Diversification or sensory unification? Controversies around the senses in fin de siècle culture.

This article analyses the evolutionist discourses on the senses that emerged in the late 19th century, when theories on the evolution of species were in full sway. Drawing on newspapers, essays and medical literature, this article aims to set face to face the two currents of thought that I have identified regarding sensory evolution: the one that stressed the value of the progressive specialisation of the senses as evidence for human evolution mainly supported by Max Nordau, and the one which regarded the sensory regrouping, exemplified by the phenomenon of synaesthesia, as the true symptom of evolution, strongly supported by Victor Segalen. A close examination of their arguments will provide clues concerning their relative position vis-à-vis the theory that stressed the exceptional nature of humankind among all living beings. Based on newspapers, essays and medical literature, this paper, which straddles several fields (history of science, philosophy, cultural history and aesthetics) aims to set both positions face to face, examining their arguments in detail and establishing their genealogies. This will lead to a better understanding of the scope and range of evolutionist discourses in the fin de siècle culture and on their impact upon artistic practices.

Francis Bacon and the practices of measurement.

The instrumental character of Francis Bacon's natural and experimental histories was often noted, but never fully investigated. In this paper I aim to reconstruct the theoretical and methodological background which supports this feature. I claim that we can read large parts of the second book of Bacon's Novum organum as a guide to laboratory practices; and that it was read in this manner by some of Bacon's seventeenth century followers. Key to this guide is Bacon's theory of prerogative instances which, in turn, provides the grounding for a whole theory of instruments of detection and instruments of measurement. I show, in particular, how Bacon suggested that such instruments can be used for 'charting' virtues and powers; a process in which instruments of detection can be transformed into instruments of measurement. I also show that Bacon's views on instruments entail an elaborated conception of measurement which departs from the ethos of artisanal perfection. Instead of pursuing the 'best results', Bacon's instrumental natural and experimental histories aim to offer a large enough corpus of correlations, estimates and calculations which, taken together, can represent more or less accurately changes and variations of natural virtues and powers.

Thomas S. Kuhn: key to a better understanding of the extended evolutionary synthesis.

In recent years, some scholars have explicitly questioned the desirability or utility of applying the classical and "old-fashioned" theories of scientific change by the likes of Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn to the question of the precise nature and significance of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). Supposedly, these twentieth-century philosophers are completely irrelevant for a better understanding of this new theoretical framework for the study of evolution. Here, it will be argued that the EES can be fruitfully interpreted in terms of, as yet, insufficiently considered or even overlooked elements from Kuhn's theory. First, in his original, historical philosophy of science, Kuhn not only distinguished between small and big scientific revolutions, he also pointed out that paradigms can be extended and reformulated. In contrast with what its name suggests, the mainstream EES can be interpreted as a Kuhnian reformulation of modern evolutionary theory. Second, it has, as yet, also been overlooked that the EES can be interpreted in terms of Kuhn's later, tentative evolutionary philosophy of science. With the EES, an old dichotomy in evolutionary biology is maybe being formalized and institutionalized.

The mule on the Mount Wilson trail: George Ellery Hale, American scientific cosmology, and cosmologies of American science.

This article explores the relation between two different modes of cosmology: the social and the scientific. Over the twentieth century, scientific understandings of the dimensions and operations of the physical universe changed dramatically, significantly prompted by astronomical and astrophysical research undertaken at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California. Could those understandings be readily translated into social theory? Studies across a range of disciplines have intimated that the scientific cosmos might be less essential to the worlds of meaning and belonging that people and communities compose around themselves than more local and relational models of an ordered whole. The article applies that proposition to the Mount Wilson Observatory itself, arguing that the observatory's founder, George Ellery Hale, and his acolytes were deeply invested in practices of terrestrial place-making, the politics of belonging, and the cadences of civilizational time as applied to their city and its region. Moreover, they struggled to construct a philosophy integrating the cosmos they were seeking to fix at home with the contortions and careering trajectories of the universal whole.

Evolution by habit: Peirce, Lamarck, and teleology in biology.

In our paper, we analyse the relationship of the evolutionary philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce to Lamarckian natural philosophy and link it to concepts of teleology, focusing especially on Aristotelian and Peircean conceptions of the final cause. Peirce commented on evolution in many of his writings, especially in 1891-1893 in essays such as 'Evolutionary Love' (1893) or 'Man's Glassy Essence' (1892). After introducing the three types of evolution distinguished by Peirce, we compare Peirce's and Lamarck's views on evolution, habit, and teleology. From a synthesis of concepts formulated by Peirce, Aristotle, nineteenth-century neo-Lamarckians, and current knowledge regarding epigenetics, there should emerge our own concept of biological teleology unburdened by panpsychism, subjective intentions, or determinism. We believe it could be a concept acceptable to current biology.

Contributions of African-centered (Africentric) psychology: A call for inclusion in APA-accredited graduate psychology program curriculum.

Over the past few years, there has been increased visibility of, and attention paid to, enduring issues such as racial discrimination toward Black Americans. Black psychologists have been called upon to explain various race-related mental health issues to the public, as well as their colleagues and students. Discussions about how to heal from persistent, intergenerational, oppressive attacks on the African psyche are important, but the theories and treatments in which most practitioners are trained and considered "best practices" are Eurocentric in nature. African-centered (or Africentric) psychology is a well-established school of thought, predating the philosophies often discussed in Western/American psychology's History and Systems curriculum, that provides an authentic understanding of the psychology of people of African descent from an African perspective. In this article, we present the historical contention about the lack of inclusion of an African perspective in conceptualizing and addressing the psychological needs of people of African descent, provide an overview of African-centered psychology including its underlying worldview and philosophy, development, and key contributors, and advocate for the inclusion of Africentric psychology in APA-accredited psychology graduate programs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Creativity, pursuit and epistemic tradition.

This paper revisits the standard definition of scientific creativity in the contemporary philosophical literature. The standard definition of creativity says that there are two necessary, and jointly sufficient, conditions for creativity, novelty and value. This paper proposes to characterize the value condition of creativity in terms of "pursuitworthiness". The notion of pursuitworthiness, adopted from the recent debate on scientific pursuit in philosophy of science, refers to a form of prospective epistemic worth. It indicates that a certain object (such as a scientific hypothesis) is promising or has the potential to be epistemically fertile in the future, if further investigated. To support the claim that creative scientific instances are, qua creative, valuable in the sense of pursuitworthy, three examples of creative hypotheses taken from the history of the geosciences are introduced: MacCulloch's continuity hypothesis in mid-19th-century geology, Baron et al.'s phylogenetic hypothesis in contemporary paleontology, and the widely discussed Anthropocene hypothesis.

Norwegian climatology, the Republic of Letters and the Nordic Enlightenment.

Although natural philosophers of Enlightenment Europe shared common ideals, like reliance on reason and natural philosophy, to promote what they deemed to be progress; there were national differences in attitude and disciplinary focus. This paper takes various eligibility criteria as a starting point from which to define a Nordic Enlightenment science; and situates endeavours in climate science within visions of useful science and international conventions for scientific practice. Two perspectives are explored: the make-up of the Nordic Enlightenment science; and the Nordic natural philosopher's various platforms for work and knowledge transfer. While historians differ as to what constitutes Enlightenment thought and spirit, I establish the existence of a Nordic Enlightenment science by identifying and examining several of its indicators. The paper concludes with a more specific discussion of climate science in Norway in which I show how climate observations performed during the eighteenth century by a sample of Norway's clergymen and civil servants bear testimony to an internationally-oriented science, through articles produced for science journals and conventions followed for data presentation and instrumentation. The findings corroborate existing knowledge of a progress-driven, Enlightenment science in Nordic countries; reveal differences between countries, and present Norway's early-modern climate science in an international light.

Fertile substrate: the rise, fall, and succession of popular microscopy in Great Britain.

This paper examines the rise and fall of the British popular microscopy movement during the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. It highlights that what is currently understood as microscopy was actually two inter-related but distinct communities and argues that the recognized collapse of microscopical societies in the closing decades of the nineteenth century was the result of amateur specialization. It finds the roots of popular microscopy in the Working Men's College movement and highlights how microscopy adopted its Christian Socialist pedagogy of equality and fraternity, resulting in a radical scientific movement that both prized and encouraged publication by its amateur adherents, who often occupied the middle and working classes. It studies the taxonomic boundaries of this popular microscopy, particularly focusing on its relationship with the study of cryptogams or 'lower plants'. It explores how its success combined with its radical approach to publication and self-sufficiency created the conditions for its collapse, as devotees established a range of successor communities that had tighter taxonomic bounds. Finally, it shows how the philosophy and practices of popular microscopy continued in these successor communities, focusing on the British expression of mycology, the study of fungi.

What data counts in policymaking and programming evaluation - Relevant data sources for triangulation according to main epistemologies and philosophies within social science.

Policy analysis and program evaluation quality guides how impact is measured, revisions are made, and allocations of resources is deployed. As interdisciplinary research grows in contemporary policy science, the importance of defining truth can be contentious among different social scientists. This research traces the history of triangulation to its contemporary version within the social sciences. The study examines the philosophical evolution influencing the environment in which triangulation develops including: consilience and the comparative linguistic structure of the traditions of thought; and the historical development of methods and emergence of triangulation in research. It also offers contrasting interpretations of triangulation within the various epistemologies and philosophies of science that have arisen in recent movements within social science. As research strives to address novel 21st century issues including big data, pandemics, misinformation, and globalization, there is a need for rigorous social science and policy-based research to be aware of different interpretations of empirical data and valid research methods across disciplines, examine new and old phenomena using multi-method approaches, and validate data informing policy through methods of triangulation.

"Put a mark on the errors": Seventeenth-century medicine and science.

Error is a neglected epistemological category in the history of science. This neglect has been driven by the commonsense idea that its elimination is a general good, which often renders it invisible or at least not worth noticing. At the end of the sixteenth century across Europe, medicine increasingly focused on "popular errors," a genre where learned doctors addressed potential patients to disperse false belief about treatments. By the mid-seventeenth century, investigations into popular error informed the working methodology of natural philosophers, rather than just physicians. In 1646, Thomas Browne published Pseudodoxia Epidemica, a large volume on popular error. Despite Browne's formal training as a physician, this work examined only a few medical errors and instead aspired to be an encyclopedia of error. Pseudodoxia Epidemica was highly popular, running to six editions, and was known by the Fellows of the Royal Society. Influenced by Browne, alongside Bacon's theory of the idols, natural philosophic practice in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century developed a focus on error that revised traditional attention to the discovery of knowledge. Fellows such as Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke proposed new ways to secure truth under the far-reaching influence of Bacon's refutations of "natural human reason" distorted by false idols, of syllogistic logic, and of "theories," his label for traditional philosophical systems that bias thought toward falsity. In three parts, this article traces the progression in early modern scientific approaches to handling error, and especially medical error - from physicians' efforts to identify and eradicate it through collaborative effort, to the striking tension in Browne's work between seeking to eliminate error while also showing a marked tolerance for it, to the Royal Society's Baconian objective of instrumentalizing error to find truth. Error emerges as its own epistemic category that serves as a driving force toward knowledge production.

Occupy the Commonplaces: Machiavelli and the Aristotelian Tradition of the Topics.

Anticipating sixteenth-century trends in vernacular Aristotelianism, Machiavelli concealed his theoretical engagement with Aristotle behind a veil of examples. Scholars have established that in The Prince, Machiavelli employed topical dialectic to update ancient maxims for the modern era. I show how he used dialectic to occupy and transform Aristotelian commonplaces that justified Renaissance philosophers' appeal to the ideal in political reasoning. These occupations reveal Machiavelli's preference for particulars over generalities as a considered judgment about the suitability of philosophy for popular readers. Machiavelli's covert reading of Aristotle is, I submit, a signal episode in the history of humanism.

The third-way third wave and the enduring appeal of bioexceptionalism.

We may induce from a longue durée examination of Anglo-American History of Biology that the impulse to reject reduc - tionism persists and will continue to percolate cyclically. This impulse I deem "bioexceptionalism": an intuition, stance, attitude, or activating metaphor that the study of living beings requires explanations in addition to exclusively bottom-up causal explanations and the research programs constructed upon that bottom-up philosophical foundation by non-organismal biologists, biochemists, and biophysicists - the explanations, in other words, that Wadding - ton (1977) humorously termed the "Conventional Wisdom of the Dominant Group, or cowdung." Bioexceptionalism might indicate an ontological assertion, like vitalism. Yet most often in the last century, it has been defined by a variety of methodological or even sociological positions. On three occasions in the interval from the late nineteenth century to the present, a small but significant group of practicing biologists and allies in other research disciplines in the UK and US adopted a species of bioexceptionalism, rejecting the dominant explanatory philosophy of reductionistic mechanism. Yet they also rejected the vitalist alternative. We can refer to their subset of bioexceptionalism as a "Third-Way" approach, though participants at the time called it by a variety of names, including "organicism." Today's appeals to a Third-Way are but the latest eruption of this older dissensus and retain at least heuristic value apart from any explanatory success.

Functionalising the wavefunction.

Functionalism is the view that being x is to play the role of x. This paper defends a functionalist account of three-dimensional entities in the context of Wave Function Realism (WFR), that can explain in details how we can recover three-dimensional entities out of the wavefunction. In particular, the essay advocates for a novel version of WFR in terms of a functional reductionist approach in the style of David Lewis. This account entails reduction of the upper entities to the bottom ones, when the latter behave appropriately. As applied to WFR, it shows how the wavefunction can turn out to be identical to three-dimensional objects, provided certain conditions. The first major goal of the paper is thus to put forward an improved and more rigorous version of WFR, which dissolves several extant issues about the theory, and can serve as a starting point for the future literature about the topic. Moreover, the second major goal of the article is to take WFR as a case study to demonstrate the pros of functional reductionism, especially in the form defended here, thereby helping to bring this view back in the philosophy of science debate. The positive upshots of this paper suggest a possible application of functional reductionism also to other contexts.

Why Reichenbach wasn't entirely wrong, and Poincaré was almost right, about geometric conventionalism.

The present paper revisits conventionalism about the geometry of classical and relativistic spacetimes. By means of critically examining a recent evaluation of conventionalism, we clarify key themes of, and rectify common misunderstandings about, conventionalism. Reichenbach's variant is demarcated from conventionalism simpliciter, associated primarily with Poincaré. We carefully outline the latter's core tenets-as a selective anti-realist response to a particular form of theory underdetermination. A subsequent double defence of geometric conventionalism is proffered: one line of defence employs (and thereby, to some extent, rehabilitates) a plausible reading of Reichenbach's idea of universal forces; another consists in independent support for conventionalism, unrelated to Reichenbach. Conventionalism, we maintain, remains a live option in contemporary philosophy of spacetime physics, worthy of serious consideration.

Locating hygienic medicine within the intellectual history of hygiene: cases of E. W. Lane and T. R. Allinson.

Nineteenth century hygiene might be a confusing concept. On the one hand, the concept of hygiene was gradually becoming an important concept that was focused on cleanliness and used interchangeably with sanitation. On the other hand, the classical notions of hygiene rooted in the Hippocratic teachings remained influential. This study is about two attempts to newly theorise such a confusing concept of hygiene in the second half of the century by Edward. W. Lane and Thomas R. Allinson. Their works, standing on the borders of self-help medical advice and theoretical treatises on medical philosophies, were not exactly scholarly ones, but their medical thoughts - conceptualised as hygienic medicine - show a characteristically holistic medical view of hygiene, a nineteenth-century version of the reinterpretation of the nature cure philosophy and vitalism. However, the aim of this study is to properly locate their conceptualisations of hygienic medicine within the historical context of the second half of the nineteenth century rather than to simply introduce the medical ideas in their books. Their views of hygiene were distinguished not only from the contemporary sanitary approach but also from similar attempts by contemporary orthodox and unorthodox medical doctors. Through a chronological analysis of changes in the concept of hygiene and a comparative analysis of these two authors' and other medical professionals' views of hygiene, this paper aims to help understand the complicated picture of nineteenth-century hygiene, particularly during the second half of the century, from the perspective of medical holism and reductionism.

"I am aware that this letter may be offensive": The Unapologetic Achievements of Ruth Barcan Marcus and Marjorie Glicksman Grene.

This article presents a case study in the complex of pressures and attitudes that shaped the professional lives and intellectual legacies of twentieth-century American philosophers, examining the writings and careers of two of the discipline's pioneering women: Ruth Barcan Marcus and Marjorie Glicksman Grene. As members of the small cohort of women trained in philosophy during the first half of the century who achieved permanent academic appointments, their stories illuminate the salience of gender within the professional world of mid-twentieth century American academia.

The policy of testing hypotheses in Chilean science. The role of a hypothesis-driven research funding programme in the installation of a hypothesis-driven experimental system in visual neuroscience.

O'Malley et al. (2009) and Haufe (2013) suggest that the philosophical idea of science as hypothesis testing generates a pernicious bias towards hypothesis-driven research and against exploratory research in the review process of research proposals and the allocation of resources. This paper addresses a conceptual objection to the argument by O'Malley et al. (2009) and Haufe (2013). We argue that the funding agencies' concepts of good science do not belong to epistemological or philosophical contexts but to political and institutional contexts. This means that correcting (potential) biases in research funding does not entail correcting funding agencies' (supposed) philosophies of science. To illustrate this point, we provide an in-depth historical case study: the granting of funds to neuroscientist Pedro Maldonado by the Chilean funding programme FONDECYT. This is a relevant comparison as FONDECYT's guidelines explicitly promote hypothesis-driven research and endorse a view of "good science" as hypothesis testing. However, we will see that the overall influence of the philosophical idea of science as hypothesis testing over this funding programme, the research project, and the actual practice of hypothesis testing is somewhat limited. The concept of science as hypothesis testing seems to play a crucial institutional or political (not philosophical) role in allowing the conceptual articulation of social expectations and researchers' expectations.

Kant, intoxicated: the aesthetics of drunkenness, between moral duty and "active play".

This article examines Kant's overlooked concept of "active play," as opposed to "free play," in connection with the influence of the Brunonian system of medicine, both of which, I propose, are central to understanding the broader significance of intoxication in Kant's post-1795 work. Beginning with a discussion of the late-18th century German reception of Brunonian theory, the idea of vital stimulus, and their importance for Kant, I assess the distinction drawn between gluttony and intoxication in The Metaphysics of Morals and Anthropology from a Practical Point of View. Both are analysed in the context of the Brunonian system of medicine, having establishing Kant's commitment to the Brunonianism system, as corroborated by Wasianski. What emerges is a novel understanding of intoxication in the work of Immanuel Kant, which brings to light a previously unexamined dynamic between imagination, intoxication, and the aesthetic.