scholarly journals Agonistic and Epistemic Pluralisms: A New Interpretation of the Dispute between Emilie du Châtelet and Dortous de Mairan

Paragraph ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Anne-Lise Rey
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Model ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Foundations Of Physics ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Agonistic Pluralism ◽  
Epistemic Pluralism

The object of this article is to lay bare the consensualist presuppositions implicit within contemporary analyses of the controversies of the Classical Age by proposing an alternative model: agonistic pluralism. The convergence between this political reading of the controversies and an epistemological reading is reinforced by a discussion of Hasok Chang's work, which develops a model of epistemic pluralism that breaks away from studies in the history of science undertaken following the Kuhnian model of scientific revolutions. This makes it possible to question the theoretical convergence of two anti-hegemonic claims: one political, the other epistemological. I aim to put this new model of analysis to the test by applying it to a well known, oft-analysed dispute, that which erupted between Dortous de Mairan and Emilie du Châtelet following the publication of the Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics).

RISE, GRUBENHUND: ON PROVINCIALIZING KUHN

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
DEBORAH R. COEN
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
Ludwik Fleck ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Visual Metaphors ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kuhnian Revolution ◽  
Neutral Ground

Bilingualism was Kuhn's solution to the problem of relativism, the problem raised by his own theory of incommensurability. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he argued that scientific theories are separated by gulfs of mutual incomprehension. There is no neutral ground from which to judge one theory fitter than another. Each is formulated in its own language and cannot be translated into the idiom of another. Yet, like many Americans, Kuhn never had the experience of moving comfortably between languages. “I've never been any good really at foreign languages,” he admitted in an interview soon before his death. “I can read French, I can read German, if I'm dropped into one of those countries I can stammer along for a while, but my command of foreign languages is not good, and never has been, which makes it somewhat ironic that much of my thought these days goes to language.” Kuhn may have been confessing to more than a personal weakness. His linguistic ineptitude seems to be a clue to his overweening emphasis on the difficulty of “transworld travel.” Multilingualism remained for him an abstraction. In this respect, I will argue, Kuhn engendered a peculiarly American turn in the history of science. Kuhn's argument for the dependence of science on the norms of particular communities has been central to the development of studies of science in and as culture since the 1980s. Recent work on the mutual construction of science and nationalism, for instance, is undeniably in Kuhn's debt. Nonetheless, the Kuhnian revolution cut off other avenues of research. In this essay, I draw on the counterexample of the physician–historian Ludwik Fleck, as well as on critiques by Steve Fuller and Ted Porter, to suggest one way to situate Kuhn within the broader history of the history of science. To echo Kuhn's own visual metaphors, one of the profound effects of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions on the field of history of science was to render certain modes of knowledge production virtually invisible.

Combining Kuhn and Jung: outlining a ‘step ladder model’ (SLM) for scientific discovery and paradigm shift research

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 206-226
Author(s):  
Sam Keenan
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Jungian Psychology ◽  
Discovery Process ◽  
Scientific Revolutions ◽  
Ladder Model ◽  
Structure Of Scientific Revolutions ◽  
12 Steps ◽  
History Of

This paper provides the outline of a ‘step ladder model’ (SLM) comprising 12 steps of scientific discovery making. It incorporates both a ‘leap-off point’ from Kuhn'sStructure of Scientific Revolutions, and ideas from Jungian psychology to reveal patterns in the way in which scientific discoveries are made, across 40 examples from the history of science. The current consensus is that these discoveries are accidental. This paper aims to provide a model for deliberately making dream-based scientific discoveries. The key to this model is intrapsychic patterns in how discoveries of this kind can be made. As these patterns become gradually clearer, greater understanding of the dream-based scientific discovery-making process can develop. Gradually as a collective endeavour, as the SLM develops, the dream-based scientific discovery process can by degrees become less accidental, and progressively more deliberate.

The United Kingdom’s Statutory Constitution

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-481
Author(s):  
Athanasios Psygkas
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
New Model ◽  
Judicial Practice ◽  
History Of

Abstract The emergence of the UK’s statutory constitution has challenged the old Diceyan adage that ‘neither the Act of Union with Scotland nor the Dentists Act 1878 has more claim than the other to be considered supreme law’. This article reconceptualises constitutional statutes, offering a three-pronged approach to identifying such legislation. This new model examines the content of the statute, the history of enacting the constitutional statute (the ‘life of the Bill’), and the post-enactment history (the ‘life of the statute’). The proposed framework reflects a historical approach to constitutionalism and gives weight not only to judicial practice, but also to the interactions between other constitutional actors and to popular endorsement. Four case studies of statutes demonstrate how the new model adds layers to, and diverges from, the current judicial approach. Finally, the article describes the implications of taking constitutional statutes seriously under the proposed approach.

Your council at work: Research Advisory Committee

1976 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 394
Author(s):  
Donald J. Dessart
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Education ◽  
Advisory Committee ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Classroom Situation ◽  
Major Task ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
History Of

One of the major task facing the Research Advisory Committee (RAC) is to serve the needs of two groups: researchers in mathematics education, who are primarily concerned with understanding the learning process: and practitioners (teachers, supervisors. principals), who are mainly concerned with finding more effective ways to teach children. Researchers, guided by their intuitions, study problems and often obtain results that are not directly applicable to the classroom situation: practitioners, on the other hand. actively pursue better ways to educate children in the classroom. To insist that researchers should address themselves only to the immediate problems of the classroom seems to be an unwise course of action, since the history of science includes many discoveries that had useful applications years, or even centuries, after their di scovery. Yet for researchers to ignore the need of the classroom may lead to sterile research results that only collect dust in the darkened corners of a library.

scholarly journals The Impact of Religious Motivation in the Emergence of Arabic Rhetoric A Reading in the Era of Composition to Independent Authorship (English Abstract)

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-223
Author(s):  
Wael Omar Alomari Wael Omar Alomari
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Abstract ◽  
Religious Motivation ◽  
Religious Influence ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
History Of ◽  
Arabic Rhetoric ◽  
The Impact

The roots of the rhetorical lesson grew in a fertile religious land. They characterized its rhetoric from the rhetoric of the rest of the nations as it was connected with the Qur’anic text. However, the religious stream did not have only one subject and one goal. It produced multiple contexts that refined the teachings of the rhetorical lesson later on. This diversity was a fertile tool for Arabic eloquence. The research sought to discuss the details of the roots, to extract the courses of religious influence in the emergence of Arabic rhetoric. The research has gone beyond the oral news and stories to begin with the written diaries, in search of the author’s motivations and his aims, and of the milestones that contributed to the reading of the rhetorical lesson. It emanated from the signs of the composition, so the limits of the research stopped at the beginning of the independent composition of Arabic rhetoric and moved to a stage approaching the methodology. The research revealed three courses that stemmed from the religious influence which were related to language. These three courses are analysis, interpretation and explanation. They were tools that were used in the analysis that aimed to understand the Qura’nic text in order to transfer it from language to practice. The interpretation, on the other hand, raised the question of compatibility between language and belief. The explanation tried to deal with the issue of miracles and clarifying its features. The re-reading of the history of science is an area that can research, re-ask the question, and disassociate its relations, to understand the process of science, and the impact of their tributaries on their concepts. This is what researchers can examine in the rest of the tributaries that have fueled the rhetorical lesson.

scholarly journals Johannes Valentini Lucubrata opuscula poeticohistorica in unum collecta [Az éjjeli mécs világánál alkotott költői-történeti művecskéim egybegyűjtése] (1808) című kötetének őstörténeti vonatkozásai

2019 ◽  
pp. 151-168
Author(s):  
László Szörényi
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
High Significance ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
Occasional Poetry ◽  
Important Trend ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 19Th Century

As a poet, the parish priest Johannes Valentini (Turčiansky Michal, 1756 – Kláštor pod Znievom, 1812) is very much tied to the other Neo-Latin priest-poets living in Hungary and the other countries of the Habsburg Empire by the tradition of laudation in occasional poetry, which flourished from the antiquity until the end of the 19th century and was a tool to praise or mourn religious superiors or secular patronising potentates. Valentini, however, is different from the other poets in his very extensive interest in prehistory. When he poeticises the history of the provostry of Thurocz, he engages in lengthy explanations which are far bigger in size than the poem itself, and are also supplemented with footnotes.From a viewpoint of history of science this approach is probably connected mostly to the research initiated by the Jesuit historian Georgius Papánek, but Valentini’s work – similarly to authors of all other nationalities of that time in the Kingdom of Hungary – of course contains mythical and legendary elements, to which he naturally utilizes the reports of antique Greek and Roman writers about Eastern-origin exotic peoples. The Nagykároly (Carei, Szatmár county)-based Ferdinandus Thomas, for example, derives the origin of Hungarians from Ethiops! But we can name examples from either Romanian or South Slav literatures.Valentini is of high significance, because in many ways he – with his poet colleagues, writing in Slovak or other language – clears the way for Orientalism, an important trend of European Romanticism.

THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE PERIODIC TABLE: AN OVERVIEW OF EVENTS BEFORE AND AFTER THE CREATION OF THE PERIODIC TABLE

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergei Teleshov ◽  
◽  
Elena Teleshova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Periodic Table ◽  
The Other ◽  
Periodic Law ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Periodic Arrangement ◽  
Made In

It has been 150 years since D.I. Mendeleev formulated the Periodic law and expressed it visually in the form of a table of elements in 1869. As is clearly well known today, Mendeleev’s ideas, confirmed by the discovery of the elements he predicted, turned out to be very promising indeed. However, Mendeleev was not the first, nor the only scientist to have investigated the periodic arrangement of the elements. With this in mind, the present paper seeks to highlight some of the other efforts made in the field during Mendeleev’s lifetime. Keywords: D. Mendeleev, periodic table, table options, history of science.

Noi credevamo (We Believed): Story and history of emotions

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Patat
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One

In the last ten years, Noi credevamo (We Believed) (Martone 2010) has been the subject of a very careful criticism interested not only in its historical-ideological implications but also in its semiotic specificities. The purpose of this article is to summarize the cardinal points of these two positions and to add to them some critical observations that have not been noted so far. On the one hand, it is a matter of highlighting how, as a historical film, the work is connected with the history of emotions, a recent historiographical trend that aims to detect the narrative devices of ideological propaganda and the diffusion of feelings since the late eighteenth century. On the other hand, the article proposes a new interpretation of Mario Martone’s film, starting with the analysis of phenomena that are not only historical but also technical and structural.

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