Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science

From the Editors

2022-11-19T04:46:54-03:00

From the Editors

Bruno Latour (June 22, 1947 – October 9, 2022)

2022-11-24T12:37:18-03:00

Obituary:

Bruno Latour (June 22, 1947 – October 9, 2022)

Interview: Paul Hoyningen-Huene

2022-11-13T12:07:33-03:00

Paul Hoyningen-Huene was born in Pfronten/Allgäu, West Germany, in 1946. He studied Physics and Philosophy in Munich (1966-1971), Mathematical Physics in London (1971-72) and Theoretical Physics in Zurich (1975). The theoretical physicist and philosopher taught in Switzerland (1976-1998) and was a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Thomas S. Kuhn (1984-85). Afterward, he published Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science (1993), an original neo-Kantian interpretation of Thomas Kuhn’s ideas. His numerous articles focus on Logic, the Philosophy of Biology, the Philosophy of Physical Sciences and the General Philosophy of Science. Throughout his career, Hoyningen-Huene also wrote about Paul Feyerabend’s thesis concerning the rationality of scientific development and theory comparison, Scientific Realism, Reductionism, Ethics of Science and Historiography of Science. The German thinker founded the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science at the Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany) and intended to summarize his main ideas on the nature of scientific knowledge in the book Systematicity: The Nature of Science (2013).

Labeling, Branding or Reality?

2022-11-15T15:15:40-03:00

The article discusses the creation of the expression and idea of historical epistemology. It problematized the context of the rise of what would be historical epistemology and who would have been the pioneer author in the introduction of the expression, traditionally considered as resulting from Dominique Lecourt’s book, L’Épistémologie historique de Gaston Bachelard (1969). The possible options for affiliating the idea of historical epistemology are explored, and the pertinence of attributing the invention of the neologism to Lecourt or lesser-known names is reassessed. Finally, the French philosopher and historian of science Abel Rey is proposed as a precursor to the use of the expression and the idea of historical epistemology. In his doctoral thesis, Rey explored this expression when reflecting on the history and philosophy of science. In effect, pioneeringly, Rey presented a proposal for historical epistemology almost seventy years before what is conventionally accepted as the beginning of this approach.

On Biological Function

2022-11-18T15:07:52-03:00

Eliminativism is a peripheral (if not dead) position in the current biological function debate, and it is roughly presented as the thesis that function terms are eliminable in biological discourse. While eliminativism is often assumed inadequate, a detailed examination of eliminativism is lacking in current literature. Accordingly, this article provides a critical examination of eliminativism. This examination consists of three parts: a clarification of three supporting arguments for eliminativism (based on historical literature), a unified account of eliminativism (inspired in particular by Larry Wright 1976), and a discussion of its validity and some of its implications. This article concludes by briefly addressing the persistent presence of function terms in biological discourse.

Surpassing Factual Preservation

2022-11-15T15:01:42-03:00

This historiographical paper gains novelty by rebutting the medicine-centered methodology frequently employed in the positivist studies of pharmaceutical history. Based on the critiques of current literature, this paper conveys two interrelated points. First, the factual approach adopted by positivist pharmaceutical historians demonstrates the explanatory limitations that the report-like discourses on the history of drugs and medicines are too pedantic to be rationally insightful. Second, the attempts of developing a sociocultural framework for the British history of opium consumption remain an underdeveloped topic for the constructionist historiography of pharmaceutical science. Taken together, the author attempts to hypothesize a research methodology for the constructionist pharmaceutical history by introducing a theory of interaction that uses an interpretive approach to humanize the past of drugs and medicines for the philosophical explorations of the human-centered world. In doing so, pharmaceutical history is able to fully realize its long-wasted potential as an intellectual source of enlightenment.

Materials and their Biographies

2022-11-18T15:32:10-03:00

In this article, we are interested in analyzing the biography of metallic titanium (Ti) and its dioxide (TiO₂) from a historical, philosophical, and sociological point of view of some of its modes of existence. This biography does not suggest any anthropomorphization of material objects, rather, it is about an attempt to reconcile the reality of science in the present with its history to understand the particularities of materials in contemporary societies. We intend to investigate some properties and characteristics of the “natural” modes of existence and the new properties and implications when these materials gain a new mode of existence, the nanostructured one. This mode of existence refers to a new way of organizing scientific knowledge, an inflection which has been called technoscience, more concerned with what an object will become in the future, then with what it essentially is. In this sense, the proper chemical identity of these substances is one among other modes of existence, into this mode of existence, one must add others which can approach its biological, geological, cultural, technological, economic or geopolitical behavior.

A Persistent Myth

2022-11-17T11:55:19-03:00

According to the Copernican myth, geocentrism was a form of anthropocentrism because it showcased humankind as being both the centre and the purpose of the Cosmos, whereas heliocentrism, in dethroning humankind from this privileged position, luckily provided a means to quash this point of view, which was illusory and vain, and that even went against scientific progress. According to the anthropocentric myth, which is a part of it, geocentrism is a form of anthropocentrism, while heliocentrism is really an anti-anthropocentrism and not simply a non-anthropocentrism. This article, in the form of a dialogue, questions these two myths, looking in particular for the causes of their appearance, among which is a guilty anachronism.