Transversal: International Journal for the Historiography of Science

Welcome to the New Editors-in-Chief

Mauro L. Condé — 2023-12-19

Welcome to the New Editors-in-Chief

Evelyn Fox Keller (March 20, 1936 – September 22, 2023)

Gustavo Rocha — 2023-12-19

Obituary:

Evelyn Fox Keller (March 20, 1936 – September 22, 2023)

Ian Hacking

María Laura Martínez — 2023-12-19

Ian Hacking Special Issue – Guest Editor’s Introduction

Making Up a Mimic

Jennifer Jill Fellows — 2023-12-19

In this paper, I employ Ian Hacking’s concept “Making Up People” to examine the current relationships humans are forming with personified AI tools and devices. I argue that, at present, AI tools are mimics. They are members of indifferent kinds that have been designed to deceive us into believing they are interactive kinds. This has largely been a result of human programmers interacting with the historical category of ‘computer’ on the one hand, and the fictional category of ‘robot overlords’ on the other. Interacting with a mimic, I contend, is not the same as interacting with a member of a human kind. And while the results of these interactions are largely still unknown, we can already see some consequences we should guard against. When we interact with mimics, I will show that human looping is often slowed. As such, our ability to resist or re-interpret the labels placed upon us becomes greatly reduced, and social progress may be slowed or lost as well. This is because all a mimic can do is mimic. They cannot interact with the labels we place on them, or those they place on us. And yet, as we classify them as teachers, therapists, friends or lovers, we hand over a great deal of categorizing power to them. In doing so, we are changing who we are and who we might become in ways we cannot yet entirely foresee. But there are already some patterns of harm and marginalization that can be tracked. Such patterns should cause us to question the power these mimics already have to make up people.

Ian Hacking’s Rewriting of Leviathan and the Air-Pump

María de los Ángeles Martini — 2023-12-19

Ian Hacking has argued that the book Leviathan and the Air-Pump acted as a historiographical source in his analysis of the laboratory style of thinking and doing. The present article analyzes Hacking’s appropriation of Shapin and Schaffer’s work as a rewriting of the history of English experimental philosophy of the seventeenth century. The analysis focuses on the contingency/permanence tension with the aim of investigating the two historiographic narratives as attempts to overcome what Bernstein calls “Cartesian anxiety.” First, I examine the mundane historiography of Shapin and Schaffer and their philosophical commitment to finitism as constitutive of their historiographical approach. Second, I analyze Hacking’s appropriation of Fernand Braudel’s historiography in writing a material history of experimental philosophy. Finally, I address the notion of form of life as a nuclear point in the ways that Hacking and Shapin and Schaffer seek to move beyond Cartesian anxiety.

What is a Style of Reasoning?

Luca Sciortino — 2023-12-19

In this paper I propose a solution to the crucial issue of the number of styles of reasoning. Ever since, in the 1980s, Ian Hacking outlined what he later called the ‘project of styles of scientific reasoning’, for short the ‘styles project’, he has never provided criteria for individuating styles of reasoning. Whether or not certain ways of thinking can be counted as styles of reasoning in the sense of Hacking is a question that has remained unanswered, despite its apparent relevance to various other controversial issues related to the styles project. I shall frame the issue within a view of categorization which begins with the later philosophy of Wittgenstein and culminates with the so-called theory of prototypes in psychological research. My conclusion will be that there is no clear boundary to the category of styles of reasoning and that degrees of category membership for a given way of thinking are determined by its degree of similarity to prototypes such as the statistical style of reasoning.

Hacking on Unity, or How to Pluralize the History and Philosophy of the Sciences

Joseba Pascual-Alba — 2023-12-19

In this paper, we analyze Ian Hacking’s conception of unity regarding the sciences and try to use his categorization to reinterpret some of the major unitarian philosophies of science of the twentieth century. In two of his papers, Hacking (1992a, 1996) proposed a dual notion of unity – “singleness” and “harmonious integration” –, which, although apparently simple, help us complexify the very notion of unity and its counterpart, plurality. To do so, and after a short review of unity qua ideology (section 2), we shall look into Hacking’s classification of unities and its relation to plurality in the sciences (section 3); then, we shall describe and qualify the notions of scientific unity in some of the most relevant philosophies of science (section 4); finally (section 5), we shall use this analysis to engage with and criticize the notion of “special sciences” and its relationship to the notion of “general science”. One of the main conclusions will be that a pluralist conception of unity is possible through the notion of integration.

Making Sense of Hacking

Jack Ritchie — 2023-12-19

I argue a useful way to conceptualise all of Hacking’s work is through his styles project. This provides us with a simple structure to organise many of Hacking’s main texts and brings into sharp relief two of his major philosophical projects. The first is to explain the stability of science. The second is metaphilosophical: to understand why scientific activity gives rise to certain philosophical difficulties, for example realism disputes. In its most ambitious form, Hacking called his project Philosophical Anthropology, and his aim was to explain how creatures like us, in a world like this have happened to alight on methods of finding out that work so well. I end with a brief discussion of how successfully he realised his goals and an even briefer comparison with two naturalist philosophers, Mark Wilson and Penelope Maddy, who share some of his interests and ambitions.

The Relationships between Scientific and Theological Discourses at the Crossroads between Medieval and Early Modern Times and the Historiography of Science

Alberto Bardi — 2023-12-19

The history of the science of the stars (astronomy and astrology) in fourteenth-century Byzantium is significantly intertwined with the implications of theological and philosophical controversies. A less-explored astronomical text authored by the fourteenth-century Byzantine scholar Theorodos Meliteniotes (ca. 1320–1393 CE) provides new historical factors toward a historiography of the differences between scientific and theological discourses, their development in the transition to early modern times, and the different historical developments of science in the worlds of the Eastern and Western Churches.

Michael Scot and the Music of the Spheres

Tony Scott — 2023-12-19

Herein, it is shown that Kepler’s contribution involving the “Music of the Spheres” can be traced back to Pythagoras and Ibn Arabī through Michael Scot. We ﬁnd threads linking this body of work associating music with astronomy leading to the modern and extensive astronomical subject of orbital resonances. In particular, we ﬁnd that Fibonacci numbers play a signiﬁcant role in this context.

Why Is Biological Teleology Non-constitutive (Merely Regulative) for Kant?

Bohang Chen — 2023-12-19

Doubtlessly Kant assigns a merely regulative function to biological teleology. But the reasons for Kant’s doing so are less clear. For some Kant scholars, Kant does so because, for him, the concept of natural purpose amounts at best to a subjective maxim of certain heuristic values. Appealing as it is, this view runs into difficulties when other Kant scholars note that Kant takes biological teleology to be indispensable and uses the natural purpose concept to identify biological organisms (or, more precisely, formative powers). In this article, I argue that Kant treats biological teleology as non-constitutive (i.e., merely regulative), because the concept of natural purpose is not associated with any supporting laws (biological organisms as instances or particulars of the concept of natural purpose are given, but the concept itself as a universal is only assumed). Based on this new reading, I do four more things: first, I offer a revised interpretation of Kant’s view of biological teleology; second, I clarify a Kantian stance on the concept of life; third, I solve a puzzle about the relationship between Kant, Naturphilosophie and the history of biology; fourth, I sketch some of its implications for three contemporary issues.

Stylistic Approach to the Brachistochrone Problem

Luíz Felipe Sigwalt de Miranda — 2023-12-19

The notion of style is frequently used, and in some instances, without the necessary rigor. Authors such as Crombie, Hacking, Bueno and Granger consider presenting a general concept to be essential and sufficient to grasp the notion of style. They found a possibility to apply a strict concept of style even to science and mathematics. Here, using a fundamental criterion raised by Bueno (2012), I test the possibility to characterize a mathematical local style from a particular event in the history of mathematics: the Brachistochrone problem. Because this problem has different solutions, which allows them to be analyzed to verify an occurrence of style on their mathematical development. There are two problems that any concept of style should face: (i) the impregnation problem posed by Bueno and (ii) the cognitive relevance proposed by Mancosu. The former presents a serious implication in supporting a proper style in mathematics because any mathematical object needs a preceding mathematical theory that characterizes it, and if it is not possible to constitute a style in mathematics, then recognizing its cognitive relevance could also be compromised.