Philosophy of Science Commons^™

The Geocentric Universe: The Making Of A Cultural Symbol, Kathleen M. Isaacson

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since the 1980s, cultural history has applied the analysis of symbols to explain historical problems. Cultural historians such as Robert Darnton, Roger Chartier, and Dominick LaCapra have completed significant work in this area. Using their models, this study defines a cultural symbol within the history of science: the geocentric universe. It examines the symbol's origin and evolution from a mere idea to that of a symbol of significance. Beginning with the ancient Greece of Aristotle and Plato through the Middle Ages of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Dante Alighieri, the symbol's potent influence expanded via powerful narratives and beautiful works of …

Nature And Nurture In Cognition, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The ‘triggering model’ of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and avoids relativizing innate traits to specific populations, as biological models of innateness are forced to do. Relativization can be avoided in the case of cognitive capacities precisely because informational content is involved. …

Was Heisst Das -- Die Bewandtnis? Retranslating The Categories Of Heideggers Hermeneutics Of The Technical, Theodore Kisiel

Research Resources

No abstract provided.

In-Between Science And Religion, Dominic Balestra

Research Resources

This paper traces the demise of the demarcation between science and non-science by falsifiability in early Popper through sophisticated revisions which results in transforming Popperian falsifiability into a historical situated criticizability, and one which retains a Duhemian requirement of subjectivity. This transformation opens a revised Popperian standpoint to the disciplinary rationality of theology, with important implications for reconsidering the relation between science and religion. It is then concluded that a significant, intellectual relationship of either dialogue or convergence between science and theology requires something like Patrick Heelan's hermeneutical philosophy of science for the standpoint in-between science and religion.

An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A significant theoretical shift in the research community examining a class of terminal, infectious neurological disorders that includes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru was assisted by rhetorical production. The local rhetoric of one laboratory, that of Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, involved first situating an heretical hypothesis within the framework of the orthodox narrative and then audaciously promoting that heresy. Another aspect of rhetorical production in this case involved situating a new language associated with the heretical hypothesis. To promote their new lexicon, the Prusiner team evoked orthodox values of consistency, efficiency, and collective ratification. Eventually, what was once …

Rethinking Mechanistic Explanation, Stuart Glennan

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Philosophers of science typically associate the causal-mechanical view of scientific explanation with the work of Railton and Salmon. In this paper I shall argue that the defects of this view arise from an inadequate analysis of the concept of mechanism. I contrast Salmon's account of mechanisms in terms of the causal nexus with my own account of mechanisms, in which mechanisms are viewed as complex systems. After describing these two concepts of mechanism, I show how the complex-systems approach avoids certain objections to Salmon's account of causal-mechanical explanation. I conclude by discussing how mechanistic explanations can provide understanding by unification.

The Genesis Of Feyerabend's 'Incommensurability Thesis' And Its Relationship To His Philosophy Of Science And Society, Sim Hui Tee

Student Works (2000-2009)

This thesis explores the genesis of Feyerabend's incommensurability thesis and its relationship to his philosophy of science and society. The exposition commences with an introduction to the origin of incommensurability thesis in chapter one. A brief outlook of the concept is introduced. In the second chapter, intellectual influences of Popper and Wittgenstein on Feyerabend is examined. With these intellectual linkages in sight, Feyerabend's incommensurability thesis is elaborated in the light of philosophy of science, in chapter three. In the consequent chapter, the focus shifts towards Feyerabend's incommensurability thesis in the perspective of his philosophy of society. In the last chapter, …

Writing Identity Into Space: The Relationship Between Ethnography, Autobiography, And Space In Bronislaw Malinowski's A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term And Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, Lawrence Phillips

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

From a number of disciplinary perspectives autobiography has always presented a challenge to more or less discrete modes of reading and evaluating the text. To read autobiography as a literary text is to suppress its close relationship to the writer, however fictionalised and evasive the writing subject might be about a textual identity so closely related to his or her public persona. On the other hand, to read it as history or a documentary presentation of a life is to fail to acknowledge the heavy use of literary techniques and imbedded subjectivity that makes autobiography what it is. …

The Observing Body: Quantum Mechanics, The Anthropic Principles, And Panopticism, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When philosopher of history and science Michel Serres wrote of that rare and narrow passage between the human sciences and the exact sciences [1], he intended to suggest not only the infrequency and difficulty of such contact, but also the unwillingness on either side to engage in what could be a dangerous, low-profit venture. It seems a long haul back to our common origins in philosophia, and typically, efforts to regain common ground between the disciplines have approached the problem as a one-sided move from the exact sciences to the study of the humanities. Notable exceptions such …