of polling. The third part scrutinises the datafication of public opinion that started with polling industry and continues in the age of big data and data mining. The final section discusses the controversial potentials of opinion-mining technology and suggests ways in which social scientists could critically respond to the big data and opinion-mining challenges in order to reintegrate the ideas of publicness, the public and public sphere into public opinion research. (shrink)

To say ‘mysticism versus philosophy’ in the context of Islamic civilization means something far different from what it has come to signify in the West, where many philosophers have looked upon mysticism as the abandonment of any attempt to reconcile religious data with intelligent thought. Certainly the Muslim mystics and philosophers sometimes display a certain mutual opposition and antagonism, but never does their relationship even approach incompatibility.

Increasing numbers of decisions about everyday life are made using algorithms. By algorithms we mean predictive models (decision rules) captured from historical data using data mining. Such models often decide prices we pay, select ads we see and news we read online, match job descriptions and candidate CVs, decide who gets a loan, who goes through an extra airport security check, or who gets released on parole. Yet growing evidence suggests that decision making by algorithms may discriminate people, (...) even if the computing process is fair and well-intentioned. This happens due to biased or non-representative learning data in combination with inadvertent modeling procedures. From the regulatory perspective there are two tendencies in relation to this issue: (1) to ensure that data-driven decision making is not discriminatory, and (2) to restrict overall collecting and storing of private data to a necessary minimum. This paper shows that from the computing perspective these two goals are contradictory. We demonstrate empirically and theoretically with standard regression models that in order to make sure that decision models are non-discriminatory, for instance, with respect to race, the sensitive racial information needs to be used in the model building process. Of course, after the model is ready, race should not be required as an input variable for decision making. From the regulatory perspective this has an important implication: collecting sensitive personal data is necessary in order to guarantee fairness of algorithms, and law making needs to find sensible ways to allow using such data in the modeling process. (shrink)

The data-driven approach to psychiatric science leverages large volumes of patient data to construct machine learning models with the goal of optimizing clinical decision making. Advocates claim that this methodology is well-placed to deliver transformative improvements to psychiatric science. I argue that talk of a data-driven revolution in psychiatry is premature. Transformative improvements, cashed out in terms of better patient outcomes, cannot be achieved without addressing patient understanding. That is, how patients understand their own mental (...) illnesses. I conceptualize understanding as the possession of adaptive mental constructs through which experience is mediated. I suggest that this notion of understanding serves as a bottleneck which any prospective approach to psychiatry must address to be efficacious. Subsequently I argue that, though the data-driven approach is undoubtedly powerful, it does not have a straightforward means of unblocking the bottleneck of understanding. I suggest that the data-driven approach must be supplemented with significant theoretical progress if it is to transform psychiatry. (shrink)

This book deals with the theoretical, methodological, and empirical implications of bounded rationality in the operation of institutions. It focuses on decisions made under uncertainty, and presents a reliable strategy of knowledge acquisition for the design and implementation of decision-support systems. Based on the distinction between the inner and outer environment of decisions, the book explores both the cognitive mechanisms at work when actors decide, and the institutional mechanisms existing among and within organizations that make decisions fairly predictable. While a (...) great deal of work has been done on how organizations act as patterns of events for (boundedly) rational decisions, less effort has been devoted to study under which circumstances organizations cease to act as such reliable mechanisms. Through an empirical strategy on open-ended response data from a survey among junior judges, the work pursues two main goals. The first one is to explore the limits of "institutional rationality" of the Spanish lower courts on-call service, an optimal scenario to observe decision-making under uncertainty. The second aim is to achieve a better understanding of the kind of uncertainty under which inexperienced decision-makers work. This entails exploring the demands imposed by problems and the knowledge needed to deal with them, making this book also a study on expertise achievement in institutional environments. This book combines standard multivariate statistical methods with machine learning techniques such as multidimensional scaling and topic models, treating text as data. Doing so, the book contributes to the collaboration between empirical social scientific approaches and the community of scientists that provide the set of tools and methods to make sense of the fastest growing resource of our time: data. (shrink)

Toward the end of the millennium our world culture concerns itself centrally with the problematic of history. That was often the case in previous similar epochs of great change, for example two hundred years ago. It was an important "characteristic of German Idealism that the concept and the problem of history did not occupy one, but the central position.".

How philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live in Philosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing new concepts, reinterpreting old truths, and reconceptualizing fundamental questions, philosophy has progressed—and driven human progress—for more than two millennia. In short, we live in a world philosophy made. In this concise history of philosophy's world-shaping impact, Scott Soames demonstrates that the modern world—including its science, technology, and politics—simply would not be possible without the (...) accomplishments of philosophy. Firmly rebutting the misconception of philosophy as ivory-tower thinking, Soames traces its essential contributions to fields as diverse as law and logic, psychology and economics, relativity and rational decision theory. Beginning with the giants of ancient Greek philosophy, The World Philosophy Made chronicles the achievements of the great thinkers, from the medieval and early modern eras to the present. It explores how philosophy has shaped our language, science, mathematics, religion, culture, morality, education, and politics, as well as our understanding of ourselves. Philosophy's idea of rational inquiry as the key to theoretical knowledge and practical wisdom has transformed the world in which we live. From the laws that govern society to the digital technology that permeates modern life, philosophy has opened up new possibilities and set us on more productive paths. The World Philosophy Made explains and illuminates as never before the inexhaustible richness of philosophy and its influence on our individual and collective lives. (shrink)

The moral dimensions of how we conduct business affect all of our lives in ways big and small, from the prevention of environmental devastation to the policing of unfair trading practices, from arguments over minimum wage rates to those over how government contracts are handed out. Yet for as deep and complex a field as business ethics is, it has remained relatively isolated from the larger, global history of moral philosophy. This book aims to bridge that gap, reaching (...) deep into the past and traveling the globe to reinvigorate and deepen the basis of business ethics. Spanning the history of western philosophy as well as looking toward classical Chinese thought and medieval Islamic philosophy, this volume provides business ethicists a unified source of clear, accurate, and compelling accounts of how the ideas of foundational thinkers—from Aristotle to Friedrich Hayek to Amartya Sen—relate to wealth, commerce, and markets. The essays illuminate perspectives that have often been ignored or forgotten, informing discussion in fresh and often unexpected ways. In doing so, the authors not only throw into relief common misunderstandings and misappropriations often endemic to business ethics but also set forth rich moments of contention as well as novel ways of approaching complex ethical problems. Ultimately, this volume provides a bedrock of moral thought that will move business ethics beyond the ever-changing opinions of headline-driven debate. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of scientific data that makes sense of recent debates on data-driven and ‘big data’ research, while also building on the history of data production and use particularly within biology. In this view, ‘data’ is a relational category applied to research outputs that are taken, at specific moments of inquiry, to provide evidence for knowledge claims of interest to the researchers involved. They do not have truth-value in and of (...) themselves, nor can they be seen as straightforward representations of given phenomena. Rather, they are fungible objects defined by their portability and prospective usefulness as evidence. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical inquiry into historical meaning and narrative understanding. Interpreting selected writings of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, and stories of Kafka, Rilke, Sartre, and Camus, the author defends the narrative coherence of life and the irreducibility of narrative understanding and truth. The island imagery uncovered in these authors provides the parameters for a contemporary philosophy of history properly mingling earth and sky as natality and mortality, remembering and forgetting, wandering and homecoming, waking and dreaming, wealth and (...) poverty. Johnson has pushed the life-world theme of Husserl's phenomenology out toward the wild-flowering world where it seems to have been headed. (shrink)

Philosophers of science diverge on the question what drives the growth of scientific knowledge. Most of the twentieth century was dominated by the notion that theories propel that growth whereas experiments play secondary roles of operating within the theoretical framework or testing theoretical predictions. New experimentalism, a school of thought pioneered by Ian Hacking in the early 1980s, challenged this view by arguing that theory-free exploratory experimentation may in many cases effectively probe nature and potentially spawn higher evidence-based theories. Because (...) theories are often powerless to envisage workings of complex biological systems, theory-independent experimentation is common in the life sciences. Some such experiments are triggered by compelling observation, others are prompted by innovative techniques or instruments, whereas different investigations query big data to identify regularities and underlying organizing principles. A distinct fourth type of experiments is motivated by a major question. Here I describe two question-guided experimental discoveries in biochemistry: the cyclic adenosine monophosphate mediator of hormone action and the ubiquitin-mediated system of protein degradation. Lacking underlying theories, antecedent data bases, or new techniques, the sole guides of the two discoveries were respective substantial questions. Both research projects were similarly instigated by theory-free exploratory experimentation and continued in alternating phases of results-based interim working hypotheses, their examination by experiment, provisional hypotheses again, and so on. These two cases designate theory-free, question-guided, stepwise biochemical investigations as a distinct subtype of the new experimentalism mode of scientific enquiry. (shrink)

Philosophies and phobosophies -- The philosophical matrix of scientific progress -- Systemics and materialism -- Technoscience? -- Climate and logic -- Informatics : one or multiple? -- Wealth and well-being, economic growth and integral development -- Can standard economic theory account for crises? -- Marxist philosophy : promise and reality -- Rules of law : just and unjust -- Subjective probabilities : admissible in science? -- Does inductive logic work? -- Bridging theories to data -- Matter and energy (...) : physical or metaphysical concepts? -- Does quantum physics refute realism, materialism and determinism? -- Parallel universes? Digital physics? -- Can functionalist psychology explain anything? -- Knowledge pyramids or rosettes? -- Existence : single or double? -- Conclusion : valuation criterion. (shrink)

The past is what happened. History is what we remember and write about that past, the narratives we craft to make sense and meaning out of our memories and their sources. But what does it mean to look at the past and see Nothing? This book redefines Nothing as a historical object and reorients historical consciousness in terms of an awareness of what has and has not been considered worth remembering. "Nothing" has been a catch-all term for everything that (...) is supposedly uninteresting, not happening, all that we have skipped over or is just not there. It will take some (possibly considerable) mental adjustment before we can see Nothing in the way this author has come to think of it, with a capital N. But if we are to transform Nothing into a legitimate historical object, something that exists in the present and has existed in the past, we must see it that way. For Nothing has actually been there all along, in plain sight. When nothing has changed but we think that it should have, we might call that injustice; when nothing happened over a long, slow period of time, we might call that boring. Justice and boredom have histories. So too does being disappointed when nothing happens-for instance, when a forecast end of the world does not occur, and millennial movements have to regroup and recalibrate their predictions. By paying attention to how we understand Nothing to be happening in the present, what it means to "know Nothing" or to "do Nothing," we can begin to ask how those experiences will be remembered. Visually driven, this book explores the ways that modern photographers, artists and writers have depicted ruins, emptiness, and a lack of action. It shows us how the perception that "nothing is the way it was" has produced images and art about memories. The book also analyzes such phenomena as fake historical markers that joke about how "On This Site Nothing Happened" to reflect on our everyday awareness that important events and places from the past be remembered. Most of all, it uncovers the mistake of taking Nothing for granted--because Nothing is happening all the time. (shrink)

This book conducts a historico-critical investigation into a proposal to transform philosophy in the early twentieth century. Driven by the Great Differentiation, the emancipation of the sciences from philosophy in the nineteenth century, several early twentieth-century philosophical movements advocated the transformation of philosophy from an endeavor to unify all conceivable human knowledge into a practice focused on the logical analysis of the differentiated sciences and broader human knowledge. However, this proposal was not subsequently adopted, leading to (...) the establishment of academic philosophy as a discipline characterized by unique philosophical problems and solutions. Drawing on a variety of sources, this book posits that the transformation proposal offers crucial insights for understanding the history of philosophy, especially at its critical turning point in the early twentieth century. Moreover, although not pursued in academic philosophy today, this proposal still offers insights for rethinking the future role of philosophy. In response to Max Weber's fundamental challenge to philosophy post-Differentiation, it is argued that logical analysis offers a viable methodological approach and that the realm of values serves as a remaining substantive domain for practical philosophy. The book will be attractive to researchers and students interested in the history of philosophy and science as well as general intellectual history. (shrink)

What can we conclude from a mere handful of case studies? The field of HPS has witnessed too many hasty philosophical generalizations based on a small number of conveniently chosen case studies. One might even speculate that dissatisfaction with such methodological shoddiness contributed decisively to a widespread disillusionment with the whole HPS enterprise. Without specifying clear mechanisms for history-philosophy interaction, we are condemned to either making unwarranted generalizations from history, or writing entirely "local" histories with no bearing (...) on an overall understanding of the scientific process. I propose a move away from the habit of viewing historical cases as an inductive evidence-base for general philosophical theses. The relation between historical and philosophical studies should not be seen as one between the particular and the general, but as a relation between the concrete and the abstract. An abstract framework is necessary for telling any concrete story at all. In this paper I explore how doing concrete history can help our abstract philosophizing. In the absence of ready-made philosophical concepts appropriate for understanding a given historical episode, the historian is compelled to craft new abstract philosophical concepts. Therefore, history-writing can be a very effective method of philosophical discovery. I will illustrate these claims through a discussion of two investigations in HPS from my own recent and current work: (1) temperature measurement and epistemic iteration; (2)constitution and laboratory practices in the Chemical Revolution. (This will also raise, and solve, a problem of reflexivity: how can we use case studies to show how to go beyond case studies?). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Approaching History through the Future: Some Thoughts from a Feminist PragmatistErin McKennai was recently asked to write on the philosophy of history from a pragmatist perspective. My initial response was that this is not my area of specialization and that I didn’t really have much to say. Then I realized that it was interesting to think about how I view and use notions of history (...) in my work as a feminist pragmatist. It turns out that in my own work, there is a theme of approaching/understanding history through the possibilities of the future. Rather than being confined by settled or fixed views of the present or the past, the present and past are better seen as possibilities for shaping new and different futures. This can be unsettling for many, as humans often like to justify practices and institutions with the idea that “it has to be this way” and/or “it has always been this way.” But unsettling this habit is important if we hope to approach conflict and disagreements in a productive manner that avoids dogmatism and division.Examining my own use of history in my varied philosophical work turned out to be interesting and instructive. It also revealed my reliance on theorists such as Jane Addams, Anna Julia Cooper, and John Dewey in my writing and my teaching. Usually, I work with implicit notions of history and its role in my philosophical writing. The one exception to that was in writing American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, co-authored with Scott L. Pratt. In that work, we explicitly took up a pragmatist approach to history rooted in the work of John Dewey. There, we wrote:For Peirce, James, and Dewey, philosophy worth the name began in response to experienced problems—situations marked by confusion, doubt, indeterminacy—and then returned to these problems, aiming to transform and reconstruct them in ways that allowed the inquirer to go forward, to encounter still more experience. Philosophy, then should be understood as an activity that arises from experience. Since [End Page 71] experience is framed by language, culture and history, philosophy is not a transcendental practice engaged with the really real and truly true.(McKenna and Pratt 3)In “Philosophy and Civilization,” Dewey noted that philosophy is closely tied to the histories of cultures. These ties are mutually transformative, as the philosophy produced is rooted in, and shaped by, the place and time just as it then transforms the place, time, and traditions that give rise to it.Dewey’s own philosophy of history guided our work in American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present as we strove to offer a history of American philosophy that acknowledges its rootedness in particular times and places. In Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Dewey noted that history is always in the making, when he wrote:The slightest reflection shows that the conceptual material employed in writing history is that of the period in which a history is written. There is no material available for leading principles and hypotheses save that of the historic present. As culture changes, the conceptions that are dominant in a culture change. Of necessity, new standpoints for viewing, appraising and ordering data arise. History is then rewritten. Material that had formerly been passed by, offers itself as data because the new conceptions propose new problems for solution requiring new factual material for statement and test.(LW 12:232–33)Dewey went on to argue that changes happening in the present put the past into a new perspective and bring to light new problems. This means that one’s understanding of the past is changed, and “we gain new instruments for estimating the force of present conditions as potentialities of the future” (LW 12:238). For this reason, in American Philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the Present, Pratt and I embedded the history of American philosophy in actual historical events that we thought could profitably provide context for the philosophy and could themselves be rethought from our present vantage point. We were guided by the standpoint that American philosophy is a tradition committed “to a dynamic, pluralistic world of experience in which knowledge is a... (shrink)

In this chapter, I offer a reading of Mill's theory of history. Mill maintains some views about history which we typically associate with the eighteenth century – most obviously, a concern for charting the natural stages of development through which societies must pass in the process of civilization. But he also moves towards doctrines associated with the historicists of the nineteenth century. He believes in the historical variability of human nature, the need to understand historical periods in their (...) own terms, and of progress driven not according to timeless laws but by an inner principle of development. As with so many other things, Mill's view of history is guided by an attempt to reconcile and combine the best of eighteenth‐century British philosophy with nineteenth‐century Continental developments. (shrink)

This collection of original essays brings together leading legal historians and theorists to explore the oft-neglected but important relationship between these two disciplines. Legal historians have often been sceptical of theory. The methodology which informs their own work is often said to be an empirical one, of gathering information from the archives and presenting it in a narrative form. The narrative produced by history is often said to be provisional, insofar as further research in the archives might falsify present (...) understandings and demand revisions. On the other side, legal theorists are often dismissive of historical works. History itself seems to many theorists not to offer any jurisprudential insights of use for their projects: at best, history is a repository of data and examples, which may be drawn on by the theorist for her own purposes. The aim of this collection is to invite participants from both sides to ask what lessons legal history can bring to legal theory, and what legal theory can bring to history. What is the theorist to do with the empirical data generated by archival research? What theories should drive the historical enterprise, and what wider lessons can be learned from it? This collection brings together a number of major theorists and legal historians to debate these ideas. (shrink)

Embodiment--having, being in, or being associated with a body--is a feature of the existence of many entities, perhaps even of all entities. Why entities should find themselves in this condition is the philosophical problem that concerns the present volume. The contributors to this volume shine light on a number of demanding questions that have driven reflection on embodiment throughout the history of philosophy.

In this essay I note some surprisingly deep parallels between the accounts of technology offered by Martin Heidegger and by Kevin Kelly. While Heidegger's insight is panoramic and almost prophetic, and grounded in his reading of the history of philosophy, Kelly's account is grounded in empirical and historical data, driven by a naturalistic and scientific understanding of our world. The similarities between these two authors are surprising in light of their different methodological frameworks and theu antithetical (...) attitudes about the benefits and dangers of technology. After setting them in conversation, I ask: "Who has the correct methodological approach and evaluative attitude toward technology"? With some hesitation, I side with Kelly's more hopeful outlook. (shrink)

R. G. Collingwood's philosophical work is marked both by its compelling critique of scientific experience and by an unresolved tension between the claims of philosophy and the claims of history. The three works under consideration here, Speculum Mentis, Essay on Philosophical Method, and Essay on Metaphysics, comprise a systematic expression of the character of human understanding in terms of its open-ended, dialectical character, and a sustained critique of the scientific conception of human knowledge as a denial of that (...) character. (shrink)

We scholars of the Medieval Academy “do” history or “do” studies of art, philosophy, and literature, as a common verb has it. And inelegant as it is, I am rather drawn to the vague, busybody little word. It has the advantage of reminding us of our participation with the dead. We assemble our conclusions from our data and say: here is the significant pattern, here is the principle that underlay the series of actions or thoughts I have (...) analyzed. But we choose the data. We draw the conclusions. We choose to speak. And this choice involves us in responsibilities, as we all are aware. We need to ask ourselves: to whom are we speaking? But let me put that aside for the present. We have another, overriding responsibility. The dead have no voice but ours. (shrink)

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfectionssuch as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed worksworldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the (...) preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Geschichte Der Entwickelungen Der Griechischen Philosophie Und Ihrer Nachwirkungen Im Romischen Reiche, Volume 2 Christian August Brandis Reimer, 1864 Philosophy; History & Surveys; Ancient & Classical; Philosophy / History & Surveys / Ancient & Classical. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 3, pp 444 - 464 Are genealogies of our beliefs relevant to the truth of these beliefs? Drawing on Bernard Williams’s _Truth and Truthfulness_, I argue that genealogies, or historical narratives showing how a set of beliefs came about, can be either critical or vindicatory of these beliefs. They can be critical by denaturalizing beliefs, showing their continued inability to solve explanatory problems, revealing the origins of these beliefs in assumptions that we no longer accept, (...) and exposing unwelcome practical applications of these beliefs. Genealogies can be vindicatory by showing that the framework of beliefs has the ability to innovate itself and has led to acceptable practical applications of the beliefs in question. However, if contingency creates the space for genealogies in philosophical arguments, it also limits their effectiveness. In most cases, genealogies do not offer conclusive arguments for or against the beliefs they narrate. They either point out a contradiction that needs to be resolved, or show that the framework of beliefs has been successful so far, with no guarantees for such success in the future. (shrink)

The central task which defines the intention of my investigation has to do with a statement and further elucidation of some of the central issues arising in an analysis, description, and interpretation of human existence. My argument throughout will be that human existence must be understood from an historical point of view, and I will seek to delineate the peculiar methodology and distinctive categories of interpretation which are demanded by such an approach. The human self is historical and must be (...) understood through its history. Ever since philosophers have taken history seriously there has been an increasing awareness that any philosophy of human existence, if it is to remain true to the immediately given data, must be rooted in man's concrete, historically lived experience. This development of the historical consciousness has added a new dimension to man's attempt to understand himself in his existence. But it has also posed certain unavoidable questions for the philosopher. Chief among these is the question concerning the relation of history and ontology. Is an ontology of historical existence possible? Wilhelm Dilthey, one of the seminal historical thinkers of the modern age, answered the above question in the negative by arguing that existence, as an historical Erlebnis, is never more than a discontinuous succession of subjectively lived experiences. He thus bequeathed to his historically minded successors the difficult problem of reconciling history and ontology. Does the concrete-historical, by virtue of its particularity and subjectivity, render impossible any rational clarification? Or is the concrete-historical in some sense a bearer of universal structures which define the ontological condition for historical existence as such? This is the problem of our investigation. Stated in its broadest formulation, our question has to do with the possibility of an ontology of human historicity. Are there discernible structures of being which underlie and qualify man's concrete historical actualization? The intention of the author is to show that such an ontology is possible. This will be done by clarifying the methodological procedures and developing the categorial analysis which is required by such a program. (shrink)

Until recently, experimental philosophy has been associated with the questionnaire-based study of intuitions; however, experimental philosophers now adapt a wide range of empirical methods for new philosophical purposes. New methods include paradigms for behavioural experiments from across the social sciences as well as computational methods from the digital humanities that can process large bodies of text and evidence. This book offers an accessible overview of these exciting innovations. The volume brings together established and emerging research leaders from several areas (...) of experimental philosophy to explore how new empirical methods can contribute to philosophical debates. Each chapter presents one or several methods new to experimental philosophy, demonstrating their application in a key area of philosophy and discussing their strengths and limitations. Methods covered include eye tracking, virtual reality technology, neuroimaging, statistical learning, and experimental economics as well as corpus linguistics, visualisation techniques and data and text mining. The volume explores their use in moral philosophy and moral psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and the history of ideas. Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy is essential reading for undergraduates, graduate students and researchers working in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

That the Enlightenment shaped modernity is uncontested. Yet remarkably few historians or philosophers have attempted to trace the process of ideas from the political and social turmoil of the late eighteenth century to the present day. This is precisely what Jonathan Israel now does. In Democratic Enlightenment , Israel demonstrates that the Enlightenment was an essentially revolutionary process, driven by philosophical debate. The American Revolution and its concerns certainly acted as a major factor in the intellectual ferment that shaped (...) the wider upheaval that followed, but the radical philosophes were no less critical than enthusiastic about the American model. From 1789, the General Revolution's impetus came from a small group of philosophe-revolutionnaires , men such as Mirabeau, Sieyes, Condorcet, Volney, Roederer, and Brissot. Not aligned to any of the social groups represented in the French National assembly, they nonetheless forged " la philosophie moderne "--in effect Radical Enlightenment ideas--into a world-transforming ideology that had a lasting impact in Latin America, Canada and eastern Europe as well as France, Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries. In addition, Israel argues that while all French revolutionary journals powerfully affirmed that la philosophie moderne was the main cause of the French Revolution, the main stream of historical thought has failed to grasp what this implies. Israel sets the record straight, demonstrating the true nature of the engine that drove the Revolution, and the intimate links between the radical wing of the Enlightenment and the anti-Robespierriste "Revolution of reason." Acclaim for earlier volumes in the trilogy: "His vast--and vastly impressive--book sets out to redefine the intellectual landscape of early modern Europe. Magnificent and magisterialwill undoubtedly be one of the truly great historical works of the decade." -- Sunday Telegraph "The scholarship is breathtaking. Israel has read everything, absorbed every nuance, followed up every byway." -- New Statesman "An enormously impressive piece of scholarship. The breadth and depth of the author's reading are breathtaking and Enlightenment Contested is set to become the definitive work for philosophers as well as historians on this extraordinary period." -- Tribune. (shrink)

Scholasticism, appropriation, and censure -- Humanists' invectives and Aristotle's impiety -- Renaissance Aristotle, Renaissance Averroes -- Italian Aristotelianism after Pomponazzi -- Religious reform and the reassessment of Aristotelianism -- Learned anti-Aristoteliansim -- History, erudition, and Aristotle's past -- Pious novelty.

It is thirty years since the last major reforms of science education. many believe that it is time for reappraisal of these earlier curricula, and for the renewal of science education-its content, aims, methods. also, and importantly, there is a renewed interest in the preparation of science teachers. this essay is a contribution to that task.

In actual practice the relation between history and sociology is very close. The sociologist of necessity derives his material from the data furnished by anthropology and history. On his side the historian, however eager he may be to confine himself to detailed and close narration of actual fact, cannot avoid reference to problems of causation or assumptions regarding human nature or the general course of human evolution, and so is a sociologist malgré lui. Again, though there are (...) still not wanting some historians, such as v. Below, who deny sociology any status, most writers on the theory and methodology of history have come to regard the two disciplines as Hilfwissenschaften to each other. Closer examination, however, reveals considerable uncertainty and hesitation. This is due, firstly to widely prevalent doubts as to the scope of sociology, with regard to which it is said, not without some exaggeration, the sociologists themselves are not in agreement. It is due, secondly, to the fact that the issues raised involve reference to difficult problems in the theory of knowledge generally, in regard to which, in the present position of epistemology, agreement is hardly to be expected. In this paper I shall attempt firstly to define briefly the scope of sociology and discuss the bearing of my definition upon some recent representative views of the nature of historical investigation. Secondly, in the light of this discussion, I will endeavour to restate the fundamental points of our problem in the hope of bringing out more clearly the main issues involved. (shrink)

Throughout its history, analytic philosophy has established a decidedly anti-rhetoric self-understanding. Yet the historical development of analytic philosophy, leading from Russell to Quine and Davidson, successively puts this anti-rhetorical ideals in question. Even though the rhetorics of clarity and objectivity remain, the discussions of post-analytic philosophy focus more and more an an understanding of language which is forced to acknowledge its irreducible practical and situational aspects. Analytical philosophy, then, should be seen as a decidedly anti-rhetoric (...) tradition which tries to keep up the spirit of scientific enlightenment in times of growing skepticism -- and which is driven, by the very force of clarity and a better understanding, to develop a picture of language which undermines this ideal at least in some aspects. (shrink)

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

This symposium is inspired by the round tables organised by James Elkins in Cork, Ireland and Chicago which aimed to create a dialogue between art historians and philosophers on concepts which are central to the way both disciplines conduct their respective endeavours. For our symposium, art historians and philosophers will discuss topics and concepts which are likely to be given different interpretations by the respective disciplines. We will attempt to bridge the gap between the respective interpretations by inviting a closer (...) consideration of the alternative perspective. The first topic will be the relation of aesthetic and moral considerations in evaluating the photography of Bill Henson. The second will be "Beauty" and the third, will be the nature of "Aesthetic Autonomy". (shrink)

This is a concise introductory textbook for a one semester course in the history and philosophy of mathematics. It is written for mathematics majors, philosophy students, history of science students and secondary school mathematics teachers. The only prerequisite is a solid command of pre-calculus mathematics. It is shorter than the standard textbooks in that area and thus more accessible to students who have trouble coping with vast amounts of reading. Furthermore, there are many detailed explanations of (...) the important mathematical procedures actually used by famous mathematicians, giving more mathematically talented students a greater opportunity to learn the history and philosophy by way of problem solving. Several important philosophical topics are pursued throughout the text, giving the student an opportunity to come to a full and consistent knowledge of their development. These topics include infinity, the nature of motion, and Platonism. This book offers, in fewer pages, a deep penetration into the key mathematical and philosophical aspects of the history of mathematics. (shrink)