A Well-Hung Horse: Sired by Knowledge and Imagination.

For more than a century, historians of science have been spinning a philosophical roulette wheel, pondering which is more important in the creative process: imagination or knowledge. The most original scientists (and artists) in our day discover newness by blending existing knowledge with imaginative thinking.

The power of perpetual collaboration: An interview with Elçin Ünal and Gloria Brar.

Here, Elçin Ünal and Gloria Brar tell us how the Br-Ün Lab came to be, the cons, but mostly the pros, of running a joint lab and things to consider, as well as their philosophies in research and mentoring a diverse group of scientists.

A new twenty-first century science for effective epidemic response.

With rapidly changing ecology, urbanization, climate change, increased travel and fragile public health systems, epidemics will become more frequent, more complex and harder to prevent and contain. Here we argue that our concept of epidemics must evolve from crisis response during discrete outbreaks to an integrated cycle of preparation, response and recovery. This is an opportunity to combine knowledge and skills from all over the world-especially at-risk and affected communities. Many disciplines need to be integrated, including not only epidemiology but also social sciences, research and development, diplomacy, logistics and crisis management. This requires a new approach to training tomorrow's leaders in epidemic prevention and response.

Variability and substantiality. Kurd Lasswitz, the Marburg school and the neo-Kantian historiography of science.

A trained physicist, Kurd Lasswitz (1848-1910) is best known as a novelist, the father of modern German science fiction, and as a historian of science, the initiator of the modern historiography of atomism. In the late 19th century, Lasswitz engaged in an intense dialogue with the emerging Marburg school of neo-Kantianism, contributing to shaping most of its defining tenets. By the end of the decade, this research had grown into a two-volume Geschichte der Atomistik (1890), which remains the most successful example of neo-Kantian historiography of science. Lasswitz combined attention to historical detail with the search for the intellectual tools (Denkmittel) without which the 'fact of science' would be impossible. In particular, Lasswitz regarded Huygens' kinetic atomism as a historical model of a successful scientific theory, shaped by the interplay of two conceptual tools: (a) substantiality, the requirement for identity of the subject of motion through time, which found its scientific expression in the extensive atom; (b) variability, the intensive tendency to continue in an instant, which found its conceptual fixation in the notion of 'differential'. By raising the problem of individuality in physics, Lasswitz offers a unique perspective on the utilization of the history of science in 19th-century neo-Kantian thought.

The problem of context revisited: Moving beyond the resources model.

The problem of context, which explores relations between societal conditions and science, has a long and contentious tradition in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. While the problem has received little explicit attention in recent years, two contemporary positions remain evident. First is the resources model, which seeks to maintain the autonomy of scientists by denying contextual influence, restricting the role of contexts to providing a pool of 'novel inputs'. Second is the contextual shaping position which recognizes that societal conditions influence science but remains conceptually vague and theoretically undeveloped. This paper argues, given current disciplinary conditions, the problem of context deserves renewed attention. In this paper I first review the history of the debate from the 1930s, highlighting several anxieties that continue to hamper the open study of the problem. After this historical review, I provide a critique of the resources model and assess the possibilities and shortfalls of the contextual shaping position. By addressing past and present perspectives, my goal is to move firmly beyond narrow accounts of context, as exemplified by the resources model. Instead, I propose a renewed program of research in which rich empirical studies are combined with equally rich theoretical work directed toward developing conceptual tools better able to capture the multiple intricacies evident in context-science relations.

Demarcating scientific medicine.

Scientific medicine and homeopathy are interesting case studies for the ongoing project of demarcating science from pseudoscience. Much of the demarcation literature formulates abstract criteria for demarcating science from pseudoscience generally. In service of a more localist approach to the demarcation problem, I reconstruct a specific demarcating difference, the like comparison criterion, invoked by nineteenth century adherents to an early model of scientific medicine. If it is to remain relevant today, I argue that the like comparison criterion must be updated in our current era of epidemiological, evidence-based medicine to recognize the importance of assessing study bias and mechanistic implausibility in contemporary medical science.

Mary Hesse on the role of the human imagination in the philosophy and practice of science.

Although Mary Hesse remains an influential figure within the history of the philosophy of science her reflections on the role of the human imagination in science have, to date, been mostly neglected. In her first, and often overlooked monograph-Science and the Human Imagination-Hesse described the imagination as composed of four dimensions. Defined as the historical, the critical, the fertile and the creative imagination, these dimensions played, for Hesse, various roles in both the philosophy and practice of science. Suffice to say, Hesse's discussion of the role of the imagination in science challenges the idea that philosophy and science are logically determined forms of practice through an appeal, as will be argued, to Immanuel Kant's seminal reflections on the 'indispensable function' of the imagination. Accordingly, a detailed elucidation of Science and the Human Imagination not only situates Hesse's reflections within the long history of the philosophy of the imagination; it revitalises anew contemporary debates on the role of the imagination in the philosophy and practice of science.

Ancient Greek laws of nature.

The prevailing narrative in the history of science maintains that the ancient Greeks did not have a concept of a 'law of nature'. This paper overturns that narrative and shows that some ancient Greek philosophers did have an idea of laws of nature and, moreover, they referred to them as 'laws of nature'. This paper analyzes specific examples of laws of nature in texts by Plato, Aristotle, Philo of Alexandria, Nicomachus of Gerasa, and Galen. These examples emerged out of the closely intertwined Platonic and Pythagorean traditions, and these philosophers' texts make reference to laws of nature when describing arithmetical methods, arithmological doctrines, or medical theories. Nicomachus' laws of nature are especially noteworthy, because they have features that historians look for in the search for the origin of the modern concept of laws of nature. Nicomachus' laws of nature are mathematical, universal, and necessary. This paper raises the possibility that the ancient Platonic and Pythagorean traditions influenced the subsequent development of the idea of laws of nature in medieval and early modern Europe, including the conception of laws of nature deployed by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.

Positivist or post-positivist philosophy of science? The left Vienna Circle and Thomas Kuhn.

The debate between the revisionist and received views of the relationship between Thomas Kuhn and logical empiricism has until now focused on the relationship between Kuhn and Rudolf Carnap. Here, I consider the relationship between Kuhn and two other members of the Vienna Circle's left-wing; Otto Neurath and Philipp Frank. It is argued that the attribution of the historical turn in philosophy of science to Kuhn obscures the historical awareness displayed in important works by members of the Vienna Circle, and thereby distorts its legacy. Both Frank and Neurath recognised the role for history in theorizing about science, and drawing upon these insights lead them to considerations of scientific theory-choice, rational disagreement, and the role of extra-scientific values in science, that anticipate those later made famous by Kuhn. It is also argued that the Left-Vienna Circle's programme for Unified Science, the replacement of traditional philosophy with a bipartite metatheory of science, provides a clearer and potentially more radical role for the history of science within the philosophy of science than Kuhn's. To reach this conclusion, it is demonstrated that some members of the Vienna Circle maintained a far less robust distinction between contexts of discovery and justification than has typically been attributed to them.

The Pragmatist roots of scientific medicine: Reassessing Abraham Flexner's report on medical education.

Abraham Flexner's 1910 report on medical education is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of modern medicine in the US and beyond. Most commentators focus on its administrative and managerial impact, despite Flexner dedicating a sizeable portion of his report to a theoretical account of the kind of medicine that he seeks to implement. Close attention to these sections reveals a surprisingly coherent account of medicine that, based on a Deweyan Pragmatist philosophy of science, unites scientific investigator and medical practitioner in a new experimental paradigm of science. Flexner can develop an account that goes beyond a mere epistemic redefinition of medicine, providing the profession with a social, cultural, and ethical identity that avails itself of the extremely wide purview that Dewey granted to modern science. Due to the subsequent narrowing of philosophy of science to a delimited academic subdiscipline, these broad Pragmatist philosophical commitments at the roots of Flexner's scientific medicine remained a largely unexplored intellectual legacy.

Historicizing a Dream of Complete Science.

This paper attempts an historical analysis of a dream of the physicist George Gamow recorded shortly before his death in 1968. The dream is contextualized through Gamow's extended scientific work and popular scientific efforts, and in light of enduring preoccupations with the notion of a complete science. The analysis extends to an examination of the relationship of the dream to dreaming practices and deliberations apart from Gamow's, as evident in the relationship and collaboration between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and C. G. Jung.

"Facts" and "Ideas": Richard Jones, William Whewell, and the Entangled Histories of Science and Political Economy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain.

This essay explores hitherto unnoticed conceptual transactions between reflections on scientific method and a rethinking of political-economic categories in early-nineteenth century Britain through the writings of William Whewell and Richard Jones. Closely examining personal correspondences between Whewell and Jones, their works, contemporary debates on political economy and the problem of scientific method, Jones's pedagogic practices, Karl Marx's engagements with Jones, and his receptions as a teacher of political economy in colonial governance and imperial education, I argue that Jones drew upon Whewell's philosophical considerations on the relation between "fact" and "idea," to reconstitute the epistemological orientation of political economy.

A brief history of the hypothesis.

Two terms used as frameworks for scientific experimentation--the "hypothesis" and the "model"--carry distinct philosophical assumptions, with important consequences for the practicing scientist.

Picturing Chinese science: wartime photographs in Joseph Needham's science diplomacy.

Joseph Needham occupies a central position in the historical narrative underpinning the most influential practitioner-derived definition of 'science diplomacy'. The brief biographical sketch produced by the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science sets Needham's activities in the Second World War as an exemplar of a science diplomacy. This article critically reconsiders Needham's wartime activities, shedding light on the roles played by photographs in those diplomatic activities and his onward dissemination of them as part of his self-fashioning. Images were important to the British biochemist, and he was an avid amateur photographer himself, amassing a unique collection of hundreds of images relating to science, technology and medicine in wartime China during his time working as director of the Sino-British Science Co-operation Office. These included ones produced by China's Nationalist Party-led government, and by the Chinese Communist Party. Focusing on these photographs, this article examines the way Joseph Needham used his experiences to underpin claims to authority which, together with the breadth of his networks, enabled him to establish himself as an international interlocutor. All three aspects formed essential parts of his science diplomacy.