Critical historical analysis of the 19th-century cholera and 21st-century coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemics suggests that in conflicts over pandemic-mitigation policies, the professional ...backgrounds of principal opponents reveal dominant and minority scientific paradigms, presaging possible epistemological shifts. Epistemic conflict over cholera helped spur biomedical expertise as the dominant paradigm for U.S. public health science and policy beginning in the 20th century. This paradigm was reflected in federal government reliance on infectious disease physicians as the primary scientific decision makers in the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, epistemic conflict over challenges to behavioral and social well-being in 2020 may highlight discordance between the dominant biomedical paradigm used in making federal policy and the inherently holistic impact of that policy on population health, suggesting need for a new paradigm of multidisciplinary scientific engagement. Because population-wide public health initiatives affect many aspects of health—physiological, psychological, behavioral, and social—that are best measured and interpreted by experts in these respective fields, multidisciplinary scientific engagement would facilitate optimal, holistic evaluation of policy benefits and harms. This multidisciplinary approach, analogous to that currently recommended in medical management of chronic disease, would advance epidemiological research to inform evidence-based policy for public health crises in which U.S. population-wide interventions are contemplated.
Abstract
Perhaps the most influential historian of science of the last century, Alexandre Koyré, famously argued that the icon of modern science, Galileo Galilei, was a Platonist who had hardly ...performed experiments. Koyré has been followed by other historians and philosophers of science. In addition, it is not difficult to find examples of Platonists in contemporary science, in particular in the physical sciences. A famous example is the icon of twenty century physics, Albert Einstein. This paper addresses two questions related to the Platonism of modern physical science. The first is: How is Galileo’s Platonism compatible with the fact that he did perform experiments? The solution to this apparent paradox can be found in Plato’s late dialogue
Timaeus
. In the dialogue the world has been created by a divine craftsman according to an original plan. The task of the scientist is not primarily to describe the material world, but to reconstruct the original plan. This view has later been known as “God’s Eye View”. The second question is: If a God’s Eye View is unattainable, how is it possible to give a “rational reconstruction” of Galileo’s Platonism? The key-word is
idealisation
. It is further argued that idealisation is intimately related to technology. Technology is required to realize ideal experimental conditions, and the results are in its turn implemented in technology. The implication is that the quest for unity in science, based on physics as the basic science, should be replaced by the recognition of the diversity of the sciences.
European navigation in the age of sail owes much to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century and the development of instruments and advanced mathematical techniques. Important though ...these developments were, it is argued here that close observation of the environment: of the weather, ocean currents, clouds, birds, mammals, and a host of other factors played a far more important role in safe navigation from one part of the globe to another.
RESUMO: Durante a Primeira República Portuguesa, António Sérgio escreveu ensaios nos quais propôs um racionalismo aberto, uma pedagogia trabalhista e uma interpretação da história de Portugal, onde ...as circunstâncias materiais, as práticas, os interesses económicos condicionavam as atitudes mentais dos agentes históricos. Sérgio inspirou-se na filosofia do trabalho de Proudhon, interessando-se pelas discussões francesas sobre a origem prática/técnica da inteligência humana e do papel da técnica no desenvolvimento científico, discussões que envolveram Bergson, Durkheim e Louis Weber. Foi a partir dessa perspectiva pragmatista que realçou o papel das navegações portuguesas e da atitude de experimentalismo, de humanismo científico, que atribuía a algumas figuras da elite portuguesa do século XVI, bem como o interesse de Galileu pelas técnicas, que favoreceu o seu desenvolvimento da nova física, conduzindo à Revolução Científica.
ABSTRACT: During the First Portuguese Republic, António Sérgio wrote essays in which he proposed open rationalism, labor pedagogy and an interpretation of the history of Portugal where material circumstances, practices, economic interests conditioned the mental attitudes of historical agents. Sérgio was inspired by Proudhon’s philosophy of ‘travail’, and also by French discussions about the practical / technical origin of human intelligence and the role of technique in scientific development, discussions that involved Bergson, Durkheim and Louis Weber. It was from this pragmatic perspective that he highlighted the role of Portuguese navigations and the attitude of experimentalism, scientific humanism that he attributed to some figures of the Portuguese elite of the 16th century, as well as Galileo’s interest in the techniques that favored his development of the new physics, which led to the Scientific Revolution.
This paper aims to show how a teleological model of reality and knowledge can be of aid in order to understand the connection between objective knowledge and subjective experience. The separation ...between them seems indeed to have been established by an opposite deterministic ontological and epistemological model within modern philosophy, which does not allow to explain the subjective relevance of objective knowledge and the objective relevance of subjective experience. In order to overcome this aporetic dichotomy, the paper will underline the actuality of the Aristotelian teleological conception of knowledge and experience and its heritage especially in contemporary philosophy.
Jacques Rancière’s theorisation of the political has been particularly influential in investigating political struggles and social movements. By distinguishing between the police order – tasked with ...maintaining the dominant (hierarchical) system – and politics – aiming at breaking that system – Rancière suggests reading the political as a disruptive event. However, he does not specifically engage with the question of how politics affects and changes the police order. This is what this article aims at exploring. Building upon Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I suggest approaching the police order in the same way Kuhn approaches ‘normal science’ and reading the political in the same way Kuhn reads revolutionary science. I ultimately suggest that Rancière’s theorisation of the political is limited because he does not (sufficiently) account for the interplay between police/politics nor for the emergence of an after-politics, that is, a new (ordinary) police order that emerges out of (extraordinary) political events.
Farid Esack on Hermeneutic of Liberation from Thomas Kuhn’s Scientific Revolution Perspective This article aims to elaborate on Farid Esack's Hermeneutic of Liberation from Thomas S Kuhn's scientific ...revolution perspective. The background of this study is the liberation of society from apartheid hegemony in South Africa in the 1949-1991 period; Farid Esack - from the beginning engaged in the practical political movement and now focuses on the scientific field - gave rise to new methodical ideas in the study of the Koran i.e hermeneutics of liberation; which is an effort to fight against racist rulers. From Kuhn's point of view, what Essack was doing was actually a scientific revolution. This assumption will be elaborated in this study. This study is a literature review using qualitative-content analysis as the data analysis technique. The results of this study are; first, his method of Qur'anic is a scientific revolution; which he supported the strengthening of the hermeneutical paradigm in the study of the Qur'an. In that way, secondly, as Kuhn requires that the new paradigm of scientific revolution must be supported by the scientific community, Farid Esack can be said to have a scientific community with Fazl Rahman, Hasan Hanafi, Mohamed Arkoun, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, etc. Thus, it is worth waiting for the success of this community revolution; to strengthen hermeneutics as a new paradigm in Qur'anic study in the future
El papel determinante que desempeña la innovación técnica en el progreso neurocientífico plantea desafíos especiales a la filosofía del cambio científico de raigambre kuhniana. Algunos filósofos de ...la neurociencia sostienen que las revoluciones en neurociencia no involucran cambios de paradigma, sino que dependen exclusivamente de la innovación técnica o experimental. Mediante el estudio del episodio histórico del descubrimiento de la neurona (1873-1909), argumento que las revoluciones en neurociencia, como muchas otras revoluciones de laboratorio, están frecuentemente impulsadas por el entrelazamiento de innovaciones técnicas y cambio conceptual.
•We propose a Unified Growth Model that incorporates the Scientific Revolution.•The Scientific Revolution paves the way for useful innovation and a takeoff to sustained economic ...development.•Countries with restricted scientific inquiry experience a delayed takeoff.•For severe restrictions in scientific inquiry, a takeoff does not occur at all.•The model can explain why the Industrial Revolution occurred in the UK first.
We analyze the role of the Scientific Revolution in the takeoff to sustained long-run economic development. Basic scientific knowledge is a necessary input in the production of applied knowledge, which, in turn, fuels productivity growth and leads to rising incomes. Subsequently, rising incomes instigate a fertility transition and foster education investments. Together, the increasing stocks of basic scientific knowledge and human capital, and the concomitant reduction in fertility enable economic development. In regions where scientific inquiry is severely constrained—for example, due to religious reasons or due to oppressive rulers—the takeoff is delayed or may not occur at all. This shows the importance of investing in basic scientific inquiry when trying to achieve long-run economic prosperity. Our framework could contribute to the understanding of why sustained economic development emerged first in Europe and not in technologically more advanced China.
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