http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7767 Sat, 25 May 2013 13:24:06 GMT 2013-05-25T13:24:06Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7877 Title: Constructivism for Philosophers (Be it a Remark on Realism) Authors: Gal, Ofer Abstract: Bereft of the illusion of an epistemic vantage point external to science, what should be our commitment towards the categories, concepts and terms of that very science? Should we, despaired of the possibility to found these concepts on rock bottom, adopt empiricist skepticism? Or perhaps the inexistence of external foundations implies, rather, immunity for scientific ontology from epistemological criticism? Philosophy’s “realism debate” died out without providing a satisfactory answer to the dilemma, which was taken over by the neighboring disciplines. The “symmetry principle” of the “Strong Programme” for the sociology of science-the requirement that truth and error receive the same kind of causal explanations-offered one bold metaphysical answer, under the guise of a methodological decree. Recently, however, it has been argued that this solution is not bold enough, that the social constructivists replaced the naïve presumption of an independent nature which adjudicates our beliefs with a mirror-image presumption of a sui generis society which furnishes these beliefs autonomously. The proper metaphysics for a foundationless epistemology,argues Bruno Latour, is one which grants nature and society, object and subject, equal roles in the success and failure of science and technology; one in which history of society merges with a history of things-in-themselves. The paper analyzes the philosophical and methodological motivations and ramifications of this extraordinary suggestion. Wed, 01 Jan 2003 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7877 2003-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7876 Title: The 'absolute existence' of phlogiston: the losing party's point of view. Authors: Gal, Ofer; Boantza, Victor Abstract: Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading chemists. Even some of the leading proponents of the new chemistry admitted its ‘absolute existence’. We demonstrate that what was defended under the title ‘phlogiston’ was no longer a particular hypothesis about combustion and respiration. Rather, it was a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and the empirical practices associated with them. Lavoisier’s gravimetric reduction, in the eyes of the phlogistians, annihilated the autonomy of chemistry together with its peculiar concepts of chemical substance and quality, chemical process and chemical affinity. The defence of phlogiston was the defence of a distinctly chemical conception of matter and its appearances, a conception which rejected the chemist’s acquaintance with details and particularities of substances, properties and processes and his skills of adducing causal relations from the interplay between their complexity and uniformity. Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7876 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7875 Title: The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge:Embodied Empiricism in Early Modern Science Authors: Gal, Ofer; Wolfe, Charles T. Abstract: It was in 1660s England, according to the received view, in the Royal Society of London, that science acquired the form of empirical enquiry we recognize as our own: an open, collaborative experimental practice, mediated by specially-designed instruments, supported by civil discourse, stressing accuracy and replicability. Guided by the philosophy of Francis Bacon, by Protestant ideas of this worldly benevolence, by gentlemanly codes of decorum and by a dominant interest in mechanics and the mechanical structure of the universe, the members of the Royal Society created a novel experimental practice that superseded former modes of empirical inquiry, from Aristotelian observations to alchemical experimentation. Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7875 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7874 Title: Empiricism Without the Senses: How the Instrument Replaced the Eye Authors: Gal, Ofer; Chen-Morris, Raz Abstract: On receiving news of Galileo’s observations of the four satellites of Jupiter and the rugged face of the moon through his newly invented perspicillum, Kepler in great excitement exclaimed: Therefore let Galileo take his stand by Kepler’s side. Let the former observe the moon with his face turned skyward, while the latter studies the sun by looking down at a screen (lest the lens injure his eyes). Let each employ his own device, and from this partnership may there some day arise an absolutely perfect theory of the distances. This Hollywood-like scene of the two astronomers marching hand in hand toward the dawn of a new scientific era was no attempt by Kepler to appropriate Galileo’s success or to diminish the novelty of the telescope. On the contrary, Kepler repeatedly asserted how short sighted he was in misjudging the potential for astronomical observations inherent in lenses, and how radically Galileo’s instrument transformed the science of astronomy. It was a deep sense of recognition that beyond their different scientific temperaments and projects, they shared a common agenda of a new mode of empirical engagement with the phenomenal world: the instrument. For Kepler and Galileo, empirical investigation was no longer a direct engagement with nature, but an essentially mediated endeavor. The new instruments were not to assist the human senses, but to replace them. Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7874 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7873 Title: Baroque Optics and the Disappearance of the Observer: From Kepler’s Optics to Descartes’ Doubt Authors: Gal, Ofer; Chen Morris, Raz Abstract: In the seventeenth century the human observer gradually disappeared from optical treatises. It was a paradoxical process: the naturalization of the eye estranged the mind from its objects. Turned into a material optical instrument, the eye no longer furnished the observer with genuine representations of visible objects. It became a mere screen, on which rested a blurry array of light stains, accidental effects of a purely causal process. It thus befell the intellect to decipher one natural object—a flat image of no inherent epistemic value—as the vague, reversed reflection of another, wholly independent object. In reflecting on and trespassing the boundaries between natural and artificial, orderly and disorderly, this optical paradox was a Baroque intellectual phenomenon; and it was the origin of Descartes’ celebrated doubt— whether we know anything at all. Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7873 2010-04-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7216 Title: The Return of Vitalism: Authors: Wolfe, Charles T. Abstract: The eminent French biologist and historian of biology, François Jacob, once notoriously declared "On n‘interroge plus la vie dans les laboratoires": laboratory research no longer inquires into the notion of Life‘. Nowadays, as David Hull puts it, "both scientists and philosophers take ontological reduction for granted… Organisms are ‗nothing but‘ atoms, and that is that." In the mid-twentieth century, from the immediate post-war period to the late 1960s, French philosophers of science such as Georges Canguilhem, Raymond Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon returned to Jacob‘s statement with an odd kind of pathos: they were determined to reverse course. Not by imposing a different kind of research program in laboratories, but by an unusual combination of historical and philosophical inquiry into the foundations of the life sciences (particularly medicine, physiology and the cluster of activities that were termed 'biology' in the early 1800s). Even in as straightforwardly scholarly a work as La formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (1955), Canguilhem speaks oddly of "defending vitalist biology," and declares that Life cannot be grasped by logic (or at least, "la vie déconcerte la logique"). Was all this historical and philosophical work merely a reassertion of 'mysterian‘, magical vitalism? In order to answer this question we need to achieve some perspective on Canguilhem‘s 'vitalism‘, notably with respect to its philosophical influences such as Kurt Goldstein. Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7216 2011-03-04T00:00:00Z