The Study of Controversies and the Theory and History of Science

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Dascal
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Usual Practice ◽  
Limited Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Way Of Thinking

These introductory remarks are unorthodox in many respects. The deviance from usual practice is justified by the extreme importance I attach to the subject matter of this special issue. I want to convey to the reader a sense of why I think controversies, particularly in science, are so crucial, and to propose a different way of thinking about them. This mandates, in the limited space available, a compact presentation, omitting supporting arguments and necessary elaboration — for which the reader is referred to the bibliography.

scholarly journals Wideokonferencja „Polskie czasopisma z historii i filozofii nauki oraz naukoznawstwa: Jak dostać się do Scopus, WoS, ICI, DOAJ oraz ERIH+? Dlaczego warto to zrobić?” (Kraków – Warszawa – Toruń, 16 kwietnia 2020, godz. 10.00–15.00)

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 573-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Kokowski
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Polish Academy ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Science Of Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
20Th Anniversary ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

Artykuł szkicuje tematykę i przebieg pierwszej w dziejach Polskiej Akademii Umiejętności i Instytutu Historii Nauki PAN Wideokonferencji pt. „Polskie czasopisma z historii i filozofii nauki oraz naukoznawstwa: Jak dostać się do Scopus, WoS, ICI, DOAJ oraz ERIH+? Dlaczego warto to zrobić?” (Kraków – Warszawa – Toruń, 16 kwietnia 2020, godz. 10.00–15.00). Konferencję zorganizowano z okazji 20-lecia Komisji Historii Nauki PAU i powołania Pracowni Naukoznawstwa IHN PAN, aktualnie jedynej placówki naukoznawczej w Polsce. Videoconference “The Polish journals on the history and philosophy of science and the science of science: How to get to Scopus, WoS, ICI, DOAJ and ERIH+? Why is it worth doing?” (Kraków – Warsaw – Toruń, Poland, April 16, 2020, 10.00–15.00) The article sketches the subject matter and the course of the first videoconference in the history of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences: “The Polish journals on the history and philosophy of science and the science of science: How to get to Scopus, WoS, ICI, DOAJ and ERIH+. Why is it worth doing?” (Krakow – Warsaw – Toruń, 16 April 2020, 10.00–15.00). The conference was organized on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Commission on the History of Science at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and to mark the establishment of the Laboratory for the Science of Science at the Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, currently the only one (!) unit for the science of science in Poland.

Reframing the Sciences of the Long Eighteenth Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-66
Author(s):  
Giuliano Pancaldi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Past Half

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.

Mickiewicz. Poeta alternatyw

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogusław Dopart
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Open Universe ◽  
Literary Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
National Literatures ◽  
Adam Mickiewicz

The title of the present monograph refers to one of the most fundamental traits of the oeuvre and literary life of Adam Mickiewicz. While constantly occupied with invigorating and broadening the subject- -matter of his works, Mickiewicz is careful to follow a steady track of ideas, concepts, and truths. In constructing successive models of poetic worlds and varying them even within single works, he incessantly integrates them into a dynamic, open universe of the ‘man of transformations’ (in Wacław Borowy’s phrasing) in accordance with the ontic position and experience of a Romantic writer. Diversity and variance of poetic forms in Mickiewicz is counterbalanced by his leaning towards regularity and structural connectedness: cycles. As early as his first critical manifesto, he opposes a schematic labeling of his creative output; he presents the history of European poetry in terms of overlapping traditions and gradual differentiation of national literatures.

Science and common sense in the study of international politics

1984 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39
Author(s):  
Roger D. Spegele
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Humean View

The history of recent efforts to establish a science of international politics may be usefully viewed as elaborate glosses on David Hume's powerful philosophical programme for resolving, reconciling or dissolving a variety of perspicuous dualities: the external and the internal, mind and body, reason and experience. Philosophers and historians of ideas still dispute the extent to which Hume succeeded but if one is to judge by the two leading ‘scientific’ research programmes1 for international politics—inductivism and naive falsificationism —these dualities are as unresolved as ever, with fatal consequences for the thesis of the unity of the sciences. For the failure to reconcile or otherwise dissolve such divisions shows that, on the Humean view, there is at least one difference between the physical (or natural) sciences. and the moral (or social) sciences: namely, that while the latter bear on the internal and external, the former are concerned primarily with the external. How much this difference matters and how the issue is avoided by the proponents of inductivism and naïve falsification is the subject matter of this paper.

scholarly journals The History of Science and the History of Knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Manhattan Project ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
History Of Knowledge ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Level

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.

scholarly journals Ironia i nihilizm. Figura bibliotekarza w Posłuchaniu u Lucypera Józefa Sękowskiego

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-94
Author(s):  
Jarosław Ławski
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Russian Literature ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

The subject matter of the present article is the image of library and librarian in a forgotten short story by a Polish-Russian writer Józef Julian Sękowski (1800−1858). Sękowski is known in Polish literature as a multi-talented orientalist and polyglot, who changed his national identity in 1832 and began to write only in Russian. In the history of Russian literature he is famous for Library for Reading and Fantastic Voyages of Baron Brambeus, an ironic-grotesque work, which was precursory in Russian prose. Until 1832 Sękowski was, however, a Polish writer. His last significant work was An Audience with Lucypher published in a Polish magazine Bałamut Petersburski (Petersburgian Philanderer) in 1832 and immediately translated into Russian by Sękowski himself under the title Bolszoj wychod u Satany (1833). The library and librarian presented by the author in this piece are a caricature illustration proving his nihilistic worldview. Sękowski is a master of irony and grotesquery, yet the world he creates is deprived of freedom and justice and a book in this world is merely a threat to absolute power.

Santa y Andrés: A dossier

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-382
Author(s):  
Dunja Fehimović ◽  
Ruth Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Original Essays ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Online Archive ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cuban Cinema

Carlos Lechuga’s film Santa y Andrés (2016) has enjoyed worldwide acclaim as an intimate, dramatic portrayal of the unlikely friendship that develops in rural Cuba between Andrés, a gay dissident writer, and Santa, the militant citizen who has been sent to surveil him. Declared to be extreme and/or inaccurate in its historical depictions, the film was censored in Cuba and was the subject of intense controversy and public polemics surrounding its release in 2016. Debates about the film’s subject matter and its censorship extend ongoing disagreement over the role of art within the Cuban Revolution, and the changing nature of the Cuban film industry itself. This dossier brings together new scholarship on Santa y Andrés and is linked to an online archive of some of the original essays that have been written about the film by Cuban critics and filmmakers since 2016. The aim of this project is to create a starting point for researchers who wish to investigate Santa y Andrés, evaluating the film both for its contentious initial reception, and in terms of its enduring contribution to the history of Cuban cinema.

Hume and the Customary Causes of Industry, Knowledge and Humanity

2018 ◽  
pp. 184-207
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Causal Analysis ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Examines Hume’s account of economic development as a subset of the history of civilisation, which is presented by him as a history of customs and manners. Since Hume believes that the subject matter of ‘economics’ is amenable to scientific analysis, the focus is on his employment of causal analysis and how he elaborates an analysis of customs as causes to account for social change. This is executed chiefly via an examination Hume’s Essays, though the History of England (as a test case) and the Treatise of Human Nature for its expression of Hume’s seminal analysis of causation are also incorporated.

Jewish Martyrdom in the Works of Adolf Rudnicki

1998 ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Józef Wróbel
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter discusses the theme of Jewish martyrdom in the works of Adolf Rudnicki. Without losing sight of the universal dimensions of the theme he was taking up, Rudnicki enriches the subject-matter with characteristics that are specifically Jewish. First, the situation of Jewish society during the occupation differed from that of other nations. Jews were pushed to the very bottom of the invader's hierarchy. Their life and death depended not only on Germans but also on the aid of Poles among whom they lived, which was not always forthcoming. A second specific feature is derived from Rudnicki's chosen artistic genre, which monumentalized the suffering of Jews by including them in the biblical circle and the almost 2,000-year history of the Diaspora, the wandering and persecution with which God tries his chosen people. This problem dominated the writing of Rudnicki for at least ten years. Undoubtedly, the literary situation in the first half of the 1950s was decisive in Rudnicki's abandonment of the theme, since the subject of the war was quickly recognized as outdated. The chapter then studies occupation literature.

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