{"title":"Correction: Diversification or sensory unification? Controversies around the senses in fin de siècle culture.","authors":"Sonsoles Hernandez Barbosa","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00654-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00654-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"47 1","pages":"1"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11649723/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142830938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Obesogenic vs. fatphobic: an examination of environment in relation to fatness.","authors":"Tiana Dodson","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00637-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00637-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The eradication of fatness (referred to as \"obesity\") is a longtime project of the medical establishment under the guise of health promotion. However, in spite of the large budgets, amount of studies done, and number of interventions tried over the years, the weights of the population still seem to be trending upward. Recent studies and research have been looking into frameworks aimed at combating fatness by reshaping the \"obesogenic\" environment as an approach that takes into account the social and physical environment and its part in promoting fatness. On its face, this research direction looks as if the discourse is changing from seating the fault of fatness at the feet of the individual and placing it more into the social systems and factors surrounding them. In this paper, I will challenge the continued conversation around \"solving\" fatness by looking at the role of the environment as a causal factor and will instead highlight the need to focus more on the impacts of a fatphobic environment on the wellness of fat people.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"48"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142820266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pavlovian theory and the development of traditional Chinese medicine, 1949-1961.","authors":"Haiwei Yang, Huili Zhang","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00632-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00632-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the leadership of the new country carried out a political, cultural, and scientific campaign to \"comprehensively learn from the Soviet Union,\" with the goal of rapid development on all fronts. In the realm of medicine, this had profound consequences. The hegemonic Soviet theory of physiology and psychology-Pavlovianism-became highly influential in China, first as Party Line and second as the basis for a reformed \"traditional Chinese medicine\". In the early 1950s, Pavlov's theory of higher nervous activity had the status of unquestioned orthodoxy. However, a disagreement between the Ministry of Health and national leader Mao Zedong led to an important shift in 1954. After that date, instead of adopting the Soviet theories wholesale, Chinese medical practitioners used Pavlovianism to shape Chinese medicine's underlying theoretical constructs. The influence of this reconstruction persists to this day, in practices thought of by the public as thoroughly Chinese, like acupuncture, holistic thinking, inner organs theory, and acupoint injection therapy.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"47"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142820275","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Historicizing the liberal antiracism of Cultural Evolution.","authors":"Cameron Brinitzer","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00647-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00647-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Cultural Evolution Society was established in 2015 to \"catalyze a theoretical synthesis\" in the scientific study of human culture. As a field of research, cultural evolution took shape in the 1970s and 1980s around the aim of incorporating culture into biology's modern evolutionary synthesis. Cultural evolution grew around the turn of the twenty-first century at the interface of population genetics and cognitive psychology. This article locates the origins of research on cultural evolution in projects of postwar scientific antiracism and U.S.-based debates about race and intelligence in the 1960s. Charting the development of prominent approaches to studying cultural evolution, I show how population geneticists and cognitive psychologists worked to redefine culture in statistical, populational, and geographic terms to politically neutralize the study of human difference. I situate the forms of genetic and cognitive culturalism that emerged as a result in a longer history of twentieth-century scientific antiracism.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"46"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11621191/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142787843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jeffry L. Ramsey, Sustainability and the Philosophy of Science, New York: Routledge, 2024.","authors":"La Ilham Toha","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00650-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00650-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"45"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142752540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the ports to the hinterland. Plague, bacteriology, and politics in Argentina (1899-1940).","authors":"Juan Pablo Zabala, Nicolás Facundo Rojas","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00648-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00648-0","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1899, the first cases of plague were recognised in Paraguay and a few months later in Buenos Aires as part of the third plague pandemic. In the first decades of the twentieth century, plague slowly advanced towards the Argentinian hinterland. In this paper we focus on the production of scientific knowledge about plague in Argentina, where a core of bacteriologists emerged early on. We show how they not only played a central role in the complex process of plague recognition and intervention, but also influenced the scientific development of bacteriology in Argentina and potentially in South America. We argue that bacteriology became a key tool in articulating the promises of modern science with political and economic interests, allowing the Argentinian government to extend its territorial control over Buenos Aires and the hinterland. This can be seen in two different configurations of the plague as an epistemic and political object in Argentina. In the first period, from 1899 to 1910, plague was a problem linked to the ports. In this section of the article, we show how plague became an important issue in the development of bacteriology in Argentina, how this research contributed to new intervention measures and, in some cases, developed innovative ideas about serotherapeutic treatments and the characteristics of the disease. In the second period, from the mid-1910s until the 1940s, research in Argentina provided new evidence of the 'rural' nature of plague, a process in deep dialogue with research on plague among peri-domestic and wild rodents carried out in other parts of the Americas, Europe and Africa. This article thus aims to contribute to a history of bacteriology that highlights the role of non-European centres, like Argentina, in the production and circulation of bacteriological knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"44"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142689809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Two scientific perspectives on nerve signal propagation: how incompatible approaches jointly promote progress in explanatory understanding.","authors":"Linda Holland, Henk W de Regt, Benjamin Drukarch","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00644-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00644-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We present a case study of two scientific perspectives on the phenomenon of nerve signal propagation, a bio-electric and a thermodynamic perspective, and compare this case with two accounts of scientific perspectivism: those of Michela Massimi and Juha Saatsi, respectively. We demonstrate that the interaction between the bio-electric perspective and the thermodynamic perspective can be captured in Saatsi's terms of progress in explanatory understanding. Using insights from our case study, we argue that both the epistemic and pragmatic dimensions of scientific understanding are important for increasing explanatory understanding of phenomena. The epistemic dimension of understanding is important for increasing the number of actually answered what-if-things-had-been-different questions about a phenomenon, the pragmatic dimension for pointing out the potentially answerable what-if questions that have been overlooked or purposefully neglected thus far. Exposing the limitations of the acquired understanding within a particular perspective can be achieved by criticizing the assumptions that have been adopted to make models of the perspective intelligible, but that are considered problematic from a rival perspective.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"43"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11582304/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142683674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A strategy to what end? \"The strategy of model building in population biology\" in its programmatic context.","authors":"Zvi Hasnes-Beninson","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00646-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00646-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>\"The Strategy of Model Building in Population Biology\" published by Richard Levins in 1966 has been cited over 2500 times. For a paper concerned with modeling approaches in population biology a surprisingly large part of the attention. The Strategy received comes from history and philosophy of biology, and specifically from accounts on model and model formulation. The Strategy is an unusual paper; it presents neither new data nor a new formal model; at times it reads like a manifesto for some modeling approach, without specifying which broader program that approach intends to support. When these peculiarities of The Strategy are even mentioned, the philosophical literature tends to explain them away by invoking Levins' Marxist commitments. In contrast, I argue that those peculiarities can be explained by examining the programmatic purpose of the paper; starting from his doctoral work, Levins was trying to establish a research program meant to account for the relations between fitness and environment in different terms than the prevalent lock-and-key view. My paper brings that program back to the discussion, explains its relation to competing approaches and examines Levins' approach to modeling in light of that context.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"42"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11573825/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142649650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inventing with bacteriology: controversy over anti-cholera therapeutic serum and tensions between transnational science and local practice in Tokyo and Berlin (1890-1902).","authors":"Shiori Nosaka","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00639-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00639-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present article examines the material, epistemological, and social dimensions of late nineteenth-century anti-cholera serum controversies that unfolded in Tokyo and Berlin. It seeks to shed light on the conflicting values embedded in the construction of scientific evidence during the transnational exploration of bacteriology as an effective response to controlling epidemics. Driven by Japanese health authorities' initiatives, Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo participated in the elaboration of bacteriological research oriented toward therapeutic application during his stay in Berlin. This work coincided with the rise of a controversy over anti-cholera serum in relation to the animal experiments conducted by Richard Pfeiffer, a German bacteriologist. After presenting a series of animal experiments and certain clinical cases conducted in Germany, France, and Egypt in the context of the controversies, the article analyzes a therapeutic trial conducted by Kitasato in Japan during an 1895 cholera epidemic. His strategy, bringing new data to the transnational debate through an intensive investment of resources in the trial, provoked criticism from his Japanese and German colleagues. These critics questioned Kitasato's method and pointed out the low social value of this experimental serum therapy, performed in highly equipped conditions. Through this case study, the present article highlights: a) a strong tension between transnational research interactions among bacteriologists and local medical practices during public health campaigns against epidemics at the turn of the twentieth century; b) the importance of analyzing the interconnected effects of local, national and transnational frameworks of medical science when examining the increasingly intertwined relationships between laboratory science and clinical medicine.</p>","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"41"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142638735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Matteo Vagelli, Reconsidering historical epistemology: French and anglophone styles in history and philosophy of science, 2024. Springer.","authors":"Matthew Perkins-McVey","doi":"10.1007/s40656-024-00641-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s40656-024-00641-7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":56308,"journal":{"name":"History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences","volume":"46 4","pages":"40"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-11-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142585337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}