Posts com a Tag ‘Transversal (Trr)’
Johannes Kepler: The Order of Things | Wolfgang Osterhage
Wolfgang Osterhage | Foto: Alfred Schmelzeisen/General Anzeiger (2015)
Placing order amid chaos is a fascinating proposition. In some episodes in history, the goal of organizing and attributing meaning to phenomena and, in this way, meeting the human desire to understand the world was treated seriously. Among the most famous names who glimpsed and pursued this purpose is Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). The book entitled Johannes Kepler: The Order of Things seeks to present this perspective. The author of this book, Wolfgang Osterhage, situates the events in Kepler’s life and his immense effort to find an order underlying all things. In this sense, the book, which belongs to the Springer Biographies series, is not only a biography; Osterhage intends to use Kepler’s life and achievements as a kind of catalyst for humanity’s effort to find order in environmental and cosmic events. Leia Mais
History/ Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story | Michael Matthews
Tomás de Aquino | Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1650)
History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story is a captivating academic autobiography, published in 2021, by Michael R. Matthews, Australian philosopher of education, known for his contribution to the advancement of the use of history and philosophy of science to enhance science education. As Matthews chronicles his own intellectual and career trajectory, he ends up outlining the history of the research in History and Philosophy of Science and Science Teaching (HPS&ST). I began my own journey into HPS&ST around 2009, as I moved to Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, to pursue a PhD at the Graduate Program in Teaching, Philosophy and History of Sciences UFBA-UEFS2 – after having already been well trained in the history and philosophy of science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) over ten years. In what follows, I endeavor to outline a personal review of Matthews’ book: History, Philosophy and Science Teaching: A Personal Story.
I had the pleasure of meeting Mathews twice after beginning my journey into HPS&ST. Firstly, in 2010, at a time I was still a novice in HPS&ST research, on the occasion of the 1st Latin American Conference of the International History, Philosophy, and Science Teaching Group, which took place in Maresias, Brazil. A few years later, in 2012, in Boston, USA, when I was a Fulbright visiting scholar at STS MIT, I attended a colloquium at the Boston University’s Center for Philosophy and History of Science, where Matthews gave a talk entitled “HPS&ST: Looking Back and Going Forward”. Leia Mais
A Way through the Global Techno-Scientific Culture | Sheldon Richmond
C. P. Snow | Imagem: Literary Theory and Criticism
“Plus l’homme est ignorant, plus son obéissance,
plus sa confiance dans son guide est absolue”
Qu’est-ce que la propriété? (Paris, 1840)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Culture and Knowledge under the Technopoly Regime
In his most recent work, A Way through the Global Techno-Scientific Culture, published in 2020, Canadian philosopher Sheldon Richmond addresses essential questions of philosophy of technology and its inevitable political and social implications by characterizing contemporaneity under an autocratic regime marked by subordination to techno-scientific culture. For Richmond, favoured and guided by computer technologies, techno-scientific culture has gradually become predominant since World War II.
Although his book consists of eight parts − the preface, prologue, six chapters, and epilogue − Richmond dispenses with linearity in the reading of his work. Instead, as in a diagram or a mosaic, where components assume autonomy of meaning, the philosopher suggests that his readers establish their criteria, that is, orient themselves by their interests in exploring the work. This approach ensures a dynamic quality of the work. Nevertheless, the subjects treated oscillate around two central axes, maintaining an internal coherence in the sequential structuring adopted or provided by the author. From the preface to the third chapter, “Culture”, Richmond discusses the main problems identified with the enormous contemporary technological sophistication. Thus, for example, in the first chapter, “Mystique”, and the second chapter, “Knowledge”, the philosopher discusses the manipulation of the sense of reality and the subsequent disintegration of stable experience of knowledge derived from what he has termed the “mystique” of computers. With the characterization of the conditions that in his understanding pervert the present, threatening humanism and humanity, the author then provides a path, a proposal for the reform of society. Leia Mais
Relativism in the Philosophy of Science | Mrtin Kusch
The Rehabilitation of the Uses of Relativism
Relativism in the Philosophy of Science, recently released in the Cambridge Elements series of the Cambridge University Press, offers a consistent and well-structured introduction to the study of the most effective forms of relativism in the last 50 years. However, the book goes beyond the usual expectations of introductions to any subject discussed: most introduction books present simplified and unreflective versions of the topic. Contrary to such reductionist approaches, condensed into the limited space of the 30,000 words allowed for the series’ books, Kusch presents an analysis that goes far beyond the set of addressed bibliography. The author transits through an infinity of titles chosen for his investigation with great competence, combining rigour and exactness when interweaving the different thinkers’ viewpoints, highlighting their due similarities and differences. Therefore, the restricted number of words in the edition and the extensive volume of sources – factors potentially prejudicial to the good progress of any intellectual production –, did not compromise the quality of the results achieved due to the author’s extensive knowledge of the subject. Based on the great intimacy with the object of study, Kusch went through the complex labyrinths of the theme with property and equipped with clear and objective language to facilitate the reader’s understanding of the density of the debate developed. Leia Mais
The Sovereign Consumer. A New Intellectual History of Neoliberalism | Kiklas Olsen
In the last two decades, there has been a great number of books on the history of neoliberalism. As most scholars in this debate recognize it, the literature is divided into three currents: the first understands neoliberalism as a “scheme” designed by the elites in a time that their profits declined, being the retreat of the State a remedy to that situation (exemplified by 2005 A Brief History of Neoliberalism of British Marxist professor David Harvey); the second is the Foucauldian strain that focuses on neoliberalism as governmentality, a new mode of subjectification that takes the individual as an enterprise and the third takes neoliberalism as an intellectual project, or a network of individuals with similar ideals united through a series of institutions that emerged in the twentieth century.
Niklas Olsen also recognizes these three trends in the introduction of his book but wants to steer us away from them. As a biographer and admirer of the German historian Reinhart Koselleck, Olsen puts in motion the method of Begriffsgeschichte (conceptual history), pioneered by Koselleck, to analyze the emergence of neoliberalism. As the author explains it, he “analyzes social-political concepts as reflecting phenomena that are shaped in historically concrete situations by historical actors who use concepts to make sense of and order the world, employing them as tools or weapons to meet their political visions”. (OLSEN, 2019, 7) Leia Mais
A Filosofia Natural de Benjamin Franklin: Traduções de Cartas e Ensaios sobre a Eletricidade e a Luz | Breno Arsioli
Breno Arsioli Moura is a Professor at the Federal University of ABC (Universidade Federal do ABC – UFABC), at the Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas [Natural and Human Sciences Center] (CCNH), Santo André, SP, Brazil, and a faculty member of the graduate program PEHCM (Pós-Graduação em Ensino e História das Ciências e da Matemática2 [Graduate Program in Teaching and History of Science and Mathematics]). Moura, both a historian of science and science educator, is known for his contributions to the history of science in the 18th century, history of optics from Newton to early-19th century, and the utilization of science studies in science teaching and education. His book, A Filosofia Natural de Benjamin Franklin: Traduções de Cartas e Ensaios sobre a Eletricidade e a Luz (2019) [The Natural Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin: Translations of Letters and Essays on Electricity and Light], is a work of scholarship on the scientific achievements in electricity by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), famous American statesman, publisher, scientist, and diplomat. Leia Mais
After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism | Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
After American Studies, by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera of the Universidad de Puerto Rico, is a critical Cultural-Studies examination of the foundational theses in the Transnational Turn in American Studies. However, it is aimed, at the same time, to rethink and deconstruct some of the key tenets of the field. Indeed, After American Studies engages a post-national and post-cultural argument, the core of which provides important nuance to the transnational turn.
The book is comprised of an introduction and nine chapters, parts of which were previously published in academic journals. Herlihy-Mera’s purpose is made clear in the Introduction: “After American Studies is a critique of national and transnational approaches to community, their forms of belonging and patriation, and initiates a theoretical gesture toward new considerations of postgeographic and postcultural communities” (p. 1). Leia Mais
Pierre Duhem, cent ans plus tard (1916 – 2016) | Jean-François Stoffel e Souad Ben Ali
The studies on Pierre Duhem’s work has come of age. After a number of publications laying out the ground, we encounter now a series of texts that are in a position to take such a “tradition” for granted. The essays presented at Tunis, some of them at least, open up new areas of investigation and they do so with enough historical care and intelligent analysis to broaden the horizon of the scholarship dedicated to the French author.
The themes of “moving tensions” and “unresolved conflicts” seem to characterize all of them. The present review outlines very succinctly the content of each article and, occasionally, indulges in a brief remark. Leia Mais
Creatively Undecided: Toward a History and Philosophy of Scientific Agency | Menachem Fisch
The history of science according to Menachem Fisch goes as follows: Scientists work both within Frameworks that are constitutive of the Normative Standards for the Frameworks, and also with Critical Rationalism where those Frameworks are revised through criticism. This creates a dilemma: since rational criticism depends on Frameworks, rational criticism is inherently limited. Hence, there will always be uncriticised areas. However, science as a fully rational endeavour cannot function without Frameworks. How then can Frameworks be fully rationally criticised and changed when rationally required? Solution (according to Fisch): the rational change of Frameworks and their normative standards of rationality occurs through a psychological process of seeking out new Frameworks and modifying one’s belief-systems by use of rational criticism from alternative Frameworks or belief-systems; by creating new hybrid Frameworks partially composed of the old Framework, and an alternative Framework – done for the reason of getting the best of both “worlds” (Frameworks as constitutive of normative systems) and ridding both “worlds” (or Normative systems) of their worst components. Leia Mais
“Um Papel para a História”: O Problema da Historicidade da Ciência | Mauro L. Condé
This is a book on the historicity of science. To say that science has a history may at first glance seem like a great triviality. For the simple fact of being a human construct, science was not born yesterday and has always undergone several changes in its most varied aspects; what we understand today as “science” has resulted from a long and repeated process involving continuities and ruptures with what preceded it – we all know about that, and this is enough to admit that science has a history.
But it is by no means trivial that science has, besides an ordinary history, a certain historicity. It might well happen that to have a history was only a matter of fact about science, so that the ties with its past would be nothing more than mere contingencies. Or again, it would not be unthinkable that the reach of historical circumstances to which science is subject did not exceed the more superficial or visible level of that activity – usually the one to which the layman has access and which constitutes the public image of the scientist’s work, such as laboratory practices, technological applications, etc. – in such a way that science, let us say, in itself would be minimally unaffected by these historical vicissitudes. In that case, it would no longer be imposing to admit that science has a history. The approach proposed by Condé in “A Role for the History”: The Problem of the Historicity of Science, however, does not recommend this interpretation at all. For our author, the historicity of science is definitely not a mere contingency. On the contrary, it must be admitted as a matter of law over science, that is, a sine qua non condition for science to be what it is, from any point of view. Leia Mais
American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History | Jenell Johnson
Many memories and images are brought to mind when talking about lobotomy. This term has, even today, the power to provoke uproar, astonishment, revolt, curiosity. To talk of its story is to be surrounded by attentive and curious eyes.
The word lobotomy is nowadays often used indiscriminately in reference to variations of psychosurgery that have their origins with a technique called prefrontal leucotomy. Elaborated by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, published in his book Tentatives opératoires dans le traitement de certaines psychoses in 1936, the procedure was imported that same year to the United States and applied by the doctors Walter Freeman and James Watts. Known in the country as the prefrontal lobotomy, this variation of the surgery consisted of damaging the fibers that connected the thalamus to the central lobes. Another American variation, developed by these doctors in the 1940s, consisted of a “simplification” of the surgical process – since it did not require trepanation, that is, the perforation of the skull. The transorbital lobotomy accessed the patient’s brain, by means of an instrument similar to an ice picker, through the ocular cavity. These techniques, which were applied in anatomically normal brains, were developed for the treatment of mental illnesses (Raz 2013), especially those with manifestations of uncontrollable behavior (Braslow 1997, 2005). Still, in Jenell Johnson’s words, “the operation was used to “bleach” or “blunt” strong emotions in people diagnosed with certain mental illnesses and, to a less extent, to ameliorate chronic pain” (Johnson 2013, 2) and has been performed on tens of thousands of women, men, and children in the United States. Leia Mais
Vérité Scientifique et Verité Philosophique dans l’Œuvre d’Alexandre Koyré | Jean Seidengart
In February 2012 an academic conference was held at the Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre entitled Vérité scientifique et verité philosophique dans l’œuvre d’Alexandre Koyré. This book, organized by Jean Seidengart and published last year, is the fruit of that event. It consists of fourteen articles, divided in three parts – Koyré philosophe, Philosophie et histoire des sciences and Koyré historien de la philosophie – and the transcription of an original course Koyré gave in 1946 with the title Galilée. The collection is made up of academic articles by Paola Zambelli, Gérard Jorland, Annarita Angelini, Walter Tega, Joël Biard, Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz, Anastasios Brenner, Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Massimo Ferrari, Pietro Redondi, Emmanuel Faye, Alexandre Guimarães Tadeu de Soares and Jean Seidengart.
Seidengart explains that the purpose of editing the collective work was not merely to reproduce programmatic formulas associated to the many different readings of Alexandre Koyré’s work but, instead, to initiate a reflection on a “plurality of analyses” of Koyré’s vast research. The book however does not manage to abstain entirely from the reductive interpretative formulae that it declaredly renounces and, in fact, the coherence and concordance of the analyses exhibited are somewhat overshadowed by the attention given to the legitimacy of the different readings in relation to Koyré’s work. Leia Mais
Pierre Duhem: Entre física y metafísica | Víctor Manuel Hernandez Márquez
This book is structured by seven chapters written by six researchers from three different Universities: Fábio Rodrigo Leite y João Cortese from the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil; Ambrosio Velasco Gómez from de Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Víctor Manuel Hernández Márquez (coordinator), Roberto Estrada Olguín and Roberto Sánchez Benítez from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
Each of the authors develops their own analytical perspectives around the work of Pierre Duhem (1861-1916). Ambrosio Velasco seeks to show that the contemporary philosophy of science began from a fundamental criticism of the modern conception of scientific rationality proposed by Descartes (in his rationalist version) and by Newton (in his empiricist turn). Velasco contends that Duhem’s contribution to this discussion is to have undermined several myths and dogmas, among them, the Cartesian idea that the rationality of knowledge is based exclusively on strict adherence to certain methodological rules and the Newtonian thought that observation, induction and experimentation are the fundamental procedures of the scientific method. Leia Mais
La théorie physique: Son objet, sa structure | Pierre Duhem
It was in 1981– thus during the same year as his dissertation defense, one year prior to doing the same for Σῴζειν τὰ φαινóµενα (1982), and six years before his book Duhem: Science et Providence (1987) – that Paul Brouzeng (1938-2012) finally furnished Francophone readers, after a wait of more than sixty years, with the first complete reprint (and, incidentally, the first anastatic one) of the second edition of La théorie physique (1914). It was enriched by an introduction of eleven pages, a very succinct bibliography and an onomastic index, which must have misled many readers since it, in fact, only covered the text of La théorie physique itself and not that of the two articles added by Duhem in his second edition. Considering the fact that this reprint of La théorie physique is still and ever available at Vrin Bookshop (both in hardcover and paperback formats), it is worth assessing any additional value which may be afforded it by Sophie Roux’s new online edition, other than the fact that, as is the case with all electronic publications, it offers readers the considerable advantage of being able to search the entire text, thereby addressing the aforementioned shortcoming with respect to Brouzeng’s edition. Leia Mais
When historiography met epistemology: Sophisticated histories and philosophies of science in French-speaking countries in the second half of the nineteenth century | Stefano Bordoni
Dedicated to a book which has long been considered a classic, and which, from the Traité de l’enchaînement des idées fondamentales dans les sciences et dans l’histoire (1861) by A.-A. Cournot to L’évolution des théories physiques du XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours (1896) by P. Duhem, takes us on a tour of 35 years of intellectual history, this review offers three objectives. Firstly, to present the author’s broader arguments. Secondly, considering that, on the one hand, its contents are not immediately apparent (at least not from its Table of Contents) and that, on the other hand, the method used consists in providing (while remaining as faithful to the text as possible) a critical interpretation and commentary on the selected publications, to provide a brief introduction to the authors and the themes addressed. Lastly, owing to its publication within a dossier specifically dedicated to P. Duhem, to further explore the main arguments and ideas, which occupy nearly a third of the work, centered around this illustrious scholar.
French historical epistemology can be defined as the conviction whereby a genuine and authentic historical perspective is seen as essential in order to establish a constructive dialogue between science and philosophy, and in order to construct an epistemology which better conforms to the reality of scientific approach. According to the traditional view adopted chiefly by A. Brenner and C. Chimisso, it originated, depending upon the chosen emphasis, either during the last decade of the 19th century with the works of H. Poincaré, P. Duhem and G. Milhaud (A. Brenner), or during the 1930s and 1940s with G. Bachelard as the key figure in this case (C. Chimisso). Leia Mais
A Contribution to the Newtonian Scholarship: The “Jesuit Edition” of Isaac Newton’s Principia | Paolo Bussotti e Raffaele Pisano
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in Latin), hereafter Principia, a three-volume tour de force written by Isaac Newton, and published in 1687, is the seminal work in the history of modern physics. American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, Steven Weinberg, remarked in his 1972 work on cosmology and gravitation that “all that has happened since 1687 is a gloss on the Principia” (apud Pask, 2013, 14).
The second edition of the Principia was published in 1713, and reprinted and corrected in 1714, incorporating a more comprehensive theory of the Moon, the motions of comets, and the precession of the equinoxes, and, at the end of the whole book, the famous general scholium. The third edition of the Principia was published in 1726. Newton made some additions to the third edition, including new explanations for the resistance of fluids in “Book 2” (which resumes “Book 1”, De motu corporum, “On the motions of bodies”), as well as a more detailed explanation for the Moon’s orbit and the role of gravitation, and, in “Book 3” (De mundi systemate, “On the system of the world”), new observations of Jupiter and the comets. The first translation into English was published in 1729, by Andrew Motte, based on the 1726 third edition of the Principia. Leia Mais
Galilée critique d’art | Erwin Panofsky
Once again, Erwin Panofsky returns to the publishing scene. In 2016, Galilee critique d’art was again published by Les impressions nouvelles. But, in fact, it is not just Panofsky’s return. In the French-speaking world, his text was hardly ever published alone. It was almost always accompanied by either Nathalie Heinich’s foreword or Alexandre Koyré’s review, or by these two works whose considerations gained a weight almost equivalent to Panofsky’s own text. On the one hand, Heinich elucidates, in the wake of Pierre Bourdieu, the fruitful method implied in the analyzes of the art historian. On the other, Koyré affirms and unfolds the reach of Panofsky’s statements that surpass his place of comfort, those based on the field of the history of the sciences, in which Koyré is considered an authority. And this is how the texts of Heinich, Panofsky and Koyré configure what comes to us as the book Galilee critique d’art.
In this work, Panofsky presents us with a series of statements that, in any way, could be included in the foreseeable assertions. It is in the midst of a disputatio over the superiority of painting or sculpture, a field where Leonardo da Vinci once engaged, which he places the mathematical physicist Galileo Galilei. In describing him, he does not speak of physical and astronomical theories, but of artistic tastes, he speaks of a character who knew by heart the latin classics, who loved Ariosto and repudiated Tasso, who was a designer and profound connoisseur of painting – even more inclined to study it than mathematics – who was a close friend of the painter Ludovico Cigoli, and for this very reason he was involved in the battle between the partisans of the painting and the sculpture, initiated in century XV. Leia Mais
Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime | Lino Cmprubí
Both as a (cutting edge) piece of scholarly work in the arena of the History of Technology and as a (very refreshing) contribution to the much debated History of Spain during the years of the Francoist regime, Lino Camprubi´s Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime makes a not so usual read within either academic milieu. Indeed: a relatively good wealth of research has been devoted lately to the development of science and technology within the context of the various undemocratic political regimes of the 20th century, thus challenging the over-simplistic idea that science (or even a well-orientated science as Philip Kitcher would have it) keeps a privileged relationship to democracy. That this needn’t always be the case is something that a good deal of research work has made evident over the last two decades. Ranging from the pioneering narrative by Mark Walker on nuclear energy research in national-socialist Germany during WWII to the many/multitude of contributions about the “fascistization of science and technology” put forth by Tiago Saraiva, an increasingly respectable amount of scholars have located the focus on the avenues through which real science (perhaps sadly: one no so well orientated as Kitcher would hope for) interacts with the social and political contexts in which real scientists do, in fact, operate. Leia Mais
Transversal | UFMG | 2016
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science (Belo Horizonte, 2016-) is an open-access semiannual [June and December] online journal published by the Graduate Program in History (Science and Culture in History) of Federal University of Minas Gerais (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais).
Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science promotes scholarly research in the historiography of science and chronicles its history and criticism. Although historiography of science is a sub-discipline of History, we construe this subject broadly to include analysis of the historiography of science produced by history of science, philosophy of science, science education and related disciplines.
By focusing its analysis on the different historical, social and epistemological implications of science, historiography of science is a transversal knowledge with respect to the production of science, hence the name of this journal. In order to accomplish its purpose, Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science discusses historical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological aspects of the different themes, works and authors present in this tradition, as well as the new approaches in the recent historiography of science.
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ISSN: 2526-2270
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