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Philosophy of History Part IX: Leopold von Ranke and the Origins of the Modern Historical Profession

September 10, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 12 Comments

Philosophy of History Part IX: Leopold von Ranke and the Origins of the Modern Historical Profession

“Only say how it essentially was.” (wie es eigentlich gewesen) –Leopold von Ranke

Philosophy of History Part VIII: Hegel’s Dialectic of History

September 3, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

Philosophy of History Part VIII: Hegel’s Dialectic of History

“Pure Reason, incapable of any limitation, is the Deity itself.” –Hegel

Philosophy of History Part VII: The Politics of Modernization

August 27, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

Philosophy of History Part VII: The Politics of Modernization

“Reason obeys itself, and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.” –Thomas Paine
“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.” –Edmund Burke

Philosophy of History Part VI: The French Revolution

August 20, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

Philosophy of History Part VI: The French Revolution

“What is the Third Estate? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something.” –Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès

Philosophy of History, Part V: Condorcet

August 13, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

Philosophy of History, Part V: Condorcet

“The time will come when the sun will shine only upon free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes.” –Condorcet

Philosophy of History, Part IV: Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”

August 6, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

Philosophy of History, Part IV: Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”

“I have recorded the triumph of barbarism and religion.” -Edward Gibbon

Philosophy of History, Part III: Voltaire and the Age of Reason

July 30, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Philosophy of History, Part III: Voltaire and the Age of Reason

“History should be written as philosophy.” –Voltaire

Philosophy of History, Part II: Giambattista Vico, Philology, and the Origins of Historicism

July 23, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

Philosophy of History, Part II: Giambattista Vico, Philology, and the Origins of Historicism

“The true and the made are convertible.” (Verum Factum)

Philosophy of History Part I: The Enlightenment

July 16, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

Philosophy of History Part I: The Enlightenment

” ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.” -Immanuel Kant

Science, Technology, and Society XIV: Ian Hacking

July 2, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

Science, Technology, and Society XIV: Ian Hacking

In “The Social Construction of What?” (1999), Ian Hacking argues that constructionist accounts of scientific theories tend to lose sight of a basic question: what, exactly, is it that’s supposed to be constructed?

Science, Technology, and Society XIII: The Sokal Hoax

June 26, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 6 Comments

Science, Technology, and Society XIII: The Sokal Hoax

In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated a hoax by submitting a nonsense article to an academic journal of postmodern studies, and subsequently deriding the journal for publishing it. The hoax was, and remains, a significant salvo in the “Science Wars.”

Science, Technology, and Society XII: Clifford Geertz

June 16, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 7 Comments

Science, Technology, and Society XII: Clifford Geertz

Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) was probably the best known American anthropologist of his generation, famous for his literary approach to ethnography, culture, and religious studies, and his development of the concept of “thick description.”

Science, Technology, and Society XI: Constructive Empiricism

June 2, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 9 Comments

Science, Technology, and Society XI: Constructive Empiricism

Because many, if not most, of the things with which science has to deal cannot be directly observed, the central question of science is not “What is the truth about nature?” but “what counts as an empirically adequate explanation?”

Science, Technology and Society X: Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics

May 15, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Science, Technology and Society X: Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics

Because German science held such a prominent place in culture before WWI, it could not escape the fallout when the war ended in disaster. German physicists needed a way to reestablish their prestige, and this meant repudiating their prewar past in order to make room for an up-to-date theory that would not be tarnished by earlier failures.A new mania for a romantic “life philosophy,” which rejected the mechanical and mechanistic attitudes of the British in favor of an experience-based, intuitive holism became fashionable. In physics, the new model incorporated the values of “life philosophy” by rejecting causality as the principle explanatory mechanism.

Science, Technology and Society IX: Malthus, Darwin, and “Social Darwinism”

May 6, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 13 Comments

Science, Technology and Society IX: Malthus, Darwin, and “Social Darwinism”

In a series of essays written, Robert M. Young argued that scientific theories, like all other products of the human mind, arise out of a specific social context. Theories necessarily incorporate the values and concerns of the people who create them, which are themselves expressions of their specific historical context. Therefore, if we want to understand evolution, we need to understand the history of Victorian England.

Science, Technology and Society VIII: Leviathan and the Air Pump

April 28, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Science, Technology and Society VIII: Leviathan and the Air Pump

According to Boyle, the best method in natural philosophy (and politics) was experiment and observation. Hobbes disagreed. He believed that observation could never displace deduction as a form of reasoning because observation always admitted of multiple explanations, and without rigorous definitions there was no way to decide between them. No number of experiments with air pumps could establish whether a vacuum was present or not unless Boyle could define what vacuum, air, etc., were.

Science, Technology and Society VII: On Gender and Science

April 15, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Science, Technology and Society VII: On Gender and Science

Evelyn Fox Keller is a leader among a generation of feminist scholars interested in questions of gender and science. Although feminist philosophy of science is a complex and controversial field, and these scholars frequently disagree among themselves as to what changes are desirable or realistically attainable, they share a commitment to broadening the scope of science so that it does not devalue feminine perspectives as a kind of structural principle.

Science, Technology and Society VI: David Bloor and the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge

April 8, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

Science, Technology and Society VI: David Bloor and the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge

Whereas Kuhn had suggested that science might not be an entirely rational activity, and Feyerabend had drawn certain philosophical and political conclusions from a rather more strident belief, David Bloor argued for an approach that ignores the truth status of scientific theories and instead concentrates on their social context of production. Needless to say, the idea that truth claims arising out of science can be ignored at all, let alone as a systematic methodological principle, was and is controversial.

Science, Technology and Society V: Imre Lakatos

March 25, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 5 Comments

Science, Technology and Society V: Imre Lakatos

Unlike Thomas Kuhn, who held that a single paradigm dominates all science at once, Lakatos argued that multiple programs compete within or across fields simultaneously.

Science, Technology and Society III: The Vienna Circle

March 17, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 8 Comments

Science, Technology and Society III: The Vienna Circle

According to the Vienna Circle, the proper domain of philosophy is logic and language as applied to observation and scientific theory. Philosophers should accept the reduction of their field to an auxiliary discipline of science.

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