Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:35:11.630Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multiple Constraints, Simultaneous Solutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Peter Galison
Peter Galison*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Historians and philosophers of science have, of late, found a new common ground. During the 1960s the two fields worked together to answer the general question: “how does one theory supersede another?” — followed immediately by a second query: “Is the process rational?” Historians provided examples from the chronicles of science, and philosophers tested these cases against universal models of change. Together the two helped ground an important avenue of inquiry, and today the best of that work — by Feyerabend, Kuhn, Lakatos, Popper, and others — forms a staple of the philosophy of science.

But despite the best of intentions, in the 1970s the two fields began to pull apart centrifugally. On one side, the philosophers found their concerns concentrated ever more on fundamental issues about meaning and reference, and these seemed to demand idealized histories with simpler structures.

Type
Part V. Experiment
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1988 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1988 , 1988 , pp. 157 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I have benefitted greatly from conversations with N. Cartwright, A. Davidson, C.A. Jones, T. Lenoir, M. Morrison, and N. Wise.

References

Cartwright, N. (1989), Nature's Capacities and their Measurement. (Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Daston, L. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, A. (1987), “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality,” Critical Inquiry 14: 16–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldman, G. J.; Gilchriese, M. G. D.; and Kirkby, J., “4π Detectors” in Design and Utilization of the SSC, 1984 Snowmass Proceedings, p. 630.Google Scholar
Fine, A. (1986), The Shaky Game. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Forman, P., “Weimar Culture, Causality, and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 3: 1–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P. (1985), “Bubble Chambers and the Experimental Workplace,” in Observation, Experiment, and Hypothesis in Modern Physical Science, Achinstein, P. and Hannaway, O. (eds.). Cambridge: Bradford-MIT.Google Scholar
Galison, P. (1987), How Experiments End. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Galison, P. (1988), “History, Philosophy and the Central Metaphor,” in Science in Context 2: 97–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galison, P., and Assmus, A., (1989), “Artificial Clouds, Real Particles,” in The Uses of Experiment, Gooding, D., (ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1975), The Emergence of Probability, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1986a), in Reconstructing Individualism, Heller, T., Sosna, M. and Wellbery, D. (eds.). Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. (1986b), “Language, Truth and Reason,” in Rationality and Relativism, Hollis, M. and Lukes, S. (eds.). Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Krüger, L., Daston, L., and Heidelberger, M., (1987) The Probabilistic Revolution, Vol. 1; and Krüger, L., Gigerenzer, G., and Morgan, M. (1986), op. cit., Vol. 2, Cambridge Bradfort - MIT.Google Scholar
Lenoir, T. (1988), “Practice, Reason, Context: The Dialogue Between Theory and Experiment,” in Science in Context 2: 3–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lenoir, T. (forthcoming), “The Eye as Measuring Device”, unpublished typescript.Google Scholar
Morrison, M. (1987), “Dimensions of Theory Acceptance: Methodology and Experiments,” unpublished PhD dissertation University of Western Ontario.Google Scholar
Pickering, A. (1984), Constructing Quarks, Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, A. (1981), “The Hunting the Quark,” Isis 72: 216-36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. (1985), Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, T. (1986), The Rise of Statistical Thinking: 1820-1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, N. (1987), “How Do Sums Count? On the Cultural Origins of Statistical Causality”. In Krûger, Daston, and Heidelberger (1987).Google Scholar
Wise, N. (1988), “Mediating Machines”, Science In Context 2: 77–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, N. (forthcoming), “Forman Reformed”, to appear in Schweber, S. and Daston, L., Science in Context 3.Google Scholar