scholarly journals Mathematization of nature: how it is done

Author(s):  
J. Leo van Hemmen

AbstractNatural phenomena can be quantitatively described by means of mathematics, which is actually the only way of doing so. Physics is a convincing example of the mathematization of nature. This paper gives an answer to the question of how mathematization of nature is done and illustrates the answer. Here nature is to be taken in a wide sense, being a substantial object of study in, among others, large domains of biology, such as epidemiology and neurobiology, chemistry, and physics, the most outspoken example. It is argued that mathematization of natural phenomena needs appropriate core concepts that are intimately connected with the phenomena one wants to describe and explain mathematically. Second, there is a scale on and not beyond which a specific description holds. Different scales allow for different conceptual and mathematical descriptions. This is the scaling hypothesis, which has meanwhile been confirmed on many occasions. Furthermore, a mathematical description can, as in physics, but need not be universally valid, as in biology. Finally, the history of science shows that only an intensive gauging of theory, i.e., mathematical description, by experiment leads to progress. That is, appropriate core concepts and appropriate scales are a necessary condition for mathematizing nature, and so is its verification by experiment.

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90

The article examines the state of the history of science as a discipline and its objectives in the context of its origins and current transformations. The establishment of this discipline and its assumptions about the nature of science together with its goals and structure are briefly discussed. The history of science became a discipline only at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, and its start is associated with the work of chemist James Conant, a high-level administrator in Manhattan project who was also president of Harvard University and a high-ranking bureaucrat. It was based also on the narrative developed by Alfred North Whitehead, Edwin Burtt, Alexandre Koyré and other historians of science, which claimed modern science was the creator of modernity and a necessary condition for the geopolitical domination of the West. In that understanding, modern science meant science since the time of Galileo and Newton. The author provides a critical analysis of this foundation narrative for the discipline and of its consequences while showing how contemporary history of science has overcome it. The contradiction between modernism and historicism has been resolved in favor of the latter. A key role in this was played by the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, which held the potential to undo the presumed monolithic unity of science by rejecting teleology and introducing incommensurability and discontinuities into the historical process. By rejecting explanation of the knowledge of other times and places in terms of modern science, the discipline faced a radical multiplication of independent types of knowledge. This was facilitated by the reorientation to the study of knowledge practices that took place in the 1980s. As a result, the subject matter of the history of science began to erode, and this launched discussion of the prospects for a transition to a history of knowledge based on the study of practices. The sweep of this change of vision is illustrated by the example of classifying sciences according to both their subject matter and the similarities in their research practices. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the new discipline along with its prospects and the challenges it faces are discussed.


REVISTA PLURI ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Ricardo Dalla Costa

Este estudo tem por objetivo analisar alguns pontos da obra Novum Organum, de Francis Bacon, à luz da história da ciência. Três tópicos são inseridos para uma rápida análise das técnicas no final do século XVI e no início do século XVII, como a investigação dos fenômenos naturais, os homens da ciência em torno de Bacon e as técnicas no pensamento baconiano. Como resultado, o estudo ilustrou as novas ideias que permeavam nos homens da ciência no início da modernidade.Palavras-chave: história da Ciência, Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, técnicas, séculos XVI e XVII.AbstractThis study aims to examine some points of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, in the light of the history of science. Three topics are inserted for rapid analysis of the technical in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century, as the investigation of natural phenomena, men of science around Bacon, and techniques in Baconian thought. As a result, the study illustrated the new ideas that permeated the men of science at the beginning of modernity.Keywords: history of Science, Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, technical, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.


Author(s):  
Helen Tilley

There is no escaping the fact that the history of science took European places and people, broadly construed, as its original object of study. There is also no escaping that in African history, scholars interested in science, technology, and to a lesser extent environmental knowledge have concentrated the bulk of their investigative energies on developments since European (and North African) conquest. This focus on the period since the 1870s has tended to foreground dynamics relating to colonial rule and state-building, extractive economies and development, and decolonization and geopolitics. A handful of Africanists in the history of science have explicitly worked to cross the colonial divide, often taking single topics deeper back in time. The field as a whole, however, still needs to debate more systematically what the overarching narratives and benchmark phenomena should be for the precolonial periods. It also needs to grapple more explicitly with methodological tensions that arise from a focus on human agency and specific places (and the languages this requires) versus a focus on ideas, tools, and phenomena that transcend local or state containers (and the trade-offs this produces). As historians of science extend their reach into Africa’s pasts and bridge the colonial and post-colonial divides, it raises thorny questions about different approaches. Among others this includes how we produce histories of science, why they matter, and what we ought to bear in mind as we do. To this end, four goals are advanced here simultaneously: First, is the aim to open a dialogue with historians of science working outside Africa about ways Africanist scholarship speaks to and could be incorporated into the field as a whole (encouraging non-Africanists to consider the blind spots of “global” histories). Second, is the objective to draw attention to the pitfalls and benefits of different research methods and theoretical assumptions, especially as they relate to expert knowledge (an analysis that may be most useful for students entering the field). Third, is the ambition to explore a set of topics that connect deeper time periods to more recent developments (topics that invite critical scrutiny from specialists and generalists alike). Finally, is the desire to foreground the many different ways people across sub-Saharan Africa have initiated, responded to, and been incorporated into the production of knowledge. Africa has been a site of rich and varied epistemological and material experiments for millennia—some deleterious, some beneficial, and all imbued with different kinds of power. Acknowledging this long-standing history can serve to correct stereotypes that suggest otherwise. It can also contribute to debates within the history of science as the field continues to move away from its original focus on Europe and Europeans.


1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 654-656
Author(s):  
Harry Beilin

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi

Here I survey a sample of the essays and reviews on the sciences of the long eighteenth century published in this journal since it was founded in 1969. The connecting thread is some historiographic reflections on the role that disciplines—in both the sciences we study and the fields we practice—have played in the development of the history of science over the past half century. I argue that, as far as disciplines are concerned, we now find ourselves a bit closer to a situation described in our studies of the long eighteenth century than we were fifty years ago. This should both favor our understanding of that period and, hopefully, make the historical studies that explore it more relevant to present-day developments and science policy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled “Looking Backward, Looking Forward: HSNS at 50,” edited by Erika Lorraine Milam.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document