Studies in History and Philosophy of Science最新文献

The precision fallacy: On the futility of preference purification 精确性谬误：论偏好净化的无效性

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-10 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102131

Johanna Thoma

引用次数: 0

Psychology and the 20th-century Galileo cult: Kurt Lewin vs. Karl Bühler 心理学与20世纪伽利略崇拜：库尔特·列文vs.卡尔·<s:1>赫勒。

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-05 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102130

James McElvenny, Clemens Knobloch

引用次数: 0

Lessons for human science measurement from the quantification of earthquake size 地震震级量化对人类科学测量的启示。

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-06-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-07 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102132

Cristian Larroulet Philippi , Miguel Ohnesorge

{"title":"Lessons for human science measurement from the quantification of earthquake size","authors":"Cristian Larroulet Philippi , Miguel Ohnesorge","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102132","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102132","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>It remains controversial whether the human sciences can quantify the phenomena they study. The feasibility of quantification is usually assessed by identifying similarities and differences to quantitative measurement in physics. We argue that the case studies used to exemplify physical measurement are not sufficiently representative to underwrite such assessments. We substantiate this thesis by reconstructing how seismologists quantified “earthquake size.” Seismology demonstrates that quantification can succeed under conditions that, on the one hand, differ from canonical case studies and, on the other, resemble those of the human sciences in relevant respects—seismologists study phenomena that are not amenable to significant experimental control and that cannot be isolated from complex background conditions. This allows us to refute an influential argument for the impossibility of human science quantification, which turns on the claim that experimental control is a necessary condition for quantification (Trendler, 2009). Finally, we draw constructive lessons for the human sciences from the method that seismologists Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg used to quantify earthquake size. That method starts by introducing (approximate and circumscribed) “placeholder” scales, which can then be extended and revised to account for inevitable disturbing factors in the measurement process. We use this method to identify promising developments but also continued shortcomings in a noteworthy effort at quantification: the Lexile measure of reading comprehension.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"117 ","pages":"Article 102132"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147373386","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Emergent causal novelty. From early emergentism to the contemporary debate 突发因果新颖性。从早期的萌芽到当代的争论

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-13 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102103

Erica Onnis

{"title":"Emergent causal novelty. From early emergentism to the contemporary debate","authors":"Erica Onnis","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102103","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102103","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Among metaphysicians, philosophers of science, and scientists, emergent phenomena are usually considered entities that depend on lower-level goings-on while maintaining some autonomy and manifesting some novelty in relation to them. Yet, understanding these features more precisely is an open problem. In this paper, I focus on emergent novelty. In the contemporary debate, this feature has been steadily interpreted in causal terms, and this causal interpretation has often been developed in a power-based framework. Moreover, several authors who played important roles in reintroducing this interpretation in the contemporary debate traced it back to the so-called “British Emergentists”. This paper aims to show that this alleged inheritance should be carefully reassessed. On the one hand, at least some of the early emergentists (John Stuart Mill, Conwy Lloyd Morgan, and Samuel Alexander) did not attach tremendous importance to causal efficacy compared to other forms of emergent novelty that I suggest calling “qualitative”. On the other hand, while contemporary accounts of emergence are prevalently outlined within a non-Humean metaphysical framework in which talk of powers is pertinent, at least some of the early emergentists were prevalently Humean in relation to causality, and explicitly rejected talk of powers or causal properties. Moreover, both Alexander and Lloyd Morgan recognised at least another form of causal efficacy associated with what the former called “Nisus”. This paper suggests that acknowledging and recovering these pluralist views about novelty and causation, besides representing a more accurate reading of early emergentism, would allow for the formulation of better and more comprehensive models of emergence.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102103"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145950329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Of atoms, bricks and cells: A historical critique of historical criticisms of classical cell theory 原子、砖块和细胞：对经典细胞理论的历史批判的历史批判

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-28 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102124

Ariane Dröscher

{"title":"Of atoms, bricks and cells: A historical critique of historical criticisms of classical cell theory","authors":"Ariane Dröscher","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102124","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102124","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The essay argues against historical accounts that portray classical cell theory as having established an atomistic and/or building block vision of life and hence as being diametrically opposed to the organismic standpoint. The cell-atom analogy came up in the mid-nineteenth century as a rhetorical creation <em>against</em> cell theory. Yet, the historical fact that opponents, such as Thomas Huxley, Adam Sedgwick, and Charles Otis Whitman interpreted and rejected cell theory as an atomistic theory does not mean that it actually was an atomistic theory. Nevertheless, their criticisms passed from one critic to the next over a considerable period and continue to influence present-day ideas about a supposedly reductionist cell theory. A look into the original texts of some protagonists of early cell theory, such as Matthias Schleiden, Theodor Schwann, Franz Unger, Albert von Koelliker, and Rudolf Virchow, shows that no one defended such a view. On the contrary, they explicitly spoke against any form of cell–atom or cell–building block analogy. Nor did they consider cells as completely independent and interchangeable units, or organisms as mere cell aggregates. I demonstrate that their views of cells and their role in vital organization were more complex, more uncertain and more hypothetical than their critics have admitted.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102124"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146079723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Proto-externalist analyses of Darwinism in Polish philosophy at turn of 19th century: How disputes of A. Chałupczyński and B. Dybowski anticipated later controversies among historians of biology 19世纪初波兰哲学中达尔文主义的原始外在主义分析：A. Chałupczyński和B. Dybowski的争论如何预示了后来生物学史家之间的争论

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-15 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102111

Michał Jakub Wagner

{"title":"Proto-externalist analyses of Darwinism in Polish philosophy at turn of 19th century: How disputes of A. Chałupczyński and B. Dybowski anticipated later controversies among historians of biology","authors":"Michał Jakub Wagner","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102111","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2025.102111","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article revises the genealogy of “externalism” in Darwin studies by foregrounding two nineteenth-century Polish figures – Adam Chałupczyński and Benedykt Dybowski. Against the usual line from Marxism, pragmatism, and sociology of science, it shows that Marx/Engels and C. S. Peirce criticized Social Darwinism and reception dynamics rather than reducing Darwin's theory to capitalist ideology. Chałupczyński offers an explicit non-Marxist/pragmatist externalism: reading natural selection as an expression of British imperial capitalism and proposing a cooperation-cantered, pacifist evolutionism shaped by Polish nation-building ambitions. Dybowski anticipates “essentialist story” of J. Dewey and E. Mayr by attacking “mutational” (typological) thinking and tying resistance to Darwinism to church authority, idealist philosophy, and social hierarchy. Set alongside Russian and German politicizations of biological discourse, these cases show externalist analyses emerging from diverse East-European contexts. Recovering them complicates the internalism/externalism binary, decouples externalism from a narrow Anglophone lineage, and significantly widens the archive for Darwin-studies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102111"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145981862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Rethinking psychological measurement: Validity potential versus realised validity 重新思考心理测量：效度潜力与实现效度

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-22 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102123

Wendy C. Higgins , David M. Kaplan , Alexander J. Gillett , John Sutton , Robert M. Ross

{"title":"Rethinking psychological measurement: Validity potential versus realised validity","authors":"Wendy C. Higgins , David M. Kaplan , Alexander J. Gillett , John Sutton , Robert M. Ross","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102123","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102123","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose a concept of validity with a novel feature that we argue can facilitate improved measurement validation practices in the psychological sciences. Following Borsboom and colleagues, our concept of validity is measurement-specific and causal. This contrasts with current guidelines linking validity to the acceptability of both measurement and non-measurement-based interpretations of test scores. Benefits of a measurement-specific concept of validity are that it can make the requirements for valid measurement clearer and make validity claims easier to interpret, which we illustrate by comparing the use of test scores for measurement versus prediction. Our concept of validity also maintains that a causal relationship of sufficient strength from the attribute being measured to the measurement outcomes is necessary and sufficient for valid measurement. This places causal explanations at the centre of the validation process. While causal complexity will make the evaluation of psychological measurements as causal inferences extremely challenging, we describe how the interventionist theory of causation and related work on causal inference can serve as a starting point for addressing this challenge. The novel feature of our concept of validity is that it makes a distinction between the <em>validity potential</em> of measurement procedures <em>in abstracto</em> (e.g., tests) and the <em>realised validity</em> of concrete measurement outcomes (e.g., specific test scores). We describe key benefits of this novel distinction, including its potential to encourage the theoretical refinement of concepts, guide the selection of appropriate measurement procedures for use in research, and increase sample-specific validity evidence reporting.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102123"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146039252","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Moving beyond anecdotes: An empirical investigation of scientists' and engineers' views about and engagement with philosophy of science 超越轶事：科学家和工程师对科学哲学的看法和参与的实证调查。

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-02-11 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102125

Kathryn S. Plaisance , Sara Doody , Chad Gonnerman , Aaron M. McCright

{"title":"Moving beyond anecdotes: An empirical investigation of scientists' and engineers' views about and engagement with philosophy of science","authors":"Kathryn S. Plaisance , Sara Doody , Chad Gonnerman , Aaron M. McCright","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102125","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102125","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Several prominent scientists have publicly expressed negative views about philosophy of science—and philosophy more generally—ranging from declarations that philosophy is dead to assertions that philosophy of science is a waste of time for scientists. Some philosophers of science have responded by defending the relevance of philosophy to scientific practice, illustrating how philosophical concepts, skills, and approaches can help make scientific research more epistemically and ethically sound. Such defenses are often motivated at least in part by claims that many scientists are antagonistic towards philosophy of science. A recent empirical study even suggests that philosophers of science perceive a ‘lack of interest from scientists’ as one of the main barriers to fruitful engagement between the two. These claims raise the question: How widespread <em>are</em> negative views of philosophy of science across the broader scientific community? We empirically investigated this and other research questions with data from a standardized survey administered to a probability-based sample of over 2000 scientists and engineers at 54 universities across Canada and the USA. Our findings indicate that the negative sentiments mentioned above are not representative of the wider scientific community. Many respondents even expressed interest in pursuing research collaborations with philosophers of science. Moreover, a majority of respondents reported having informally engaged with philosophers of science in one way or another. This study demonstrates why it is essential to empirically examine scientists' views rather than generalizing from a few cases, regardless of how prominent they may be.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102125"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146183167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Blindspots of empiricism in the discovery of chaos theory 混沌理论发现中的经验主义盲点。

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-03-04 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102133

Brett Park

引用次数: 0

Medicine, healthcare and the environment: from the salutogenic approach towards the salutogenic environments 医学、保健和环境：从有益健康的方法到有益健康的环境。

IF 1.8 2区哲学

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Pub Date : 2026-03-01 Epub Date: 2026-01-21 DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102115

Laura Menatti

{"title":"Medicine, healthcare and the environment: from the salutogenic approach towards the salutogenic environments","authors":"Laura Menatti","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102115","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsa.2026.102115","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Research in medicine is increasingly calling for greater attention to the importance of the environment and the effects of climate change. In this paper, I propose that the ecological dimension of health and its role in current medicine can be better addressed and its understanding enhanced through the salutogenic approach, first introduced by Aaron Antonovsky. I discuss this approach, and I reframe it to apply it to the study of the health-environment coupling. I do so by introducing the concept of salutogenic environments to provide a comprehensive framework for health that goes beyond disease prevention to understand how environments may foster health and well-being. After a historical and theoretical introduction of the concepts of salutogenesis and pathogenesis, I analyse the role of salutogenic environments, by focusing on their epistemological and practical implications for medical theory and healthcare, with the aim to 1) capture the positive and preventive aspects of the environment as related to health, and 2) clarify the relationship between the pathogenic and positive (salutogenic) aspects of the environment. Integrating the concept of salutogenic environment into medical education and practice can provide healthcare professionals with a more nuanced understanding of environmental impacts on patients’ health. Yet, scientific rigour should be applied to this field to ensure credibility and applicability.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49467,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Science","volume":"116 ","pages":"Article 102115"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146020466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0