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Galileo and the Indispensability of Scientific Thought Experiment

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

This chapter argues that thought experiments play a distinctive role in scientific inquiry. Reasoning about particular entities within the context of an imaginary scenario can lead to rationally ... More

This chapter argues that thought experiments play a distinctive role in scientific inquiry. Reasoning about particular entities within the context of an imaginary scenario can lead to rationally justified conclusions that—given the same initial information—would not be rationally justifiable on the basis of a straightforward argument. The bulk of the essay involves a careful reconstruction of one of the most famous thought experiments in the history of science—that by which Galileo is said to have refuted the Aristotelian theory that heavy bodies fall faster than lighter ones. But it also offers some more general remarks about scientific thought experiment as such, including a comparison of the author's views with those of James Robert Brown and John Norton.Less

Spinoza, Science, and the Scientists

Jonathan I. Israel

in Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750

The most important and exceptional element in Spinoza's scientific thought is simply that natural philosophy, or science, is of universal applicability and that there is no reserved area beyond it. ... More

The most important and exceptional element in Spinoza's scientific thought is simply that natural philosophy, or science, is of universal applicability and that there is no reserved area beyond it. This implied a stark contrast between Spinoza's scientific rationality and that of every other leading philosopher and scientist of the age, not least Descartes. Various contemporaries attested to Spinoza's skill in preparing lenses and building microscopes and telescopes. Among those most aware of Spinoza's work with microscopes was the preeminent scientist of the Dutch Golden Age, Christian Huygens. Below the surface, the barely suppressed rivalry between Huygens and Spinoza extended far beyond lenses and microscopes. For both men, the central issue in science at the time was to revise and refine Descartes' laws of motion and mechanics. Another central strand of Spinoza's scientific thought is his critique of Boyle. Spinoza relegated observation and experiment to the secondary role of confirming or contradicting hypotheses, and it was on this ground that he was drawn into criticizing Boyle and the empiricism of the Royal Society.Less

Methodological Approaches to Scientific and Technological Thinking

Michael E. Gorman

in Psychology of Science: Implicit and Explicit Processes

This chapter provides a taxonomy of the methodological approaches psychologists have taken to studying scientific and technological thinking, based on an analogy to biological methods, including in ... More

This chapter provides a taxonomy of the methodological approaches psychologists have taken to studying scientific and technological thinking, based on an analogy to biological methods, including in vitro studies of nonscientists working on simulations of science and in vivo studies of scientists working in their laboratories. Tacit knowledge is incorporated into the taxonomy. Scholars in science and technology studies have discovered a new category of expertise which they refer to as interactional, or the ability to talk like a member of a particular scientific community without being able to do the research. Interactional expertise is a topic that should be explored by psychologists of science; the chapter describes how. The chapter ends by considering what it would take to make psychology of science into a field, and whether that is desirable.Less

Thought Experiments Rethought—and Reperceived

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

This chapter explores the question of how contemplation of an imaginary scenario can lead to new knowledge about contingent features of the natural world—that is, how it can provide us with relevant ... More

This chapter explores the question of how contemplation of an imaginary scenario can lead to new knowledge about contingent features of the natural world—that is, how it can provide us with relevant beliefs about contingent matters that are simultaneously new and justified. It traces the source of both novelty and justification to the ways in which focusing one's attention on a specific scenario (as opposed to a general schema) may evoke quasi‐sensory intuitions which then serve as a basei for novel justified true beliefs. Drawing on work on mental imagery by Roger Shepard, Daniel Reisberg, and others, the chapter presents empirical psychological evidence that supports its main thesis; it also includes a comparison of the author's views with those of James Robert Brown and John Norton.Less

George Eliot’s Science Fiction

Ian Duncan

in Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution

This concluding chapter focuses on George Eliot's Middlemarch. The main business of Middlemarch, formulated as the premise of its opening rhetorical question, is with a scientific project, “the ... More

This concluding chapter focuses on George Eliot's Middlemarch. The main business of Middlemarch, formulated as the premise of its opening rhetorical question, is with a scientific project, “the history of man.” While George Eliot's literary career coincided with Charles Darwin's, she did not immediately digest his theory; her fiction activates other developmental forces besides natural selection, and deranges the scientific thought it brings into play. In doing so, it churns up the not-yet-settled, volatile currents of that scientific thought-including Darwin's, who was not always (himself) a pure Darwinist. With that, it deranges its own aesthetic protocols, so often read as an Olympian consummation of Victorian realism. “To a degree that the catchall term 'realism' obscures,” writes Lauren Goodlad, “Eliot's oeuvre is generically diverse, bold, and experimental.” The chapter seeks to recapture the unsettling force of that experimentalism: to make George Eliot strange again.Less

Verbal Magical Beliefs and Children's Everyday Experience

Eugene Subbotsky

in Magic and the Mind: Mechanisms, Functions, and Development of Magical Thinking and Behavior

In Chapter 3 (“Verbal Magical Beliefs and Children's Everyday Experience”), the problem of entrenchment of magical beliefs in children of various ages is examined. The development of magical beliefs ... More

In Chapter 3 (“Verbal Magical Beliefs and Children's Everyday Experience”), the problem of entrenchment of magical beliefs in children of various ages is examined. The development of magical beliefs in children is put in the context of a more general model of people's reaction to anomalous events, both in the sciences (Kuhn, Lacatos) and in school education (Chinn & Brewer). This allowed one to consider the transition from magical to scientific thinking in children as an instance of a “revolution” in children's causal thinking about the world. Experiments are presented that examine when and how this fundamental transition from magical to scientific thinking occurs, and whether this transition is a complete replacement of one kind of causal orientation with the alternative kind or is domain specific and covers only knowledge about the physical world, whereas in other areas (such as fantasy, play, or human relations) magic thinking persists to older ages. In contrast to most previous studies, in these experiments, special care was taken to ensure that children understood the difference between “true magic” and “fake magic” (i.e., magic tricks).Less

Scientists as the Model of Human Nature

Jamie Cohen-Cole

in The Open Mind: Cold War Politics and the Sciences of Human Nature

This chapter focuses on a particular moment in the history of human sciences in which reflexivity played a significant role: the early days of revolution when cognitive science supplanted behaviorism ... More

This chapter focuses on a particular moment in the history of human sciences in which reflexivity played a significant role: the early days of revolution when cognitive science supplanted behaviorism as the hegemonic science of human nature. In the struggle that marked the cognitive revolution. Reflexivity provided the combatants with weapons to attack their foes and also methods and concepts to form their respective sciences of human nature. To enhance their public standing, cognitive scientists sought to make their own thought processes match folk ideas of scientific thinking. They applied the same categories of selfhood found in popular culture and social psychology to themselves. They collapsed distinction between normative rules for scientific thinking and the actual processes of human thinking. As cognitive scientists crossed back and forth between scientific descriptions of the human and normative discussions of the best way for scientists to think, they borrowed from the folk and social psychological image of right-thinking to inform their own personal and public images. These very same scientific self-images would form the basis for the image of human nature that cognitive science produced.Less

Psyche and Soma

C. U. M. Smith, Eugenio Frixione, Stanley Finger, and William Clower

in The Animal Spirit Doctrine and the Origins of Neurophysiology

This chapter studies the ancient Greeks' understanding of the soul and body, as well as the relationship between the two. It discusses a set of basic notions, including movement and keeping the body ... More

This chapter studies the ancient Greeks' understanding of the soul and body, as well as the relationship between the two. It discusses a set of basic notions, including movement and keeping the body together against disintegration, and the heart. It studies the start of scientific thought, from the pre-Socratic philosophers until the height of classic Greek philosophy. It focuses on the works of Plato and Aristotle and outlines the development of early Greek conceptions about the soul and body. It then examines how these notions influenced the birth of scientific medicine. This chapter concludes with a review of the teachings on the soul and body by some representatives of Epicureanism and Stoicism, which are two opposing philosophical-scientific schools that prospered from the post-Aristotelian period until the rise of the Roman Empire.Less

The Psychology of (Pseudo)Science: Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Factors

Emilio J. C. Lobato and Corinne Zimmerman

in Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science

We review findings from the psychology of science that are relevant to understanding or explaining peoples’ tendencies to believe both scientific and pseudoscientific claims. We discuss relevant ... More

We review findings from the psychology of science that are relevant to understanding or explaining peoples’ tendencies to believe both scientific and pseudoscientific claims. We discuss relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical findings to support the proposal that pseudoscientific beliefs arise in much the same way as other scientific and non-scientific beliefs do. In particular, we focus on (a) cognitive and metacognitive factors at the individual level; (b) trust in testimony and judgments of expertise at the social level; and (c) personal identity and the public’s relationship with the scientific community at a cultural level.Less

Science in the Gap

Peter Gaffney

in The Force of the Virtual: Deleuze, Science, and Philosophy

This introductory chapter sets out the theoretical underpinnings of the present volume. It draws on the analyses of Deleuze and Guattari to address the question of whether scientific thought, like ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the theoretical underpinnings of the present volume. It draws on the analyses of Deleuze and Guattari to address the question of whether scientific thought, like philosophical thought, takes place in the gap between worlds and sustains the force of the virtual. It considers a polemic that has emerged from discussions regarding Deleuze’s “scienticity”; and discusses ontological versus epistemological realism, how science lacks the metaphysics it needs, nature as creative process, and the processes of subjectivation. The book aims to examine the possibilities of a science that engages (or is engaged by) the force of the virtual, and how this influences our understanding of Deleuze’s process-oriented ontology. The question is not only whether science withstands, confirms, or refutes the role that Deleuze attributes to it, but how this challenges contemporary literary and social criticism to “play by new rules”.Less

Music: Uncertainty, the Canon, and Dissident Musics

Born Georgina

in Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde

This chapter illustrates how the concert programming of the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) embodied an extremely coherent and forceful canonization of ... More

This chapter illustrates how the concert programming of the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) embodied an extremely coherent and forceful canonization of twentieth-century high-musical modernism. It explains that IRCAM's resources were channeled into three powerful and legitimizing displacements. These include the interpretation of the musical past, the development of technology and pure science around music, and the assertion of a realm of utopian and scientific thought and theory closely linked to composition.Less

A Short History of the Race Concept

Michael Yudell

in Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture

This chapter describes the role played by scientific thought, from the late eighteenth century through to the twentieth century, in developing a language to measure the meaning of human difference in ... More

This chapter describes the role played by scientific thought, from the late eighteenth century through to the twentieth century, in developing a language to measure the meaning of human difference in the form of race. It explores how many scientists came to reject this concept in the twentieth century. The concept of race traces its roots from the consideration of the nature of human difference. Ancient civilizations such as Greece and Rome divided people between the civic and the barbarous, and between the political citizen and those “outside.” It was only towards the end of the Middle Ages that the idea of categorization based on human variations in blood or in kinship was accepted. The twentieth century saw another dimension of race as the studies of human genetics began to flourish. The chapter concludes with a brief examination of the current state of racial thinking in biology.Less

Mythic Thought and Scientific Thought

Claude Lévi-Strauss

in We Are All Cannibals: And Other Essays

Mythic thought and scientific thought compared

Introduction

in From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870-1920

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the study of Darwinism as practiced in Argentina and the study of Argentina as shaped by Darwinism during the period from ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume which is about the study of Darwinism as practiced in Argentina and the study of Argentina as shaped by Darwinism during the period from 1870 to 1920. This volume aims to demonstrate the importance of Darwinism in nineteenth-century Argentina and, by extension, elsewhere in Latin America. The first section of this volume reviews the history of the dissemination of evolutionary thought in Argentina and its reception by the intellectuals who appropriated it while the second examines some of the most salient constituent analogies of Darwinism and their effects on and transformation within Argentine scientific and social thought.Less

Developing Scientific Thinking in the Context of Video Games: Where to Next?

Corinne Zimmerman

in Learning by Playing: Video Gaming in Education

This chapter reviews the research on scientific thinking that is relevant for game developers interested in creating or modifying video games to promote scientific thinking skills. It first ... More

This chapter reviews the research on scientific thinking that is relevant for game developers interested in creating or modifying video games to promote scientific thinking skills. It first summarizes the evidence on video games and science, highlighting what still needs to be done. It then offers suggestions for a new research agenda on the academic potential of video games and how educators and researchers can utilize video games to scaffold and develop scientific thinking skills. Suggestions include developing high-quality learning games, specifying more precise research questions, identifying the science education problems that require solutions, specifying the big picture learning tools, consulting the basic research on scientific thinking, and specifying learning goals, learning activities, games, and learning outcomes.Less